Part 2 of the Great Release! The Rules and stuff

"As the pall of darkness falls and hope is sundered, woe be the foe who stands in the path of my machine"

For those that have not seen part 1 where I go over and rate each unit, please check out this link.

Part 2: The Dread Boogaloo

In this article I will be reviewing the rules that appeared in our Index. Overall this will be shorter than Part 1. 

Army Rules ahead!

This was shown to us by the Faction Focus article. Overall these rules are hard to quantify. Against Orks which are mainly LD7 will suffer more than lets say marines which are LD6 (or small demons with their silly banner!)

Due to this being hard to quantify and the fact that we are one of the few armies that has an Army Wide that turns on in the later parts of the game, I am not really able to say if this is good or not. In my heart I feel that it is just not that great. 

This is a tentative 7 our of 11 for me. (Praise Malal)

The Detachment Rule are up next

This detachment is interesting, based on what we have seen in the Chaos Space Marine double battle shock for units under half strength is quite possible (but until we get the Designer Commentary check with your Tournament Organizers). 

In some match ups (looking at you Dark Angels) you will want to watch what you are forcing checks on overall. 

I like it but you have to be smrt (ImpandSkiz fans? Anyone?) another tentative 7 our of 11 as I need to play with it to get its worth. 

Traitoris Lance Enchancements! Are they spicy or mild?

Here we have four Enhancements. I am going to preface that EACH of these can only go on a Stalker, an Abhorrent class or Knight Tyrant. 

First up we have the Lord of Dread. This is interesting. It can be okay on a Stalker but the Rampager loves this. +1 to wound and -1 to be hit can be useful but cant you last that long? 

This is a 6 out of 11 for me. I will need to test it and we dont know what it costs, if its like 10pts then sure why not for a points filler, but 30? ehhhh 

The Traitors Mark can be strong, the issue I am seeing is that you are realistically not going to get this active Turn 1. Turn 2 is possible but you have to jam a lot into your opponent and hope. 

You are hoping a lot of things go the right way. It will need testing for certain. 

This will be a 5 out of 11 for me. Just too situational to be worth points but I am excited to see how it could be used. 

Aura of Terror is our wall of text. Basically this makes objectives Sticky (we hold it even when not on them) and our T1 part of our Army Wide is active from 12" around that Objective Marker. 

This is SUPER solid. Put this on a Stalker and have it grabbing objectives starting in your back field and you can do quite a lot! 

Solid 8 out of 11. Points will either bring this up or down when we get them.

Ever want a super durable Knight Tyrant? Want a 4+ save on a big knight against AP3 Lascannons? Well I have the enhancement for you!

 

Slaps Panoply of the Cursed Knight 

This enhancement is pretty strong, arguably the strongest of the Enhancements we have access to. This plus the amount of cover we can get and the fact that this works in melee, OH BOY!

This is a 9 out of 11 for me. Just so versatile and useful. 

On to the Stratagems!

I will preface that GW has from what I have seen done very few bad stratagems. Overall I am extremally happy with the Chaos Knight Stratagems. However (yes the obligatory however), we are a Command Point (CP) starved army. We have no methods of regen in codex and may want to consider Tactical Objectives just so we can discard an objective here or there (prior to T5) to gain 1 CP.

Here is the key for those that want to know when they can do the following stratagems! 

First off we have the new Tormented Wrath. This is quite a solid stratagem. There is the obvious weakness that if you over commit on the number of War Dogs it will take to drop a unit or get them to your desired state, the remaining War Dogs will not be able to shoot any other target. This is a Buyers beware strat!

Another important thing to note is that this is at the START of the shooting or Fight Phase. This means only the Abominant will work for the shooting part. The other source of Shooting Battle Shock will be a gamble where as the Abominant will give you up front information.

Overall an 8 out of 11 for me!

It seems we have fed the Pterrorshades that they are no longer Ravenous! Still these guys are quite hungry. 

There are a few things to note here. A unit coming out of a destroyed transport is just Battle-Shocked. Check with your Tournament Organizer to see if that counts are a Failed Battle Shock Test. Maybe this will be covered in the designer commentary but we dont know at this time. 

This is a nifty strat. It heals, deals mortals, etc. Funny thing, lets say you roll 4 mortal wounds but the defender has a Feel No Pain and saves some you still gain 4 wounds. Good times!

I rate this a good 7 out of 11. With our lack of CP regen, this is good but we have better options to spend our CP on. 

This is cute. A Fight Phase only Feel No Pain, its cute... I don't know what you want from me. This is Fight Phase ONLY which solves non of the issues of being shot with [Devastating Wounds] weapons. Sure we get a 5+ against battle-shocked units but that can be quite win more at times. 

Due to the lack of flexibility in use, this is a 6 out of 11 for me. Its sad, so much potential, but not useable outside of melee...

When the War Dogs get too far from their big daddy Knights, we have this stratagem. 

This is pretty good. With the changes to the BS for the Brigand this makes the Desecrator very spicy! Being able to tell three Brigands to DO BETTER! with a reroll is quite nice. 

I rate this a solid 8 out of 11 if you are bringing an Abhorrent. 

This.... good googley moogley ! This was a 9th ed strat gated behind a very unused Sub Faction. Not to mention it WAS 2 CP. Now... gods, We went from a faction that suffers from Terrain to one that our opponents have to be VERY smart in move blocking us. 

Now, we are a "fast" army. What I mean is that we do move 10-12" which is quite far but due to the size of our bases going through terrain really drops that. I will write an article on this and the limitations we can face. 

This strat is a SOLID 9 out of 11. Hands down the BEST strat of the 6. 

Here we have the old Rotate Ion Shields. Its nice. Only works in Opponents shooting Phase so you can not use it against Overwatch (there could be some contention as it counts that as your opponents shooting phase but this is a Red Stratagem so opponents turn)

Solid 7 out of 11 for me. 

Conclusion time! 

We have several stratagems I consider traps, basically CP we dont really need to spend for unless we have excess CP. Save, save, save, CP for Knight of Shades. It WILL win you games. Make sure your opponent is aware it exists. 

Those are my thoughts! I will do a part three as ideas percolate on potential combos, list styles that interest me and general banter. 

Thank you for reading and remember, the War vs the Grey is winnable!