Chaos Knights for 9th Edition have finally arrived and are available for preorder this weekend! The Knights team cannot wait to get our hands on the new Chaos Knights models and start featuring them in our Warhammer 40k battle reports. We’ve already covered how Chaos Knights have received new rules for quests and crusades, new abilities: Doom, Darkness and Despair, and their Dataslate Update.
Today, we’re going to show you everything you’ll get in the Chaos Knights 9th Edition box set and then jump into the top 5 tactics for this new army!
Chaos Knights 9th Edition Army Set
This box set is the first place you’ll be able to get your hands on these incredible new Knights, and get them stomping your enemies to bits. Along with their Codex and data cards this new set is really a must have if you’re planning to put Chaos Knights on the battlefield.
What’s in the Chaos Knight’s Box Set?
- 1 Knight Abominant
- 2 War Dogs
- Exclusive Edition of Codex: Chaos Knights
- 50 Datacards
- 2 Transfer Sheets of 600 total emblems to customize your Knights
The Knight Abominant
The Knight Abominant is a brand new unit to add to the armies of Chaos featured for the first time in this box set. You won’t be able to pick it up anywhere else. This new unit is a psychic Knight and is jam packed with terrifying weapon combinations.
War Dogs 9th Edition
If the Knight Abominant is just too big for your army, but you still want to pack a walking death machine then the War Dogs are just what you’re looking for. Packed into these models inside the Box Set are a truly staggering amount of options. These terror inspiring models can be built in three different ways specializing in close, medium and long range death dealing abilities.
Codex: Chaos Knights 9th Edition
Also included in the box is a soft touch cover of the codex not found anywhere else.
Chaos Knights 9th Edition Overview
Chaos Knights have come a long way since their original release just four year ago. When originally launched they seemed to be little more than a sideshow compared to their Imperial cousins. That has definitely changed with the release of Codex: Chaos Knights 9th edition. The addition of two new models and a plethora of new abilities and rules make Chaos Knights a real contender to their Imperial Knight counterparts.
Today we’ll be digging into the new Chaos Knights and the best strategies to take when taking them to the tabletop.
Why play Chaos Knights?
First and foremost because you want to march onto the battlefield, stomp on the Imperium’s head and walk off the battlefield cackling into the chaos you just created. More seriously, however, is that Chaos Knights are truly fun to play with serious customization options and because you get to paint a big scary Knight. Few other models are going to give you both the joy and challenge of bringing them to life like a Chaos Knight. Finally, the new Dreadblade rules allow you to drop a Chaos Knight or a few War Dogs into an existing Chaos army for even more chaos!
How could you not play them?
Chaos Knights 9th Edition Top 5 Tactics
- Unyielding Rage –
A big advantage of playing a Chaos Knight is that you’re huge, you do massive damage up close, and you don’t need to be afraid to move into close combat with other units. Unyielding Rage should give you the confidence to do just that.
Depending on the size of the Knight you’ll have to spend one or two command points. The effect though is that this gives you minus 1 to damage against melee attacks for the rest of your turn. Many melee attacks rely on rolling 2s and 3s to deal damage. Unyielding rage will allow your knight to tank all that damage and then hit back for truly terrifying damage.
When combined with Counter Offensive this ability allows a pair of Knights to possibly tank an entire round of close combat. - Spiteful Demise –
This is of course designed to get close to your opponents, pummel them and then when your Chaos Knight finally falls, blow yourself up with devastating consequences to units in range.
The big change here is that you can only use it once per game. A very easy strategy is to use is it on a Knight that goes down in range of a lot of your opponents army. To counter the once per game rule, however, Spiteful Demise now automatically explodes. You’re never going to have to worry that you leave them with that last farewell gift.
If used properly this should lead to devastating consequences to your opponent and because you know it’s going to work, getting in close and losing a Knight doesn’t have to be such a devastating consequence. - Ravenous Pterrorshades –
During the morale phase you’re going to select one of your enemies units within Dread range of War Dog or Abominant that have the keyword Pterrorshade. That enemy has to make a Dread test. For each point with which the test is failed the enemy unit will lose 1 mortal wound.
This could be huge! Is there a chance it fails altogether? Sure. But, being able to dole out up to 6 mortal wounds at a time during the morale phase is nothing to sneeze at. - Hunting Hounds –
At the start of your movement phase you’ll have the chance to move two of your War Dogs that are: at least 6″ away from an enemy unit and within 6″ of the edge of the table. These units will then enter Strategic reserves and you can bring them back at a later turn.
There are many ways this could be used very effectively for a strategic move. The biggest one we see is if you start the first round and do not have any clear openings to your enemies units. No problem! Move those hounds into strategic reserves and deploy them later. - Beseech the Dark Gods –
For one or two command points you can come back to life! Depending on the size of the model, when your unit falls in battle you will roll a D6 at the end of the phase. On a 4+ that Chaos Knight comes right back to life through the power of chaos! You’ll be back on your feet with three wounds and ready to dish out punishment to your enemies.
Obviously, this isn’t a sure fire bet. And it’s certainly not something to base your entire army around. However, when it does work, it’s going to be devastating for your opponents to deal with. Chaos Knights resurrecting from the dead to serve the gods of chaos for eternity!
The Night’s team is very excited to get to painting and bring you a bunch of content with Chaos Knights. Stay tuned to our Youtube Channel as our next battle report will feature Chaos Knights and War Dogs!
Of course we always have lively discussions about all of our content in our free Facebook group Game Talk for Gamers.
