AoS Battletome discussion: saurus knights

Knights are ardboys without the good save in the best situation

 

eh i would say they are better in many cases due to that extra mobility and additional volume of attacks

 

You are forgetting that the boys move two to three times they are just as fast if not faster and still do way more damage

 

oh yeah mighty destroyers....

i love "balance"

 

What really is so appealing about them is a cheap unit can do sooo well with minimal buffs.

it’s like a freight train with reptiles

 

The slann has awakened and he has spoken

 

I had two games this weekend with a few friends where I fielded one 10 model unit with blades and one 5 model unit with warspears.

The first game was against Orruk Warclans, and they caught me completely off guard and managed to get their Brutes into my carnosaur riding Oldblood general turn one and kill him, as well as get within 3 inches of one of the models from the large Saurus Knights unit. These were just 1000 point games, so that was half my army gone or locked up right there.

That was a rather rough start and I was pretty sure the game had already been decided, but the five knights with warspears charged the rest of his army from the side and surprised us both with the damage they could put out. When the larger force of knights eventually chewed through the Brutes, they wiped the rest of his army.

The next game was against Ossiarch Bonereapers. Confident in the power of my knights from my first game, I used the larger unit to hold an objective and ended up fighting three Necropolis Stalkers. The complete lack of rend made it damn near impossible to kill them, and I had to divert my second unit of knights back to that objective just to be able to hold it. Even with 15 v 3 I barely managed to secure my hold of that objective by the end of round 4.

In the end I won that game as well, and my impressions on our knights are as follows:

Both blades and warspears are good, but I personally favor the blades. The better chance to hit makes them more independent and able to function without much support. The amount of attacks either of them can dish out is amazing (I was playing Coalesced). With support, preferably from a Scar-Vet and a Skink Starpriest, they become truly terrifying.

A really awesome unit. They only struggle against really tanky targets due to not having any rend. Now if only they could get some better looking models...

 

Honestly, one of the command abilities or spells (or other abilities) we have should've been able to give them (and potentially others) rend. The unmounted and mounted versions of scar-vets & oldbloods sharing command abilities is kind of a waste of potential that's noticeable here.
Might also give a bit more of a reason to bring the minor versions, like the oldblood on foot, or the scar vet on cold one if they had a selling point besides just being cheaper than those mounted on a carnosaur. Similarly a sunblood doesn't exactly bring anything game-changing that makes him a top pick either.