The Return of Imperial Assassins!
[Spoiler alert! Just in case you haven’t heard the news, we will be talking about the new rules!]
I love Imperial Assassins and what they bring to a game of Warhammer 40,000. As more of a skirmish player at heart than a mass-battle gamer, I’m drawn to single models that can accomplish more than their diminutive size might suggest. I also like being able to attack from multiple vectors and Imperial Assassins checked all those boxes.
Being able to strike at weak spots with precision weaponry like phase swords, or snipe irritating enemy characters from afar, offered solutions to very real problems, and having the option to make stratagems less appealing to the enemy, or nerf an opponent’s psychic phase, came in really useful against armies that rely on those things to unlock their potential, like Blood Angels for example.
So yeah, I’m an assassin fan. Rarely do I run my Dark Angels without at least one offering his or her services. So when the new Index dropped, I couldn’t wait to get hold of it.
Old Dogs, New Tricks
Well, the four familiar temples are represented: the sneaky Callidus, the creepy Culexus, the deadly Vindicare and the one-man slaughterhouse that is the Eversor. All of them have been placed at the same points value, which simplifies things.
What’s amazing is that you no longer have to choose which assassin you bring before the game. Check out the Operative Requisition Sanctioned stratagem; you can now make your choice during deployment, offering you greater flexibility.
The Callidus - once my personal favourite - is just as mean as she ever was. Her ability to start within D6+3” of an enemy makes it almost impossible for the enemy to protect its soft targets. She still has the Neural Shredder with its bonkers Smite Bullets, to soften up targets before she goes in with the phase sword. Her ability to cause enemy stratagems to potentially increase by 1 Command Point just slows down the enemy that little bit, and might even stave off an alpha strike when playing against cautious opponents who don’t want to spend all their CPs on turn one.
Stratagems are one of my favourite aspects of 8th edition and the designers have cleverly used them to add flavour to the assassins. The Callidus can now expand the effect of her Reign of Confusion beyond round one, run and gun (and be harder to hit) and generally be more annoying. Which is ace.
The Vindicare assassin now benefits from being able to ignore penalties to shooting when remaining stationary, and Head Shot has become truly gruesome. His stratagems are a delight, too. If you feel like taking a unit that can shoot twice, and inflict mortal wounds on tanks, then check out the Vindicare. Say there’s an enemy vehicle with a single wound left, and you just want to remove it from the table without too much stress? Well, that’s what Turbo-Penetrator Rounds are for!
The Culexus remains an intriguing toolkit. Now able to fire Assault D6 with an AP-4 weapon if an enemy psyker is within 18”, with the option of boosting the damage from 1 to D3 for 1 CP, he can dish out some hurt. But my favourite is Soul Horror. This stratagem let the Culexus mess around with the fight phase, forcing enemies to fight last. Which is potentially awesome.
Finally, we come to the Eversor. Now, he was always the last to be picked for me, mainly because I found the others more useful. But now he’s absolutely terrifying. His Bio-Meltdown now has a range of 6”, so woe betide anyone who kills him. He’s also the bane of mobs, since he gets a free attack every time he kills something. Given that he has 8 attacks on the charge, and has a stratagem that allows him to fight twice, that could be one dead general or a pile of Ork Boyz. A cheeky Assassin-version of a 4+ feel no pain is a nice addition to his arsenal too.
So yeah, there’s been a lot of talk about how good White Dwarf has become over the last couple of months. Well, the trend continues. If you’re an Imperium player, you need this Index. It’s short, sure, but it’s crammed with cool artwork, background fluff, paint jobs and truly horrifying stratagems. If you don’t play Imperium? Get it so you know what you’re about to face. Because these assassins are going to be everywhere!
Why not get involved in the discussion? For a chance to win a 10% off discount code for our webstore, comment beneath and let us know what you think about the Assassins and how you'll be using them!
1 comment
I’ve a mate who is obsessed by Eversors and was hoping that White Dwarf would include Kill Team rules for the assassins. He’s currently trying to homebrew up some rules to allow the Eversor to be used as an army of one in Kill Team, but what you describe above sounds like they’d be incredibly dangerous given the close confines and small unit sizes of that game!
If the assassins do get official Kill Team rules I wouldn’t be surprised if they are written up as special commanders for Imperium teams. If the Eversor can really manage 8+ attacks a turn, has an inulvnerable save and feel no pain and will probably kill anyone within 6" when they finally go down I expect they’re going to cost a lot of points.