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I’m making a list for a tournament. It’ll be heavily focused on militarism tempestus. I figured including a lord commissar and some regular commissars could be thematic. But I’m curious as to how useful they are currently. The list will be a full platoon of tempestus, a full platoon of guards and maybe some tanks. I’ll go for obsec wincon I’m thinking.

You might want to ask over at the Tactica thread. I can't speak too well to the current game state, but I don't think Commissars are considered a meta choice. Certainly worth it for fluff reasons, but perhaps not something you'd do for a power boost.

Ah, thanks. Guess I'll turn theese kinds of questions over to the tactica forum. You're probably right. The commissars do seem weak as far as combat potential goes.

Very useful. More assassination VPs for your opponent.

It kind of sucks, because I feel commissars are one of the more thematic parts of guard that are present but really underutilized by GW rules-wise. In the past, they were the closest to having decent CC (for guardsmen at least) outside of Ogryn/Bullgryns, with their key thing providing Ld9 with Stubborn and morale protection alongside a hidden power weapon/fist, particularly back in the old guard blobs in 5th. With the shift to 8th/9th ed, they went too far the other way with morale fixers, basically causing the reign of conscript blob terrors that look quaint to what we see nowadays. Their morale ability is both gutted and more or less pointless nowadays with the level of lethality in the game, since conscripts are basically a non-starter for their current price/unit size and guardsmen squads are dead before morale even matters. So now we have guys that don't serve a morale purpose or their old role of adding a bit of CC punch to your front line. At this point, they need to add some kind of buff to units, with maybe an additional ability that allows them to "motivate" units by executing a member of the squad, like they do in DoW2.

The short answer, not very.

They’re useful as cheap HQ tax and very situationally their morale abilities might become up. Their combat is shockingly bad too.

Honestly I was incredibly surprised when GW nerfed both Commissars and Lord Commissars back in CA 2021 Mk I.

The typical Guard list is either spam Company Commanders, Tank Commanders, maybe take Creed/Straken depending on your list and regiment. If you’re taking Militarum Tempestus then Tempestor Primes are the obvious choice.

Primaris Psykers are in a similar boat. Can be a cheap HQ tax, opens up Psychic secondaries, but being limited to 1 power really hurts. Especially when powers in general aren’t guaranteed and can be denied by the opponent.