Armor question?

[WriterJames]

@NoisyAssassin

Knights aren’t required in any way to take power armor, and I suspect that their special ability is mostly targeted at those cases where they choose not to take it.

Noisy Assassin is right. The Knight Unit card does not have them wearing power armor by default, so if they are then equipped with power armor they are getting an even better benefit of having strong armor which does not get discarded in the way Armor Boosts do.

It’s the same as a model with physical armor 2 on its Unit card which then equips armor with a physical rating of 3 - by choice it has a better physical armor rating but it has only gained 1 physical armor (and a model with less physical armor on its Unit card would have gained more). It’s not losing a benefit but choosing to have a greater total benefit.

As Noisy Assassin mentioned, the Armor Boost could still be used in conjunction with the model’s own armor rating which can sometimes be better, it depends on the circumstances and the power armor.

A model with Power Armor and an Armor Boost token still discards 1 token when they get hit even if not using the Armor Boost’s effect.

Whilst on this topic, I thought I’d mention that armor ratings are not just the physical toughness of a model but include the effects of their dexterity, attitude, experience, etc.

[Sappy69]

@NoisyAssassin

Knights aren’t required in any way to take power armor, and I suspect that their special ability is mostly targeted at those cases where they choose not to take it. If they DO have power armor, you might choose to use their inferior underlying armor first to delay taking damage on their power armor (since at that point the damage goes directly against their health) in order to keep it in good shape for longer. It’s not usually a good idea to do this, but with a strong armor token the math would sometimes work out in favor of this approach (and would be a good idea more often for a unique Survivor with two tokens)

This almost makes sense to me, except for one thing: if a Knight wearing power armor takes a hit, and chooses to apply its underlying armor (with the Hardy +1 strong armor token) instead of the power armor to that hit, wouldn’t the resulting damage (assuming greater than zero) still apply to the power armor health instead of the Knight’s health? Here, using the underlying armor is still strictly inferior to using the power armor, which again wastes the Knight’s Hardy ability.

[NoisyAssassin]

Double checked and you’re right. I thought you only damaged the armor if you used its against the attack, but it always takes damage first.

So yeah, the only time it makes sense to roll normal armor then is if your armor rating is higher than the power armor’s (Lone Wanderer for example has 4 if he’s not near an ally), your armor is the same as the power armor’s and you have 2 strong armor tokens, or if it’s a 2 damage attack and you have 2 strong armor tokens.

Knights in power armor meet none of those criteria, so will never benefit from their special rule in that case.