Horus Heresy Review: Cerastus Knight Atrapos

Good afternoon,

Today's post is the final in my Cerastus Knight class reviews and focuses on what is commonly called the dirty Knight - The Atrapos. The Atrapos has a very mechanicum based aesthetic and is the best looking for me personally.

Stats

The Atrapos comes with the stats line of :

WS      BS      S      F      S     R     I    A   HP

 4           4      10    13    12    12    4    4    7

Overview: Important to note an additional hull point compared to all the other Cerastus frames giving it that additional level of durability. This Knight comes in at 435 points making it the most expensive of the Cerastus frames.

Special Rules

As a super heavy walker the Atrapos comes with a chunk of special rules that include:

- Move through Cover

- Fear

- Strikedown

- Relentless

- Invincible Behemoth

- Smash (eh!?)

- Hammer of Wrath

The Cerastus frames also have the special rule Flank Speed, that means they can run 3D6 inches in the shooting phase. 

Incidentally the specific wording is the knight may opt to run instead of shooting A weapon in the shooting phase. This seems open to interpretation that a knight with multiple weapons could sacrifice one weapon to run and still shoot the others. Personally I think it would be a dick move to play it that way as it seems super gamey to me, but just to point it out.

The Atrapos also has two extra rules:

Catastrophic Destruction: Add +2 to D table when determining the strength of the explosion after the Atrapos loses its last hull point.

Macro-extinction protocols: The Atrapos' weapons counts as twin-linked when fired at super-heavy type or gargantuan type miniatures.

Equipment

The Atrapos has very tasty equipment indeed:

Graviton Singularity Cannon - 36" S8 AP2, Heavy 1, large blast, armourbane, concussive, collapsing singularity

Effectively a 48" range due to the super heavy move, this is a very nasty weapon, it has the potential to scatter as much as any large blast but if it hits it will mulch things that are out of cover. Concussive is nice if it hits a T5 multi wound model that will survive and become I1 but realistically will have little to no effect in game.

Collapsing Singularity: Before firing the weapon roll D6. On a 1 the knight loses a HP and on a 6 the weapon becomes Vortex.

This is interesting and fun but you have an equal chance of losing unsaveable HPs.

Atrapos Lascutter - D AP1, Melee, Wrecker

OR 8" D, AP2 Heavy 1

So here we have a ranged and melee D weapon! However the short range on the D means you will have to get right in the grill of your opponent to make any use of it. This means opponents can kite away from the knight preventing its use. Wrecker re-rolls failed pens against building and adds and additonal +1 to damage rolls making them blow on a 4+ with the AP1.

Ionic Flare Shield - 4++ against shooting attacks with the facing declared at the start of the shooting phase as usual. You know it you love it but you love it more when it reduces attack strength by -1 or -2 if its a blast or template weapon!!!

Blessed Auto-Simulcra - IWND weak with a HP restored on a 6 at the end of the turn

Options

Only one options here:

Occular Augmetics - May re-roll vehicle damage results of 1 when shooting from 12" or less and also gain night vision for 10 points.

Found at cool mini or not

Utilisation

Right, many people class this as the best knight of the Cerastus frames. I do not for a few reasons but I will go over its great strengths first. In a word that is durability. An additional hull point coupled with the ionic flare shield makes this a tougher prospect to take down. Having said that it will suffer as much as any other knight if it is caught in cross fire by high strength weaponry with only one side coverable.

The additional benefit is the ranged D weapon though the downsides of its 8" range should not be underestimated. Effectively the Atrapos suffers the same as the Castigator that you can only reliably shoot one unit a turn UNLESS your enemy is foolish enough to stray within that 8" death bubble.

While the Graviton cannon is great, its blast nature means wild scatters are possible AND you have the potential to lose a HP as well on a roll of a 1 beforehand. If your enemy is within charge range (and you want to charge) but out of 8" this makes its possible to scatter on to yourself with a dreadful roll as if you are wanting to charge that unit.

Don't get me wrong this knight is great, but compared to the Acheron it has too much "random" in its weaponry to be truly devastating.

For a comparison the Acheron has a hellstorm template that ignores 3+ armour AND cover AND it is ordnance for taking on smaller vehicles AND it doesn't need to roll to hit AND covers a much larger area overall AND it has an additional weapon with a range over 12" making it easier to flame one unit then shoot another for charging AND it still has a big dirty D weapon in combat.

But that is just my 2 pennies worth and you should decide for yourself :)

Peace out,

Rob