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Is there a place for Inquisitorial Assassins in the 5th Edition?

The rule that units cannot consolidate into a new combat could hardly have hit any class of models harder than the Assassins, not to mention the targeting of independent characters being easier. Is there still justification for taking them, and if so which?

Callidus - ignoring all saves in close combat, being able to jump back from combat, but most interestingly being able to move an enemy unit out of cover now that cover-saves are so prevalent
Eversor - Unpredictably brilliant in close combat when charging
Vindicare - sniping heavy weapons and similar. Doesn't look terribly exciting.
Culexus - morale reducing effects could now be even more useful

I am considering adding one to a DH/IG army just for the sake of theme, but it would be ideal if they could fill a useful role. If anyone has tried them in 5th or has an opinion it would be welcome.

I would still consider the Callidus to be very useful. Use it to go after a far away scoring unit on an obective. Will probably die to shooting after that, but if it kills off the Troop, then it is worth it.

Vindicare and Callidus are still the best. Vindicare's useful for sniping anything that needs to hide in a squad! For instance, Chaos Icons and things like that. Hits on a 2+, wounds on a 4+/2+, and no armour saves allowed? Hell yes!

One trick pony. The Callidus is eventually useful, but I wouldn't count on them too much.

Vindicaire now has an excellent one shot anti armor bullet as its 3+3D6 and triple rending. This is actually pretty handy in Sisters or GK since they tend to be starved for long range anti-armor. Other than that he does what he's always done, take out PFists and Warlocks and such. The Callidus is still ok as her redeployment ability is still very useful. Her problem is that with countercharge she has trouble taking on units on her own any more and generally has to be a bit more cagey as a result. Eversor is still pretty nice when supported by Death Cult Assassins but that sadly only really works in a non-kill point environment. Great if your playgroup uses VPs though. Culexus I've generally found to be more trouble than he's worth. There are probably some interesting leadership shenanigans to exploit there, perhaps in a mortar heavy guard army, but I've yet to be able to make him work.

Callidus is useful because you can reveal her wherever you need her. She can't kill squads by herself anymore, but if you add her at a crucial assault point you can really get use out of her.

Vindicare still looks like he's got the short end of the stick. Waste of points except with house rules.

I am having a hard time imagining some of the Marine independent characters being safe without a squad/retinue. Assassins have wore saves and less wounds. Some of their equipment might allow them to get their points back but I would be surprised if they could survive more than a turn or two. Probably not long enough to contest anything at the end.

They are going to need some special rules to make them viable or be a lot cheaper. My guess s they will get a bevy of special rules that break many of the 5th edition targeting and HtH rules. Until a inquisition codex comes out I would leave them on the shelf. Mine were on the shelf for most of 4th anyway.

Callidus assassins are worth their poitnts for a word in your ear. Anything they kill is gravy. Usually you can move something like a dev squad out of a building into the open, a basilisk into the open, a transport/skimmer into hvy terrain.

As for hth, the callidus takes a pretty big hit. You can;t prey of the end of squad anymore. The pile in move messes this guy up pretty bad.

In fifth, I actually like the eversor. Hide him behind a tank and move him up the board, the smash someone in hth.

In 5th ed decisive hths win games.

Callidus is still quite useful. Word In Your Ear and her ability to come in whereever you want her are both still good. True, you pile her into a large unit and she's toasted, but hit that small unit and she can do quite well. And let's not forget the Neural Shredder. I intend to keep using her in my IG.

Hows this for a synopsis:

The Callidus is probably the best choice for an assassin but all assassins are less useful in combat in 5th Edition.

The 'Word in your Ear' power is more useful than before (due to abundance of improved cover saves).

The ideal target for a Callidus would be a 5 man squad with an expensive special character of I5 or lower.

A Callidus' Jump Back ability is still very useful: If they survive the first combat they can remain engaged to avoid shooting, and then disengage before the next round of combat in order to charge again in their owner players turn.

Um, if you look, assassins haven't been independent characters ever since the WH book came out. They act independently but none of them had the Independent Character classification. Nothing's changed.

Keep in mind the Eversor can Outflank, btw.

Keep in mind the Eversor can Outflank, btw.

True - actually the all have the Infiltrate rule, but Eversor benfits most due to the large charge range.

Callidus' Polymorphine is probably still better though, being placed anywhere on the battlefield is the best form of inflitration!

Back on Eversor, the codex says his needle pistol 'has an armour penetration of D6 against vehicles' - what on earth is the point of that?

Vindicaire now has an excellent one shot anti armor bullet as its 3+3D6 and triple rending.

The codex lists it as Armour Penetration 3D6, what lead you to the conclusion its 3+ 3D6?
Also its a sniper rifle, but is it correct that it is 'triple rending' because 3 dice are rolled for armour penetration (ie any 6 rends)?

The codex lists it as Armour Penetration 3D6, what lead you to the conclusion its 3+ 3D6?
Also its a sniper rifle, but is it correct that it is 'triple rending' because 3 dice are rolled for armour penetration (ie any 6 rends)?

The GW FAQ adds the 3 in their example.

100 ish point unit that has abilities to do

Move a unit

HTH god

Snipe anything on the board

Lower morale and target Psychers.

That is the question and only you and your army build can answer that. I myself have always enjoyed the Evesor though I dont use him that much. That guy just has so many option that personally he is the best of the three/four with the step child.

Only thing I do not like about the hth type assassins is the INT. This guy was built to kill in hth and should have a higher int let along the Callidus for popping out and hacking you down.

Matt-ShadowLord wrote:
A Callidus' Jump Back ability is still very useful: If they survive the first combat they can remain engaged to avoid shooting, and then disengage before the next round of combat in order to charge again in their owner players turn.

Except that the DH FAQ now states that the unit she jumps away from can assault her after she jumps away.................. But it also states that she can jump out in her own phase and assault.

Personally, I find the Vindicare to be saddly overcosted. It seems that he has ~10 tricks that are worth about 5-10 points each, but in total are not worth his price tag of over 100 points.
The big issue with him is that you get exactly 6 shots. Roll a 1 to hit, and 16%+ of his functionality just went away. Roll 3- or 1 to wound, and another 16% just went away.
Granted, his pistol is nice too (and often forgotten) and he often becomes a paranoid focus for your enemy, but he is pretty salty for questionable effectiveness. His rifle being twin linked or Heavy 2, or his WS being 8 would solve the issues.

I think the Callidus is still useful, since her shooting ignores cover, and her melee ignores everything else. She is still tricky to use, however, to get the full benefit of her points. Tricks like Improved Comms really help her come in at the perfect time to maximize her effectiveness.

The Eversor still seems to be a heck of a deal, given his tremendous charge range. He can easily shadow a melee unit to provide a huge punch and draw fire, or race up a flank while being difficult to target (depending on terrain... it is just a lot easier to hide 1 man than 10).

The Cullexus... I dunno. I want to get one painted up to field, but I can't think of a great use for him. It seems that most of the hth units one is scared of are fearless anyway, but using him to support a really killy hth unit to force break checks from losing combat could be fun.

In my mind they're still extras to do fun stuff, but nothing you want as the core of your army. Well, that is unless you're using a Col. Schaeffer's Psyker army with their Eversor buddy.

Mass psykers + Cullexus = you are a lame but it's still amusing.

Hey I get 25 shots! Ready? Me too...isn't this exciting!

Eversor is nasty, but I personally prefer the Callidus. Her current best use is taking that stupid tactical squad sitting on the other guys objective and move it off so he has to move it to contest it again. lol

Oh and moving Eldrad so he's on the other side of his army, is always highly amusing. How many lascannon shots does it take to get to the crunchy goodness?

I've been using a culexus on and off for about a year, including half a dozen games in 5th. He nearly always does something useful, even with no psykers on the table.

The thing to recognize about the culexus is that he's a disruption unit, not a direct-attack unit. He should avoid HtH combat (he doesn't even have a power weapon) except with psykers, and should mostly just stalk around the backfield, shooting at vulnerable targets with his str5 gun and lowering leadership.

With outflank, it's even easier to get him into the enemy ranks where he works best. A couple of weeks ago, I walked my culexus onto the table within 12" of a couple of SM tac squad guarding the home objective, then used shooting to cause 25% casualties in those units. They failed their Ld 7 tests, and suddenly that objective is uncovered and everybody else is out of position.

People also always overlook the Etherium ability--anybody who wants to shoot or assault a culexus has to make a Ld test (always on Ld7 for assaulting or rapid-fire) to shoot or assault him. So it's not uncommon for my culexus to bog down a big scary assault unit just by standing near them. One time my culexus tied up a huge unit of genestealers for two turns because they couldn't roll the 7 they needed to assault him, while he ran past them and shot up a zoanthrope. It put all the nids on that side of the board out of synapse, trying to test on 5's and 7's to get their shot.

SM commanders with their Ld ability and fearless troops kind of screw him up, but he pwns lash princes, harlequins, Eldrad, FoA librarians, many of the units that traditionally cause problems for people.

I think he's the best assassin now that the callidus and eversor have trouble rolling squads the way they used to. (I always thought the vindicare was crap--a measly 3-4 wounds average per game, a culexus can do that much in one turn.)

The codex lists it as Armour Penetration 3D6, what lead you to the conclusion its 3+ 3D6?
Also its a sniper rifle, but is it correct that it is 'triple rending' because 3 dice are rolled for armour penetration (ie any 6 rends)?

...
The GW FAQ adds the 3 in their example.

Do they also mention 3 chances to rend?

Vindicare to be saddly overcosted.
The big issue with him is that you get exactly 6 shots

Not any more. You now have between 5 and 7 shots due to variable game length. You're correct that he will struggle to make it pay.

Mass psykers + Cullexus = you are a lame but it's still amusing.

Hahah yeah that is quite a funny approach, but unfortunately my conscience stops me doing anything so cheesy.

I personally prefer the Callidus. Her current best use is taking that stupid tactical squad sitting on the other guys objective and move it off so he has to move it to contest it again. lol

Oh and moving Eldrad so he's on the other side of his army, is always highly amusing. How many lascannon shots does it take to get to the crunchy goodness?

I was considering her best purpose being moving an enemy tank out of cover but still keeping its back edge in difficult terrain. Those two are also good ideas though.

The thing to recognize about the culexus is that he's a disruption unit, not a direct-attack unit.

You've made a good defence of the Culexus, Flavius. Even so he still sounds like he needs a lot of luck and failed rolls by the enemy to use effectively.

Perhaps he's worth considering for an army with a lot of pinning weapons (basilisks, mortars, snipers etc). I don't know if I'd want to make the sort of changes required to really get value for money out of him.

Yes, they mention 3 chances to rend. You think an armor pen roll of 30 would leave an exit wound in a Warlord Titan?

Now it is much easier for vindicare to earn back his cost.

Even if there is no 6 in the 3 rolls,the total penentration value is still 12.As comparison,a lascannon has 12.5 of average.

tokugawa wrote:Now it is much easier for vindicare to earn back his cost.

Even if there is no 6 in the 3 rolls,the total penentration value is still 12.As comparison,a lascannon has 12.5 of average.

Its better than that. The median penetration roll is 15 and you have a 75% chance of getting 13 or higher. Here's the distribution of penetration rolls over a million simulations.

Do they also mention 3 chances to rend?

Yes, to the point where they explicitly state an example of each: where you roll one six, two sixes and three with the ranges of the value of armour penetration for each one.

Rosicrucian wrote:

tokugawa wrote:Now it is much easier for vindicare to earn back his cost.

Even if there is no 6 in the 3 rolls,the total penentration value is still 12.As comparison,a lascannon has 12.5 of average.

Its better than that. The median penetration roll is 15 and you have a 75% chance of getting 13 or higher. Here's the distribution of penetration rolls over a million simulations.

12 is for the situation that no 6 appeared.In this case (about 57.9%),I count the average of a D6 as 3,instead of 3.5

and you give a good simulation!

Excellent information, Rosicrucian, particularly the graph. I have severely underestimated the turbo penetrator round in the past.

Before we all get carried away, he's not all that far below dedicated anti-tank toys like a Predator Annihilators. In a DH/IG force he adds shootiness to an overly shooty force (and I'd still probably rather drop a melta squad for the anti tank)

Yes, they mention 3 chances to rend.

I couldn't see this in the DH FAQ on the GW site. Where is it?

The new Witch Hunters FAQ