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So I'm going to jump right in and start a new thread for tactics using cypher. Yes games workshop has made buying the rules expensive, but there's plenty of background with it and let's be honest he's being long awaited for his return by lots of us. But this is tactics I'm interested in, with some interesting rules and a dazling array of universal special rules, is cypher worth his points? And what tactics would you use if you included him in your army list?

I'm tempted to try taking Abaddon, Cypher a squad of three Terminators (Lets make them the Bringers of Destruction from the BL Supplement, why not) then take a dedicated Land Raider and put the lot of them in it.
Then infiltrate the Land Raider between 12" and 18" from the enemy and aim for a turn two charge.

Now the question is whether to keep Cypher in the Land Raider and protect him for the D3 victory points or alternatively to keep him with Abaddon to give them Hit and Run, Grenades, Shrouded and a bit of extra shooting/AP2 attacks.

Probably very wasteful and points inefficient (In the region of 830~) but it is something I'd like to try.

I'm thinking of just using his 3 chosen squads to infiltrate/outflank with full special weapon load outs to put pressure on the enemy.

Get huron as your warlord and you can a ton of infiltrators in your army.

3 squads of chosen and d3 blobs of CSM infiltrating right into the fry? YES PLEASE!

Its like the CSM drop pod list XD

That sounds good. I had always thought infiltrating noise marines would be a good option, One that may work well with that. The ability to inore cover could really help in taking out those pesky guys behind the defense wall and manning the gun which would make flying in your hell turkey a lot easier for mop up.

Cypher infiltrating a squad of 6 centurions with grav guns.

Lets you be in range of most the army turn 1.

Ok, so... a few things to clarify:

First, you cannot attach cypher to a unit and infiltrate them. This is the same issue with Huron giving an IC (like himself) infiltrate and then giving it for free to another unit. The two units deploy at different times, and so can't be attached. The best you can get out of an infiltrating IC and a non infiltrating unit is outflank, as they both deploy out of reserves. There's a million YMDC threads about this.
"

Second, cypher's extra D3 victory points rule is only in effect when there are also dark angels on the board. It does not just give you free VPs if he lives against any other army.
"The following additional objectives must be used in missions that include both Cypher AND DARK ANGEL MODELS"

That being said, I still think he's an amazing IC to put in a big blob of CSM to give them hit and run, shrouded, and ATSKNF. 20 khornish marines footslogging suddenly looks pretty viable. Hit and running to generate absurd amounts of furious charge rage attacks, with shrouded to protect from shooting.

I can't find it anywhere, but i know cypher has shrouded, so can that be given to a vehicle/flyer that he is in?

Why...would he?

Shrouded is conferred to a squad you are in, not to a transport you are in.

Only very few specific rule-usually ones related to deployment-effect a unit's transport.

I didn't think so, would of been nice to have a flyer with a 2+ cover save. Reading his rules and comparing his points cost to other named characters around his points cost, cypher is a very fluffy character;
No invulnerable save
Eternal warrior
No actuall close combat weapon
BS10
Fires his pistols twice per round
Can fire his pistols in combat

A true gunslinger as he should be.

Minimanj wrote:
I didn't think so, would of been nice to have a flyer with a 2+ cover save. Reading his rules and comparing his points cost to other named characters around his points cost, cypher is a very fluffy character;
No invulnerable save
Eternal warrior
No actuall close combat weapon
BS10
Fires his pistols twice per round
Can fire his pistols in combat

A true gunslinger as he should be.

remember his pistols count as close combat weapons so he gets the bonus attack for having 2 close combat weapons and his special rules essentially let him use the profile of those pistols in cc.

 Voodoo_Chile wrote:
I'm tempted to try taking Abaddon, Cypher a squad of three Terminators (Lets make them the Bringers of Destruction from the BL Supplement, why not) then take a dedicated Land Raider and put the lot of them in it.
Then infiltrate the Land Raider between 12" and 18" from the enemy and aim for a turn two charge.

Now the question is whether to keep Cypher in the Land Raider and protect him for the D3 victory points or alternatively to keep him with Abaddon to give them Hit and Run, Grenades, Shrouded and a bit of extra shooting/AP2 attacks.

Probably very wasteful and points inefficient (In the region of 830~) but it is something I'd like to try.

Whole thing does not Work.

Cypher does not deploy into the unit until the set up Infiltrators step of deployment, After the Land Raider, abbadon, and termies are already either on the board or prepared in normal reserves.

Ahh curses, oh well back to the drawing board

 McGibs wrote:
Ok, so... a few things to clarify:

First, you cannot attach cypher to a unit and infiltrate them. This is the same issue with Huron giving an IC (like himself) infiltrate and then giving it for free to another unit. The two units deploy at different times, and so can't be attached. The best you can get out of an infiltrating IC and a non infiltrating unit is outflank, as they both deploy out of reserves. There's a million YMDC threads about this.

Yes and those million YMDC threads cannot agree.

You decide what units to attach ICs to before the game. Therefore infiltrate is conferred onto the squad at that pre-deployment stage. By your logic, you cannot deploy ICs into drop pods or transports either then, as you are saying the IC essentially joins a squad during deployment. This argument is flawed.

Fabricated Issue; During deployment you attach the IC to the Unit, Put the unit in the Drop Pod, Put the drop pod in reserves(as required) prepared to deepstrike.

You can and do follow the rules through the progression of the process.

You can also Put the unit in the drop pod, and the drop pod into reserves prepared as deepstrike, then at deploy infiltrators put an infiltrating IC joining to the squad in the deepstriking Pod following the same rules.

You cannot join the Infiltrate IC to the non infiltrate squad and either put them in reserves or infiltrate them because you would have not finished deploying your normal forces in order to join the IC(Who joins during deployment as is clearly written in the IC rules)

 FifteenHours wrote:
You decide what units to attach ICs to before the game.

No you do not. You attach an IC to a unit in one of two ways:

1) By deploying the IC and unit on the table within 2" coherency.

or

2) By committing the unit and IC to reserve and declaring that they will arrive joined together.

There is no option to magically attach an IC to a unit and then put them on the table together.

Many tourneys do allow infiltrating IC+unit though, as that seems to be RAI from f.ex. Shrike

^ I've actually seen that used once. It faired ok.

 Peregrine wrote:

 FifteenHours wrote:
You decide what units to attach ICs to before the game.

No you do not. You attach an IC to a unit in one of two ways:

1) By deploying the IC and unit on the table within 2" coherency.

or

2) By committing the unit and IC to reserve and declaring that they will arrive joined together.

There is no option to magically attach an IC to a unit and then put them on the table together.

A.) This doesn't help the part where an IC is allowed to start joined with a squad inside of a dedicated transport. Which has nothing to do with reserves. And nothing to do with "magically attaching an IC".


B) RAI it clearly is meant to be work that ICs give infiltrate, so any other interpretation borders on the rules lawyer/WAAC kind of angle to be honest. I would never deny people joining Huron or Ahriman to a unit and infiltrating them the ability to do so. You know, spirit of the game and all that.


C.) Ok, let's explain this another way:

ICs set up on the battlefield join units in coherency at the end of each deployment phase (placing units one after the other).

So the change here is that ICs do join units before the game starts which still satisfies "ICs may start the game joined..." Hence, this is what allows starting joined in transports. Joining units on the battlefield before the game starts is triggered by the deploy action, not by the game starting. . E.g This does allow an IC to confer a Scout redeployment to a unit and vice versa. Scout is worded as "at least one model in the unit with the Scout USR may redeploy...".

During a deployment phase you first set up your army to your satisfaction. Then you make a single declaration to your opponent, "this is how I am deploying." At which time all the deploy triggers and restrictions are evaluated simultaneously. This step joins ICs and units before moving on to the next deployment phase.

D.) Upgrade characters like Gunnery Sergeant Harker allow a non-infiltrating unit to infiltrate, and this again gives more weight to that RAI this is what is intended.


E.) The main issue simplified in all these debates: Most people say that the IC joins the unit early enough to grant them Infiltrate (using the above reasoning), while a minority are saying that they CANT join the unit until deployment, in which case infiltrate can't be granted in time.

F.) Wow I just wasted 10 minutes of my life explaining this...Meh. If in doubt 4+ it, or be a sport and allow it if someone wants to do it. Hell, with all the servo skulls around it makes infiltrating redundant in a lot of lists anyway...So it's a mute point some occasions.

 Illumini wrote:
Many tourneys do allow infiltrating IC+unit though, as that seems to be RAI from f.ex. Shrike

Agreed. A lot of the major US tournaments are allowing this, including the Bay Area Open, the Las Vegas Open and the Feast of Blades.

So RAI huron can infiltrate 5 units? 2 IC's, the squads they are attached to and 1 other one?

So lets say that cypher can infiltrate with the unit that he is attatched to. You could potentially infiltrate any unit in the game with him, due to him being allowed in so many primary detatchments, then take into account battle brothers allies, where cypher can join even more units, the list is endless. But obviously on a competitive front you'd only infiltrate him with certain units.

 Illumini wrote:
Many tourneys do allow infiltrating IC+unit though, as that seems to be RAI from f.ex. Shrike

The fact they do it does not mean it makes the tiniest of sense.


Shriek suggest it is possible?
HECK NO! Shriek points out how its normally NOT possible, as he does not have Infiltrate, but his own UNIQUE rule that nobody else has.
Shriek is not the norm, he is the exception to it. he is the only one that CAN make a non-infiltrating unit to infiltrate.
And any TO doing it differently is bending rules to fit what he likes rather then what really is legal.

And you get nasty and purely unintended things like shadowsun infiltrating an entire farsight bodyguard team, or huron dishing out infiltrate to ICs so you can infiltrate even more things then you should have.
Try to think of it out of rules logic and into action logic for a second-how the FETH does having a sneaky guy leading a group of loud guys in heavy armor makes them any less noisy?

That "infiltrate on IC gives infiltrate to squad" ruling does not follow RAW, does not follow RAI and not even questionably follow RAL (read as logic), where almost anything can be argued.

You should take that to the YMDC. Case is still that many tourneys allow it as many people believe it is RAI.

Even if you were the boss of RAI, TO`s are still free to do as they please with their own tourneys, so having a tactical discussion that takes into account that you can infiltrate Cypher+unit should be possible. You don`t have to participate if you don`t want to.

Those "unintended things" don`t really sound that nasty either. Those extra units Huron can infiltrate is himself and another IC, and if you know farsight+buddies are infiltrating, just set up a screen. Of course, there are also servoskulls and your own infiltrators who can totally stop all these things.

The last part means that you should probably not bring Cypher just for infiltrating something as there are so many easy ways to counter it.

 jy2 wrote:

 Illumini wrote:
Many tourneys do allow infiltrating IC+unit though, as that seems to be RAI from f.ex. Shrike

Agreed. A lot of the major US tournaments are allowing this, including the Bay Area Open, the Las Vegas Open and the Feast of Blades.

DA boys did as well. I know last years nova FAQ didn't allow this, but the inat FAQ currently does. Adepticon uses the inat as well, tho they have been silent thusfar on what they are allowing so I can't say for sure.

Minimanj wrote:
So I'm going to jump right in and start a new thread for tactics using cypher. Yes games workshop has made buying the rules expensive, but there's plenty of background with it and let's be honest he's being long awaited for his return by lots of us. But this is tactics I'm interested in, with some interesting rules and a dazling array of universal special rules, is cypher worth his points? And what tactics would you use if you included him in your army list?

Getting back to business.

There are some obvious tactics to using a Cypher detachment that jump right out. Each has some downsides.

1) Infiltrate 1 - 3 squads of plasma chosen (infiltrate is part of their profile).

I kind of like this, I run 2 squads of plasma chosen right now with my Black Legion army and hate having to move them up the board in Rhinos. The downside is that they are not allowed to choose CSM marks, they are not going to be as survivable. These would need to be placed in ruins or outside LOS.

2) 1 -3 squads of cc chosen.

The ATSKNF rule on the chosen is huge. It would be huger if they were able to take MoS and be able to strike first in combat. I don't think this is something I would be using, but being able to infiltrate a bunch of guys with power weapons, 2 attacks base, and ATSKNF would be pretty big.

3) Cypher with X cc unit.

Hit and Run on a CSM cc unit is a big deal. 20 man blobs w/ MoK stand out as targets here.

While I think I know the answer, would a Cypher detachment be able to be included in a Black Legion army? Do C:CSM supplements count as C:CSM?

Hit and Run on a CSM cc unit is a big deal. 20 man blobs w/ MoK stand out as targets here.

Seems good in practice, but I'm not so sure. He might be better with units with good shooting and melee so that they can pop out, discharge really good weapons at a better shot (Because BS4 is usually far better then WS4)

I have a couple questions:

First off: Cypher the character can ally with with both sides, but can the formation ? Or does the formation's status as chaos marines limit it to the standard ally chart?

Just want to be sure I am reading this one right and I am not mission an update: 5 chosen can take 5 specials (4 on any model and the one extra)?

The formation special rules say: Infiltrate, but this rule is only listed under Cypher and not listed under the chosen's special rules, does the listing under the formation heading cover every unit in the formation?

I really like the idea of 3 infiltrating squads of chosen, each with 5 special weapons. Before I start hacking and slashing converting I want to make sure this is all correct.

@Techsoldaten. Yes the black legion supplement counts as CSM for the purposes of allies.

@TheLiinOfTheForest. 1) When putting the formation into your army, it counts as CSM for allies. 2) Not too sure what you mean by the number of specials, for a 5 man squad you can have 5 special weapons and the champion can have the usual squad leader upgrades. 3) Yes the whole unit has the infiltrate USR.

I think put cypher into a shooting unit, infiltrate them into area terrain/building. With him granting the unit shrouding, they'll have a 3+/2+ cover save and will be in a good position from when the game starts.

I' thinking Cypher outflanking with a bunch of combi-plasma chaos terminators or maybe a chosen squad with 5 plasma guns and a combi-plasma.
Would mean up to 14 plasma shots on he turn you come in if in rapid fire range.

Although the terminators might be better so you can throw them into combat the turn afterwards.