Trench Crusade Warband Focus: Knights of Avarice

The Knights of Avarice are the true personification of Greed incarnate: followers of the Archdevil Mammon who value wealth and riches over any other vice. Their followers consist of ambitious warlords, corrupt merchants, and even the "regular" people of the Heretic Legion that found themselves caught in the clutches of the Lord of Greed. Walking into battle ordained with silk robes and golden plates, they fight for the glory of showing off their possessions equally as much as they fight to scour the battlefield for loot when the smoke clears.

Welcome to our review of the Knights of Avarice, a Variant Warband for the Heretic Legion in Trench Crusade. We'll be covering the specifics of the Knights (I'll refer to as KoA for short from here) in this article, but I'll be referencing a lot of things we covered in our main faction focus for Heretic Legion as well. Check that out here. We briefly covered this warband there, but I'll be recapping and going into more detail on builds and tactics here.

Knights of Avarice Priest, Credit - Loxi

Overview

On the tabletop, the Knights represent a hyper-elite force that leans more towards having a core of powerful elites backed up with Anointed Heavy Infantry, with Wretched to bolster out your action economy. While there aren't a lot of explicit rules calling out Anointed, the faction-specific battlekit and general changes definitely lead towards supporting them and making use of easy access to STRONG to handle heavy gear. If you like the idea of playing a lower model quantity but higher model quality version of the Heretics that pack a ton of ways to dish out blood markers and play around with the biggest and baddest guns in the roster, then Knights might be up your alley.

Just to recap from our main article, the following changes are what you're looking at when you select KoA compared to Core Heretic Legion:

Gain one piece of battlekit from both the New Antioch and Iron Sultanate armories, with keyword restrictions still applying. These are selected at warband creation and you can purchase a replacement if you lose it. Differently from prior versions to 1.0, you do only get a single copy of each item.
You can recruit 0-1 Goetic Warlocks as a Mercenary for 110 ducats. Note that this is in addition to the normal one you can recruit for Glory (at the time of writing), so you are able to take two if your heart desires.
Artillery Witches replace their regular bombs with Gas Bombs - these are -1 injury dice but ignore armor, as well as the plethora of other rules the normal bombs have. They don't have Infernal Strike for the big hit bonus, but they also can't be Ducked like the regular bombs can.
Your patron is always Mammon in campaigns; real shocker there. The good news is that there are some great traits in there, so this has both some flavorful and powerful options.
Your Priest must replace the Puppet Master ability with Price of Greed. This is a close range ability that lets you make a risky success roll: if you pass, pick a visible enemy within 12" and make an injury roll against them, adding +1 Dice for each -1 Injury Modifier they have. This can be devastating against heavier targets and shifts the role of the Priest in this roster from being a supportive combat character to a full-on frontline monster.
Besides Wretched, you cannot include any model with a total cost (including battlekit) less than 80 ducats. Because the return on investment for Legionaries gets pretty bad when they start to cost almost as much as an Anointed, this means you won't really see many of them outside of specific builds and late campaigns if you've hit the limit of five Anointed.
You cannot include any Death Commandos. Mammon likes to make fun of them on social media and they do not take it well.
No battlekit with Fire or Shrapnel keywords can be taken, this includes all grenades that are not Gas Grenades. Grenade Launchers are replaced with Gas Grenade Launchers, which are -1 to Injury Dice but have GAS and IGNORE ARMOR, making them slightly less lethal but really good at handing out blood markers.

It's a lot of changes on paper, but functionally a lot of your individual models will still perform similarly to how you expect them to in comparison to standard HL. While losing Death Commandos definitely hurts our assassination game, we still have a more control-focused mobility tool in the Goetic Warlock, so we won't be totally missing out in terms of board presence. The biggest restrictions will be the unit cost and the weapon restriction - while there are a few obvious ones it hits such as the flamethrowers and the cheaper grenade option in Frags, it also means we lose some of the handy melee tools like Hellblades and the Blasphemous Staff. These aren't dealbreakers, but this means we need to rely on our Gas weapons for Armor Piercing, which become a bit harder to actually secure a kill with, although not impossible by any means.

All Gas, All the Time

Let's quickly talk about the access to Gas weapons this warband has and how to utilize it well. As covered above, we have a plethora of Gas weapons that we can use to our advantage:

Artillery Witches have Gas Bombs
Gas Grenade Launchers
Gas Grenades

These will be bread and butter tools you'll often be reaching for. One of the main disadvantages of playing KoA is often going to be activation economy - you'll have fewer models to play with, which can sometimes mean less chaff with simple weapons to build up Blood Markers on targets before you can swing in with your heavy hitters. That means that these weapons will play a key role in helping to deal with heavy targets. While the -1 Damage Dice means that they won't be as good at consistently rolling hot on the injury table, Ignores Armor will make it still much better against targets with higher flat reductions injury rolls, especially those with -3 armor. They also make reasonably good spenders for Blood Markers as well if you're swinging into armor, as you can end up counteracting the -1 Dice with just one counter already on the target.

What this ends up lending to is a methodical playstyle - you want to brute force your way up into the midfield with tough models, clearing out sections of chaff and quickly building up blood counters while your heavy hitting models line up for the kill.

What's Yours Is Mine

Heretic Troopers - Credit: Ace

One of the staple abilities of the Knights of Avarice is the ability to steal an item from both the New Antioch and Iron Sultanate Armories. As mentioned above, you now can only have one copy of each item at a time, but you can buy it back if you lose it. These are only selected at warband creation. The good news is that there are a plethora of great choices, and really what you decide to pick will come down to preference and how you want to shape your individual playstyle. Here are some of the options you can take from each armory, in no particular order.

New Antioch

Machine Armor is the big boy option here. You're only going to be able to put it on your Chorister or your Priest, but both are fine options for this. It's expensive and will shorten your charge range a little bit, but it will give you some crazy survivability on two models that really want to be in the fray anyway.
Satchel Charges can add a serious threat to some of your Anointed, or even to make a really nightmarish Legionary that's a thorn to deal with. We don't really have a great way to deliver them, but they're a powerful tool regardless.
Sniper Rifles can add some ranged bite and are a good choice for pretty much anything you want to give a gun. Reliable long ranged damage help us cash in on those Blood Markers we generate really well, so these have great synergy with the rest of the warband.
Heavy Shotguns are a fantastic choice for Anointed, although you'll have to weigh if you value a higher damage shot over the potential ASSAULT bonus you can get from an Automatic Shotgun.
Automatic Rifles are a good choice if you want to grab one for someone but want to save a bit of glory. They aren't a bad option for a Priest and can make for a pretty role-flexible Anointed piece as well.
Submachine Guns are a similar idea - take this if you want to get one out of the gate and save glory for other options. I'm actually pretty partial to this - if you're worried about body count, you can grab one of these for a ranged Legionary with standard armor and optional shield for a pretty well rounded package that's cheaper than an Anointed.
Automatic Pistols can be an alright option on a Melee focused Priest as well, although they aren't a particularly stellar or exciting choice.

Iron Sultanate

Siege Jezzails are my favorite choice here; they provide a really powerful ranged threat that can work well on dedicated ranged Anointed as well as flexible role with solid melee options to back it up.
Wind Amulets aren't a bad choice if you want an extra boost of mobility on some of your key pieces, although now that in 1.0 you'll only get a single one, I do think they lose a bit of value.
Medi-Kits are in a similar boat, but there is a really good use case for these: Wretched. They can sit back and heal your tougher targets while providing a sort of "ablative wounds" layer to the model - nobody really wants to waste their time killing the naked Wretched, but if you don't he's going to just go crazy healing everything.
Halberd Guns are tricky, as they're a pretty solid choice but they compete with a lot of already solid gear in the roster. They're restricted to Elite, and we only really have one elite that cares about shooting and melee. If you want a safer option than the Sacrificial Blade that can still have some decent bite and range and isn't crazy expensive all together, it's an option there, although I think most people tend to lean towards a more aggressive build for Priests here. There is something to be said about being extra tanky and being able to walk up and blast away with
Cloak of Alamut can be handy if you're using a close ranged Priest (or, just like any Chorister) that needs to be a bit safer when sprinting it up the board.
Alchemist Armor is a great defensive choice if you want to keep an Elite character protected, but want to keep the charge mobility that you wouldn't have with Machine Armor. It's worth the shout that you can take both this and Machine Armor to put on both your Elites and put Tarnished Armor on something else, as that isn't Elite restricted.

As a final note, the wording of the rule states that you may purchase the items initially, then replace them later. If you're starting a typical 700/0 campaign, this means Glory items will be off the table for you, but if you are starting with Glory or playing in a Skirmish environment you can look at items like the Holy Relic or Martyrdom Pills if you feel inclined.

Armory of Avarice

Credit: Factory Fortress Inc.

Aside from the normal options from the Heretic Legion armory with the restrictions covered above, we have a few solid unique battlekit choices that really shape our warband, and all of them are worth considering for specific roles.

Coin Hammers are a beast of a melee weapon. They're 20 ducats each, limited to 2 in the roster, and are functionally identical combat-wise to the two-handed blunt melee weapons. What sets them apart is that if you deal at least one Blood Markers out with an attack from this, you get a Blessing Marker on the model that attacked. These are fantastic and absolutely worth looking at, even if you might not be able to afford them from the get-go. They are Heavy, so these are mostly going to be just for beefing up your Anointed even more.
Golden Calf Altars give out a 3" aura of difficult terrain for enemies, including things that fly. You can place one down on a 25mm base and it becomes a little piece of immovable and impassable terrain with the same aura. These are outstanding area denial tools, able to totally shut down pushes in certain choke points, make objectives a pain to push through, and even just make one model have a "don't get too close to me" aura to prevent sneaky long-bomb charges around a frontliner. These are also often going to be on Anointed as they have Heavy, although there at least is a use case for throwing these on something cheap just to throw it down somewhere for zone control.
The Standard of Mammon is a Troop Flag that's juiced up with a really cool ability. Kneel Before Me makes it so that any enemy that is Down within 1" of the standard bearer can't stand back up, and anything ending a charge within 1" of the bearer has to pass a Success check or become downed. This ends up being a super useful package for the faction as a whole - being a lower model count warband, the bonus to Morale can help keep you in the fight for longer even if you end up losing a few models faster than you expect. The control aspect to keep enemies downed is a fantastic choice for your frontliners, and it has outstanding synergy on a Chorister, who will make passing those actions a royal pain and just be a total nuisance to deal with. It's worth a shout for Anointed as well, since STRONG will allow them to wield a two-handed melee weapon with one hand, so they'll be able to carry the flag and still have a punchy melee option.
Tarnished Armor is a -2 Injury Modifier and Negate Gas suit of armor, limited to one per roster. It also has the ability Target of Wrath, which essentially just makes it so anything that wants to charge and is within range has to pick it as an option if it's not already within 1" of an enemy, is visible, and they don't have to do weird stuff like climb, jump, or dive to get there. There are two main use cases for this. First, you can throw this on a Chorister to make them even more annoying to deal with and force enemies into it's aura, as well as give it a bit more protection from Gas. The second is ignoring the Negate Gas and the charge shenanigans and throwing it on a Artillery Witch to make them -3 Armor with a shield, a great way to make sure she stays alive without having to wait to promote her. It's also fine on a Priest as well - a bit of extra defense and bringing people closer so you can Price of Greed them isn't terrible, although I prefer going for one of the stolen armor options for them. The big advantage is that this isn't ELITE locked, so use it on whoever you think needs it most.

Unit Tactics

Trench Crusade Wretched. Credit - Loxi

I'm not going to cover each unit in detail - check out our main Heretic Legion article for that, as many of the general ideas for using units and loadouts will be the same. Here I'm going to cover any differences or key things to note that are specific to KoA.

Heretic Priest

Let this be your main combat tool - they have the best stats, TOUGH, and access to all of the goodies you'll be able to take that don't require STRONG to efficiently wield. Even if you aren't intentionally building around Price of Greed the same way you would with Puppet Master from Core HL, it can be a nice boost to your damage output when it comes down to dueling tougher enemies. It's perfectly fine to ball out on upgrades for these guys - the Sacrificial Blade will always be a classic, but a good gun and any of the higher-tier armor options will make this a force to be reckoned with. They absolutely can still fill a dedicated long-ranged roll, but you won't really be making the most of their kit that way, and you will often have Anointed and the Artillery Witch to support the backfield.

Chorister

As a support piece that also can still throw hands in close combat, the Chorister fits really well with an warband that wants to keep their big boys protected and safe. The combo of the Standard of Mammon and Tarnished Armor is a fantastic choice if you want to go the dedicated supporting route, while still giving you an open hand for a Sacrificial Blade if you want to still have some bite. Losing Flamethrowers means you don't really have a ranged choice that's worth including on them outside of maybe Gas Grenades if you have spare coin, but other options like the polearm/shield or even just double-clubbing it are fine choices. If you aren't skewing heavily towards a purely ranged warband, I think Choristers are often a pretty essential pick for the lineup.

Anointed

Knights of Avarice Anointed, Credit - Loxi

Anointed are your main role players in the roster, filling pretty much any combat position from dedicated ranged, to melee punch, to a combined arms approach. There are pretty much countless options for them so I won't list them here, but many lists will be starting with 2-3 of these guys to form a core.

Until you bolster up with more models, I often think starting with a few all-comers options can be great to have. A midrange weapon (Siege Jezzail, Sniper Rifle, Assault Rifle) plus a two handed melee is a great do-it-all loadout. A Gas Grenade launcher and club is a solid setup for a reasonable price that can really pump out Blood Markers and has room to upgrade to a better melee later on. For closer range options, automatic shotguns or submachine guns + a shield and melee of choice is a great short-mid range option. Machine Guns are an alright choice for longer range, but often Sniper Rifles and Anti-Materiel Rifles (when you can get them for Glory) are fantastic.

War Wolf Assault Beast

Interestingly, this changes the least from regular HL. The role is the same - just run at them and scream. It's a great piece to have, as a fast threat can help both distract from your other dangerous crew, but it also synergizes well as a counter-punching piece to help deal with any really mobile targets sneaking up on you. Speaking of which...

Goetic Warlock

The Warlock has been previously covered in our Mercenary focus, which you can check out here. Being able to take one more readily is a very handy feature of KoA, and it provides a much needed control tool for an army that wants to move steadily up the board rather than rely on movement shenanigans. That being said, it's worth mentioning that you shouldn't just use this as a stand-in for a Death Commando - this isn't assassinating anything in the same way, instead you're using this to "pin" units in place, maneuver around the board to deal with any fast threats you can't quite kill, and dish out more Blood Markers for the rest of the team to finish off. They serve a very important role for the faction, and a lot of taking them comes down to how badly you need that extra control vs. just taking something that can kill well. I love them to bits, but I often find myself wanting them as an early game pickup rather than something you start your roster with.

Artillery Witch

The Witch will be built out the same way as you would in a Core HL list, but her role is slightly different. You won't just be slamming kills home on targets you're hitting raw like you can with the normal Witch, the Gas Bombs are not nearly as lethal into the majority of targets. What she does provide is a great way to hand out a crazy amount of Blood Markers on anything that wants to cluster up or hide in cover, and if an armored target already has a few on them she can readily pop them with ease. She needs a bit more finesse just because she doesn't have the sheer power of a 3D6 Injury roll to punch out most models, but ignoring the Duck mechanic and being able to still knock people around makes this a great piece for your roster. They do compete with Gas GL Anointed for a similar role, but I like one of each to help keep people honest from long range and make every choke point a potential death trap.

Troopers/Legionaries

Since everything that isn't a Wretch has to be 80 or more ducats in cost, your regular dudes fall in a weird spot. They cost 30 ducats each, 40 if you make them a Legionary. This means you have to spend 40-50 ducats to make them usable, but then they start to get close to the 95 minimum ducats you're paying for an Anointed, who come with a whole bunch of extras built in (Reinforced Armor, Negate Fire, STRONG, +1/+1 stats). This means that realistically you're shooting for models that do one of two things: fill a specific role you wouldn't really want an Anointed to do, or be in that 80-90 ducat sweet spot where they will end up being a decent bit cheaper than Anointed with similar kits.

*A reminder that you can't have more Legionaries than Troopers, so if you only bring one of these in your roster as a utility piece you can't just pay for the Legionary upgrade.

My first pick for these guys is almost always a Musical Instrument carrier, as they require much less investment than an Anointed for this. You can get one to 81 Ducats with the following loadout:

Standard Armor
Musical Instrument
Gas Grenades
Trench Club
Mountaineering Kit
Combat Helmet

Obviously that's a lot to put on a normal dork, but it means you can make use of the Dash bonus without having to hinder one of your bigger and even more expensive models to do so. Plus, all of the upgrades you're buying do at least give him some sort of damage punch and staying power, it's not like they're completely wasted ducats. I really like the Mountaineering Kit so you can make sure he gets where he needs to to use his instrument optimally, but you could swap that for a Gas Mask and give him a knife instead for the same points if you want to use the kit elsewhere.

If you're only going for one guy, I think using him for that role is like your best bet, but you can use them to bolster your roster if you really just cant afford to save for another Anointed or hit your limit on them. With the Legionary upgrade and standard armor, you only need to spend 25 ducats to hit the 80 cost floor, which isn't too bad to do with a lot of loadouts. A shield + Submachine Gun, Shotgun, or Gas Grenades with a Melee weapon are all perfectly fine options that can act as a pretty good roadblock unit that can scrap pretty well with other chaff units.

Wretched

One of the secretly cool things about KoA is that Wretched shine here in a way they often don't get to in Heretic Legion, since they actually fill a role that isn't tightly competing with Troopers. When in doubt, a Knife and a dream is all you need to help with deployment, action economy, and objective play, but Polearms and/or Shields, Gas Grenades, and even a Bolt Action Rifle or Shotgun can make them annoying little buggers that nobody really wants to deal with, but will cause just enough of a problem to help you out if they go unscathed. They aren't going to ever be actually great units, but having them occasionally punch up to help out in a fight is really helpful, and you'll almost always have a few just to help with action count.

Don't forget the trick I mentioned with Medi-Kits on them; you can only do it on one guy now, but it can be really helpful for keeping your team battle ready.

Sample Roster

Knights have so many choices when it comes to making a roster that it's almost hard to suggest a baseline to go off, as you can really adapt it based on what weapons you steal with Corrupt Merchants, if you do/don't take a Chorister, and so on. The following is the general framework I find works the best when making a starting roster:

Priest
0-1 Chorister or War Wolf
2-3 Anointed
0-1 Artillery Witch
0-1 Musical Instrument Troopers
0-2 Wretched

You can play around with this general framework based on what items you take and how expensive those things are. Here is my example list that runs a bit more elite from the start, taking Machine Armor from NA and a Siege Jezzail from IS:

Example List

Faction: Knights of Avarice Rating: 700 Ducats | 0 Glory Patron: None

Elites

Heretic Priest of Mammon • Cost: 168 Ducats | 0 Glory • Equipment: Automatic Shotgun, Sacrificial Blade, Machine Armour Heretic Chorister • Cost: 121 Ducats | 0 Glory • Equipment: Trench Club, Mountaineer Kit, Standard of Mammon, Tarnished Armour

Troops

Anointed Heavy Infantry • Cost: 132 Ducats | 0 Glory • Battlekit: Siege Jezzail, Trench Polearm, Infernal Brand Mark, Reinforced Armour Anointed Heavy Infantry • Cost: 128 Ducats | 0 Glory • Battlekit: Gas Grenade Launcher, Trench Club, Infernal Brand Mark, Reinforced Armour Artillery Witches of Mammon • Cost: 125 Ducats | 0 Glory • Battlekit: Infernal Gas Bomb, Standard Armour, Trench Shield Wretched • Cost: 26 Ducats | 0 Glory • Battlekit: Trench Knife

Six models is obviously pretty tight; I'd be shooting for an Instrument or more Wretched pretty quickly here. If you wanted another body, you can definitely lean off on some of the upgrades on the Priest to get another Wretched with a Knife. The core idea is pretty simple though - the Gas GL Anointed and Witch can rain shells on the opponents to stack up blood markers while the Jezzail tries to pick them off, and your Chorister and Priest can form a little bromance and tear up the midfield. Don't forget you can Reinforce whenever you need to, you're playing a lower model count force and absolutely don't want to fall behind if you lose too much early, especially as a roster without a lot of Elites prior to promotions.

That's a wrap; we hope you enjoy getting out there and getting some sick loot and showing off your drip. Have fun, and see you in the trenches.

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Tags: trench crusade | heretic legion | knights of avarice | warband focus