Faction Focus: Imperial Agents

Warhammer 40,000 Faction Focus: Imperial Agents

I'm fighting off something, but it's a big day and I got a surprise in my email yesterday that I might cover too.  So let's get started!

Imperial Agents are a bit of an odd duck.  They're not really a faction, in the lore or in the game.  Instead they represent the many unique offices of the Imperium that might take an interest in a battle.  That hasn't stopped players from wanting to play them as an army though, especially since back in 2nd they were an army.  Since then, though, two of the forces in the codexes were split off into their own factions.  But that hasn't stopped players from wanting to run the elite forces of an Inquisitor, an alliance of Rogue Traders, or a disparate force made of allies of convenience.  Unfortunately, 9th made it difficult to put such a force on the battlefield.  Even with the new Kill Team boxes adding in forces of the Imperial Navy and the Adeptus Arbites, these armies have largely been relegated to Narrative or Open Play.

Will 10th change this?  Let's find out!

FACTION RULES

And with our preamble out of the way, GW cuts straight to the point.  No, Imperial Agents are not designed to be fielded as a combined force in 10th Edition.  They do not get Detachment rules, Stratagems, or Enhancements in the Index.  Whether they might change this later, time will tell.  But for now, these are units designed to slot into your existing army.

Right off the bat, Agents can not be used in a Combat Patrol.  This makes perfect sense, since Combat Patrol is now specific armies fighting each other instead of one you build.  Next, agents are now split into Characters and Retinues.  This also makes a lot of sense since most Agents would come with their own hand pick unit of allies, and with the new Leader rule you'd want them together.  You get 1 of each based on the game size, so 1 Character and 1 Retinue for Incursion, 2 Characters and 2 Retinues for Strike Force, etc.  Finally, you can't have an Assassin as your Warlord.  This does mean that since including Agents occurs after your Select Army Faction step, you can pick an Agent to be your Warlord.  So in this way at least, you can still field the forces of an Inquisitor or Rogue Trader, they'll just use the rules of another faction.

VINDICARE ASSASSIN

We get my favorite assassin for the first Unit Spotlight.  Statline wise, the Vindicare has lost a wound like many characters.  This is something I keep forgetting to notice or mention, but it is a definitive trend that has crossed all factions with a Character in the Faction Focus.  The pistol has gone up a point of Strength and gone to a flat damage 3, while losing the normal pip of AP.  That's overall a buff for 10th Edition, though if there were weapons that shouldn't lose AP I'd say these would be them.  What isn't a buff are the changes to the special rules.  It's no longer ANTI-INFANTRY 2+, and since they've gotten rid of ignoring invulns, that's gone too.  Instead, it's gotten DEVASTATING WOUNDS and IGNORES COVER.  This will still be a potent weapon, but nowhere near as reliable.

It's a similar story for the rifle, though this time it's a pure buff on the statline as this weapon didn't lose AP.  Looks like GW agreed with me that the Vindicare's Exitus rifle should have a high AP even in 10th.  Again, they've traded DEVASTATING WOUNDS for ignores invulns and IGNORES COVER for ANTI-INFANTRY 2+.  But the weapon has also remained HEAVY, which is now a pure buff.  This means if you're Vindicare can Remain Stationary, it can offset most penalties to Hit.

As expected, the Vindicare, and I'm guessing all assassins, are Lone Operative.  This means you can't shoot them unless you're within 12" or, maybe, with PRECISION.  You can feel free to perch them atop a ruin to get the most benefit from their range and HEAVY rule, as well as Plunging Fire, without your opponent being able to pick them off.

As if the boost to damage wasn't enough, especially with Characters going down in wounds, you get another 3 Damage on a critical hit.  This means there is a very real possibility this Assassin can just headshot a character off the board.

And there it is!  There's the ignore invuln!  The Shieldbreaker rule lets the assassin fire a single shot in a battle that ignores all saving throws.  That's our bar for ignoring an invuln: a once per battle ability on the Vindicare Assassin.  You must be that swol to ride the pain train!

INQUISITOR

While we don't get Dan Abnett's Gregor Eisenhorn or even Katarinya Greyfax from the Fall of Cadia, we do still get our baseline Inquistor for the second reveal.  Again, there are no surprises in the statline, just a single lost wound.  They can now wield a combi-weapon with it's new and improved abilities.  They also get a single PSYCHIC attack in the form of Psychic Shock Wave.  It's stats are underwhelming but it does come with DEVASTATING WOUNDS, so on average you'll plink at least one point of damage through.  It's melee choices have seen the usual consolidation with a single Inquisitorial melee weapon and a force weapon.  The force weapon looks like it's based off the force sword profile.  Sorry, no more big hammer blows for Inquisitors.  And the melee weapon appears to be a power sword.

It keeps the special rule that allows it to override the unit restrictions of a transport.  This makes more sense than including the Inquisitor on any potential transport amongst all the Imperium factions.  It then additionally gets the standard CP refund rule for units its leading, though it goes off on a 3+.  The real kicker here, though, is it can grant a unit a 5+ FNP.

Honestly this is underwhelming.  The main reason you brought an Inquisitor before was for access to their special Psychic powers.  Now you'll be weighing them up against other leaders for units.  Most factions will have access to that CP refund and that FNP.  But it's possible there might not be as many that can grant both with one character.  We'll have to see if people find uses for them in 10th.

IMPERIAL NAVY BREACHERS

Oh!  But what is this?  We get another reveal!  I guess with no real faction rule they thought fans of Imperial Agents needed a bit more.  Navy Breachers were underwhelming on release and never really got any kind of buff.  Let's see if they get any interesting rules now.

Their statline is unchanged, which means they come with a Termagant's 8+ Ld.  Ouch!  Aren't these supposed to be hardened warriors of the Imperial Navy that brave the deadly role of both breaching an enemy vessel as well as defending from breachers?  You'd think that soldiers that have seen the horrors of void warfare would be a bit more fearless!

They otherwise get a large, but bland, selection of weapons.  It's very clear that this datasheet is designed to let you take your Kill Team and have them be roughly as effective on the board regardless of how you've put them together.

In exchange, they get Veterans.  However unlike the previous versions we've seen, they get the re-roll for all of their attacks!  This is a nice buff.  My big concern is that they're rarely going to get to use that OC 2 since they'll be constantly Battle-shocked.  Still, they might be able to help secure an objective.  They get access to both Smoke and an enhanced Grenade Stratagem, but this has the same concern since you can't target a Battle-shocked unit with a Stratagem.

I know they were Ld 6 in 9th, but I just don't understand why they weren't bumped to Ld 7+ in 10th.

INQUISITOR KATARINYA GREYFAX

Well it seems I spoke too soon!  But then I wasn't expecting to see four reveals today.  Do I hear a fifth?  There's still some scroll bar and I know we're not getting a Stratagem!

Greyfax has also lost a wound, so that trend continues.  However, she's Ld 4+!  For reference, Guilliman is 5+!  That means she only has a 1 in 12 chance, only a little more than 8%, to fail Leadership normally.  If she can give her Leadership to units, she could be really valuable.  She gets Castigation as her main witchfire, hitting at S8, AP-2, and D3 with ANIT-CHARACTER 4+, DEVASTATING WOUNDS, and PRECISION.  She'll be able to do some nice damage to priority targets with this.  And while the Condemnor has a bland profile, it gets ANIT-PSYCHER 2+, DEVASTATING WOUNDS, PRECISION, and RAPID FIRE 1.  I'd say that's an overall buff for the Pychic power though maybe a nerf to the gun.  Honestly Condemnor is probably a side-grade, gaining more general purpose use for less potent anti-Pycher.

She keeps the Transport rules from the generic Inquisitor profile but also gets the ability to share her ANTI-PSYCHER abilities with her Bodyguards at 4+.  And though I have no idea how important Desperate Escape will be in the new edition, the fact that she forces enemies in melee to test it if they want to Fall Back, at -1 if they're Battle-shocked, is probably pretty good.  There are lots of enemies that you want to keep pinned in melee, and anything that helps you do that is a good thing.

FINAL THOUGHTS

The article closes noting that you can field an army of Agents of the Imperium.  They all have the Faction Keyword, so you can select that as your Faction and follow the rules as normal.  But you won't gain any other benefits for doing so.

At the end of the day, Agents of the Imperium allows you to sprinkle in cool units into your existing Imperium armies and allows Kill Team players ways to use their units in 40K.  While bespoke rules for an Inquisitor's retinue would be cool, it's honestly easiest to just use whatever existing faction fits the scenario best.  Maybe as 10th Edition continues, as well as another season of Kill Team, we'll see more rules to let you do interesting things with these units.

Of what we saw in this faction focus, my guess is that Assassins are still going to be the main thing you use from this Index.  The Inquistor might be worth taking if your budget is tight and you need those two specific buffs in your army.  Breachers feel a bit sad to me, and I'm worried their Leadership will prevent them from finding a home in any list.  Depending on what she costs, though, Greyfax could find a home in a few armies.

All we have left are divergent Space Marine Chapters and Titans.  And since next week is the first full week of June, I'm guessing the reveals are going to be coming fast at this point.  It won't be long until we get to see these full indexes and their points, as well as an official release of the full rules.  Then the real fun, the army building and theory crafting, can begin!

Eh?  Playing 40K?  Yeah, I guess that's fun too.