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just how bad ass ARE the assassins. games wise, fluff wise. which one is THE best? now get your thinking caps on cause i want your reasons why!

I dont know spit about the fluff other then the basic "this is what they are for" but I pick the Vindicare, simply because they should EASILY kill anything thats coming from a mile away

I love the full on in your face fury of the eversor, but the vindicare is a sweet model. So vin gets my vote

i think vindicare is the one

Callidus, baby!

When you hire a bodyguard to protect from assassins, the bodyguard is that assassin.

And your bodyguard looked like a tau the whole time.

::EDIT:: Plus, she's just way more dangerous. How does a Vindicare get your whole army killed? He doesn't, unless the leader is the lynchpin of the whole force. A Callidus can mess up way more than that.

ok i dont know anything about the callidus, what exactly do they do? because i was under the impression (dont ask where) that they were just another CC assassin.

@corey85 i like how the vindicare wins just cause he looks cool.

Eversor with Culexus coming at a close second.

Eversor, I would crap myself if I saw one of those guys running at me. I mean, all hopped up on drugs with a bunch of explosives and near superhuman strength?

Culexus if you are a Psyker. These guys are so bad that the Eldar attempted to track down and destroy their Temple for the safety of their people. Pretty rough.....

Plus, the Pariah Gene is creepy.....

What is the goal of an assassin? Is it merely to kill 1 heretic general or a traitor governor? A squad of stormtroopers or even a precision lance strike could accomplish that.

The goal of an assassin is terror.


Does a sniper cause terror? Snipers are something mankind has been dealing with since the advent of the rifle. Yes they can disrupt and confuse, but terror? If a traitor was really worried he would simply stay in his palace.

A shapechanger? Yes they are powerful and could sneak inside the aforementioned palace and kill the traitor. But I not convinced that they will cause a sense of terror. What would be the rumors? "The general was killed, but we do not know how or by whom. But don't worry, we have a replacement at hand and will be continuing as planned."

Now picture this. Not only is the traitor general dead, but everyone near him is dead, everyone in the palace is dead and people who fled the palace saw who did it. "It was like a devil came out of night! He slaughtered all before him! The palace is a slaughter house! Oh God Emperor forgive us!" Now that is the kind of terror we need to be causing!

I like the Callidus model.. hot chick in a leather suit.. um.. yeah..

why didn't the Deathcult Assassins make the list/? (sad face)

porkuslime wrote:

why didn't the Deathcult Assassins make the list/? (sad face)

I second that.




Eversor + 6 DCA = fun times

BoxANT wrote:What is the goal of an assassin? Is it merely to kill 1 heretic general or a traitor governor? A squad of stormtroopers or even a precision lance strike could accomplish that.

The goal of an assassin is terror.


Does a sniper cause terror? Snipers are something mankind has been dealing with since the advent of the rifle. Yes they can disrupt and confuse, but terror? If a traitor was really worried he would simply stay in his palace.

A shapechanger? Yes they are powerful and could sneak inside the aforementioned palace and kill the traitor. But I not convinced that they will cause a sense of terror. What would be the rumors? "The general was killed, but we do not know how or by whom. But don't worry, we have a replacement at hand and will be continuing as planned."

Now picture this. Not only is the traitor general dead, but everyone near him is dead, everyone in the palace is dead and people who fled the palace saw who did it. "It was like a devil came out of night! He slaughtered all before him! The palace is a slaughter house! Oh God Emperor forgive us!" Now that is the kind of terror we need to be causing!

I'm not sure I agree with you here.

The goal of an assassin is to kill important people. That's what an assassin does.
Someone trained to just scare people would not be called an assassin.

The reason the Imperium has assassins is because not everyone can be killed by stormtroopers or lance strikes. You think you can send a squad of stormtroopers into the middle of a Chaos Lord's ship? You think you can use a Lance Barrage on someone who is miles underground in a bunker? Or who has kidnapped a valuable Tech-Magos? That's not even considering all of the times the Imperium would want someone killed with out letting everyone on the planet know how it happened.

Plus, a sniper and a shapechanger are very frightening. A sniper who can kill anyone he can see, from anywhere, and hide in a choice position for days, and ignore any type of armor you can equip yourself with? That's scary. Anyone could die at any time.

A shapechanger? Someone who can become anyone? That's about the paranoia inducing thing you can even get. No one in the organization can be trusted. People will turn on each other out of fear.

"lol kil every1" isn't particularly scary at all. A space marine could do the same thing. Or a bunch of orks. Or an aspect warrior, or some genestealers, or a berserker, or some kroot, or aforementioned stormtroopers, or aforementioned lance strike...

At least the Culexus has supernatural fear as an ability. They'd probably be the scariest of all, although they're most useful against psykers.
(Unless you were talking about a Culexus, in which case I could better see your point.)

Is the Evesor still such a beast in combat? I don't have the rules right now, but since the Assassins got their last upate there were a lot of new CC monsters over the years.

I saw an Eversor charging a small SM unit and getting killed. I'd stay away from Assassins at the competitive level.

"ima comin 2 get you lolololololololol"
- Eversor assassin on the charge

wuestenfux wrote:I saw an Eversor charging a small SM unit and getting killed. I'd stay away from Assassins at the competitive level.

I think 1 Unit charging 5 or more Space Marines would be out of the question for most things. But that guy was determined! He should have went all Martyr on them and detonated all of his Meltas right before he died in front of them.

Word In Your Ear is so useful. I once saw a player use that to move 20 Necron Warriors on top of another unit of 20 Necron Warriors and then proceeded to hit them with an Apocalypse barrage. None survived.

callidus hands down. all the rest are just fumes from th smoking monkey (boxant)

porkuslime wrote:I like the Callidus model.. hot chick in a leather suit.. um.. yeah..

why didn't the Deathcult Assassins make the list/? (sad face)

why? WHY? because i made the poll dag nabbit! me! and to be honest i totally forgot about them

Callidus.

Callidus is cunning.

Me, Lindi!!!

You could have a sniper detachment as a part of your indoctrinated IG Platoon(s). So you could already have as many snipers as you need. So the vindicare, fearsome as he is, is surplus.

You can have mulitiple DCAs.

So really that just leaves the (more) special powers of the shapechanger and the psychic killer. So it has to be one of them.

The Vindicare gets my vote one this one.. He just screams awsome

I like the Vindicare, getting rid of power fists and heavy weapons is just so handy.

I like the vindicare... do you have any idea how many games it took my friends to realize that they needed to take more than 2 summoning icons?

1

It took one game in which my vindicare clocked 853 points in 5 rounds.

It is also acts like a gauge for your opponents talent. based on your opponents reaction, you can pretty accurately tell how good your opponent is

Even if they basically suck from a gameplay perspective...

I think the Culexus assassin deserves a whole lot more credit than it's been getting. I ask myself the question "Who would I rather be assassinated by?". Alongside an insane supersoldier with a plethora of weaponry, a Shapeshifter with a sword that would kill me if it even made contact (Not worrying about the fact that literally anything else in WH40k would kill me anyway), and a Sniper with an extremely powerful rifle, I think that a being with no soul that could suck the life right out of my face is definetly the last one on that list. All of the other assassins are based off of real life assassination techniques, at least somewhat. But Culexus? Something else entirely.

Okay, let's break it down a bit more, shall we? Culexus assassins are chosen because they have no presence in the warp, which, in the Warhammer Universe, means that they have no soul. Not only would this make them immune to most psychic powers (theoretically) and impossible to strike fear into (again, theoretically), it's just downright creepy. They wear a helm/weapon called the Animus Speculum that they need to contain their powers, otherwise completely corrupting any nearby lifeform's soul. Oh, and it also allows them to shoot psychic energies out of their face. In game, the Culexus has basically what you could consider a one-up on Terror, known as "Etherium". You can't do ANYTHING to the assassin without a leadership test first, ever.

I think that the Culexus would make the most effective assassin as well, and not just by far the freakiest. A Culexus assassin has the potential to strike anywhere, anytime. A target would see an Eversor assassin coming from a mile away, and would try and have him killed accordingly. A Vindicare Assassin only really works on an open battlefield, with no real obstructions to deal with, from an extreme range. And a Callidus assassin would ideally work in a more covert, close-range setting. A Culexus could, theoretically, cut a swathe through anything that a target could possibly throw at it (except for possibly anything controlled remotely) without even having to kill them (simply causing them utter, uncontrollable terror), anywhere. Whether it be in the center of a gigantic battlefield, or hundreds of miles underground in their own fallout shelter, or what have you. Not only that, but anything killed by a Culexus assassin will be able to realize the absolute error in their ways in their last moments (Which is something that, for whatever reason, I think the Imperium is trying to go for). Getting shot/stabbed/terrorized in the face doesn't tend to allow for that.

Anyway, from a gameplay perspective, I'd probably go with Vindicaire. Because, "assassination" worthy or not, a shot to the face tends to take care of a lot of problems.

Zzzzzz wrote:You could have a sniper detachment as a part of your indoctrinated IG Platoon(s). So you could already have as many snipers as you need. So the vindicare, fearsome as he is, is surplus.

You can have mulitiple DCAs.

So really that just leaves the (more) special powers of the shapechanger and the psychic killer. So it has to be one of them.

are you REALLY comparing regular snipers to a vindicare? WHOA

and i also agree almost completely with Chrysaor on the Culexus. those are some bad ass assassins

KingCracker wrote:
are you REALLY comparing regular snipers to a vindicare? WHOA

The number of regular snipers you could field is limited by the points total (as opposed to the number of force org slots available). You could have two squads of them with every HQ. If you had three Hvy Wpn Platoons then that would 1xHQ (2 squads of snipers) 2x troops (2 more squads of snipers for each platoon HQ) and your three Hvy Wpn Platoons (2 squads of snipers each there, as well). So that's twelve squads of snipers without touching your elite slot. Or your second HQ slot. Surely enough pinning tests in there to keep the orcs and nids down ? So then you could send your *elite* assassins from the other temples out to KO the zoanthrope/weirdboy or 'word in their ear' them into your sniping/hvy wpn killing zone. Or whatever.

Of course for apoc, you could just fill your basket with all sorts of assassins, but if I have to use force org charts, then I could take twelve squads of snipers, and not blow a valuable elite slot on a vinidicare. So in this context, yes, the vinidicare does equate to 'just another sniper'. He might, as an individual, be superfabandgroovy; but given the right army build, he is surplus to requirements.

hmm 12 snipers do sound much more deadly then 1 vindicare. point proven sir

Vindicare assassins are the least cool, really.

They can't even kill farseers.

Because of love.

Fluffwise, if you want a person dead, you send a Callidus. Wasn't it a Callidus who took down Night Haunter?


Gamewise, the Eversor is easily the best, with the Callidus coming in second.

The Eversor is a single model that can infiltrate and usually pull off a first-turn charge, if that's what you need. He's an excellent counter-assault model, when that's what you need as well. He can fight anything and come out on top. Last year at the Adepticon tournament, my eversor killed two full squads of marines in one game, a grandmaster in another, and fortunately wasn't needed against an ork horde.

The Callidus is pretty good, if she manages to show up on turn 2. However, she's usually in a position where she's not well supported by nature of her arrival method, and while she's good at dropping characters, she has a much harder time if cornered by a unit than the eversor does. The Word in Your Ear is a nice add-on, but her biggest weakness is having to do the reserve thing, leaving you at the mercy of the reserve die.

The Vindicare is a waste of points. He gets, at most, seven shots during a game, but will usually only take 4 or 5. While most of them will hit, you're looking at 50/50 odds to even kill the model you hit. I don't think I've ever played against a Vindicare who did anything useful at all. You fail to wound twice and next thing you know, he's in combat, or he's been shot to death. I keep hearing all the stories about how people used them to snipe out powerfists or whatever, but I can only assume that the player who lost the powerfist didn't take the necessary precautions.

The Cullexus is very fluffy, but unfortunately is too opponent-dependent to make it into any sort of all-comers game.

In fluff terms the Culexus has got to be the baddest. Think about it, a purposely bred killing machine, trained in all sorts of types of combat and weaponry, as well as not having a soul? This assassin has a weapon that literally crushes the soul of the target, thats so much nastier than a sniper, swordsman or infiltrator, which is what the other three are.

Some of you will baulk at me saying a Culexus is a killing machine, but an Imperial Assassin, any Imperial Assassin, is bad to the bone. In game terms they are toned down to make them playable but in any background they are fearsome killing machines, if Ragnar Blackmane is scared of one than they are pretty awesome!