Black Knights vs. Blood Knights

[Austin]

I cannot figure out how Blood Knights are cost effective at all any longer (assuming they were prior to LoN).

A 10 man unit of Black Knights is 240 pts, 20 attacks at 3 and 4, move 12, 5+sv, and they have the summonable keyword.

5 man unit of Blood Knights is 260, 15 attacks at 3 and 3, move 10, 4+ sv

Legion of Blood adds an extra attack and bravery debuff, which is good, but hardly puts them further than equal to the Black Knights.

And the kicker- I can buy three boxes of Black Knights for the price of five old poor looking Blood Knights.

 

So, what am I missing? I want Blood Knights to be good (though not as much as I want new models for them).  Can we go about making them perform better?

[Elmir]

Blood knights are pretty  meh in a non-LoB list.  I'm experimenting mostly with Legion of Blood since the battletome dropped, and I've never left home without at least a unit of 5. So far, they have not disappointed me yet.  

They absolutely massacre on the charge in a LoB list . Also... good luck getting all those attacks in with 10 black knights on their base size.  60*35mm is incredibly awkward for anything with a 1" range and getting more than 7 in combat can be quite tricky in my experience. 

[someone2040]

So I think it's important to take a look at a few things:

1. Are 10 Black Knights even going to all be able to attack? Certainly I suspect not all the Horses will be able to.

2. Black Knights don't have any rend on their attacks. Rend is huge on Cavalry, and a large part of why a lot of 'old world' Cavalry aren't super great (Although, most of them only having 1 attack from the rider is also another reason).

3. Blood Knight horses are better than Black Knight horses. 

4. The extra point of save I think is not something to be overlooked. 

 

So what I think you'll find overall, is that they serve different purposes in your army. Black Knights are probably more mobile tank that can put out some damage. Blood Knights are meant to be your hammer.

Whether or not they're overpriced, I think purely based on the fact they get +1 attack in Legion of Blood is unlikely to see them come down in points. That's a problem when you share a unit between multiple 'factions', is that they end up being balanced when they're at their peak.

[Austin]

Yeah true. I tend to ignore horses (old bad habits die hard) when thinking about cav. And the space issue is certainly a good point.

One thing I did forget to mention, Black Knights on the charge are pretty solid with the +1 wound +1 damage. Perhaps even better than the d3 for Blood Knights bc you don't have to worry about poor dice.

[Mirbeau]

I used to use 10 Black Knights as a mobile screen/bubble for Nef. Now they hit like a ton of bricks too (on the charge), the guaranteed damage is huge. Took out the medium Khadaron ship with attacks to spare today in one combat phase, lovely and cheap.

[deynon]

16 minutes ago, Caladancid said:

Yeah true. I tend to ignore horses (old bad habits die hard) when thinking about cav. And the space issue is certainly a good point.

One thing I did forget to mention, Black Knights on the charge are pretty solid with the +1 wound +1 damage. Perhaps even better than the d3 for Blood Knights bc you don't have to worry about poor dice.

never forget the horses, they kill the more. And with legion of blood they gain an extra attack too

[AverageBoss]

I am liking Hexwraiths the most between our 3 horse options honestly. I might be wrong I how good I see them being though.

[Arentius]

Don’t forget as Deathrattle if you pair a wight king with your black knights then both the lance and horse get +1 attack from his lord of bones command trait (also lord of nagashizzar / van hels) if you want lots of mobile attacks 

[TheWilddog]

For me it all comes down to the regeneration factor.  Even in a Legion of Blood list I would consider taking a unit of 10 Black Knights over a unit of 5 Blood Knights just for the survivability.    

[Killax]

4 hours ago, AverageBoss said:

I am liking Hexwraiths the most between our 3 horse options honestly. I might be wrong I how good I see them being though.

Not wrong, can confirm they are amazing. Thing is really that I see a lot of light/middle and heavyweight hitter units being put in the same box while they have different roles... The Hexwraiths are the 'easiest to use' middleweight that can push a lot of work out due to reliable saves and reliable Mortal Wounds in combination with Fly. As a result there is very little on the same base size that's much better...

Blood Knights are good in Legion of Blood. Within that context they require more buffs than just that but this is what Legion of Blood potentially provides.

What gives them an advantage there over say Black Knights is the hitting power on one base, this is an advantage overlooked but can come very much in handy in crowded areas or particular corners of the board. Basically battles that occur in the later stages of the game. Having said that I would go light on Blood Knight inclusion. Reason being that Legion of Blood has a good reason to go for two Vamp Lords on Zombie Dragons. Which isn't a incredibly great tool in the current meta but this can change.

[Austin]

7 hours ago, TheWilddog said:

For me it all comes down to the regeneration factor.  Even in a Legion of Blood list I would consider taking a unit of 10 Black Knights over a unit of 5 Blood Knights just for the survivability.    

This is also the strongest factor to me, for both game reasons and theme with endless undead legions.

[Crispen]

My friend used a unit of 10 black knights being followed by a vamp with some orb that gave them an additional 6++. throughout the game they killed about 80 goblins and I killed about 11 of them, at the end of the game there were still 6 black knights on the table thanks to the regen haha.

They're really tough to kill with hand of negash regen, followed by two grave sites he setup basically in my deployment zone followed by the vamp.

On the charge they were killing between 20-30 goblins. The first charge he did killed 26 goblins with mystic shield on them. 

You really need to completely kill the black knights in one go, which isn't so easy with crypt shields and a mystic shield sitting on them.

On a side note the changes to the wight king made him much less punchy, 5 goblin wolf riders sorted him out, which before would never have happened with the d3 dmg.

[bsharitt]

16 hours ago, Killax said:

Not wrong, can confirm they are amazing. Thing is really that I see a lot of light/middle and heavyweight hitter units being put in the same box while they have different roles... The Hexwraiths are the 'easiest to use' middleweight that can push a lot of work out due to reliable saves and reliable Mortal Wounds in combination with Fly. As a result there is very little on the same base size that's much better...

I haven't had a chance to get my death army out since LoN dropped(needed to add those 3 min units of zombies to my old Nighthaunt army to make battleline), but I'm really looking forward to my upgraded hexwraiths. I did get to play against a guy running them and getting a couple of reliable mortal wounds out of a unit that I'd found to hit like a nerf bat more often than not was certainly a nice change(well, technically it wasn't a nice change for my goblins).

[Killax]

9 hours ago, bsharitt said:

I haven't had a chance to get my death army out since LoN dropped(needed to add those 3 min units of zombies to my old Nighthaunt army to make battleline), but I'm really looking forward to my upgraded hexwraiths. I did get to play against a guy running them and getting a couple of reliable mortal wounds out of a unit that I'd found to hit like a nerf bat more often than not was certainly a nice change(well, technically it wasn't a nice change for my goblins).

The most awesome aspects of them is really that they are amazing in catching opponents by suprise when they go over smaller elite units. Which also includes Support Heroes and the like. But what I truely dig the most is that they are amongst the hardest units to deal with for quite some elite oppossing units. A very good save, a potential 6++ and a legal Deadly Invocation target makes 10 much more problematic to deal with.

In this aspect I would also say that Fly is arguably their biggest advantage and as someone who doesn't play that often against LoN I can also say that you can catch some opponents by suprise with that because regular cavalry doesn't fly and most certainly not if their arn't some clear wings stuck to the model  

What I think is the only problem with LoN for former Death players is that the army really went all over te place in the period of 3 years.  Where it used to be a monster mash, then turned into a close to competitive unplayable horde splinter-gang and now it's a combination of both. Thaking the best aspects will lead to a great army but this also means your competitively running a whole lot morde models as you used to with "old Death." Most armies didn't massively change their competitive ways but LoN is a complete overhaul preformed twice.