Detachment Focus: Freeblade Company

As chaotic forces surge from the Eye of Terror, new Detachments and datasheets arrive for traitors and loyalists alike. This article dives into the Freeblade Company Detachment for the Imperial Knights.

No need for a meandering introduction here - have you, an Imperial Knights player, been sad ever since the Index Detachment went away? Wouldn’t it be great if you got some of that juice back? You know it would - and that’s what the Freeblade Company delivers. There will be much rejoicing among the chivalric-ly inclined, and a great wailing and a gnashing of the teeth from everyone else.

We’d like to thank Games Workshop for providing us with a preview copy of these rules for review purposes. Any points referenced in this article are subject to change until published on Warhammer Community or the 40K App.

Detachment Overview

Credit: SRM

Freeblade Lance is an powerful all-rounder Detachment that helps almost any strategy Knights want to field. It has a universally excellent Detachment rule that adds durability, Enhancements to cover several bases, and decent Stratagems. About the only real problem it has is the lack of an Advance/Charge stratagem, but it’s such a strong boost to the fundamentals of playing the army that it’s likely you can work around this.

Detachment Rule: Knights of Legend

Imperial Knights models in your army have a 6+ Feel No Pain, and each heals 1W in each of your Command Phases. This makes all of your Knights tougher, which has been a premium option for Detachment/faction rule every time it has appeared. The healing is also nice; not as good as an upgrade to a 5+ Feel No Pain used to be, but perfectly fine. This kind of rule slightly leans you towards wanting more models on the table, as you want to saturate your foe with tough targets, and are also more likely to benefit from the healing in that case. Expect to see lists in this Detachment trying (at minimum) three big/three Destrier setups, and plausibly some more all-rounder options with Armigers as well.

Enhancements

This Detachment has great enhancements, a mix of returning classics and strong force multipliers.

Mysterious Guardian (35pts): The legend returns - this gives a Knight Deep Strike, and a once-per-game reposition triggered at the end of the opponent’s turn. This has generally been the highest value on Crusaders, who can use it to set up perfect lines, or Valiants for a proper gut punch move. There’s probably a world where you try this on a melee Destrier as an Ingress threat too. The only real issue with this is the price; the Detachment wants to squeeze as many units as possible in, so may struggle to spring for this.
Sanctuary (20pts): Provides a 5+ Invulnerable Save, which functionally means it’s adding one in melee. Most likely to see use on a wrecking ball Destrier or a Knight Errant, because the latter clocking in a 375 with this enhancement actually makes it meaningfully cheaper than just taking an Atrapos, whereas for most other bigs the tradeoff isn’t there.
Bringer of Justice (30pts): Adds +2A to a model’s melee weapons, and gives them +1 to hit in melee. Like a broken record, I have to note that this is excellent on a melee Destrier, as it turns them into a monstrous all-purpose blender at a competitive price, but there’s broader interest here that you can effectively make any of the gun and melee big Knights hit as hard as a Gallant for a relatively small upgrade price, so if you devise a list that wants their Bondsman effects, this maximises their value.
Hunter’s Eye (25pts): Finally, an enhancement that is not good on Destriers! This provides Ignore Cover. That means it is very good on a Knight Crusader, Knight Castellan or Knight Defender. You probably want this on one of those in most builds, it’s really good.

Stratagems

Imperial Knight Lancer. Credit: Jack Hunter

The Stratagems are probably the weakest part of this Detachment, not because they’re bad, but because they aren’t as standout as the Detachment Rule or Enhancements, and there are effects that are probably just weaker versions of what other Knight Detachments offer.

Noble Sacrifice (1CP): When rolling for deadly demise, go off on a 4+ instead of a 6, or a 3+ if you’re an Armiger. Nobody exactly likes spending CP on Stratagems that have a chance of doing nothing, but you’ll still begrudgingly do this sometimes because the upside of detonating a big Knight (especially a Cerastus) in the middle of the enemy can be too great.
Strength From Exile (1CP): Use when shooting or fighting, and provide re-roll 1s to Hit and Wound as long as no friendly model are within 9”. This isn’t always trivial to set up but the payoff is huge, encouraging you to either trail a double gun Knight back from the rest of your army, or send a Destrier out to go full wrecking ball mode. Especially strong on a Bringer Destrier, because Lance means they’ll often be 2s and 2s whether the target needs Strikes or Sweeps, and this can let them reliably connect for extreme damage.
Full Tilt (1CP): Auto-advance a Knight 6”, or 9” if it’s a Destrier or Armiger. The challenge with this one is that there’s no Advance/Charge in this Detachment, so unless you have a Lancer throwing out Bondsman buffs, you’re using this for positioning or shooting. That does create the potential incentive to bring one shooty Destrier, as although in general the melee build is more attractive, being able to move 21+d3” and fully shoot with Titanic so you can toe into terrain and see through it is quite something. You can often combine this with Strength From Exile above too, since after that big of a move you’re probably out on your lonesome!
Point-Blank Barrage (1CP): Allows a model to ignore the hit penalty for shooting while engaged, and also to target Blast weapons at foes they’re within engagement range of, as long as no other friendlies are engaged. When doing so, for each unmodified 1 to hit (with a Blast weapon), your unit suffers 1MW. Nice to have - helps make it far harder to protect something from the full wrath of a Castellan or Crusader by bully charging them.
Survivor of Strife (1CP): Use when targeted in the shooting phase, and for the rest of the phase get -1 to Wound against you when being targeted by weapons with S higher than your T. Somewhat situational - you’d be much more excited about this in melee to protect against stuff like the Nightbringer or enemy Knights. At range, weapons that fit this description often come with re-rolls, and many foes aim to punch up with re-rolling lower S weapons instead. That said, this does help against both Ultramarine (particularly versions without Ballistus) and Dorn shooting, so has a real place in some important current matchups.
Flanking Maneuvres (1CP): Pull an Armiger within 9” of a Battlefield edge into Strategic Reserves at the end of the opponent’s Fight Phase. Very useful to have, if lists end up wanting Armigers rather than just all bigs and Destriers.

Playing This Detachment

Imperial Knight Castellan. Credit: Jack Hunter

There’s only so much that a set of Detachment rules can change the core Knight plan - overpower the foe. Take out the stuff that threatens your Knights, then roll through them. Freeblade Company helps you with the fundamentals of this, and provides elevated support for making big thrusts with a single Knight when required. It also supports building in lots of different directions - you can maximise larger Knights if you want, but going for a diverse setup is also well supported. There probably will still be some usage of Questoris Companions for five big or three big/three Destrier setups, but this Detachment can compete on those, and probably replaces existing Detachments for almost any other build, in a similar way to what Grizzled did in Guard.

Strengths

Extra durability makes all your Knights last longer.
Excellent Enhancements.
Support for a broad range of lists.

Weaknesses

No Advance/Charge.
Stratagems can be situational.
Hard to squeeze everything you want into lists.

Sample Lists

Normally we put one list in these, but Imperial Knight lists don’t take very long to craft, and I think there’s a distinct separation between the builds that are big-maxing, and those which go a bit broader.

List 1 - Big Hero Six

Big Hero Six - click to expand

Canis Rex - 415pts

Knight Lancer - 395pts

Knight Crusader, Hunter’s Eye - 410pts

Knight Destrier, double melee, Bringer of Justice - 280pts

Knight Destrier, double melee - 250pts

Knight Destrier, double gun - 250pts

This list squeezes in the nastiest combination of six Destier or larger hulls you can achieve. The Lancer, melee Destiers and Canis can push, the Crusader provides supporting firepower from a distance, and the gun Destier can babysit a home objective if the Crusader needs to move, then redeploy at maximum velocity if the situation requires it. You could drop the gun Destrier for an Immolator and Sisters, at which point you could drop Hunter’s Eye to make the Crusader a Castellan, and add Sanctuary to the second Destrier, which also avoids having to consider keeping a Knight back on your home (likely a better choice on denser maps).

List 2 - All-Rounder

All-rounder - click to expand

Knight Castellan, Hunter’s Eye - 435

Knight Lancer - 395

Knight Errant, Sanctuary - 375

Knight Destrier, Bringer of Justice - 280

Warglaive - 140

Warglaive - 140

Helverin - 135

Callidus Assassin - 100

This list puts more activations on the table, but keeps some gut punch power at the top. The upgraded Destrier being able to hit Gallant-hard at 280pts and being able to create a big Knight with a gun and a melee invulnerable save for only 375pts lets you squeeze extra value into this Detachment.

Final Thoughts

The arrival of this Detachment and the Destrier should give Imperial Knights a serious shot in their massive arms, so expect to see plenty of people giving it a try.

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