Detachment Focus: Helhunt Lance

As chaotic forces surge from the Eye of Terror, new Detachments and datasheets arrive for traitors and loyalists alike. This article covers into the Helhunt Lance Detachment for Chaos Knights.

While they don’t get a new fancy knight like their Imperial brothers, Chaos Knights do get a new Detachment to play with. Helhunt Lance asks the question, “What if Chaos Knights had the old bondsman abilities?” by providing ways for big Chaos Knights to finally get a taste of the buffs they hand out. The real question though is: Does this move the needle on them at all? Let’s find out.

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

Chaos Knights. Credit: Rockfish

Hellhunt Lance is a generalist Detachment that wants you to bring a nice mix of War Dogs and big knights to maximize value from it. The Detachment Rule lets big Knights gain the benefits of their own auras but it keys off having War Dogs nearby. That said, the dogs don’t really get a lot out of the deal so bigs remain the stars of the show.

Detachment Rule: Masters of the Pack

If a TITANIC Chaos Knights unit from your army has an aura that affects War Dogs, it gets the effects of its own aura if there are two or more War Dogs in range.

This is definitely an interesting ability, but ultimately it doesn’t do all that much for you - the best example here may be the Desecrator, who gains the ability to re-roll 1s to hit. That's great given it hits on 2+, but it's still only firing three shots which are likely to wound on a 3+, limiting its effectiveness.

The other key candidate here is the Ruinator, which can gain +1 AP on its flamer and melee weapons. That said, this is more cute than good, and doesn't quite do enough to elevate the Ruinator to a satisfactory level of playability.

The big challenge with this Detachment is that the only big Knights you want to take are typically the ones which don't have auras that benefit them:

• The Despoiler only hands out +1 Ld.
• The Lancer gives out assault - which it already has.
• The Knight Tyrant just gives out cover, which it will already have most of the time.

This all ignores the other issue, which is that if an opponent destroys the nearby War Dogs (something they want to do anyways), they'll be removing this ability and taking out your Detachment rule altogether, leaving you with some mediocre Knights. It's not ideal, and this ranks among the weaker Detachment rules for the faction.

Ruinator. Credit: Rockfish

Enhancements

• Hunter’s Helm (15 pts): Re-roll advance and charge rolls for this Knight. At 15 points this is cheap enough to consider, but it's not good enough to build around.
• Octogram of Conjuration (40 pts): This lets the Abominant play with the Detachment Rule by giving you an aura that gives War Dogs the ability to impose Battle-shock tests on anything they shoot. This is a great ability on its face - many of your rules are gated behind Battle-shock tests and you can use this in conjunction with Havoc Multilaunchers to drop tests on units behind walls, giving you some sweet point-and-click Battle-shock. That said, 40 points is a lot for something your opponents can still just pass with a high roll.
• Throne Tyrannicus (25 pts): Now this is what makes the Detachment work at all. This Enhancement lets you pick another big knight and give it the affects of your aura until your next turn. Sure, a Desecrator with the ability to re-roll ones may not do a lot, but what about a Tyrant? Or maybe a Despoiler with +1 AP against the closest target. There’s a lot of interesting combos here to work with, and this one's worth building around.
• Aspect of the Beast (30 pts): In your command phase, pick a Dread ability that isn’t active and it becomes active for this knight until next turn. This is…fine. On one hand, Dread on command can be very useful, but you’ll quickly remember that Darkness is still the only Dread ability worth using. That said if you wanted you can combo this with the Octogram and pick +1 to wound against Battle-shocked units, you can attempt to live the dream... or the nightmare when you watch your opponent just pass those tests. For 100 points in Enhancements, this is too big a cost.

Khorne Knight Kharnivore - Norman

Stratagems

• Feral Arrogance (1CP): This gives your Knight a 5+ feel no pain to mortal wounds for the phase. This can be very good in certain scenarios and worthless in others. A welcome tool in the toolbox all the same.
• Merciless Fusilade (1CP): Pick a target; a big Knight and up to two small Knights all get Sustained Hits into that target. This is great considering you’ll be wondering why you aren’t playing Infernal Lance every minute you’re playing this Detachment.
• Beasthide Manifestation (1CP): Classic Armor of Contempt. Always useful.
• Flush out the Quarry (1CP): Pick up to 3 War Dogs within 6” of a big knight, they can go through walls and models this turn. This is a neat little sidegrade for Knights of Shade and will help your fast moving dogs move around the board.
• Contemptuous Volleys (1CP): Fall Back, Shoot, and Charge. This is one of the best tools Knights can get access to as touching certain Knights can fully tie up 400 points of your army in a lot of situations.
• Goaded Beast (1CP): A D6” surge move if you get shot. This is a neat thing to have for Karnivores or a Lancer you want to torpedo into your opponent’s lines, but doing that means you’re not working with the rest of what this Detachment wants to be doing.

Playing This Detachment

This detachment heavily favors a shooting castle where you can keep your supporting smalls safe while letting shooting bigs do their thing with a variety of buffs. You’ll be keeping everything pretty tight to benefit from Throne Tyrranicus and you’ll want at least one alpha strike capable knight to truly take advantage of that. Executioners do well here, being the cheapest dog with the longest ranged shooting, allowing them to stay active while buffing your big guys. That said, you’re gonna want at least a few knights to go range out and do stuff.

Strengths

• Re-rolls!: This is one of the very few ways Chaos Knight bigs can get rerolls through the Desecrator and Rampager. Whether its worth the hoops you have to jump through to get there is another matter.
• Solid Strats: There’s a neat little toolbox of stratagems here, providing both some unique capabilities for your guys and also some old favorites.
• Bad Knights Get Better: If you want to play with Knights that generally don’t see the table, a lot get new life in this Detachment. That said…

Weaknesses

• Bad Knights Are Still Bad: I’ll be real, there’s only so much you can polish a turd. A Desecrator with reroll 1s to hit simply misses wounds and saves instead of hits.
• Weak Links: This whole Detachment relies on dogs to work at all while giving them very little benefit for being near their dads. Generally you want dogs to be disposable trash and in an already elite army it's hard to justify keeping your chaff safe.
• Doesn’t Compete: Unfortunately Infernal Lance is right there and does everything this Detachment wants to do better.

A Sample List

This list tries to make the most out of what this Detachment has to offer, giving you a good targets for your auras and relying on the Tyrant to make some big punches happen. The Karnivores range out and harass the enemy while your firing base cleans up the rest, heavily utilizing the sustained hits stratagem every turn. Honestly, in my test game with this list it went about how you’d expect, the Tyrant popped off and everything else basically did nothing and I wished I was playing Infernal the whole time.

Final Thoughts

Gotta say folks this one’s pretty bad. As a swan song for Chaos Knights this edition, it underlines their issues pretty well; most of the datasheets are bad and need good rules to support them. Those rules unfortunately aren’t here and it just doesn’t cut the mustard. That said if you’ve been dying to take your Desecrator off the shelf or have a Ruinator waiting on your paint desk that you want to put on the table, this is definitely the Detachment to do it in.

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