AoS Saurus Knights Usage

Hey all,

I'm wondering why Saurus Knights get such a bad reputation on the forums? A unit of knights have the same amount of wounds as warriors and do the same number of attacks as warriors.

I mean I guess they need to charge to deal their mortal wounds but can't you just cycle charge them to maintain that bonus? I do admit their base size might make it a problem to pile in with them but on paper they don't seem worse than warriors so why aren't more people using them as the core of their army in a firelance or tail?

If I sound salty, I want to apologize because making MW so prevalent is probably one of the most annoying things in the game (RIP my guards but thank you based shadowstrike).

 

My Knights have been doing nicely for me in our escalation league so far. I do believe that we need to look at what they can do rather than trying to force them into a role they struggle to fill.

They are a good objective grabbing unit, more expensive than Skinks but more durable and very often faster. The reliable 14" movement gets them around the table pretty fast. Yes skinks can go faster if they charge but then you are going to have to use one of your valuable early activations to Wary Fighters them to avoid fragile skinks from getting smashed in combat. Knights can just move 14" without making charge/run rolls which lets you plan objective grabs without relying on dice or your opponent putting units where you can slingshot off them.

A word on that durability - it may not seem a big deal but smaller units are near-immune to battleshock with their Seraphon bravery.

Unlike skinks the Knights can actually do damage. Units of 10 skinks reliably do no damage for me all game, Knights if they make contact will push a few wounds onto a target. If you have a Saurus Hero nearby and a bunch of CP then Knights can go mental - at the upper levels of possible CP availability they can make Ripperdactyls look underpowered. I would not want to run a 2000 point list with Knights as my heavy hitters but the fact that my objective grabbing battleline unit carries a potential threat just helps with me putting threat overload on my opponent.

Their limitations are also real:

They have no rend and no real way to get rend. Against targets with good saves they are fairly helpless. The mortal wounds are beyond unreliable, assume you will get none and then when you roll that 6 it is a nice bonus. I have not rolled a single 6 on the lances in 4 games so far.

In some situations the base size is awkward, although to be fair 32mm bases on warriors has always been pretty awkward for me also.

You pretty much have to choose between decent mobility or trying to attack with them. If you want to try to charge they are kinda slow. In practice this means you need to get lucky with LoSaT and/or charge rolls to get the charge with them. Luckily the bonus for getting the charge is so unreliable that you will hardly miss not getting it. This is why firelance starhost is so good for them but it is expensive and you are sinking points into a unit that still will not kill that much unless you have a supporting hero and CP to burn.



Saurus Knights are not a terribly impressive unit but I find they have a lot of utility.

 

I may have mispoke about using knights are core. What I meant to actually say was why can’t knights replace warriors in a list? It’s not like seraphon have good sources for rend and MW.

 

It depends on what unit of warriors you are trying to replace.

A basic unit of 10 acting as battleline: 5 knights are objectively better in almost every way (as are skinks)
A unit of 40 in a Sunclaw Starhost : the warriors do something which the knights cannot - which is be a hammer unit

I think some of the negativity about knights just comes from old points costs etc when they are pretty overcosted for what they do. Some also comes from trying to make them into a hammer unit, which they struggle to be.

 

I have been using knights in my last few games. Fire lance and mixed bloodclaw. Had at least 4 games. Yet to deal a single mortal wound with the lance.

The cold one scar-vet is just a must. Stacking 2 or more of his command buffs is nothing less than great. Coldones gain an extra attack and hit on 3+ re rolling 1’s. Really surprised me at how effective they can be.

 

So I shouldn't even bother with knights or guards then?

 

Never would I imagine that someone would say those cold ones have good sculpts. GW gives us models that look like total war when?

I should also assume that fangs > tail?

 

You have a couple of differing opinions in the responses to your question on Knights, you will probably have to try things out for yourself to see what works for you. I would be very wary of anyone claiming to know for sure what is competitive - AOS2 is very new and there are no dominant Seraphon lists out there so if there is a competitive lizards list it has not yet been settled on.

Guard are another matter, they are highly vulnerable to mortal wounds which are usually common in a competitive environment. I love the models and have a box of them made up but my plan is only to summon them if I happen to be facing an opponent who lacks high mortal wound output.

 

No, not necessarily. Tail is often ran with minimum battle line so it has room for lots of extra bits. Tail is often the base for the EoTG spam lists that were popular for a hot second.

Fangs you're plopping down at least 800 points in Battle line (40, 40, 10) so it doesn't leave much room for anything outside of the battalion. The warriors need to do a lot of your heavy lifting, while the knights in Tail don't need to do anything much more than hold objectives and be fast.

 

@Putzfrau Tfw EotG has been out of stock forever T_T. Got a link to a tail list or a batrep with it? Curious to see how it's played.

 

I have found the exact same thing as you mentioned above. Now that skink blocks of 40 were nerfed, I have been using saurus knights as battleline in a thunderquake starhost list, and they add a lot of speed to get to objectives early and win me the first round of points. Now that we have a chance of moving after 5 or 6, they seem like they could get just about ANYWHERE on the map!

 

@dinoSTARZ I never played AoS1 but how were skinks nerfed?

 

They used to be 200 points for 40, now they are 240 for 40. They used to be battle line for all Grand Alliance Order, now they are just battle line for Seraphon.

 

With the changes in AOS2 I think Tail got quite a lot better so long as you take the Scar Vet on Cold One - the bonus 2CP you start with mean that those Knights can clear out hordes very quickly. In a Dracothions Tail you can reliably drop a unit of Knights where they only need a 6" charge re-rolling 1's which is not bad. If you are building a list to maximise this you probably take Cogs to make that a 4" charge in which case it is ~98% likely to work. To do more than just tag something in combat to inconvenience it you need to be willing to burn CP but I do honestly find that with 2-3CP and Serpent Staff they force the opponent to make a lot of saves.

Alternatively you can use Tail to one-drop and enable all those deploy-off-table shenanigans on something else and just use Knights as fast moving objective grabbers and screening units. This list will be all about the other stuff you take because the minimum investment in Knights & Scar Vet is a very reasonable 370 points and they have decent utility rather than being pure tax. Tail does not need to be build around the Knights to have value - you can just go minimal knights as your battleline and then use the one-drop and deploying off the table to get the tactical advantage.

Fangs is different because minimum units of Warriors are weak, clearly inferior to other choices we have when taken in units of 10. In the big blocks where the warriors become good you are spending so many points that this is what your list becomes about; warrior blocks with supporting units.

 

Speaking of Knights, did any of the weapons got buffed like the lances?

 

Not really. What buffed them was indirect - the ability to stack command abilities if you have enough CP handy.