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Soo I am going to begin painting my Cypher model tonight and want to know some of the best ways to use him. I have already used him a couple times with my Black Templar and have had some success.

So here are his strong points
+ Infiltrate: Great for him, but as per the GW FAQ, infiltrate does not confer to non-infiltrate units. So he only gets to take advantage of this if he is solo or with a unit of infiltrators.
+BS10 2+ rerollable shooting is awesome, too bad its only pistol range. well 12" and 16". but he fires each pistol twice and can fire full BS in overwatch and one of them is S7 ap2.
+Eternal Warrior means he wont be one-shotted down by a lascannon, melta-gun or some other nasty blast.
+Fleet and Hit-and-Run Makes him fast and gives him the ability to get out of a nasty situation if he needs to.
+Shroud Makes him harder to hit in cover...but its still just a cover save

Bad Areas
- 3+ Sv and no invuln save. actually kind of fragil
- Str4 ap 5 for the majority of his melee attacks. Sure he may get 1 or 2 S7 AP2 attacks but not really reliable enough.
- -1 Leadership to your warlord. Not a huge negative but still a negative.
- Points coming in at just a shade under 200 points, he is expensive for the toughness and armor of a marine.
- Threat Range with short range shooting he needs to be near his enemies. But not being an absolute beast in CC means dedicated CC units will end him.

So I have been thinking about infiltrating him alone somewhere on to the field, but I think that would make him too vulnerable. If one infiltrate HQ can confer infiltrate to a unit and their dedicated transport then you could infilttrate a Land Raider, which would be fun to see. But Shroud confers to his unit so even sticking him with some scouts to start off the game might be worth it. Giving them both stealth and shroud.

Anyway when I had the best success with him, I had infiltrated him and 10 marines up the field against a tau gunline. I started in cover and was then able to get in assault over his aegis defence line and get rid of a couple units of pathfinders. But beating up Tau in close combat isn't saying much, so I cant exactly brag about how awesome he was in close combat. Although, due to marker lights and overwatch, it was only him and 3 other marines that actually made it in to close combat. But once Cypher was there, he took out the units on his own.

Have any of you run him and had success? Any ideas?

I thought when he attacks he can choose which pistol profile to use in CC? I might be wrong, havent gotten the updated dataslate yet..while I love his model and fluff 20$ for a single model dataslate is tough to cough up

I would say a strong way to apply him is with two chosen units decked out with plas, doubt its really competitive but on paper seems semi at least. Infiltrate them up and pop boxes or deal with TEQ

He splits his attacks 1/2 and 1/2 with spares being bolt pistols. Not great, but not terrible. Consider him for buffs and effects no one else can give, it helps justify his cost.

 ALEXisAWESOME wrote:
He splits his attacks 1/2 and 1/2 with spares being bolt pistols. Not great, but not terrible. Consider him for buffs and effects no one else can give, it helps justify his cost.

Ah I see, thanks for clarifying

Still hard to justify him for buffs in chaos since he cant take marks and neither can his chosen, he needs a slight point drop.

I've used him to infiltrate with a 5-man squad of plasma Chosen. This makes a threat that your opponent CANNOT ignore, even if they are a bit squishy. When I ran this, I found that the Chosen died a little too easily for the points, but Cypher himself was a tenacious little dude and hung on for a while.

As for the close combat attacks he strikes half (rounded up) at S4 ap5.

But as for what army to ally him with I don't think he meshes well with chaos space marines. But since he can ally in with space marines, imperial guard, grey Knights, or even sisters of battle, I think his buffs may really start to shine. It's just finding that unit that he gives the most benefit to. That's the tricky part.

Infiltrate a full blob of 30 guardsmen and give them all shrouded?

You can't join an IC with infiltrate to unit without infiltrate (as per GW's rulebook FAQ) so their is no way for Cypher to confer infiltrate to a unit

Ah there it is.

So the best he could do is give them shrouded then.

I would totally take Cypher for my Ultramarines Cent Star...

...if he could join the unit during deployment. Even if they didn't confer infiltrate, I'd like him to start in the bunker with the Centurions.

He is a driving force in a full-infiltrate csm list. Cypher + a blob of 20 marines is potent. Grant them infiltrate with Huron or Ahriman, add Cypher in there and here you go. And before you dismiss it as "but they're still just 20 marines!", i must tell that it's been way more successful than any other csm build in a while. At least for me.

Shrowded, Hit and run, atsknf. That's cool even for regular marines. What i've tried were mos marines and mok marines. Mos did better - probably cause of matchups where fnp did matter a lot. However, you meet larger guns more and more often nowadays and ld stuff is much more common, so basic ld10 might not cut it. In this case, i'd probably run Noize marines or try to infiltrate Huron alongside them or constantly buff them with invisibility or at least fearless form telepathy if i roll with Ahriman.

 koooaei wrote:
He is a driving force in a full-infiltrate csm list. Cypher + a blob of 20 marines is potent. Grant them infiltrate with Huron or Ahriman, add Cypher in there and here you go. And before you dismiss it as "but they're still just 20 marines!", i must tell that it's been way more successful than any other csm build in a while. At least for me.

Shrowded, Hit and run, atsknf. That's cool even for regular marines. What i've tried were mos marines and mok marines. Mos did better - probably cause of matchups where fnp did matter a lot. However, you meet larger guns more and more often nowadays and ld stuff is much more common, so basic ld10 might not cut it. In this case, i'd probably run Noize marines or try to infiltrate Huron alongside them or constantly buff them with invisibility or at least fearless form telepathy if i roll with Ahriman.

Double CAD for Fabulous Bill and Balestar/Daemonheart sorcerer, put some into biomancy and hope for 4+ FnP.
Triple CAD/ally and add KDK for Collar of Khorne and Locus of Wrath/Fury.

Expensive, but damn its fun

Daemonheart is junk on a Sorcerer. You'll not get a lot out of IWND, and simply paying for Terminator armor gives you a 5++ to boot.

dethric wrote:

 koooaei wrote:
He is a driving force in a full-infiltrate csm list. Cypher + a blob of 20 marines is potent. Grant them infiltrate with Huron or Ahriman, add Cypher in there and here you go. And before you dismiss it as "but they're still just 20 marines!", i must tell that it's been way more successful than any other csm build in a while. At least for me.

Shrowded, Hit and run, atsknf. That's cool even for regular marines. What i've tried were mos marines and mok marines. Mos did better - probably cause of matchups where fnp did matter a lot. However, you meet larger guns more and more often nowadays and ld stuff is much more common, so basic ld10 might not cut it. In this case, i'd probably run Noize marines or try to infiltrate Huron alongside them or constantly buff them with invisibility or at least fearless form telepathy if i roll with Ahriman.

Double CAD for Fabulous Bill and Balestar/Daemonheart sorcerer, put some into biomancy and hope for 4+ FnP.
Triple CAD/ally and add KDK for Collar of Khorne and Locus of Wrath/Fury.

Expensive, but damn its fun

I've tried Fabius Bile, btw. He, Lord of slaanesh on a steed for outflank+accute sences and 20 slaanesh marines. Ended up playing against a tank-heavy ig gunline. Mind you, it was quite some time ago and we played eternal war, so this ig gunline was pretty effective. And s5 fearless marines won that game. They came in, tanked an unholy ammount of damage with 3+ and fnp and than proceeded chopping everything to bits. By the end of the battle, there were like 3 marines left but the battle itself was won nevertheless.

I'd not call it optimal cause it simply costs too much but it was fun and unusual.

So I adjusted the original post and the line about infiltrating. After reading the FAQ, it looks like infiltrate does not confer at all.

So what units are there that already have infiltrate or outflank that he could join? It looks like the chosen unit is gaining more appeal since they can actually infiltrate with him.

I am still a fan of the liber hereticus on an inquisitor allowing his unit to scout. Scout redeploy has always seemed a little scary, but if you are going to benefit from shrouded it may actually work.

Due to the fact that he works best with infiltrate units and he confers ATSKNF I think he would work best in chaos armies. If you are paying the points you might aswell be getting the full bang for your buck.

Now though I have heard of centstars running him and having success so maybe that is something to look up.

 Icculus wrote:
So I adjusted the original post and the line about infiltrating. After reading the FAQ, it looks like infiltrate does not confer at all.

So what units are there that already have infiltrate or outflank that he could join?

You could always grant infiltrate to any non-vehicle unit with Huron or Ahriman.

He's pretty fun to run with his Fallen Champions. He's a bit overcosted, but not terribly so. He's great in another shooty unit, since Infiltrating gets you in range to double tap Plasma Guns, or get into range to shoot Meltaguns. If you get him into a MEQ unit he does quite well in cc, almost certainly killing two with his Plasma Pistol shots, and possibly a third with bolter fire, before anyone can strike back. He's a great distraction unit to allow other stuff to either get upfield or to allow your big guns to keep shooting without worrying about return fire.

He has hit and run too... I like infiltrating him with the fallen chosen. Meltas and flamers.

So I recently played a fluffy game with him against a Dark Angels player. 1500 points.

The Dark Angels player ended up running a Deathwing list with Belial. This actually made things a little easier for me as he was holding a good chunk of his units in Deepstrike reserve

I put Cypher in a drop pod with a Space Marine Command Squad, the emperors champion, and a chaplain. The command squad had 3 plasma guns and a meltagun. The idea was that having shrouded would help the incoming fire after getting out of the pod. Well I got lucky enough to go first and podded in behind a unit of termies in cover. Thanks to plasmaguns, meltaguns, and cyphers 2 plasma shots I killed the whole unit.

The squad was then assaulted by a unit of dark angel knights. These guys are pretty hardcore, but cypher ended up killing one because of his full BS overwatch.

In the close combat, the emperors champion and Cypher were the only ones to survive. And unfortunately for him, I was able to kill off his other unit of termies and his landraider before belial ever came in. he was tabled by turn 3.

If Cypher didnt have eternal warrior he would have been dead, and if Belial did come in on turn 2 or 3. things would have been different. I think Cypher would not have survived that.

One thing I find interesting about the formation rules: the regular version of Cypher's dataslate says the fallen champions formation has infiltrate: the one I got from the Codex: Dark Angels Reclusiam Edition does not. That is why I have been somewhat confused about the formation being able to Infiltrate.