Lots of Knights

[Frowny]

Hey everyone. I just bought 40 bretonnian knights, mostly as a painting challenge what with the ability to decorate each one diffently. I and am looking for some ways to use them, hopefully competitively as well. I am happy to do some conversions, likely giving some pistols or handguns as pistoliers

Ideas: tempests eye pistolier and outrider hordes. Seems fun and maneuverable.

Living cities, put 2 per base and use them as lance dracoths. Also, anyone have luck with dark riders? They seem mostly like worse pistoliers really.

Also, what foot infantry go best with these lists? Maybe great swords or phoenix guard (converted as foot knights) ? Phoenix guard seem best but if im already getting a free guild general, great swords may be better.

Trying to avoid a horde army if possible although 1 to 2 units are fine.

[hughwyeth]

Perhaps just as Demigryph knights? Bretonnian knights are heavy cavalry so might fit with the theme. The only issue is the base size might look silly! The Hammerhal 6x demigryph units+general on griffon, equipping all with the lances means you get 2+/3+/rende -2/2 damage on 3 attacks. I think you can even get stuff to help wound rolls as well. Priority Roll Podcast Ep 23 interviews Jack Armstrong who ran it and went 4-1 (i think) but more importantly said it was great fun. 

Edited August 11, 2020 by hughwyeth

[Lord of the Isle]

Order of the Blood Drenched Rose might give you the most impressive rules...?

[SentinelGuy]

Use them as vampire blood knights in a death army. That way you don't wreck the knightly aesthetic by sticking pistols on them. Sad truth is that GW sucks at writing good cavalry rules.

Dark riders are ok as a fast objective grabber that can throw out shots at longer range than pistoliers. The bravery debuff can be useful in an Anvilgard army though.

[readercolin]

For knights, here are some of the frequently tossed around "proxy" ideas:

Blood Knights.  These are the easiest stand in, and you can fairly easily get blood knights with some shield and head swaps.  Also makes sense as an art project because these aren't common run of the mill undead, they are all vampires.  If you still want to use them in the cities, you can use the Mercenary Company rules to bring a block.  Alternatively, get a Vampire on Zombie Dragon and you have a solid death army (note, 40 knights and 1 vampire lord on zombie dragon is 1880 points, leaving you space for an endless spells, or a block of dire wolves and a command point, etc.).

Dark Riders.  Dark riders are dark elf cavalry running around with a 4+ save, so a bunch of guys in armor makes sense for them.  Just give them some crossbows on their back and you are good.

Chaos Knights.  Hang some skulls from them, do some shield swaps, add a bunch of horns, and some iconography and you have a big ass block of Chaos Knights with lances (1280 points worth).  The only real problem with this is that chaos knights tend to be a bit bulkier, so the brettonian ones might look a bit small next to a typical chaos knight, but when you already have 40 of them it isn't that big of a problem because you likely won't be putting these knights next to standard ones.

Any of the above three options should be easy for you to get with just some painting, and maybe a few extra bits or small swaps.  Anything beyond that though and you are starting to look at some pretty significant alters, or just going straight up into proxy territory.  Alternatively, you can use your knights as brettonian knights using the legends rules, and see how well that works out.  I'm sure 40 knights is enough to come close to a full army.

[Frowny]

I'm pretty set on cities of sigmar and happy to give them guns or crossbows or so, which is why I'm posting here. 

I mostly play with a single group that is very understanding of conversions, so am not too worried about counts as. The only tourneys I ever went to aren't at a gw store, so I'd be fine there too. 

My other army is gnoblars stacked on each other to make ogors as a gnoblars liberation army, so some conversions and counts as are a plus. Indeed I won a gift card for coolest army. To give you some ideas, I'm considering all mechanical legs (mechanical horses) and mounting dwarves on them, to give you all some ideas of the possible conversions.

I'm looking for some help building lists within within cities? What is competitively strongest? What types of foot troops compliment this style? 

 

[Dankboss]

The best analogue for their size in cities is Drakespawn knights.

[SentinelGuy]

In that case I'd suggest Tempest's Eye as the city and consider taking them as pistoliers. The Tempest's Eye thread would be a good place to look for discussion on army ideas. There's a lot of chat about pistoliers and their various merits. That city is also good for lots of the slower infantry units like longbeards, which make excellent battleline objective holders. 

[Evangelist of Cinders]

Bit late but wanted to test some stuff before I gave hard to work with information. As someone who is making and converting an army first picking rules to use second, (still don't know wrote story first), Ive been using a lot of older kits especially the low fantasy bretonians for easier conversions, I've done some tests and dwelt on this long to give some ideas.  .

 

On base size, it's going to depend which knights you got . 6th edition knights are probably the best portioned cavalry I've worked with from GW the horses are armoured and clearly bigger then a pony , they are clearly  HEAVY cavalry standing next to my old wood elves.beyond  their runners they  have twice the foot print of some of the older elves mounts(about the same as the new lumineth dawn riders even with their more dynamic poses). the old Bretonnians  horses(the ones you plug the knight into a saddle hole) are about 20-30% smaller then the 6th editions length is about the same so they will fit on a base equally small but there is a image difference

60mm x 35mm is what bretonnia uses in AoS so same as dark riders,  drake spawn pistollers as previously suggested. can be a bit tight based on lance position

75mm  the bigger demigryph base, i had a plan to try multi basing as a how to guide but upon testing boy is that a tight fit( probably still will  to show why not to). Lances down the single 6th ed model works fine. the chaos knights are on the same base now but shared the same base size in WHFB so it's not unheard of for old cavalry models on it. the smaller older knights look quite small and maybe avoid using them as  demigryphs if you were considering that route. If you want to convert some griffon helmets, turkic tugs pr hussar wings may fit the theme.

 

 

[Orsino]

I'm seeing a few people suggesting Bloodknight mercenaries, didn't GHB 2020 scrap mercenaries? I don't see them in the points list or on the warscoll builder. 

[Kramer]

On 8/11/2020 at 7:37 PM, hughwyeth said:

Perhaps just as Demigryph knights? Bretonnian knights are heavy cavalry so might fit with the theme. The only issue is the base size might look silly! The Hammerhal 6x demigryph units+general on griffon, equipping all with the lances means you get 2+/3+/rende -2/2 damage on 3 attacks. I think you can even get stuff to help wound rolls as well. Priority Roll Podcast Ep 23 interviews Jack Armstrong who ran it and went 4-1 (i think) but more importantly said it was great fun. 

I’ve seen a super nice demographic knight conversion where they used an old empire knight with a gryph hound on the base next to it. Like a hunting dog. 
EDIT: not the conversion i was thinking off but a good example of the principle and the sizes  

Edited August 17, 2020 by Kramer

[Evantas]

Although the closest fit is the Drakespawn Knights, you might want to consider Lumineth rules for the knights as well.

In my mind, Light of E is pretty much the Green Knight, and you got your spears and bowmen albeit a little overpowered. 

It's like a reverse 'what-if' scenario to the Flesheater Courts, 'Bretonnia resurrected'.

Maybe this is what they are if they were not actually hallucinating. 

[Lord of the Isle]

Any reasonable friend would still let you play mercs right?

[JackStreicher]

You could also play them as Drakespawn Knights (Knights is the Order of the Dragon)

[Orsino]

4 hours ago, Lord of the Isle said:

Any reasonable friend would still let you play mercs right?

Probably, but I don't like to have to ask if it's okay to use a non-legal army everytime I play a new person. 

For my own knights I think I'm gonna be running them as dracothians, Cities of Sigmar has plenty of mounted units but few of them are really elite and intimidating  in the way I feel knights should be.