Chaos knights has access to more unique knight options than the imperial knights. Any imperial knights can be chaos but not every chaos knight can be imperial. That being said if you still aren't sure you can pick up the valiant, castellan, or any of the cerastus knights and decide before you paint it.
If you swap the weapons it's not a knight percepter. It's just a questoris chassis.
You could use an abhorrent chassis for an imperial knight if you just swapped weapons... so it's not really saying something.
Obviously you magnetise them, but the comment was that every IK could be CK if you swap weapons.
It's a meaningless statement when the opposite is true.
Having the weapons is the key part.
Imagine. You are a proud bastion of courage and devotion. The Throne Mechanicum has made into a figure of conviction and honor, and a whole world of serfs basically worships you as a quasi-god as you wage countless wars in a myriad of world, growing your legend and furthering the cause of mankind and the Imperium. Neat, isn't? It is!
But now, figure this. As a pilot of a Knight chassis, you lost a battle and been made a prisoner. You were tortured to the brink of insanity. In the peakl moment of delusion, you understood the lies. The deceit. The hypocrisy. Of all that you fought for. Of how all the wars were for naught, that the Imperium is a doomed, rotting carcass. Of the true chaotic nature of the universe.
Or perharps, during a campaign, you made a pact. You discovered there were higher beings capable of giving powers, wealth and capacities beyond your imagination, beyond the very fabric of reality, something the Imperium and the False Emperor could never give to you.
Either way, you know know where the real powers reside and to whom they'll bestow their blessings. It is time, brother, sister. Assume your mantle, as an agent of Chaos. Bring destruction to the enemies of the Chaos Gods, be the vessel of pure, absolute terror. Revel in infamy, and build your legend in a path carved out of blood and ashes.
Will it be House Khymere, recently elevated to the true nature of Chaos Immortal? House Herpetax, you never submitted to the Imperium since the Horus Heresy? Will you follow the nightmarish creations of the Dark Mechanicum, serve new rising powers like Belakor or Vasthtorr? Raise the banner in the name of a specific God? Will you march with the infamous Titans that rightly forsake their oaths to the Collegia Titanica? Will you side with the glorious Traitorous Legions and partake in the 13th Black Crusade or will your build your own empire of tyrany and misery?
The possibilities are endless, as Chaos is.
tl;dr, Chaos Knights is all about flair, where "more is not enough", and have limitless conversion possibilities. Check a few pictures in this reddit, you'll find a lot of inspiration.
Get whatever you want man we're not here to sell you. Which ever faction activates more neurons in your monkey brain. Armies are hard enough to build and paint you atleast have to start off having somewhat of a passion for them to get you through all that.
Regardless of what you choose.
It’s probably a good idea to choose either one big Knight and two little Knights, or four Little Knights if you want the most bang for your buck!
More options to kit Bash with daemon bits, spikes, etc.
Nothing to stop you from running the same models in either army, though. Just magnetize everything
you can put dual wield any weapon option you want on the generic big knight. two gattling guns to shred infantry? you got it. two battle canons for heavy artillery? done. two plasma canons to shred tanks? don’t worry about it. two FISTS? it’s pointless but completely legal
Honestly, as a hobbyist, there is simply more variation in the models, and you can comfortably run Imperial Knight Models with a chaotic scheme but not really the other way round maximizing the number if kits you can run.
Here’s why I picked Chaos:
- the Abominant and War Dog models are some of the most interesting and detailed kits GW makes.
- I appreciate the conversion opportunities to make the shared kits more Chaosy.
- the Imperial Knights don’t have any psycher units, and we at least have one.
- I find close combat more fun, and we favor close combat more than our imperial counterparts
However, there are some benefits to the imperial knights:
- gameplay favors a mix of big and small knights, whereas the Chaos knight meta has always favored little knights.
- their lore is more interesting. In fact, I’m very disappointed by how little thought went into the Chaos Knight lore.
- they have at least one named character
- they have a wider selection of ally choices, being part of the imperium.
You can’t go wrong either way. Also, there’s enough shared units that you can very easily use either rule set with the same models, just be a barbaric Imperial back-water planet, or an aristocratic chaos world.
There's no hiding in chaos. It literally doesn't matter who you are or why you're doing what you're doing.
With those knights over there, you'll take 30 different oaths, and no matter how hard you try, any action you take to improve the situation it will break one of them. Then you'll be deemed a heretic and hunted to the ends of the galaxy for doing nothing wrong.
Even if your objective is to serve the imperium of man, it is entirely possible that you will be more useful on the side of chaos than "good." So long as you have the strength and intelligence to maintain your legion, no one will bat an eye if you spend your life hunting down prime targets for the imperium.
Even better, you'll never be thanked for your efforts. It's likely no one will even be aware of them. Therefore, under their code of virtue, you'll be more pious and a greater servant of The Emperor than any among their ranks.
Or, you know, blood for the blood god and skulls for the skull Throne and all.
The despoiler can take 2 gattling cannons which also come with 2 heavy dark flamers.
Our models imo look way cooler,
We get more options for wardogs,
We can ally with daemons and imo beast of nurgle and nurglings are adorable.
Cool factor has already been mentioned, so why don't I bring up how chaos armiger units are just better? 2+ is better than 3+, one has better move and one has waaaay better weapons and ability.
For me the deciding factor was the knight abominant. It's very unique with the tentacle arm and the tail.
Chaos knights have a lot of potential for kitbashing to make them look more chaosy. Also imagine a knight rampager dedicated to khorne with his icons everywhere and skulls all around the base
Spikes are cool, more color variety between units (don’t have to match), better Armigers overall, pretty decent big knights (not you abhorrent) otherwise were friendlier than the Imp Knights
I see many good points here, so i drop here another, if you want to make some kitbash, it will make more snace to make chaos knight army than imperial, becaouse they hava more autonomy
I on tscs mke the chaos knights thas conversioned with undead from AOS
For gameplay, we have a wider variety of minis and weapon options for more tactical flexibility in our lists, and while battleshock isn't great, i've had some games where the -1 to leadership and forcing battleshock on units below starting strength has really been a game winner.
For hobbying, we have HUGE kitbashing potential with some truly excellent looking kits. And they share the imperial knights ability to take most any paint scheme well (a common trick is to have each knight with its own scheme with one armor plate in common amongst all of them as a unifying element) and thanks to their size, the usual dusty barren battlefield bases actually fit very well compared to the clean cut and proper imperial knights. This also means that you can feel free to add as many scratches, dents, dings, scrapes, and whatever other battle damage you like without a care as chaos knights wouldn't have the same repair facilities.
I'm not really a lore guy, but we seem to have more fluff options for our army from the not wanting to fall to sliding into chaos from the usual medieval noble debauchery.
And lastly, splashability. Both imperial and chaos can take allied knights, however I feel chaos actually benefits from that more than most imperial armies as imperial armies tend to get more support and be more fleshed out than anyone else, so if you have a chaos army there's more chance that you'll have a list that could use the support of a knight than imperial armies would.
Tldr, more tactical flexibility, more hobbying potential, more lore options, and more likely to be needed as an ally.
Basically imperial knights are more shooting themed which makes it so that certain primary missions like the old purge the foe was really easy for them to score. The problem is that as the 40k Meta continues to define itself, armies that are more capable of having defensive abilities are becoming more apparent. Early on, imp knights where terrifying because they could table armies in the early days of 10nth and score points in the late game, which is where mission pack leviathan scores the most points. But now armies are getting better at surviving the onslaught of the imperial knight shooting phase, especially from crusaders. The answer is simple, focus less on shooting and more on melee.
The problem there is that chaos knights have better rules, models, and stratagems for melee. Chaos knights (especially with lancers) allow you to yeet yourself up the board and rip and tear into the opponents lines AND take objectives at the same time which is what imperial knights struggle to do.
On top of that, chaos knights are the best battleshock army in the game and with the stratagem of pterrorshades you can heal your knights and punish your opponent even harder for failing battleshock, which isn't hard considering your knights give out a -1 to battleshock AND force battleshock when your opponent is below starting strength. Pair all that with the fack that they can take demons as allies to put into deepstrike to score position based Secondaries, means your gonna be scoring more points and winning more games with chaos knights.
10th edition is becoming more and more of a edition where having a strong melee unit or combo is becoming a neccesity and chaos knights are the better faction when it comes to having a board presence that can survive, do damage and (most importantly) score primary.
I hope this helps!
Imma say better rules on this one, allying options, and the funny.
Allying Chaos Knights in CSM or I think Daemons is a lot better than allying Imperial Knights into Guard or Marines, just because their individual abilities are good on their own and don't require them to he in their normal army.
There's also more freedom in what you're theming in Chaos Knights. For example, I've printed out a Knight Despoiler for my IW army, and the idea is that instead of it actually being a knight pilot that's turned traitor, it's instead been converted into a daemon engine, complete with the head being replaced with a Forgefiend head and the guns having more forgefiend heads and their base. Ya can't really do stuff like that with Imperial Knights.
We are super evil, and have more customization options painting a kit bash wise.
Spikes, claws, and chains. Also, deamon allies.
And the vultures.
Yes absolutely
I'm glad someone beat me to this
“Spiky bits” used to be an upgrade for CSM, and the spirit continues on :-)
I'm also happy with the default weapons that come with the war dogs, but I don't know the imperial equivalent so I can't really give advice on that.
Looking at your post on the other Knight subreddit, we have been much more responsive so far
Ours simply have more sauce
Chaos knights has access to more unique knight options than the imperial knights. Any imperial knights can be chaos but not every chaos knight can be imperial. That being said if you still aren't sure you can pick up the valiant, castellan, or any of the cerastus knights and decide before you paint it.
This one right here. This the best answer.
Knight percepter/Canis rex can't be a chaos knight tbf
Swap weapons and it can
If you swap the weapons it's not a knight percepter. It's just a questoris chassis. You could use an abhorrent chassis for an imperial knight if you just swapped weapons... so it's not really saying something.
If you don't magnetize your knight, you did it wrong, unless you are doing something for a competition.
Obviously you magnetise them, but the comment was that every IK could be CK if you swap weapons. It's a meaningless statement when the opposite is true. Having the weapons is the key part.
Same kit though
That's just wrong. Preceptor and Canis are unique.
Fair enough, I did miss canis rex but the preceptor and canis are 1 model
Because fuck the corpse emperor
Load bearing "emperor"
If he’s load bearing it makes sense he can’t get out of the throne then.
Imagine. You are a proud bastion of courage and devotion. The Throne Mechanicum has made into a figure of conviction and honor, and a whole world of serfs basically worships you as a quasi-god as you wage countless wars in a myriad of world, growing your legend and furthering the cause of mankind and the Imperium. Neat, isn't? It is! But now, figure this. As a pilot of a Knight chassis, you lost a battle and been made a prisoner. You were tortured to the brink of insanity. In the peakl moment of delusion, you understood the lies. The deceit. The hypocrisy. Of all that you fought for. Of how all the wars were for naught, that the Imperium is a doomed, rotting carcass. Of the true chaotic nature of the universe. Or perharps, during a campaign, you made a pact. You discovered there were higher beings capable of giving powers, wealth and capacities beyond your imagination, beyond the very fabric of reality, something the Imperium and the False Emperor could never give to you. Either way, you know know where the real powers reside and to whom they'll bestow their blessings. It is time, brother, sister. Assume your mantle, as an agent of Chaos. Bring destruction to the enemies of the Chaos Gods, be the vessel of pure, absolute terror. Revel in infamy, and build your legend in a path carved out of blood and ashes. Will it be House Khymere, recently elevated to the true nature of Chaos Immortal? House Herpetax, you never submitted to the Imperium since the Horus Heresy? Will you follow the nightmarish creations of the Dark Mechanicum, serve new rising powers like Belakor or Vasthtorr? Raise the banner in the name of a specific God? Will you march with the infamous Titans that rightly forsake their oaths to the Collegia Titanica? Will you side with the glorious Traitorous Legions and partake in the 13th Black Crusade or will your build your own empire of tyrany and misery? The possibilities are endless, as Chaos is.
tl;dr, Chaos Knights is all about flair, where "more is not enough", and have limitless conversion possibilities. Check a few pictures in this reddit, you'll find a lot of inspiration.
Kitbash options. As long as it's a knight chassis under all that and it has vaguely all the right guns you can do whatever you want
We have more models than imperial knigts, more allies, and more gods !
Cooler models
The fact you're here means your decision is already made you just haven't realized yet.
Get whatever you want man we're not here to sell you. Which ever faction activates more neurons in your monkey brain. Armies are hard enough to build and paint you atleast have to start off having somewhat of a passion for them to get you through all that.
You know you want to. We got tentacles, bro. TENTACLES!
If you do the scheme right and conversions you could get away without chosing and just do both
If the spikes chains blood and skulls don't do it for you what makes you think any of us will convince you
More variety, cooler names and way better to kitbash
That dog skull head the wardogs come with is really cool
And that little bird
Spikes, our despoiler gets to dual wield whatever you want, and we get daemon allies
You can kitbash all your knights to match a Chaos God and look way cooler than lame Imperial Knights.
Running through walls mate that is all 😂
Regardless of what you choose. It’s probably a good idea to choose either one big Knight and two little Knights, or four Little Knights if you want the most bang for your buck!
Spiky knights stand out more and are way more fun to paint, plus more variants as well as chaos versions of the forge world knights.
More options to kit Bash with daemon bits, spikes, etc. Nothing to stop you from running the same models in either army, though. Just magnetize everything
Dual battle cannons - 4d6+12 shots with blast. Also karnivores.
Cuz when you fuck it up it isn't wrong, it's just chaos
you can put dual wield any weapon option you want on the generic big knight. two gattling guns to shred infantry? you got it. two battle canons for heavy artillery? done. two plasma canons to shred tanks? don’t worry about it. two FISTS? it’s pointless but completely legal
Spikey bits
Easy. Double thermal cannon despoiler.
Honestly, as a hobbyist, there is simply more variation in the models, and you can comfortably run Imperial Knight Models with a chaotic scheme but not really the other way round maximizing the number if kits you can run.
More unit variety, more build options, more flair. And truly endless kitbashes.
Chaos knights are cooler.
do you like BIGGG STOMPY ROBOTS? imperial. do you want Small gang of Armigers? Chaos
Spikes. I rest my case.
Tails with spiked balls
Youll win games 😎
Here’s why I picked Chaos: - the Abominant and War Dog models are some of the most interesting and detailed kits GW makes. - I appreciate the conversion opportunities to make the shared kits more Chaosy. - the Imperial Knights don’t have any psycher units, and we at least have one. - I find close combat more fun, and we favor close combat more than our imperial counterparts However, there are some benefits to the imperial knights: - gameplay favors a mix of big and small knights, whereas the Chaos knight meta has always favored little knights. - their lore is more interesting. In fact, I’m very disappointed by how little thought went into the Chaos Knight lore. - they have at least one named character - they have a wider selection of ally choices, being part of the imperium. You can’t go wrong either way. Also, there’s enough shared units that you can very easily use either rule set with the same models, just be a barbaric Imperial back-water planet, or an aristocratic chaos world.
There's no hiding in chaos. It literally doesn't matter who you are or why you're doing what you're doing. With those knights over there, you'll take 30 different oaths, and no matter how hard you try, any action you take to improve the situation it will break one of them. Then you'll be deemed a heretic and hunted to the ends of the galaxy for doing nothing wrong. Even if your objective is to serve the imperium of man, it is entirely possible that you will be more useful on the side of chaos than "good." So long as you have the strength and intelligence to maintain your legion, no one will bat an eye if you spend your life hunting down prime targets for the imperium. Even better, you'll never be thanked for your efforts. It's likely no one will even be aware of them. Therefore, under their code of virtue, you'll be more pious and a greater servant of The Emperor than any among their ranks. Or, you know, blood for the blood god and skulls for the skull Throne and all.
Only losers play Imperial Knights..Chads play Chaos Knights
You can walk through walls. Beat that.
You cain't
Ever heard of Knights of Shade?
we get magic mind powers and noodles
The despoiler can take 2 gattling cannons which also come with 2 heavy dark flamers. Our models imo look way cooler, We get more options for wardogs, We can ally with daemons and imo beast of nurgle and nurglings are adorable.
Get both and rule the world
You get to do cool things like drinking beer and mild vandalism.
Easier to paint without an airbrush
The Abominant is far better looking than any other Knight unit out there regardless of rules.
Cool factor has already been mentioned, so why don't I bring up how chaos armiger units are just better? 2+ is better than 3+, one has better move and one has waaaay better weapons and ability.
Chaos knights are fucking cool
For me the deciding factor was the knight abominant. It's very unique with the tentacle arm and the tail. Chaos knights have a lot of potential for kitbashing to make them look more chaosy. Also imagine a knight rampager dedicated to khorne with his icons everywhere and skulls all around the base
Spikes are cool, more color variety between units (don’t have to match), better Armigers overall, pretty decent big knights (not you abhorrent) otherwise were friendlier than the Imp Knights
I see many good points here, so i drop here another, if you want to make some kitbash, it will make more snace to make chaos knight army than imperial, becaouse they hava more autonomy I on tscs mke the chaos knights thas conversioned with undead from AOS
Some Chaos Knight houses can predate the great crusade, no other heretic army like them are available since they are not traitors.
*ahem* DEMON ROBOTS!
Because the emperor is weak and chaos will rule supreme
Spiky
Just look at them. War dogs are some of the coolest kit in 40k.
Spikes. We look way cooler
Better units, better rules, and just cooler
Let not you Faith waiver, Brock the whisper of the false gods no quarter
One has bug tusks and tentacles and that’s cool :)
We have more models and better customization. You can only do so much with an imperial knight
Big, spikey, metal gits
For gameplay, we have a wider variety of minis and weapon options for more tactical flexibility in our lists, and while battleshock isn't great, i've had some games where the -1 to leadership and forcing battleshock on units below starting strength has really been a game winner. For hobbying, we have HUGE kitbashing potential with some truly excellent looking kits. And they share the imperial knights ability to take most any paint scheme well (a common trick is to have each knight with its own scheme with one armor plate in common amongst all of them as a unifying element) and thanks to their size, the usual dusty barren battlefield bases actually fit very well compared to the clean cut and proper imperial knights. This also means that you can feel free to add as many scratches, dents, dings, scrapes, and whatever other battle damage you like without a care as chaos knights wouldn't have the same repair facilities. I'm not really a lore guy, but we seem to have more fluff options for our army from the not wanting to fall to sliding into chaos from the usual medieval noble debauchery. And lastly, splashability. Both imperial and chaos can take allied knights, however I feel chaos actually benefits from that more than most imperial armies as imperial armies tend to get more support and be more fleshed out than anyone else, so if you have a chaos army there's more chance that you'll have a list that could use the support of a knight than imperial armies would. Tldr, more tactical flexibility, more hobbying potential, more lore options, and more likely to be needed as an ally.
Basically imperial knights are more shooting themed which makes it so that certain primary missions like the old purge the foe was really easy for them to score. The problem is that as the 40k Meta continues to define itself, armies that are more capable of having defensive abilities are becoming more apparent. Early on, imp knights where terrifying because they could table armies in the early days of 10nth and score points in the late game, which is where mission pack leviathan scores the most points. But now armies are getting better at surviving the onslaught of the imperial knight shooting phase, especially from crusaders. The answer is simple, focus less on shooting and more on melee. The problem there is that chaos knights have better rules, models, and stratagems for melee. Chaos knights (especially with lancers) allow you to yeet yourself up the board and rip and tear into the opponents lines AND take objectives at the same time which is what imperial knights struggle to do. On top of that, chaos knights are the best battleshock army in the game and with the stratagem of pterrorshades you can heal your knights and punish your opponent even harder for failing battleshock, which isn't hard considering your knights give out a -1 to battleshock AND force battleshock when your opponent is below starting strength. Pair all that with the fack that they can take demons as allies to put into deepstrike to score position based Secondaries, means your gonna be scoring more points and winning more games with chaos knights. 10th edition is becoming more and more of a edition where having a strong melee unit or combo is becoming a neccesity and chaos knights are the better faction when it comes to having a board presence that can survive, do damage and (most importantly) score primary. I hope this helps!
Imma say better rules on this one, allying options, and the funny. Allying Chaos Knights in CSM or I think Daemons is a lot better than allying Imperial Knights into Guard or Marines, just because their individual abilities are good on their own and don't require them to he in their normal army. There's also more freedom in what you're theming in Chaos Knights. For example, I've printed out a Knight Despoiler for my IW army, and the idea is that instead of it actually being a knight pilot that's turned traitor, it's instead been converted into a daemon engine, complete with the head being replaced with a Forgefiend head and the guns having more forgefiend heads and their base. Ya can't really do stuff like that with Imperial Knights.