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I played a friendly game against my buddy's Tau gunline. He decided to bring some Assassins as allies, bringing the four guys below. Two of them did more or lesss nothing all game, but Vindicare wrecked my tank and killed a couple unit, but Callidus deployed an 1" away from my Devastator squad and Libby, who were holding my objective (we were playing Emperor's Will)). He proceeded to completely wreck them, ignoring armor and invuln saves.

Do you guys have a consistent way to stop them off the off chance I see them again? Two of them seem worthless, but Callidus and Vindicare seem so broken. I've listed the stats below, thanks to 3++.

http://www.3plusplus.net/2014/08/dataslate-officio-assassinorum/

Operation Assassinate: All Assassins have this rule, and grants you an extra victory point if the enemy's warlord was removed as a casualty by a model with this rule.
Independent Operative: Cannot be joined by Independent characters.
Lightning Reflexes: 4++
No Escape: -2 to look out sir rolls against the assassins hits.

Vindicare:
Of course the Vindicare is all about his rifle and its ammmo. Not much has really changed here
Deadshot: All hits are precision shots, excluding snap shots
Spy Mask: has ignore cover, excluding snap shots
Ammo:
Shield Breaker: No invul saves allowed
Turbo Penetrator: S10 against vehicles, against everyone else d3 wounds per hit
Hellfire: wounds on a 2+

Callidus:
The Callidus of course is back to her sudden appearances. She comes with hit and run, move through cover, and a cool new rule Reign of Confusion
Reign of Confusion: Can re-roll seize the initiative, and opponent suffers a -3 to the first roll for reserves in the game.
Polymorphine: Can set up 1″ from enemy units, or go into reserves to enter from an opponents board edge. First round appearing can only be hit by snap shots.
Neural Shredder: Template wounds on a 4+ AP2
Phase Sword: Only ignores invulnerable saves on a 6+ to wound, AP2
Poison Blades: Poisoned 3+, with rending

Eversor:
I have always found the Eversor lacking, but with a long list of special rules, he may once again be hitting the table. He comes with melta bombs, and a power sword, and a poisoned pistol (4+)
Frenzon: Roll 3d6 for charge range and gains 3 attacks on the charge.
Sentinel Array: Can overwatch at full bs
Neuro-Gauntlet: Fleshbane, shred
Biomeltdown: d6″ s5 hit upon death
Feel no Pain
Furious Charge
Move through cover

Culexus
My old favorite, now with preferred enemy psykers.
Life Drain: No armor saves, 6 to wound is instant death, against psykers the wounds are instant death
Etherium: All shot and attacks against him are resolved at BS and WS1
Psyk-Out Grenades
Animus Speculum: Add up all psyker units within 12″ and add up to 3 dice from your own pool., This is how many shots you get for your animus speculum. 18″ S5 AP1
Psychic Abomination: Psykers friend or foe get a -3 ldr, do not generate any warp charge, and can only harness warp charge points on a 6.”

By 'stop them,' do you mean beat them or a way to stop your opponent from fielding them?

Calldius will wreck some units, but she can't consistently ignore invulnerable saves. She is a timebomb. She blows up a spot then tries to do as much annoying things as possible before being killed.

You try to catch them in the open, and shoot them with a few squads. At T4, 3W and 4++, they are all very fragile (except the callexus), so if you just dedicate a little bit of shooting at them they will go down. That said, they will usually kill the thing theyre pointed at. Theyre all 150ish points, so theyre hardly 'broken' if they manage to pop a few units.
To minimize them targeting your priority units, you need to do some reactionary positioning. Hold your tank in reserve and bring it in out of LoS from the vindicare until it's been dealt with. Spread out your terminator squads (or deepstrike them), or surround them with bubblewarp units to limit the callidus from positioning optimally.

If your opponent fields all 4 of them two things will happen to your advantage:

1) your enemy took a big chunk out of his "bread and butter" list as that's nearly 600pts spent on 4 models

2) 1 or 2 of those assassins will be relatively useless as they are all highly specialized at a specific task

Some things you can do to minimize their impact:

-deploy carefully, all of the assassins infiltrate but the main threat there is the Callidus; keep units in vehicles if possible until you know where she's deployed. If kept in reserve, deploy so that you can keep her AP2 template away from your back lines, and remember that she has basically nothing against vehicles

-focus on the assassin that will cripple your army the most, as mentioned you can relatively easily take them out for an easy 1st Blood point.

-ignore the ones that will have little impact. No need to waste ammo on a Cullexus if you don't have a psyker

Bring assasins of your own

Reserve your Warlord or make sure you have initiative to cut down on the bonus VP shenanigans.

I would say vindicare and crulexus are the most viable. The other two can be dealt with easily enough.

The vindicare can put the hurt on some single targets, true enough, but he still needs line of sight, and is 150 points for a 3 wound 4++ save model. The answer - Just shoot him.

The crulexus can be more difficult, but remember that it must get close to do anything, so the opponent must invest even more points to use it. If you are afraid of the psychic gun it uses, try to stick to cover.
Again, it statline is not spectacularly durable, but snap shooting it will be a pain. Try twin linked weapons.
Anything that auto hits is of course good here, HoW hits for example.

I feel like the Callidus is the rich man's Marbo. You basically have to come to terms with the fact that something you love will probably die... but then just make sure to devote enough firepower to killing her so she can't do it again.

Vindicare hasn't changed much, tactically, although now he's definitely got range on his side. I would potentially be tempted to try and instakill with something S8 or better, but volume of fire is always a good solution.

Eversor doesn't seem very scary. Will potentially blenderize a squad, but he'll die even more easily to shooting than the Vindicare.

Culexus is a strange one. Shooting/Swinging at BS1 against him is pretty brutal and he has the potential to really lay the hurt on multi-wound models (especially psykers). As others have mentioned, he's probably the most dangerous as he can soak up plenty of fire while still being a threat to anything he charges or shoots. Would definitely be an interesting battle.

DoW

 DogOfWar wrote:
I feel like the Callidus is the rich man's Marbo. You basically have to come to terms with the fact that something you love will probably die... but then just make sure to devote enough firepower to killing her so she can't do it again.

Vindicare hasn't changed much, tactically, although now he's definitely got range on his side. I would potentially be tempted to try and instakill with something S8 or better, but volume of fire is always a good solution.

Eversor doesn't seem very scary. Will potentially blenderize a squad, but he'll die even more easily to shooting than the Vindicare.

Culexus is a strange one. Shooting/Swinging at BS1 against him is pretty brutal and he has the potential to really lay the hurt on multi-wound models (especially psykers). As others have mentioned, he's probably the most dangerous as he can soak up plenty of fire while still being a threat to anything he charges or shoots. Would definitely be an interesting battle.

DoW

Callidus was the one I was most upset about. Vindicare was annoying, but other than trying to snipe, he didn't do much. I could probably have taken him. Eversor tried to charge a lot and failed, and I just stayed away from Culexus. Callidus just frustrated me because I felt less like I was outplayed tactically and more like I got cheesed out by shenanigans. I will probably next time if I know he's bringing one or more of this gak just take my Chapter Master in my LR, make him my Warlord, and keep him away from her.

The Callidus is a psychological threat/wrench in the enemys plan more than anything else, I don´t think her broken.

Paying 145 points for one flamer attack and a few close-combat wounds isn´t that great ( that´s usually what the Callidus does on average. If she maims 2 units whole then the player playing against her is doing something wrong or the opponent just rolls successfull ++4´s like no other. ) The good thing about her is the alphastrike and the fact she will be there doing her thing almost no matter what.

Callidus still can't charge turn 1 so all she has is that AP2 template, right?

Mavnas wrote:
Callidus still can't charge turn 1 so all she has is that AP2 template, right?

Are you sure? Would that count under scouting rules? If so, that changes a lot

 jreilly89 wrote:

Mavnas wrote:
Callidus still can't charge turn 1 so all she has is that AP2 template, right?

Are you sure? Would that count under scouting rules? If so, that changes a lot

No, she cannot charge on turn 1 if she deploys via Infiltrate or on the turn she arrives from Reserves on her opponents table edge (via Polymorphine). However, that limitation is somewhat mitigated as you can only fire snap shots against her the turn she arrives (though you can hit her normally in melee, unlike the Culexus).

DoW

"Polymorphine: When a Callidus Assassin is deployed using her Infiltrate special rule, she can be set up anywhere on the table that is more than 1" from any enemy unit, whether deployed enemy units can draw a line of sight to her or not."

Can´t charge when deployed with Infiltrate, nor straight from Reserves which is her second way of arrival.

Yeah, so the issue is she can only kill about half the things under a template, and then a fast enemy unit can run away. I'm thinking about this in the context of my last game against eldar where I would have been hardpressed to get more than a single template out of her. The things on Wave Serpents wouldn't have cared, the bikes would have been able to run out of her charge range after the initial hit, and the warp spiders would have also been able to warp away though dice could have stopped them.

 Big Blind Bill wrote:


The vindicare can put the hurt on some single targets, true enough, but he still needs line of sight, and is 150 points for a 3 wound 4++ save model. The answer - Just shoot him.

I agree that the best way to deal with the Vindicate is to simply shoot him.

Ironically, Friday night I watched another player fruitlessly try to gun down a Vindicare for 6 turns. It was quite hilarious.

 phoenix darkus wrote:
If your opponent fields all 4 of them two things will happen to your advantage:

1) your enemy took a big chunk out of his "bread and butter" list as that's nearly 600pts spent on 4 models

2) 1 or 2 of those assassins will be relatively useless as they are all highly specialized at a specific task

Some things you can do to minimize their impact:

-deploy carefully, all of the assassins infiltrate but the main threat there is the Callidus; keep units in vehicles if possible until you know where she's deployed. If kept in reserve, deploy so that you can keep her AP2 template away from your back lines, and remember that she has basically nothing against vehicles

-focus on the assassin that will cripple your army the most, as mentioned you can relatively easily take them out for an easy 1st Blood point.

-ignore the ones that will have little impact. No need to waste ammo on a Cullexus if you don't have a psyker

It seems like poor planning by the Assassinorum to not equip all their operatives with krak grenades at the very least.

I wonder how well this formation will benefit Imperial Knight only armies.

Put wounds on it. If that doesn't work, put More wounds on it till the problem is solved.

Vehicles will always give them problems. though the vindi has a decent chance of putting hull points into 1.

 TheSilo wrote:
It seems like poor planning by the Assassinorum to not equip all their operatives with krak grenades at the very least.

I agree. I assume it's just a game-balancing mechanic.

"Callidus Operative #8536, you must assassinate the enemy Warlord. What? He's in a Land Raider? Oh, well then never mind."

You would imagine all of the Assassins would have access to rather high-tech grenades (Haywire, EMP, Meltabomb etc.) in the fluff for exactly such situations. I could see the Callidus Phasing Hits rule potentially having an additional effect similar to the Necron Gauss rule regarding vehicles, but that would probably be a little OP on the tabletop.

DoW

I've played the formation a few times.

It isn't OP... but, it's a nice toolbox and it's almost a TAC formation. The only things it really lacks is anti-flyers, which 'umies can bring in spades.

To me, the Cullexus is a game changer... it's like having a mini-me character with smash rule (AP2, ID hits) and mini-me invisibiltiy.

Callidus is the primo backline disruptor unit. Snipe on the first turn and try to survive, then... just get into hand-to-hand combat on the following turn. With hit-and-run, she can bounce around all game long.

The Vindicare seems too situational, but can contribute something every turn.

It's the Eversor that seems weak. Either infiltrate him somewhere OUT of los. Or, put him near the Vindicare as an expense bodyguard, objective holder.

Everyone always seems very down on the eversor. Hide the eversor behind LoS blocking cover, preferably towards the centre of the opponents table half, and now the opponent really risks pushing any of their units forward into potential charge range - 6"+3d6 (with reroll). That's big in maelstrom missions where the opponent cannot just gunline.

If the target was on a land raider, I'm sure the Callidus would just find a way to be inside that vehicle in fluff. Too bad you can't infiltrate enemy transports.

Mavnas wrote:
If the target was on a land raider, I'm sure the Callidus would just find a way to be inside that vehicle in fluff. Too bad you can't infiltrate enemy transports.

Now that'd be something! "You see your Land Raider with your grav centurions and Tigurius inside? Well, the driver is my Callidus. <insert cackle>".

how to stop the assassins dataslate? talk it out with your opponent beforehand, or limit it to one source? it would make some factions unplayable (FE) but if your opponent insists on bringing assassins, then that is all you would be facing.