Agent of the Imperium

Product Information

The Imperial Agents RETINUE units are an eclectic combination of releases from Kill Team and various boxed games.

How many units of Imperial Agents you can include in your IMPERIUM armies is determined by the battle size, and CHARACTER and RETINUE units have their own allowances – so you’ll never have to choose between Inquisitor Greyfax and her Henchmen. As Assigned Agents , they won’t benefit from the parent faction’s army rule or Detachment abilities, but their presence alone is a worthy trade. If the Tactical Doctrine was active for your army during the previous battle round, you can change it so that the Assault Doctrine is now active. Defend the Realm is next, and very good. You gain a point here by controlling more objectives at the end of your turn than the opponent, which will nearly always be something you’re planning to do anyway. Losing a point is also hard here too – to trigger the Troth, you have to control fewer objectives at the end of your turn than the start, and the natural flow of how the game goes means this will rarely happen unless you’re already out of contention. Both rewards here are also great – the Honoured ability doubles the Battle Forced CP bonus at the start of the turn (which is just always something you want as Knights), and the Virtuous ability provides army-wide ObSec (or upgrades any models that already had ObSec to count as three more extra models). Great stuff.

Who Are They?

When you deploy an INQUISITION unit (excluding DAEMONHOST units) in an Entry Zone, you can deploy a friendly JOKAERO WEAPONSMITH unit in that Entry Zone as well. There aren’t a lot of units in the Imperial Agents “faction” but there’s a decent amount of power here and a ton of versatility. You can fine tune lists by adding an Inquisitor to a unit or prep for a specific meta with an assassin, and the only real cost will typically be the opportunity cost of what else you could have taken or attached to that squad instead. You aren’t going to field Inquisitor armies any time soon, but that’s a good thing – these rules feel like the appropriate way to add Inquisitors, their retinues, and some of these other imperial weirdos to the mix. If there’s anything to complain about here it’s that the Eversor and Callidus assassin feel underpowered, but that may also be a result of how melee combat in 10th edition feels generally underpowered. On the other hand, the Vindicare Assassin is a unit to watch, as it might need a nerf down the road. Finally, Freeblade-specific choices, where three out of the four seem interesting. Mysterious Guardian allows the Freeblade, if placed into Strategic Reserves , to arrive as if it was a turn later than it actually was, so coming in on a flank right out of the gate is permissible. Potentially good on both a big Knight and Armigers. Peerless Warrior, meanwhile, gives a once-per-game free use of an Epic Deed, which is probably either Valiant Last Stand or Machine Spirit Resurgent depending on your Questor oath. If you’re building a Freeblade Lance, this seems fine to throw on a Knight you want to be aggressive with. Finally, Mythic Hero lets the Knight count your current Honour as two higher than it actually is. Notably, unlike most of the other effects like this in the book this doesn’t switch off if you become Dishonoured, so the relevant model will always have your Honoured effects, and a way easier time jumping to Virtuous. This definitely feels worth a look with that in mind. Stratagems With the changes to how you build a Battle-forged army, many players will be looking to retain as many Command points as possible, while making sure they don’t lose their Detachment’s Chapter Traits or Doctrines, etc. Fortunately, any Battle-forged Imperium army can include one Agent of the Imperium unit – either an Inquisitor or Assassin – in each Patrol, Battalion or Brigade Detachment without losing their powerful Faction abilities. If you want a larger force, you can include the wide variety of Inquisition units in a Vanguard Detachment, or add in an entire Execution Force if you’re aiming for EXTREME assassination! The Agents of the Imperium datasheets cover a diverse range of specialists; everything from Assassins and Inquisitors to Rogue Traders and the Adeptus Arbites,” explains Robin from the Warhammer Design Studio.

Off to one side in the Questoris section you have the Preceptor, with a unique weapon (the las-impulsor, notably sporting improved range and flat damage 4 on its “big” profile) and Knightly Teachings instead of a Bondsman effect. These are fine – they’re decently priced, and the Teachings can have a real impact. One Preceptor and loads of Armigers seems like a plausible build, and teaming one up with an Exalted Court model you want to multiply the Bondsman ability of is strong too. Mustering a Boarding PatrolWhen mustering a Boarding Patrol, if your Faction is AGENTS OF THE IMPERIUM, then the following rules apply when adding units to your Boarding Patrol Detachment, and they take priority over the ‘mustering a Boarding Patrol’ rules. Mechanicus ups the durability of your knights, helping you play a more calculating, long game. It provides one extra wound to Armigers, two to TITANIC knights, and allows each model to heal one wound each turn. Rules AdaptationsIf your Faction is AGENTS OF THE IMPERIUM, then the following rules adaptations apply.

Hot Takes

Buffs are a big part of this book in general – it feels like if your army list doesn’t contain at least one plan for creating super Warglaives and firing them at the opponent you’re probably not squeezing the full power out of it. You’re going to be hitting the sweet spot with this army when it really feels like a powerful band of heroes rampaging through the enemy while powering one another up. Hot Takes Wings There’s some extent to which building around these puts quite a few eggs into one basket, but the amount of force multiplication they provide when you’re using them to the full means that these should prove to be a key part of any high end strategies emerging from this book. As mentioned at the start, if you’re playing with the Imperial Knights rather than Chaos the big draw is the combo potential, and Exalted Court is one of the dynamos that drive the book. They definitely aren’t as outright, up front flashy as some of the Chaos Blessing upgrades, and are going to take more experimentation to really nail the correct use of, but do feel very impactful overall. Knightly Teachings If you’re planning to enlist some of the Emperor’s own constabulary, it’s also a great time to be thinking about the updates to Warhammer 40,000 just over the horizon. Much like in the current edition , AGENTS OF THE IMPERIUM can join other Imperial armies as auxiliaries and overseers – but this time the rules are a little different. Relics: A spicy selection of relics was one of the big draws to Imperial Knights in 8th Edition, and that’s just as true in the new book. TO SAVE THE GALAXY, A DEAD HERO MUST RISE AGAIN! NEWLY REVISED AND EXPANDED NOVEL SET IN THE TRAVELLER UNIVERSE FROM LEGENDARY GAME DESIGNER MARC MILLER

Each Armiger can only be under the effect of one Bondsman ability at once (if you apply a second one, it overwrites the first). A dominion as vast as the Imperium requires all kinds of agencies to keep it running, from the fastidious scribes and accountants of the Adeptus Administratum to the void-faring Imperial Navy. Most of these organisations maintain their own cadres of professional troops for when things get dicey on their own patch. These are the Imperial Agents, a disparate collection of house troops, irregulars, and specialist operatives sometimes seconded to other parts of the Imperial war machine when their expertise may prove useful. The Wave of Craziness: A psionic effect originating from coreward that near-lobotomizes sophonts and is particularly deleterious to psions. It also destroys the higher thinking of many sophonts, often outright slaying them. the wave has murdered billions if not more. to incoming damage as long as your army is Honoured or Virtuous. This is just thrown in there as an aside at the end of the general rules for Bondsman Abilities, no big deal or anything, Damage Reduction has never been a superstar ability at all. Hello, can someone explain to me how a list would look like with this faction as a keyword? I have seen lots of random bits of information and am a bit of a novice when it comes to the detachments themselves and how they operate. Ive seen on several mention now that you can't take a patrol detachment legally because they only troop choice are the imperial navy breachers but they themselves cant be taken as a compulsory unless blah blah. So ok I understand no patrols. What I dont get it why it matters? Isn't the new Ark of Omen detachment just better? 0 cp cost, 1 HQ + anything else x3? couldnt I go(just for demonstration purposes)

Mustering a Boarding Patrol

House Hawkshroud get a bit of tuning – as well as their Knights counting as having double wounds remaining for their profiles, their models also now count your honour total as one higher (as long as you’re not dishonoured), making aiming for the Virtuous abilities a bit more practical. The Angel’s Grace relic is now an anti-Mortal aura on 5+ for Armigers (and the bearer), which is pretty neat in the current metagame as well. Finally, their Staunch Allies stratagem, letting one of them get involved in a nearby combat, has been changed to drop the ability to fire Overwatch but add an improved version of the “super heroic” – the Knight performing it now moves 6”+d6” rather than 2d6”, and gets to Fight First in the subsequent phase. That means that getting into a fight near a melee-focused Hawkshroud Knight is extremely unsafe. If every model in an INFANTRY unit is on or in an Area Terrain feature with this trait, then it can either Hold Steady or it can Set to Defend (see below) when an enemy unit declares a charge against it. Imperialis enhances aggressive, melee focused strategies with +1” to Advance and Charge rolls, immunity to any penalties on those rolls, and an extra inch of consolidation.