Black knights any use?

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

 

I think it's worth mentioning that after the change to coherency Black Knights deal substantially more damage than Dire Wolves, assuming only 5 or 6 wolves get into combat at any given time. This is how 6 wolves vs. 5 Black Knights vs. 10 Blood Knights breaks down:

 

Save	Dire Wolves	Black Knights	Blood Knights
2+	0.96	2.68	5.37
3+	1.93	3.69	8.36
4+	2.89	4.69	11.36
5+	3.85	5.7	14.35
6+	4.81	6.71	17.35
-	5.78	7.72	17.97

 

I am currently thinking about whether or not 5 Black Knights have a role as screen clearers. While people often like to claim that Blood Knights can "jump over screens" with Riders of Ruin, that is not strictly speaking true. What they get to do is jump out of tarpits if your opponent counter-charges you. So there could still be value in bringing a cheaper unit of Black Knights in order to wipe out small chaff screens.

I think the key component of making this work, though, would be that Black Knights need to be able to do this job as a unit of 5 without additional support from any heroes. I think that if they can get there with only self-buffs, they have an advantage over Dire Wolves which cannot get any bonuses to hit and wound (because they get these bonuses on their warscroll). I say if this is supposed to work at all, a unit of 5 has to be able to do it, because if you are bringing 10 Black Knights, you could just bring another 5 Blood Knights instead for cheaper.

Side note: Black Knights do get 2" reach, so you could conceivably run them in 10s, but 10 Black Knights still deal worse damage than 5 Blood Knights, so why? Also, 2x5 would probably be preferable anyway for double impact hits.

Anyway, the damage just does not seem to be there. Here are the numbers for 5 Black Knights with All-Out Attack, and also with a Wight King tagging along:

Save	Black Knights	Black Knights with Wight King
2+	3.02	5.64
3+	4.37	7.5
4+	5.72	9.36
5+	7.07	11.22
6+	8.43	13.08
-	9.78	14.5

It looks like Black Knights can just barely wipe a save '-' screen on the charge when buffed with All-Out Attack, which honestly is not very impressive. If you happen to have a Wight King in your list already, things look a little better and you can reliably remove save 5+, 10 wound screens. Which, you know, is something. However, it pretty much means that Black Knights don't have much of a role as a support unit in a Blood Knight list, because what Blood Knight list takes a Wight King along?

So yeah: Black Knights are still not very good, even with new coherency.

[oggurt_da_bog_zombie]

5 hours ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

 

I think it's worth mentioning that after the change to coherency Black Knights deal substantially more damage than Dire Wolves, assuming only 5 or 6 wolves get into combat at any given time. This is how 6 wolves vs. 5 Black Knights vs. 10 Blood Knights breaks down:

 

Save	Dire Wolves	Black Knights	Blood Knights
2+	0.96	2.68	5.37
3+	1.93	3.69	8.36
4+	2.89	4.69	11.36
5+	3.85	5.7	14.35
6+	4.81	6.71	17.35
-	5.78	7.72	17.97

 

I am currently thinking about whether or not 5 Black Knights have a role as screen clearers. While people often like to claim that Blood Knights can "jump over screens" with Riders of Ruin, that is not strictly speaking true. What they get to do is jump out of tarpits if your opponent counter-charges you. So there could still be value in bringing a cheaper unit of Black Knights in order to wipe out small chaff screens.

I think the key component of making this work, though, would be that Black Knights need to be able to do this job as a unit of 5 without additional support from any heroes. I think that if they can get there with only self-buffs, they have an advantage over Dire Wolves which cannot get any bonuses to hit and wound (because they get these bonuses on their warscroll). I say if this is supposed to work at all, a unit of 5 has to be able to do it, because if you are bringing 10 Black Knights, you could just bring another 5 Blood Knights instead for cheaper.

Side note: Black Knights do get 2" reach, so you could conceivably run them in 10s, but 10 Black Knights still deal worse damage than 5 Blood Knights, so why? Also, 2x5 would probably be preferable anyway for double impact hits.

Anyway, the damage just does not seem to be there. Here are the numbers for 5 Black Knights with All-Out Attack, and also with a Wight King tagging along:

Save	Black Knights	Black Knights with Wight King
2+	3.02	5.64
3+	4.37	7.5
4+	5.72	9.36
5+	7.07	11.22
6+	8.43	13.08
-	9.78	14.5

It looks like Black Knights can just barely wipe a save '-' screen on the charge when buffed with All-Out Attack, which honestly is not very impressive. If you happen to have a Wight King in your list already, things look a little better and you can reliably remove save 5+, 10 wound screens. Which, you know, is something. However, it pretty much means that Black Knights don't have much of a role as a support unit in a Blood Knight list, because what Blood Knight list takes a Wight King along?

So yeah: Black Knights are still not very good, even with new coherency.

This is super interesting, thanks for the write-up/research!

I'm working on a 2k Legion of Blood list which the main focus is to run both Neferata and VLoZD, so the key here is a lot of my points for the army are already spent on just two models! One thing I'm considering is running a Wight King w/ Steed general to get a unit of 20 2h graveguard as battle-line, a unit of 20 skellies as second battleline, and I'm considering taking a unit of black knights to check-off the last battle-line requirement. Fully realize black knights are not very good, been reading this forum post and tons of others on the topic, but given your research, it seems like in the context of my list running 5 or even 10 black knights might be worth it. I realize Blood Knights are better, but I still need to fulfill battleline, and I think I can fit in a unit of 5 BKs in addition to some Black Knights anyway.

Thinking of an example, instead of taking more graveguard or skellies as battleline, a unit of 10 black knights paired with a the wight king w/ steed general -- taking the soul-crushing contempt command trait -- makes a potentially decent chaff / screen clearer from both a fair amount of mobile damage and bravery shenanigans. Could drop this to 5 black knights but they do have 2" range, so that along with them being a bigger unit to resurrect, could be at least serviceable instead of them being a total tax on the list. And this gives the black knights & wight king a bit of a functional purpose, and lets Nef and VLoZD focus on other things and not dealing with chaff/screens.

Seems like my idea could be viable. Put an example of this list in the spoiler tag below, but I'm still working on fine tuning so not really "done" yet, probably needs an endless spell, some artifact tweaking, sorting out the core battalions so I can take two artifacts and get a unifed deployment, etc.
 

Spoiler

Allegiance: Soulblight Gravelords
- Lineage: Legion of Blood

Leaders
Wight King on Skeletal Steed (130)
- General
- Command Trait: Soul-crushing Contempt
- Artefact: Oubliette Arcana
Neferata, Mortarch of Blood (365)
Vampire Lord on Zombie Dragon (435)
- Deathlance
- Artefact: Soulbound Garments
- Lore of the Vampires: Amethystine Pinions
Necromancer (125)
- Lore of the Deathmages: Decrepify

Battleline
10 x Black Knights (240)
20 x Deathrattle Skeletons (170)
20 x Grave Guard (280)
- Great Wight Blades

Units
5 x Blood Knights (195)

Total: 1940 / 2000
Extra Command Points: 0
Allies: 0 / 400
Wounds: 113
 

 

Edited June 28, 2021 by oggurt_da_bog_zombie

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

11 hours ago, oggurt_da_bog_zombie said:

This is super interesting, thanks for the write-up/research!

I'm working on a 2k Legion of Blood list which the main focus is to run both Neferata and VLoZD, so the key here is a lot of my points for the army are already spent on just two models! One thing I'm considering is running a Wight King w/ Steed general to get a unit of 20 2h graveguard as battle-line, a unit of 20 skellies as second battleline, and I'm considering taking a unit of black knights to check-off the last battle-line requirement. Fully realize black knights are not very good, been reading this forum post and tons of others on the topic, but given your research, it seems like in the context of my list running 5 or even 10 black knights might be worth it. I realize Blood Knights are better, but I still need to fulfill battleline, and I think I can fit in a unit of 5 BKs in addition to some Black Knights anyway.

Thinking of an example, instead of taking more graveguard or skellies as battleline, a unit of 10 black knights paired with a the wight king w/ steed general -- taking the soul-crushing contempt command trait -- makes a potentially decent chaff / screen clearer from both a fair amount of mobile damage and bravery shenanigans. Could drop this to 5 black knights but they do have 2" range, so that along with them being a bigger unit to resurrect, could be at least serviceable instead of them being a total tax on the list. And this gives the black knights & wight king a bit of a functional purpose, and lets Nef and VLoZD focus on other things and not dealing with chaff/screens.

Seems like my idea could be viable. Put an example of this list in the spoiler tag below, but I'm still working on fine tuning so not really "done" yet, probably needs an endless spell, some artifact tweaking, sorting out the core battalions so I can take two artifacts and get a unifed deployment, etc.
 

  Reveal hidden contents

Allegiance: Soulblight Gravelords
- Lineage: Legion of Blood

Leaders
Wight King on Skeletal Steed (130)
- General
- Command Trait: Soul-crushing Contempt
- Artefact: Oubliette Arcana
Neferata, Mortarch of Blood (365)
Vampire Lord on Zombie Dragon (435)
- Deathlance
- Artefact: Soulbound Garments
- Lore of the Vampires: Amethystine Pinions
Necromancer (125)
- Lore of the Deathmages: Decrepify

Battleline
10 x Black Knights (240)
20 x Deathrattle Skeletons (170)
20 x Grave Guard (280)
- Great Wight Blades

Units
5 x Blood Knights (195)

Total: 1940 / 2000
Extra Command Points: 0
Allies: 0 / 400
Wounds: 113
 

 

I definitely think the Legion of Blood Black Knight bravery bomb is usable! It's definitely not top-tier competitive (anything bravery related is too unreliable for that) but it's at least a fun, janky combo that will feel good to pull off and can situationally be quite strong.

I actually did two write-ups of the idea here and here.

Personally, I would run a block of 5 Black Knights, though. I feel the smaller unit size is a little easier to position and Black Knights kind of benefit from dying early so that you can have a valid resurrection target on most turns. Or, if you want 10 Black Knights, 2x5 might be the way to go for more impact hits.

[vlad3theimpaler]

On 6/28/2021 at 10:18 AM, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

 

I think it's worth mentioning that after the change to coherency Black Knights deal substantially more damage than Dire Wolves, assuming only 5 or 6 wolves get into combat at any given time. This is how 6 wolves vs. 5 Black Knights vs. 10 Blood Knights breaks down:

 

Save	Dire Wolves	Black Knights	Blood Knights
2+	0.96	2.68	5.37
3+	1.93	3.69	8.36
4+	2.89	4.69	11.36
5+	3.85	5.7	14.35
6+	4.81	6.71	17.35
-	5.78	7.72	17.97

 

I am currently thinking about whether or not 5 Black Knights have a role as screen clearers. While people often like to claim that Blood Knights can "jump over screens" with Riders of Ruin, that is not strictly speaking true. What they get to do is jump out of tarpits if your opponent counter-charges you. So there could still be value in bringing a cheaper unit of Black Knights in order to wipe out small chaff screens.

I think the key component of making this work, though, would be that Black Knights need to be able to do this job as a unit of 5 without additional support from any heroes. I think that if they can get there with only self-buffs, they have an advantage over Dire Wolves which cannot get any bonuses to hit and wound (because they get these bonuses on their warscroll). I say if this is supposed to work at all, a unit of 5 has to be able to do it, because if you are bringing 10 Black Knights, you could just bring another 5 Blood Knights instead for cheaper.

Side note: Black Knights do get 2" reach, so you could conceivably run them in 10s, but 10 Black Knights still deal worse damage than 5 Blood Knights, so why? Also, 2x5 would probably be preferable anyway for double impact hits.

Anyway, the damage just does not seem to be there. Here are the numbers for 5 Black Knights with All-Out Attack, and also with a Wight King tagging along:

Save	Black Knights	Black Knights with Wight King
2+	3.02	5.64
3+	4.37	7.5
4+	5.72	9.36
5+	7.07	11.22
6+	8.43	13.08
-	9.78	14.5

It looks like Black Knights can just barely wipe a save '-' screen on the charge when buffed with All-Out Attack, which honestly is not very impressive. If you happen to have a Wight King in your list already, things look a little better and you can reliably remove save 5+, 10 wound screens. Which, you know, is something. However, it pretty much means that Black Knights don't have much of a role as a support unit in a Blood Knight list, because what Blood Knight list takes a Wight King along?

So yeah: Black Knights are still not very good, even with new coherency.

For the first chart, why are your points of comparison 5 black knights, 6 wolves, and 10 blood knights?  Wouldn't 5 blood knights be the more comparable size?

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

28 minutes ago, vlad3theimpaler said:

For the first chart, why are your points of comparison 5 black knights, 6 wolves, and 10 blood knights?  Wouldn't 5 blood knights be the more comparable size?

It's how many units I expect to get into combat on the charge, not point parity. For wolves, due to coherency I expect only about half of them to actually get into combat, but went with 6 to be generous. Black Knights and Blood Knights can get in 5.

The 10 Blood Knights are just a typo, the calculation is for 5, so thanks for catching that

Edited July 3, 2021 by Neil Arthur Hotep

[vlad3theimpaler]

19 hours ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

It's how many units I expect to get into combat on the charge, not point parity. For wolves, due to coherency I expect only about half of them to actually get into combat, but went with 6 to be generous. Black Knights and Blood Knights can get in 5.

The 10 Blood Knights are just a typo, the calculation is for 5, so thanks for catching that

Okay, that makes sense.  I was trying to figure out how Blood Knights could conceivably get more guys in with their big bases and 1" reach, but hadn't done the math to see if the numbers you gave were actually for a 5 man unit.

[Liquidsteel]

On 6/28/2021 at 9:06 PM, oggurt_da_bog_zombie said:

This is super interesting, thanks for the write-up/research!

I'm working on a 2k Legion of Blood list which the main focus is to run both Neferata and VLoZD, so the key here is a lot of my points for the army are already spent on just two models! One thing I'm considering is running a Wight King w/ Steed general to get a unit of 20 2h graveguard as battle-line, a unit of 20 skellies as second battleline, and I'm considering taking a unit of black knights to check-off the last battle-line requirement. Fully realize black knights are not very good, been reading this forum post and tons of others on the topic, but given your research, it seems like in the context of my list running 5 or even 10 black knights might be worth it. I realize Blood Knights are better, but I still need to fulfill battleline, and I think I can fit in a unit of 5 BKs in addition to some Black Knights anyway.

Thinking of an example, instead of taking more graveguard or skellies as battleline, a unit of 10 black knights paired with a the wight king w/ steed general -- taking the soul-crushing contempt command trait -- makes a potentially decent chaff / screen clearer from both a fair amount of mobile damage and bravery shenanigans. Could drop this to 5 black knights but they do have 2" range, so that along with them being a bigger unit to resurrect, could be at least serviceable instead of them being a total tax on the list. And this gives the black knights & wight king a bit of a functional purpose, and lets Nef and VLoZD focus on other things and not dealing with chaff/screens.

Seems like my idea could be viable. Put an example of this list in the spoiler tag below, but I'm still working on fine tuning so not really "done" yet, probably needs an endless spell, some artifact tweaking, sorting out the core battalions so I can take two artifacts and get a unifed deployment, etc.
 

  Hide contents

Allegiance: Soulblight Gravelords
- Lineage: Legion of Blood

Leaders
Wight King on Skeletal Steed (130)
- General
- Command Trait: Soul-crushing Contempt
- Artefact: Oubliette Arcana
Neferata, Mortarch of Blood (365)
Vampire Lord on Zombie Dragon (435)
- Deathlance
- Artefact: Soulbound Garments
- Lore of the Vampires: Amethystine Pinions
Necromancer (125)
- Lore of the Deathmages: Decrepify

Battleline
10 x Black Knights (240)
20 x Deathrattle Skeletons (170)
20 x Grave Guard (280)
- Great Wight Blades

Units
5 x Blood Knights (195)

Total: 1940 / 2000
Extra Command Points: 0
Allies: 0 / 400
Wounds: 113
 

 

Would you consider bumping the Skellies to 30 and reducing the Knights down to 5? I'm warming to a block of 30 of them, gives them maximum chance of sticking around. Can then take a unit of Fel Bats or something.