Black Knights (Lances & Barding)

Black Knights (Lances & Barding) is a Vampire Counts cavalry unit in Total War: Warhammer. Atop their skeletal steeds, Black Knights destroy enemy battle lines with powerful cavalry charges.

Description
In the times before the Empire, there were few domesticated horses, and horsemen were exceedingly rare. In most tribes, a steed was a symbol of wealth and status. So it was often that only a Chieftain and his closest warriors would ride mounted into battle, the wealthiest of their number clad in crude iron plate and carrying stout shields. When these early Knights died, their horses were ritually killed and buried in the barrows alongside their masters, to carry them in the afterlife. Many centuries later, the Vampire Counts are known to summon forth the gruesome remains of those ancient Knights in order to bolster the masses of lesser Undead minions under their control. As a Vampire stalks through barrows and mausoleums, Dark Magic swirls invisibly around him like a cloak, probing and penetrating the cracked and overgrown porticos of each resting place and saturating the bones of the armoured corpses within. A thousand years of dust shifts and dissipates as the parchment-dry cadavers twitch and sit upright. In a morbid mockery of their old lives, these Black Knights stir into motion, tearing themselves free of thorny creepers and thick cobwebs, cold fingers clamping around the hilts of age-blackened blades. Alongside them, the skeletal remains of their steeds jerk to unlife, twisted by magic into hellish mockeries of the noble beasts they once were.

Strategy
Now these are some proper shock cavalry compared to their normal counterparts. Trading a little bit of speed and melee stats for higher armor, damage and more than double the charge bonus of their fellows, they will perform much better in any hammer-and-anvil flanking maneuver. They will also be able to engage enemy cavalry more comfortably, but do not expect them to win against dedicated anti-large cavalry (Knights of the Realm, Demigryph Knights etc). If you need to deal with nastier cavary/monstrous infantry its better to use Blood Knights, which while very expensive will wreck them on a good charge.