The Amazing Abominant: 5 Hot Takes After 5 Games with the New Chaos Knights Codex

Most weeks, I don’t get to play as much 40K as I would like.

This week was definitely not one of those weeks. A brand new Chaos codex dropped on a weekend where I had basically no obligations, my fiancée was out of town, and I had nothing to do besides go to an amusement park for a half day with some friends. You know damn well that I was not going to pass up a chance to put a spicy new Chaos codex on the table.

I wanted to know three main things:

First, is the army good?

Second, are the big Knights viable?

Third, and most importantly, is the Abominant viable?

The answer to all three questions is a resounding YES. I’m having some of the most fun I’ve had in 10th Edition running 3 Abominants. I can’t believe this is actually real life. It only took most of the edition, but Chaos Knights are finally where I want them to be.

Here are the initial Warphammer hot takes about the new Chaos Knights codex. I also realized I have many more than just 5 hot takes in this article, but “5 Hot Takes After 5 Games” makes for a smoother title than “An Uncountable Amount of Rambling Hot Takes”. Enjoy all the extra takes on the house, as a gift from me to you.

Chaos Knights Are Really Good… Maybe Even Too Good

Let’s just get something out of the way right away. The doomers, as usual, were wrong. I genuinely don’t understand the extremely negative reactions that the Chaos Knights fanbase had when the codex dropped, but I imagine they are going to quickly quiet down.

This is a very strong codex. No qualifiers: This is a great army.

This codex is a huge success both in terms of army strength and in terms of giving Chaos Knights players many different viable builds.

Small sample size, and frankly a sample of above average players, but I asked Chaos Knights players in the Warphammer discord (https://discord.gg/4Jtq74cd) to share their records in their games with the new codex so far. That sample of Chaos Knights players is currently 15-4. Do I think Chaos Knights are a completely busted ~80% winrate army? Of course not! A small sample size of practice games doesn’t mean much. But the results of early testing are encouraging, and it’s not just me. This is a legitimately good army.

The Army Rule Is… Okay

I’ve seen some very polarized takes on the Harbingers Of Dread army rule. Most are negative. Here’s the reality: It’s okay. It could be better, but it could be worse. It’s fun to pick up abilities as the game goes on and basically every ability will have some use in every game. The one big mistake in my view is not letting you re-roll doubles. That incentivizes you to get in reps and really understand each matchup so you know if a specific ability is especially powerful so you just pick it. I’m a fan of anything that rewards players mastering a faction. That being said… they really should have just made doubles less punishing to start with.

I also think it’s unnecessarily restrictive to make Delirium only proc the d3 Mortal Wounds if the opponent fails a battleshock test, is within 9″ of you, and is below half-strength. They were too careful with this one, which ultimately makes it a dud.

Here is my Doom And Darkness decision tree: Is your opponent a shooting army? Pick Darkness at the start so your army is -1 to Hit outside of 18″, and then roll after that or pick something situationally useful. Anything else? Just roll and then keep rolling or picking depending on whether any specific buffs are very useful. For example, if your opponent is down to a few units and they’re all wounded, it is probably better to just select Dismay at that point to make them take battleshocks and try to disrupt their end of game scoring. Of course, this doesn’t apply to the Traitoris Lance, where you have an incredible amount of control over the Doom And Darkness outcomes.

I’m very intrigued by the Dominion ability to add +3″ to aura ranges in the Houndpack Lance. +3″ on your auras gives your Rampager a 12″ aura of re-roll 1’s to Hit in melee and your War Dog with Final Howl a 9″ aura of re-roll 1’s to Wound, making it much easier to apply both buffs in the right spots. Dominion is also extremely spicy when combined with the Mirror Of Fates enhancement in Lords Of Dread for a 15″ aura of +1CP cost for your opponents. That sounds absolutely miserable on a Knight that wants to push aggressively anyway, like a Lancer.

The Toughness Change Is Fine

Here is something I can’t wrap my head around.

All edition, I heard Chaos Knights players say big Knights aren’t viable because of common access to Lethal Hits/Devastating Wounds. GW lowers their Toughness and gives them more Wounds, and suddenly that T12 was a load-bearing stat that was vital to how the Knights functioned and they are trash without it.

Knights are now a bit more vulnerable to some specific dedicated anti-tank profiles (mainly Lascannons), but more resilient to Lethal Hits and Devastating Wounds and Grenades and all of the ways people “cheated” Knight’s Toughness. That seems like a reasonable choice.

People might counter that they want Knights to have both T12+ and more wounds. The reality is every faction can’t have their perfect power fantasy or 40K couldn’t function as a tabletop game. Yes, each Knight should probably T14 with 40 Wounds and singlehandedly solo entire armies. Each Necron weapon should be able to destroy the table you’re playing on and auto-win the battle. Each Daemon model that is killed should disappear into the Warp and be able to return later on in the battle. I’m not going to waste time on that silly “Knights shouldn’t even be an army” argument. They are an army. That ship has sailed. Not only that, Chaos Knights are a really, really cool army!

T11 Knights with a massive pool of wounds are still an excellent stat check if you want to play that way. War Dogs going from 12 to 14 Wounds is also a good breakpoint. Anyone that has played against Nemesis Dreadknights knows how frustrating it is to try to kill 13 Wound models.

If you’re worried about your Chaos Knight army feeling too fragile after the Toughness change, go ahead and put it on the table. I promise you, it’ll be okay. Your army absolutely still feels like playing Knights.

Abominants Are… Actually Really Good?

All edition, Chaos Knights players have been begging for an opportunity to run our coolest model. That time is now.

On the surface, the Abominant changes in the codex weren’t huge. Their Volkite Combuster went from 9 shots to 12 shots. The range of their Battleshock test increased to 24″. They get ~10% cheaper. But once you add in some extremely strong support in several detachments in the new codex, there are collectively enough levers being pulled that the Abominant has massively improved.

It’s not just my (or your) imagination. Abominants are objectively way better. An Abominant in the index had 9 Volkite shots. They now have 33% more shots. They also have access to reroll 1’s to hit and wound Lords Of Dread. That is combined an 81% damage increase from an index Abominant. Now scale that by the fact Abominants are cheaper, and a codex Abominant can shoot 203% as hard per-point as an index Abominant could. That’s what we call a glow-up.

Abominants get better the more you run. 1 Abominant is very inconsistent at battleshocking something, doing AOE mortal wounds, or getting Dev Wounds from their Volkite Combuster. 2 Abominants means that 1 of them each turn will probably do something. 3 Abominants means that 1 of them every turn will do something big, and all 3 pointing together at one target will pretty reliably kill it. Access to a reroll 1’s to Hit and Wound stratagem in Lords Of Dread means that you can get at least one pretty consistent Abominant activation. I had an Abominant one-shot an Aeldari Falcon. I thought that was a crazy spike and I had just gotten lucky. I put it into UnitCrunch, and it turns out that with the Titanic Duel stratagem, a single Abominant one-shots a 12-wound/3+ Save vehicle 52% of the time. Not bad for an AP0 gun!

Don’t just take my word for it. Go out and put your Abominants on the table. They feel so good in practice. I’m sad it took us most of the edition to get here, but Abominants are not just playable; they are an excellent unit.

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Lords Of Dread is a Deranged Detachment

Lords Of Dread is like great Italian food. It won’t wow you with fancy techniques. Instead, it is a few high-quality ingredients prepared extremely well.

Listen, I don’t know much about cooking Italian food. If I’m completely wrong about that analogy and an Italian grandmother chases me down with a rolling pin, then I apologize. But the second I saw Lords Of Dread I thought that this was a wildly good detachment, and putting it on the table has only solidified that opinion. This is a top tier detachment.

My Lords Of Dread list is 6 models. It is only 3 different datasheets. I only use 3 different stratagems. Turns out that if every ingredient is excellent, you don’t need a lot of variety to have an extremely powerful list. You dominate Primary with your sticky stratagem, survive longer than you should with access to -1 Damage from Runes Of Disdain, and get 1 consistent activation each turn with Titanic Duel. That’s all you need!

The detachment rule has felt excellent, contrary to some people’s initial impressions. The combination of +2OC on the big Knights and free spamming the sticky stratagem makes this army a nightmare to contest objectives against. One very cool detail: The +2OC on big Knights does not have a restriction on not being Battleshocked. A battleshocked Knight still holds an objective. A battleshocked Knight can still contest an objective against a Rhino or a Lictor or whatever 1 or 2 OC unit your opponent has on an objective.

The 6-model list is not a meme. It is legitimately great. It has some counters, but hard counters way more lists than counter it. The only game I have lost with it was when I wanted to test its resilience versus a well-played Mortarion’s Hammer list and shoved pretty mindlessly. Death Guard are not the army you want to just take a punch to the face from, but we all already knew that. If I approach that game differently, I’m sure that matchup is very playable.

Basically Everything Is Viable. Let’s Discuss What’s Not.

Big Knights are Viable.

Small Knights are viable.

Running all War Dogs is viable.

Running all big Knights is viable.

Running a mixed list is viable.

Life is good. That being said, I don’t want this to just be a hype piece, so let’s talk about the misses in the codex!

Executioners continue to be a complete dud. GW has had all edition to see how utterly useless the combination of the Executioner’s guns and its datasheet rule are. That’s why, when this codex came out… they double down on that rule, and kept everything the same while adding a conditional battleshock rule if the Executioner kills something? It’s a shame that this unit continues to be crap.

Brigands got heavily nerfed, but honestly they’re still okay. Their datasheet rule is actually pretty good. Getting a relevant bonus versus units on objectives can never be that bad. Karnivores and Stalkers are both excellent datasheets if you’re into War Dogs, with Huntsmen also having a lot of appeal.

Tyrants are the main disappointment among the big Knights. I don’t mind some power being shifted away from their defensive profile, but they didn’t get any real offensive buffs to compensate. Why is their massive plasma cannon still only Strength 9? Why did the Harpoon lose 6″ of range? At least they have the decency to be under 400 points. At that points cost, you can put them on the table and not feel terrible, and in fact could do real work in the right list. I would not be shocked if lists with Brigands or Tyrants did well. Despoilers at 335 make it tough to justify a Tyrant at 395.

Ruinators are also a huge disappointment. If GW uses rules to sell new models, they did a poor job with the Ruinator. 4 attacks in melee that hit on a 3+ is just begging for disappointment. His shooting is pretty mediocre, especially with a flamer that can’t overwatch, so why not at least let him hit on a 2+ in melee so he’ll reliably do something if he gets there. Ruinators are worse than Rampagers but cost more, a baffling choice.

Speaking of which: Rampagers are the absolute truth. What a powerful datasheet!

Initial Detachment Ranking

Tier lists are usually boring engagement bait, but what the hell. Let’s have a little harmless fun, as long as all agree not to take it too seriously.

Here is my initial detachment tier list:

A+: Lords Of Dread, Infernal Lance

A: Traitoris Lance, Iconoclast Fiefdom

B+: Houndpack Lance

While we’re on the subject: Don’t sleep on Iconoclast Fiefdom! What does Iconoclast Fiefdom reward most? Big Knights and Karnivores. Those are the strongest units in the codex. Cultists remain a premium unit in the context of Chaos Knights, too.

Final Thoughts

I was bored to tears by Chaos Knights for most of the edition. Any Warphammer fan knows I love running interesting lists, and spamming War Dogs put me to sleep (and did not match my playstyle, which led to disappointment when I tried them in Teams last month).

That’s why I’m so happy Chaos Knights got this codex! This army is not only strong, it’s interesting. I want to keep trying every unit and every detachment and all sorts of list archetypes. I haven’t had this feeling with Chaos Knights since 9th Edition. If you’re excited about Chaos Knights, the Warphammer discord has been blowing up about them and I’ve streamed myself playing several games there. Come join the fun: https://discord.gg/4Jtq74cd

While you’re here, go ahead and treat yourself to the Daemonic Masterclass and grab it while it’s on sale. Check it out here! https://40kfireside.com/courses/the-demonic-masterclass/. We made something special, and I genuinely can’t recommend anything better for Daemons fans than this course. Enjoy over 7 hours of practical and fun content while supporting Warphammer and Fireside. What’s not to love?

As always, have fun, stay safe, and may the Dark Gods bless your rolls!