Knight Titans

[me_in_japan]

I am almost completely sure that the whole knight situation ran thus:

Boss: Those bastards over at Dreamforge are stealing my money. Make me a big-ass imperial kit. One of those big robot things like the Eldar and Tau have.
Designer: how about one of those epic Knights?
Boss: good idea. Make it so.
(Some time later)
Designer: what do you reckon, boss?
Boss: nice. Very gothic and stuff. Start selling them immediately!
Designer: you want we should give it some rules? Customers do kinda like rules for their models.
Boss: dammit do I have to think of everything round here? Fine, yes. Get one of the lads to scribble down some rules and bang em in the next Knight codex.
Designer: we don't have a knight codex, boss.
Boss: fine. Stick em in white dwarf.
Designer: that's due next week, boss.
Boss: chop chop then!
(Across the hall, in the game design room)
Designer: so the boss says he wants Knight rules, like, yesterday.
Rules writer: Knights! Sweet! Like in the old epic game?
Designer: yeah.
Rules writer: ok. Just like in epic...*starts typong*
(Some further time later)
WD staff: boss! I wrote some rules and stuff.
Boss: I saw em. Very nice. Reminds me of epic. I like the idea about squads.
WD staff: well...I kinda forgot that in 40k an army needs scoring units, and warlords and stuff.
Boss: oh ffs, send a memo. Make em all scoring and just let players pick one and call it a warlord.
WD: should we playtest that, boss?
Boss: play-what? What's that? Get away with you man, we have better things to do with our time than play games.
WD: ok, boss, you're the boss, boss.

[Spevna]

I am almost completely sure that the whole knight situation ran thus:

Boss: Those bastards over at Dreamforge are stealing my money. Make me a big-ass imperial kit. One of those big robot things like the Eldar and Tau have.
Designer: how about one of those epic Knights?
Boss: good idea. Make it so.
(Some time later)
Designer: what do you reckon, boss?
Boss: nice. Very gothic and stuff. Start selling them immediately!
Designer: you want we should give it some rules? Customers do kinda like rules for their models.
Boss: dammit do I have to think of everything round here? Fine, yes. Get one of the lads to scribble down some rules and bang em in the next Knight codex.
Designer: we don't have a knight codex, boss.
Boss: fine. Stick em in white dwarf.
Designer: that's due next week, boss.
Boss: chop chop then!
(Across the hall, in the game design room)
Designer: so the boss says he wants Knight rules, like, yesterday.
Rules writer: Knights! Sweet! Like in the old epic game?
Designer: yeah.
Rules writer: ok. Just like in epic...*starts typong*
(Some further time later)
WD staff: boss! I wrote some rules and stuff.
Boss: I saw em. Very nice. Reminds me of epic. I like the idea about squads.
WD staff: well...I kinda forgot that in 40k an army needs scoring units, and warlords and stuff.
Boss: oh ffs, send a memo. Make em all scoring and just let players pick one and call it a warlord.
WD: should we playtest that, boss?
Boss: play-what? What's that? Get away with you man, we have better things to do with our time than play games.
WD: ok, boss, you're the boss, boss.

That seems very much well within the realms of reality mate.

Got to be honest though, I really love the idea of having an army of them go up against an army of gargants just for the bloody spectacle.

[The Other Dave]

GW is in the business of selling miniatures. Full stop. To be surprised that they consider non-revenue-generating things like "the rules" as anything other than secondary is pure folly.

[Miguelsan]

Funny part is that if the opponent is aware of it an all Knight army is not really that hard to kill.

In all fairness for the Knights it's something that would be real cool to play against in a set mission where the players agree on the lists ahead of the game but by writing the rules in such a half-arsed way GW has asured that Knights will be hated for either being a horrible thing to play against that a take all comers list can hope to defeat or a list tabled in the second turn when facing an AT heavy specialist list.

Who wouldn't like to play an scenario where Titans or Knights assault a SM fortress or Maginot line alike? What about a last stand one between IG and nids? Pity about GW approaching all that stuff in a way that causes division among players between balance and fun instead of supporting their game.

M.

[Colonel Voss]

Sigh. Why don't we just compare how much money our army cost us at the start of each game and declare the person who spent the most the winner?

But then we have to argue about whether to use current prices, prices at time of purchase, retail price versus actual paid price, currency conversion calculations, etc.!

You mean it would be the same confusion as the massive rule bloat that is the current edition?

[Auxryn]

You can get two Knights for the points of 3 land raiders, and it comes out to the same number of hull points as well. The Knights are a bit more dollars. They can't carry troops but they are scoring.

I prefer to think of a Paladin as more like a pair of Leman Russ taped together with some perks. Having it as a scoring backfield unit/counterassault unit would be pretty cool. I assume they are Battle Brothers so Coteaz can cast prescience on them, which would be fun.

I wonder if the 'through attrition, victory' secondary objective from Escalation should apply here? That would mean each knight kill is worth 2 VPs.

Ah well, it should make for some spectacular spectacles and I don't think it will be a big problem in normal games. I would be happy to play against an army with one or two in a big game.

I do wish for a proper pdf codex release (is that a contradiction in terms?). It would be cool to have a warlord table, a proper allies matrix entry, and so on.

[Primarch]

I do wish for a proper pdf codex release (is that a contradiction in terms?). It would be cool to have a warlord table, a proper allies matrix entry, and so on.

It would be great if there were more in the codex than the two knights. There were more variants back in the day. Perhaps versions with two guns or two chainswords. Some Ad Mech infantry would be welcome too.

[The Other Dave]

I do wish for a proper pdf codex release (is that a contradiction in terms?). It would be cool to have a warlord table, a proper allies matrix entry, and so on.

It would be great if there were more in the codex than the two knights. There were more variants back in the day. Perhaps versions with two guns or two chainswords.

Or a Quake Cannon.

[me_in_japan]

eh, I didnt mean to come across as complaining. I actually quite like GWs attitude to sales vis a vis minis before rules. But, I can't help but think that a better ruleset, some playtesting, and a better attitude to tournaments couldnt possibly do them any harm. I mean, speaking as a customer who is pretty much in it for how the minis look, it nonetheless wouldnt put me off any if the ruleset were well designed and tourney play was supported with solid, clearly written rules, quickly responsive FAQs, and solid playtesting. Conversely, the lack of these things certainly puts off some people from buying GW stuff and playing their games.

I dont believe this:

To be surprised that they consider non-revenue-generating things like "the rules" as anything other than secondary is pure folly.

is completely accurate. Rules are revenue generating. Sure, they don't make money in and of themselves, but they certainly drive sales of minis. If I can have 20 customers (those who buy for looks only and dont care about rules), 20 customers (those who want solid rules and dont care what minis look like) or 40 customers (both sets) I know which I'd be aiming for, as theyre hardly mutually exclusive.

And for what it's worth, I'd happily play against 3 or 4 of these, as long as I knew what I was up against in advance.

[AndrewGPaul]

GW have said repeatedly that there's a significant segment of their customer base that buys models purely for display. I don't know how accurate that is, or what fraction of their sales they account for. Given that, though, I'm not convinced that the tournament scene is nearly as important as it thinks it is. Is it really a 50/50 split like you suggest? or 90/10 in favour of kids on the kitchen table? somewhere in between?

Having said that, the response to recent releases - the various dataslates, the spin-off Codexes, Escalation and such like - from the vocal tournament players online has been mostly negative. I'm thankful GW didn't listen to them, or we wouldn't have these Knights, or any of the big Forge World kits.