Powerfisting wrote:I want to try out the assassin dataslate, but am fuzzy on how best to apply them, except for the ant- psyker one, which is pretty straight forward. In general, I get that the idea that you point it at something big and ugly and it does well as a death star remover. But they all seem so situational. What is the breakdown on which assassin does what best? and what is my best bet for when I don't know what the other guy is packing?
If only taking one assassin..... It still depends on what's in your army and what's in the enemy army.
Culexus:
He's the hardest to kill most of the time. Thanks to the Etherium (enemies are
WS/
BS 1 when attacking him) he can survive small arms fire from entire squads, something most armies can't do. He kills most things fairly well - any deathstar relying on psykers is obviously a good target, but with AP2 and potential instant death, he's pretty good at killing elite units, too. A lot of nasty monstrous creatures are also psykers (tervigons, dreadknights, hive tyrants, greater daemons, etc) and preferred enemy psykers and instant death is a scary combination. His big weakness is (a) he doesn't have any actual weapons, so you've only got your base 4 attacks, and big squads can manage to do damage even if they are hitting on 5s or 6s. Also note that the animus eats warp charge to fire, so he's competing with your own psykers if you use them. Best used as monster/deathstar insurance
Callidus:
She's good - making for a superb small unit killer. She's actually the best character-killer in my mind; an AP2 close combat weapon that can sometimes go through invulnerable saves as well, paired close combat weapons (the other being rending and poisoned for high toughness foes), and an AP2 flamer to cut through bodyguards. Don't expect her to take on an army warlord and bodyguard solo - use her to ambush and kill small heavy weapon squads or similar for preference - but she's got a decent chance of taking a warlord with her. If you have several assassins, a pair or more of callidus can take apart a warlord and bodyguard very efficiently. The 'snap shots only' rule is good - note that unlike the Culexus, this is true 'snap shots only', making you immune to blasts and flamers for one turn.
Vindicere:
Good at taking out heavy weapons and squad sergeants. Killing a multi-wound independent character takes too long, especially since they still get a reasonable Look Out Sir roll. Turbopenetrators married to the spy mask make him an awesome light vehicle killer - an AP2 weapon on open-topped, AV10 targets that think they can rely on jink to protect themselves is just brutal. Note that he's not hard to kill; apply some defensive logic to chosing where to deploy him.
Eversor:
An excellent marine-killer and decent crowd control. The problem is that most people have such things in their army.
Which is best to put in your army depends on the rest of the army. Most armies can make good use of a vindicere, whilst an eversor is best used to support armies who want a cheap, scary close combat threat to lurk defensively - a solo eversor is a brief distraction and not much more. The Culexus is a very good unit simply because no-one else can pull the kind of jank he can when facing abusive psyker armies.
You could always use massed assassins, of course - my views on them are here:
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/640336.page
