On the ninth day of Grotmas, Games Workshop gave to me… not one but two fresh Warhammer 40k detachments: one for the craven, corpse-worshipping Imperial Knights, and the deliciously fluffy, innovative Chaos Knights Iconoclast Fiefdom, which for the first time marries up your big walkers with supporting hordes of squishy cultists.
Revealed via GW’s Warhammer Community site on Monday, this new Warhammer 40k detachment is dripping with chaotic flavor, and (whether competitive or not) adds a genuinely new way to play the Chaos Knights army, alongside the existing Traitoris Lance index detachment.
It comes alongside a new Imperial Knights detachment – the Questor Forgepact – that’s almost its mirror image, letting you field loyalist knights alongside Adeptus Mechanicus support troops.
GW says it’s releasing new detachments for all the Warhammer 40k factions before the month ends, and WarCom confirms that the Grey Knights will be next to get new rules on Tuesday, December 10.
As standard for Warhammer 40k 10th edition, you get one core detachment rule; four Enhancements to buff characters; and six unique Stratagems. We’ll briefly break down the new rules here, and explain how they work (in terms even a mind-warped servant of the ruinous powers could follow).
Detachment Rule – Dreaded Masters
The Iconoclast Fiefdom’s detachment rule, Dreaded Masters, is made of several parts that combine to support its core theme: fielding blobs of the weak, horde infantry units from the Chaos Space Marines army list, and using them in tandem with the war machines towering above their spiky little heads.
There are three parts to consider:
Wretched Thralls
Up to a quarter of your army (250 points for small Incursion games; 500 points for regular 2,000 point Strike Force games; or 750 points for larger Onslaught matches) can be made up of Damned units from the Chaos Space Marines codex.
That category includes Chaos Cultists, Accursed Cultists, Fellgor Beastmen, and Traitor Guardsmen – plus the associated characters: the Cultist Firebrand, Dark Commune, and Traitor Enforcer. But if you do bring Damned characters, none of them can be your Warlord.
Dread Tyrants (Aura)
All your big Titanic knights (Abominant, Desecrator, Despoiler, Rampager, or Tyrant) get a nine inch aura that lets all Damned units within it (not wholly within it) re-roll ones to hit and wound.
Dark Sacrifice
This is the really cool part. Each time you select a Chaos Knights unit to shoot or fight, you can choose to deal some mortal wounds to a friendly Damned unit within six inches, and in exchange give your chosen knight either the Lethal Hits or Sustained Hits 1 40k ability for the rest of the phase.
When you pick your unfortunate unit of sacrificial victims, it takes a Leadership test. On a pass, d3 of its models are destroyed; on a fail, it’s d3+3 models. Note that this is not mortal wound-based damage; there’s no possible save; the models are simply consumed by the warp to empower your knights.
For all its multiple parts, the detachment’s core strategy is really simple: you’ll surround your marching knights with large units of cheap, disposable Toughness-3 infantry, and use them both as meat shields against enemy charges, and fuel for buffs to your knights’ attacks. It’s a 40k Chaos player’s dream.
Enhancements
Profane Altar – 20 points
Each time the bearer uses Dark Sacrifice, the sacrificial unit loses maximum number of models (three or six depending on the leadership test) – but your knight gets both Lethal Hits and Sustained Hits 1 this phase.
This is probably the stand-out Enhancement of the detachment, both for power and for narrative appropriateness. The combined benefit of Lethal Hits (sixes to hit automatically wound) and Sustained Hits 1 (sixes to hit generate an additional hit) is a huge increase in shooting damage output, especially on a gun-heavy knight like the Despoiler.
A guaranteed cost of three cultists per turn is steep, but that’s this detachment’s whole deal – your Damned units are a resource to spend, and this greatly increases the value you get in return, for a decent points cost.
Pave the Way – 15 points
Lets you give up to three Damned units the Scouts 6″ rule – allowing them to start the game forward of your deployment zone.
Great stuff – to get the most out of this detachment, you need your Cultist blobs out on the board, teeming around the feet of your knights, and with their titchy 6″ move, they need all the help they can get.
Tyrant’s Banner – 5 points
When the bearer uses Dark Sacrifice, you can pick any Damned unit as sacrifice that’s visible to it – it doesn’t have to be within six inches.
It’s a small help, sir, but it checks out! For a measly five points, giving one of your knights the ability to stay behind the lines or rove beyond the main Cultist Castle, without losing its access to Lethal Hits or Sustained Hits 1 each turn, makes for a very cheap, handy flexibility bonus.
Diabolical Resilience – 35 points
The bearer gets Feel No Pain 6+ and ignores all modifiers to its movement characteristic, advance, or charge rolls for the whole game.
Useful in some situations, and certainly a scary Enhancement to see on an opponent’s list (knights are already very tough to kill, after all), this has its attractions as a survivability buff on a key knight.
But it’s also very expensive, especially considering this detachment draws its strength from those blobs of Damned; for just 15 points more you could bring in ten more Cultists for extra screening and sacrificial resources, leaning better into your core strat.
Stratagems
Avenge the Masters! – 1 CP
Used just after one of your knights units is destroyed, this ‘marks’ the enemy unit that killed it, giving all your Damned units Lethal Hits against that unit for the rest of the game.
Narratively fun, but not very powerful, sadly. Your newly bereaved cultist mobs could potentially pour enough shots into an enemy unit to get a decent number of free wounds on sixes, but with only one shot each you’re unlikely to net many kills from it. Hard pass.
Wretched Masses – 2 CP
Once per battle, when a Damned unit is destroyed, you can ‘respawn’ that unit, at starting strength, in Strategic Reserves (minus any characters that were attached to it).
You’ll use this banger almost every game. It’s always a wrench spending two command points, but bringing back an entire unit of Cultists is seriously worth it in a detachment that a) uses them as constant buff fuel and b) is constantly killing its own cultists in the first place (see also: the Worthless Chattel stratagem below).
Soul Hunger – 1 CP
Used just after one of your knights units has killed one or more enemy models in the fight phase, this heals that knight unit for d3 wounds (or d3+2 if the model(s) you killed were from a Battle-shocked unit).
Nothing too fancy, but a very handy tool for healing up your melee knights. Remember to factor in the debuffs to enemy Battle-shock tests from the Chaos Knights’ army rule – a guaranteed minimum three wounds back makes this much better.
Unrestrained Rage – 1 CP
Used just after you advanced or fell back with a knights unit, this lets you shoot and declare a charge with that unit this turn.
The undisputed number one strat in this detachment, it’ll be your bread and butter. Knights lose when they take too long to make it into combat and get shot off the board, or get bogged down in combat and can’t maneuver to where they’re needed (or shoot the right targets). This helps you avoid both.
For just one CP, you can escape a tar pit and shoot a key target and make a damning counterpunch, or, in the right circumstances, set up a heroic long bomb charge very early on. Magnificent.
Worthless Chattel – 1 CP
Used in the shooting phase, selecting one friendly Damned unit that’s in Engagement Range of one or more enemy units – this lets you ignore that Damned unit’s proximity when selecting targets, getting around the usual ban on ‘shooting into combat’.
However, for every wound you deal to enemy units in combat with your Damned unit this phase, you’ll roll a d6, and on a 4+ one model from the Damned unit is destroyed.
Chaos fans will love this one for the flavor – mowing down your own chaff as collateral damage for a key shooting attack is very on-brand, especially if you’re a Khorne adherent, for he cares not from whence the blood flows. But it’s also potentially very useful for the knight/cultist synergy in this detachment, letting you pin down enemy units with your screening line of Cultists, then still blast them with your knights’ full force.
Preserve the Idols – 1 CP
Used right after your opponent finishes moving, advancing, or falling back with a unit movement phase, this lets you pick one knight unit within nine inches of that enemy unit, and one Damned unit within six inches of that knight. You can make a free move of up to six inches with that Damned unit, but it has to end the move closer to the said enemy unit.
A fiddly, but superb tool to keep up the careful positioning that’ll be key to making this detachment work – use this to make sure your cultist mobs are properly screening your knights when the enemy draws near.
It’s yet another new tool to mitigate knights’ melee tar-pit Achilles heel. Combine it with Worthless Chattel, and you’ve got a serious damage stew going, friend.
Summary
This is very definitely a higher skill level detachment than Chaos Knights’ index option, the Traitoris Lance, as you’re giving up powerful defensive stratagems like Diabolic Bulwark (4+ invulnerable save vs shooting) and Disdain for the Weak (Feel No Pain 6+ or 5+ in the fight phase) in exchange for your cultist cohort.
Those cultists will look fantastic, but can do very little offensively, and require a dab hand to manage effectively as a defensive screen, especially since you’ll constantly be killing off whole swathes of them yourself to maximize your knights’ damage output.
If you can pull off that fine balance, though, it’s a fantastically flavorsome way to play Chaos Knights, and super satisfying for lore lovers, hungry for battles that properly evoke Chaos’ soul-eating evil.
You can download the Iconoclast Fiefdom detachment from GW right now, alongside the Necrons’ Starshatter Arsenal, the Admech Haloscreed Battle Clade; the Tyranids’ Warrior Bioform Onslaught, the Dark Angels’ Lion’s Blade Taskforce, and the Death Guard’s Flyblown Host PDF.
In the meantime, you can check which armies are getting new rules next with our guide to upcoming Warhammer 40k codex release dates – and stay up to date with daily news by following Wargamer on Google News.
Source: Wargamer
