Being a giant, nigh-invulnerable walking death machine is undeniably great, but do you find all of that ‘honour’ stuff which the Imperial Knights bang on about to be too pious? Wouldn’t you rather just… smash things?
Of course you would, that’s why you’re here – and the Chaos Knights are ready to provide. Use your strength and status for what really matters – becoming the baddest dude in the galaxy – and the looming giants of your dread household will back you up with awesomely powerful rules.
Overview
Chaos Knights are fear made manifest – walking engines of pure destruction that chill the souls of all who gaze upon them. Where their Imperial counterparts are all about courtly manners and noblesse oblige, the dread households prize nothing but sheer martial dominance, and have many ways to exploit the quaking terror that they inspire in lowly mortals.
Faction Rules
The sight of a lance of Chaos Knights striding through the fog of war elicits nothing but sheer, unbridled terror, and even the hardiest of heroes in the 41st Millennium will feel the aura of disquiet that flows from these mechanical monsters. These Harbingers of Dread spread disorder and sap the will, with the effect only getting stronger as time goes by.
Many factions have special ways to cause Battle-shock, but Chaos Knights take further advantage with a bonus to wound Battle-shocked units, and can even avoid return fire from them.
When formed into a Traitoris Lance Detachment, they can also force Battle-shock tests on nearby units as soon as they’ve taken damage, turning a single fallen model into a cascade failure under the fists and chainswords of blasphemous war machines Forged in Terror.
Unit Spotlight
Chaos Knights have always taken a freewheeling approach to their equipment selection, with the Knight Despoiler throwing off the shackles of rigid Imperial designations to equip whatever allows them to slaughter more chattel. The same is true in the new edition, and its Seething Hatred rule adds a touch of reliability to all weapon types.
The presence of an Abhorrent-class Knight is enough to spur on the various War Dogs that cluster around them. These auras are more flexible than the targeted bonuses used by Imperial Knights – but the new Bondsman abilities benefit both the Armiger target and the Questoris Knight using them, while a Chaos Knight is unaffected by its own aura. This fundamentally changes the dynamic between lord and squire, as the larger Chaos Knights have little concern for the benefit a War Dog can give them, instead of working in careful concert.
Perhaps the most horrifying of all Knight suits piloted by Fallen Nobles is the Knight Abominant, a towering psychic monstrosity that projects a tempest of empyric terror. Its psychic Vortex Terrors can throw an enemy unit straight into Battle-shock at the start of the Shooting phase – making them vulnerable to Harbingers of Dread – and tears its prey apart both with psychic squalls and scorching volkite energy, then follows up with a barrage of close combat attacks.
Weapon Spotlight
Where Imperial Knight households show some measure of caution and only mount their strongest laser weaponry to the massive Dominus-class Knights, Chaos Knights show no such restraint. The raw vehicle-punching power of the desecrator laser destructor is enough to turn loyalists green with envy… should any of them survive a potent Strength 18 beam of death.
Like many Knights , the Desecrator can also pack a warpstrike claw to maximise its damage against newly toughened vehicles. Battle tanks might now be packing a Toughness characteristic of 10 or higher, but against a Strength 20 fist with 8 damage per hit, they’ll still fold like paper.
Stratagem Spotlight
War Dogs are afforded little respect in Traitoris Lances – by their bigger masters, anyway. To everyone else, they’re still piloting a stompy war machine from out of a nightmare. These scout-grade Knights nip around the heels of their larger compatriots and hunt for scraps amidst the carnage. Like their namesakes, these Dread Hounds roam the battlefield in packs and gang up on their enemies to drag down larger prey.
There’s no limit on the number or variety of War Dogs who can focus on a single target, allowing you to get tremendous efficiency out of a single Command point. Just make sure not to overestimate your foe, or you’ll be left with War Dogs standing over the wreckage with nothing to do that phase.
The Word from the Studio
“Chaos Knights are terrifying foes to face – where they tread, fear and panic spread, and this is how we wanted them to play in the latest edition,” explains Robin from the Warhammer Design Studio. “Their army rule and Detachment ability work together to cause widespread panic in their foes, and many of their Detachment’s Stratagems either grant the Chaos Knights bonuses when attacking Battle-shocked foes, or impose penalties on their foes when their nerve breaks.
“This is all before you consider the datasheets themselves, which – as you might expect – are all potently destructive. The vision here was a master and their pack of savage hounds – in this case the despotic, titanic Knights who lead their War Dogs to battle.”
Black Library
Stories that paint the Chaos Knights as protagonists are rare, as they’re just too good as baddies, but you can get your fill of their despoiling ways in the short story Apex Predator by Gavin G Smith. In it, an Imperial Knight pilot is hunted across a ravaged world by her Chaos-worshipping kin, and the monster that stalks her is a veteran of a thousand more wars than she could ever fight.
Want to see how the other factions of Warhammer 40,000 are doing in the new edition? Plenty of Faction Focus articles are available to read right now, and more are coming every weekday this month. The super-elites of the Adeptus Custodes are on the cards for tomorrow, so get out your gold paint and prepare for some awesome rules.
