Beating an Imperial Knight

My Howling Griffons played in a quick 1000 point game against George's new Imperial Knight tonight. He was using it allied to his FW Sons of Horus army, using the Chaos codex. We knew this combo was not official, but it was just a trial game.

The rest of his army was 3x10-man squads with 2 plasma guns each and a terminator sorceror, all of which he had also just finished assembling.

I reasoned that if he was using a super-heavy, I would use my Stormwing formation, along with a 10-man tac squad, a 5-man tac, 5 sniper scouts, a rifleman dread and a basic librarian.

We played Big Guns with 5 objectives on a 4'x4' board. I got to place 3 objectives and also deployed and went first. Even so I did very little first turn, as I just hid in my deployment zone out of range or sight of his units.

George advanced his units first turn, but the Knight couldn't see the tactical marines and failed to kill any scouts either, as they went to ground for a 2+ save with their cloaks.

Luckily my formation turned up turn 2, so I put the Raven in front of the Knight and the two talons either side.  Of course the Ion Shield went up facing towards the Raven. I knew the Stormtalons weren't facing it with their Skyhammers, but fortunately their assault cannons can fire 360°. The Ion Shield saved him from the multi-melta but the assault cannons took off 3 HPs.

George's outflanking squad from his warlord trait then arrived on the scouts' side of the board and also started trying to shoot the young marines off their objective.  Again the 2+ cover made the snipers hard to shift.  He also backed off the Knight, so I couldn't get all 3 flyers shooting armour 12.

Turn 3 I unloaded my dread and meltagun combat squad from the Raven and then hovered all the flyers circling the Knight to make sure I could use all their weapons.  In the end this proved to be overkill.  The Ion Shield went up towards the Raven and one Talon, but the meltas, autocannons and the other Talon accounted for its last 3 HPs.  First blood to me, although I did get worried the apocalyptic blast would catch the hovering flyers, but they were quite safe.

At that point we both had two objectives and linebreaker, but my first blood meant I was 8-7 ahead.  We called it there, as our time had run out and George couldn't really do much against my flyers, beyond some lucky plasma shots.

Knights can't touch flyers with armour 11 or more unless they hover, so really need protection with some anti-air allies and a more balanced army to guard their flanks and rear from multiple threats.

It was very satisfying to kill off the Knight, but it did feel a bit like playing rock-paper-scissors.

Howling Griffons Stormwing Formation

Flying machines have always been one of my passions and I have regularly used a Stormtalon in my Space Marine lists.  In addition to my Storm Eagle I have now assembled my Stormwing formation and also started basecoating it.  This will be fun!

Even with the new rules allowing Forge World models, I will rarely get the chance to field all 5 flyers at the same time, unless I play more Apocalypse.  So I'm trying to work out how best to include the Stormwing in 1.5K points.

All of my Stormtalons have Skyhammer missiles, as they always do well for me and aren't too expensive.  The Stormraven has the multi-melta, assault cannons and hurricane bolters.  My basic formation would therefore come to 480 points, so nearly a third of the total.

The next problem is that I now can't decide if it's worth putting any other units in the raven. Even a basic Tactical Squad and Dreadnought would be exactly half of my points stuck in reserve, possibly until Turn 4.

The rest of my list will need to soak up all the opposing fire until the flyers show up, so a fortification with a comms relay might be needed to give me a solid firebase.

Anti-air is another worry, especially Riptides, so a Command Squad on bikes with grav guns might be my best option, although my usual HQ is a biker MOTF with a conversion beamer. I would either need a different HQ or take two.  This would again limit my points for other units.

I have some decisions to take, but I plan on having fun testing out my options, whilst I get the models finished.