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 Grimskul wrote:

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Right, what if it was also that unit's statline it "declares itself"?

I mean, realistically in most cases you'll be choosing characters since they have the abilities/auras you want, and their statlines are pretty much in line with what you have already and you still have a 4+ invuln so it's not like you'll be reducing yourself to S2 or T2, if you copy a Daemon Prince you get buffed to S7 and T6 so its rarely going to be a hindrance. It also brings into question how you would handle the keyword aspects of these abilities that can get needlessly complicated with how it interacts with your army. Doesn't sound balanced to me at all.

Also doesnt make sense, polymorphine doesn't give you the strength of an ork warboss, just makes you look like him.

The Callidus isn't that bad an assassin. She averages 3.5 wounds against T4 Sv 3+ thanks to the Phase Sword (S4 AP -3 D2, No Invulnerable Saves) and the Neural Shredder have a 75% chance of putting D3 Mortal Wounds on its target. Allow her to ignore Look Out, Sir and she's got a decent chance of taking out a good number of characters when she appears.

That being said, her job is less about killing a single target than disrupting your opponent's plans. Adjust Reign of Confusion to happen more often (say on a 3+ with Supreme Deception costing 1 CP) and you have a very useful character. Remember that Reign of Confusion works while the character is in Reserves, so you can keep that party running while the assassin is 100% safe.

This does reminder me that her old rule was after deployment you could move one of our opponent's units 6" as long as it stayed in it's deployment zone.

"Why isn't that tank behind the building?"
"Because you ordered it to be there, Sir."
"No I didn't!"
"But I have your written orders right here."

Ok, so going the fluff route is broken as hell. What if we just turned it into a Sly Marbo of sorts? Give it a melta bomb, a needler pistol, character targeting, and an ability to fire and fade?

I'd much prefer that the Callidus' disruption abilities applied to stopping enemy units' actions or Obsec in some way. This would show her acting as the tactical saboteur she should be in sowing confusion and preventing units from following orders as she should be.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
What if the Calli can use it's mimicry to effect itself?

At the start of the game, choose one Troop/Elite/HQ unit on the map. The Calladius gains one of that character's abilities until the end of the game, or until it dies.

I would take 3 of those in a heartbeat.

That doesn't make any sense lore wise. Callidus don't steal random abilities, they kill things and steal their identity with the express goal of getting closer to their ultimate target or sometimes tearing organizations apart from inside using a stolen identity. They maintain their disguise until they are ready to strike or their work is done if sowing confusion from inside.

Yes they do, In the Custodes book two, one of the few bits of established lore involving them, there are 3-4 of them acting as crew to the Battleship in Orbit under High Lord Perith. And they pop out, kill everyone, and free Jeck. To get there, they would have to routinely pass bioscans, as Jeck did. So it's clear they copy or mimic the person down to the Cellular level? It's not just clark kent glasses. They are aren't fully human according to Jeck's predecessor, when he is trying to decide which "house" the master of assassins was in originally before he became Master.

I like Grimskulls idea, however that being said, it's kinda bad to use her as a objective camper, (I assume it would need to be ON the objective for that ability to work) She's pretty fragile as assasins go. She's not gonna stop much with a 5+ and 5 wounds.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Yes they do, In the Custodes book two, one of the few bits of established lore involving them, there are 3-4 of them acting as crew to the Battleship in Orbit under High Lord Perith. And they pop out, kill everyone, and free Jeck. To get there, they would have to routinely pass bioscans, as Jeck did. So it's clear they copy or mimic the person down to the Cellular level? It's not just clark kent glasses. They are aren't fully human according to Jeck's predecessor, when he is trying to decide which "house" the master of assassins was in originally before he became Master.

I like Grimskulls idea, however that being said, it's kinda bad to use her as a objective camper, (I assume it would need to be ON the objective for that ability to work) She's pretty fragile as assasins go. She's not gonna stop much with a 5+ and 5 wounds.

All assassins have a 4+ invuln right now and I think they should keep it when they get updated for 9th.

That still won't keep them locking down that objective against even a basic troop squad in 9th. With everything ramping up the killiness in 9th, a single model with 5+4++ 5W can't hold an objective. Even Intercessors will shoot it off the board.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
That still won't keep them locking down that objective against even a basic troop squad in 9th. With everything ramping up the killiness in 9th, a single model with 5+4++ 5W can't hold an objective. Even Intercessors will shoot it off the board.

Intercessors are a very good troop unit.

The bigger issue is that it’s one model without ObSec-even if it can turn ObSec off, it’d be outnumbered easily.

Right, I think the best way to stay true to the killy fluff, and make it at least somewhat viable, is to make it a sort of pistolero character, like that GSC pistol elite. Give it character targeting, and the Vindicaire pistol that wounds on 2s and evades invuln, and give it some sort of strat that allows it to target models in squads. The ability to kill SGTs would be original and interesting.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Right, I think the best way to stay true to the killy fluff, and make it at least somewhat viable, is to make it a sort of pistolero character, like that GSC pistol elite. Give it character targeting, and the Vindicaire pistol that wounds on 2s and evades invuln, and give it some sort of strat that allows it to target models in squads. The ability to kill SGTs would be original and interesting.

Killing off specific models would be interesting. I get why snipers can no longer do that (it kind of turned wargear upgrades into bad ideas and generally kept people from playing with their toys), but it would probably be fitting for a single brand of assassin. Fluffy too. Not sure where you're going with the whole pistol thing though. The calidus is one of the few units in the game that can actually make a charge out of reserves relatively reliably, and as pointed out above, she does a respectable amount of damage to most characters. You probably don't want to sic her on a terminator captain or a daemon primarch, but she'll make a farseer or troupe master or chaplain sweat. Or, if your opponent doesn't have a good character target for her, you can just throw her into whatever shooty unit you want to silence for a turn or two. She's the disruption assassin; not the "effortlessly kill Guilliman and walk away unwounded," assassin. And she really doesn't look like a gunslinger to me.

Maybe she just needs a strat that lets her go back into reserves at the end of the morale phase? So you can launch her into key targets multiple times a game and not leave her hanging in the wind after she hits her first target. Or maybe just a strat to prevent enemies from falling back so she can hide in the confusion of combat.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Tiberias wrote:

Many of your points seem to hinge on the fact that assassins seem to be better than some Phoenix Lords and therefore they can't be that bad, right? The problem is that Phoenix Lords are just garbage right now, they desperately, desperately need an update. They need to be on the same power level as the new drazhar, who is an absolute murder machine and one of the best melee characters in the game.
All of that does not mean however, that assassins are fine as they are. Phoenix Lords absolutely needing a ton of buffs does not mean assassins don't also need at least some minor tweaks

Belated response to this. Just wanted to say that this is a fair point. I was using PLs as an example because they're meant to be super-elite specialist individuals like the assassins and currently have a similar points cost. But you're right. Phoenix Lords are considered pretty meh for their cost right now and thus probably aren't a great point of comparison.

I feel like all the assassins do their jobs reasonably well at the moment. Would it be the worst thing in the world to just drop them back down to 85 points each and leave them otherwise unchanged?

I see your points about it being a disruption unit, and that is a valid point. My only concern with that is there are already 2 other "disruption" units in the assassins, that do it better. Calladius is the only one that doesn't get character targeting, this signifies to me they are supposed to bully or harass weak-mid-tier infantry units. How is this best accomplished? It has no good shooting to be honest. So it falls to melee. What 100pt unit can it tangle with and successfully overcome with it's melee? Maybe a squad of Admech or Scions, but then why are you wasting an assasin on a squad of troops? They need to be able to hit above their weight, or they aren't making a difference.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
What 100pt unit can it tangle with and successfully overcome with it's melee? Maybe a squad of Admech or Scions, but then why are you wasting an assasin on a squad of troops? They need to be able to hit above their weight, or they aren't making a difference.

I don't entirely agree with that last sentence, but there actually are some 100 point units that get nervous when a calidus shows up. My farseers, for instance, don't have an armor save; just an invul. And at T3 and W5, a calidus has pretty good odds of ganking them. They're also the lynchpin of your average asuryani army. Shadowseers are similarly vulnerable and also cost at least 100 points. Troupe Masters might not quite break 100 points with upgrades (they might; I'm not sure), but they're also a cost-effective unit in that general ballpark that you hate to lose. So targets matching those parameters definitely exist.

But as I said, I don't entirely agree with the idea that a unit is only good if it kills at least as many points as it costs. The point of all the assassins, to my mind, is that they're equipped to kill/shut down specific targets of your choosing. If your calidus kills a dark apostle or librarian, she might not be killing 100 points worth of army, but that's not a problem if the buffs from that character were a big part of your opponent's strategy. Say that apostle's buffs were going to keep X points of CSM units alive next turn. Your calidus has functionally added X to the points it has earned back.

Or maybe you just toss the callidus into a tank on the turn that your squishy scion command squads show up form reserves. Normally, that tank would blast your scions off the board on the next turn. Instead, your calidus risks getting wiped out on your opponent's shooting phase, but the scions remain intact and kill a 150 point target during their second turn on the board. Even if the callidus basically just flailed in a tank's face and then died, it still functionally allowed you to remove 150 points from your opponent's army.

The calidus has tools to be in the right place at the right time and bypass defenses (invulns and high toughness) that might give other parts of your army a hard time. Those are useful traits even if she doesn't trade points as efficiently as another unit.

(And isn't that kind of where you want the tricky disruption assassin to be?)

Arguably assassins aren't war assets. They're normally deployed on clandestine missions when wars AREN'T happening.

So they don't need to be indestructible demi gods, as they're not normally running through artillery barrages to perform their jobs.

I think they are pretty good at what they do currently.

Assassins are meant both fluff and in game, to take out key targets that change the course of the battle. This usually involves characters, HQs, or some form of Psyker unit. Usually singular in nature. Rarely do we see Assassins used to take out groups of enemies, because

1. It doesn't work out well the majority of the time.

2. It isn't going to change the battle radically.

Taking our a librarian is more important than taking out the Intercessors around them. Taking out a captain or a Company commander is more important than the devestators or the HWs he is buffing.

I hesitate to say Elite units because those tend to be multi-wound heavy infantry with Invulns. The Calladius has no real answer to invulns, or multiwound multi-model units, like a squad of Bullgryns. They would eat the Calladius and poop it out. Wasted assassin.

If we want the Calladius to be good at something, give it a role. Right now it doesn't have character targeting (Baffling given it's lore) but it does have good charge and melee abilities. So give it something that shuts down abilities of units it is currently in combat with, so the Necron Lord can't use it's abilities, or the Apothacary can't heal stuff. That is what it needs, character targeting and the ability to lock down abilities/auras.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:

I hesitate to say Elite units because those tend to be multi-wound heavy infantry with Invulns. The Calladius has no real answer to invulns, or multiwound multi-model units, like a squad of Bullgryns. They would eat the Calladius and poop it out. Wasted assassin.

If we want the Calladius to be good at something, give it a role. Right now it doesn't have character targeting (Baffling given it's lore) but it does have good charge and melee abilities. So give it something that shuts down abilities of units it is currently in combat with, so the Necron Lord can't use it's abilities, or the Apothacary can't heal stuff. That is what it needs, character targeting and the ability to lock down abilities/auras.

Emphasis mine. Unless the Battlescribe rules are way off, the callidus's phase sword straight up ignores invul saves while also being AP3 and Damage 2. The neural shredder also bypasses invuln saves by virtue of doing mortal wounds. That makes it pretty great at overcoming invulns, which is why I used farseers and shadowseers (who only have invul saves) in my examples of good targets above. Being D2 means that her phasesword is also actually pretty decent against most multi-wound multi-model units (like any non-gravis non-terminator marines). I definitely wouldn't call bullgryn an ideal target for her, but she would actually do better against such a target than most units in the game. No other assassin particularly wants to be in melee with bullgryn. Neither do autarchs, archons, or even marine captains, really.

She doesn't have the ability to ignore Look Out Sir, but you're more likely to be able to make a character the closest enemy unit by virtue of deepstriking closer than normal.

All that said, an ability to shut down auras would be pretty cool. I guess you could fluff it as some sort of signal jammer suite or something, though it's weird that you can keep a captain from bellowing orders to the guys next to him. Auras are usually abstract enough for such a thing to be handwaivable.

The point here is that, while not being bad, the callidus (and all other assassins for that matter) are not viable in this current edition, they offer too little for what they cost.
A 60p succubus from the new dark eldar codex is way more deadly than a callidus assassin.

The phase sword of the callidus is very good, and ignoring invulns if obviously very strong. I'd give the phase sword S+1 and give the callidus at least one more attack in melee, if not two. I think she is properly threatening this way to one single character she's meant to take out before she inevitably dies herself.

Let's see. Sloppy math says...

VS Farseer
(5 * (5/6) * (2/3)) * 2 = ~5.58 wounds from the phase sword. (No saves for the farseer.)

VS a marine captain...
(5* (5/6) * (1/2) * (5/6)) * 2 = ~3.47 wounds from the phase sword.

If I'm not way off on my math, you're averaging a dead farseer before factoring in the neural shredder and the bonus attack from the poison blades. You don't quite melee the captain to death with the phase sword alone, but the neural shredder (better than 50% chance to do an average of 2 mortal wounds) gets you pretty darn close.

So with that in mind, where would you like the average damage of a calidus to be? That's not some sort of accusation or gotcha question. What should the average damage be on a model that will deploy, on average, 6.5" away from its target, giving it a better than 50% chance to make its charge before command point rerolls. How close to 100% should the chances of killing a captain or farseer out of deepstrike be?

The more I look at where the calidus currently is, the more I wonder if it's actually about right as-is. And if the assassins really are so bad at their current cost, is it an issue of them not doing their job, or an issue of them being too expensive for that job performance? If the latter, would dropping them back down to 85 points do the trick?

Again. That's not me saying you're wrong for wanting to buff the assassins. It's me asking what our concrete design goals are.

A.) What are our goals?
B.) What about each assassin's current rules causes them to fall short of those goals?
C.) What are the cleanest, simplest changes we could make to achieve those goals.

Wyldhunt wrote:
Let's see. Sloppy math says...

VS Farseer
(5 * (5/6) * (2/3)) * 2 = ~5.58 wounds from the phase sword. (No saves for the farseer.)

VS a marine captain...
(5* (5/6) * (1/2) * (5/6)) * 2 = ~3.47 wounds from the phase sword.

If I'm not way off on my math, you're averaging a dead farseer before factoring in the neural shredder and the bonus attack from the poison blades. You don't quite melee the captain to death with the phase sword alone, but the neural shredder (better than 50% chance to do an average of 2 mortal wounds) gets you pretty darn close.

So with that in mind, where would you like the average damage of a calidus to be? That's not some sort of accusation or gotcha question. What should the average damage be on a model that will deploy, on average, 6.5" away from its target, giving it a better than 50% chance to make its charge before command point rerolls. How close to 100% should the chances of killing a captain or farseer out of deepstrike be?

The more I look at where the calidus currently is, the more I wonder if it's actually about right as-is. And if the assassins really are so bad at their current cost, is it an issue of them not doing their job, or an issue of them being too expensive for that job performance? If the latter, would dropping them back down to 85 points do the trick?

Again. That's not me saying you're wrong for wanting to buff the assassins. It's me asking what our concrete design goals are.

A.) What are our goals?
B.) What about each assassin's current rules causes them to fall short of those goals?
C.) What are the cleanest, simplest changes we could make to achieve those goals.

Fair points. In a perfect world each assassin is a strong pick for imperium factions and each offer something unique based on their specialty. They must not be so strong that they are a must have in imperium lists however, that would be crucial to me.

We've already established where the other assassins fall short and there have been some good ideas from multiple people on how to fix them imo.
I just feel the callidus is more difficult. As you say, she's not bad, maybe the cleanest way to fix her is a point reduction...I don't know. I still think giving her S+1 on her phase sword wouldn't make her too good or broken (giving her more attacks might push her over the edge though). Unless my math is off, with S+1 she does 4,63 dmg on a space marine captain in melee with her phase sword. For a unit that just does one thing and then has a high chance of dying anyway, having a good chance to take out one character is not too strong imho.

My point is that all the assassins have this "Bursty" method of damage, that is a total dice roll. Your Vind could miss, or he could do 63 MWs and 4 regular damage to two separate targets. The Eversor can do nothing, or it can seriously ruin the day of a an entire squad of Gravis Armor dudes. A Culexus can do nothing, or it can lay some big hurt on a DP/Chaos Sorcerer.

The Calladius, well, it can cost your opponent 1 extra CP if it rolls well. That's it. It has no real burst factor.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
My point is that all the assassins have this "Bursty" method of damage, that is a total dice roll. Your Vind could miss, or he could do 63 MWs and 4 regular damage to two separate targets. The Eversor can do nothing, or it can seriously ruin the day of a an entire squad of Gravis Armor dudes. A Culexus can do nothing, or it can lay some big hurt on a DP/Chaos Sorcerer.

The Calladius, well, it can cost your opponent 1 extra CP if it rolls well. That's it. It has no real burst factor.

While I partly agree on the callidus (the phase sword can definitely take out very weak characters) the other assassins don't really have the burst factor you speak of the way their rules are right now.
The vindicare rolling hot and really headshotting a character in one turn really doesn't happen. As you said it's only one shot that doesn't even have fixed dmg.
I also can't see how the eversor would ever take a squad of gravis armored space marines. He only has 1dmg weapons. If he uses his power sword he barely takes one (about 2,4 dmg if my math checks out). With the claw it's even less I think.

Tiberias wrote:

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
My point is that all the assassins have this "Bursty" method of damage, that is a total dice roll. Your Vind could miss, or he could do 63 MWs and 4 regular damage to two separate targets. The Eversor can do nothing, or it can seriously ruin the day of a an entire squad of Gravis Armor dudes. A Culexus can do nothing, or it can lay some big hurt on a DP/Chaos Sorcerer.

The Calladius, well, it can cost your opponent 1 extra CP if it rolls well. That's it. It has no real burst factor.

While I partly agree on the callidus (the phase sword can definitely take out very weak characters) the other assassins don't really have the burst factor you speak of the way their rules are right now.
The vindicare rolling hot and really headshotting a character in one turn really doesn't happen. As you said it's only one shot that doesn't even have fixed dmg.
I also can't see how the eversor would ever take a squad of gravis armored space marines. He only has 1dmg weapons. If he uses his power sword he barely takes one (about 2,4 dmg if my math checks out). With the claw it's even less I think.

BioMeltdown? It also gets Stimm Overload which is fight twice, so thats 12 attacks at S5 ap1 D1, with extra attacks if it kills anything. Also it re-rolls all wound rolls with it's gauntet. Then it gets killed and does meltdown, and has a 50% chance to do d3 MW against everything in 6 inches. Thata hell of a lot of burst potential. If the Power sword follows suit, and gets that damage upgrade, thats S4 Ap3 D2 damage per swing.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:

Tiberias wrote:

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
My point is that all the assassins have this "Bursty" method of damage, that is a total dice roll. Your Vind could miss, or he could do 63 MWs and 4 regular damage to two separate targets. The Eversor can do nothing, or it can seriously ruin the day of a an entire squad of Gravis Armor dudes. A Culexus can do nothing, or it can lay some big hurt on a DP/Chaos Sorcerer.

The Calladius, well, it can cost your opponent 1 extra CP if it rolls well. That's it. It has no real burst factor.

While I partly agree on the callidus (the phase sword can definitely take out very weak characters) the other assassins don't really have the burst factor you speak of the way their rules are right now.
The vindicare rolling hot and really headshotting a character in one turn really doesn't happen. As you said it's only one shot that doesn't even have fixed dmg.
I also can't see how the eversor would ever take a squad of gravis armored space marines. He only has 1dmg weapons. If he uses his power sword he barely takes one (about 2,4 dmg if my math checks out). With the claw it's even less I think.

BioMeltdown? It also gets Stimm Overload which is fight twice, so thats 12 attacks at S5 ap1 D1, with extra attacks if it kills anything. Also it re-rolls all wound rolls with it's gauntet. Then it gets killed and does meltdown, and has a 50% chance to do d3 MW against everything in 6 inches. Thata hell of a lot of burst potential. If the Power sword follows suit, and gets that damage upgrade, thats S4 Ap3 D2 damage per swing.

Yeah if you're pumping in 2cp. And upon death you have a 50% chance to do about 2MW. Its so much rng, I'd much rather take 2 more saggitarum guard than this guy and that is precisely why the eversor doesn't see any play. Also his power sword isn't dmg2, but an argument can be made that it should be.

Personally, I'd like to see the summon strat return to 1 CP. Having their strength be in flexibility instead of raw "worth their points" is a better mechanics niche than trying to make them all truly worth taking.

They're each worth their points in the right matchup, it just costs a little too much to get them there currently.

 LunarSol wrote:
Personally, I'd like to see the summon strat return to 1 CP. Having their strength be in flexibility instead of raw "worth their points" is a better mechanics niche than trying to make them all truly worth taking.

They're each worth their points in the right matchup, it just costs a little too much to get them there currently.

I am not saying you are wrong, but in what matchup is an eversor worth taking instead of taking 100p more of one valuable unit in your list? Cause I genuinely can't see a scenario where I'd want to take one.
I've used the vindicare multiple times in 9th for fun and he underperformed every single time. It's just too much randomness with his singular sniper shot. The only value he had for me was that my opponents were more careful as to where they move their characters, but I am not convinced that this "intimidation effect" of a sniper lurking around is worth 100 points. Especially since you can target the vindicare in 9th unless you babysit him (which is never ever worth it) and his -2 to hit while in cover is worthless.
In my book that's not good enough. Sure you could just make them cheaper again, but that is the most boring solution imho. I would even go so far to say that even if you reduce their cost back to 85points, they would almost never show up in any imperium lists.

Tiberias wrote:

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:

Tiberias wrote:

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
My point is that all the assassins have this "Bursty" method of damage, that is a total dice roll. Your Vind could miss, or he could do 63 MWs and 4 regular damage to two separate targets. The Eversor can do nothing, or it can seriously ruin the day of a an entire squad of Gravis Armor dudes. A Culexus can do nothing, or it can lay some big hurt on a DP/Chaos Sorcerer.

The Calladius, well, it can cost your opponent 1 extra CP if it rolls well. That's it. It has no real burst factor.

While I partly agree on the callidus (the phase sword can definitely take out very weak characters) the other assassins don't really have the burst factor you speak of the way their rules are right now.
The vindicare rolling hot and really headshotting a character in one turn really doesn't happen. As you said it's only one shot that doesn't even have fixed dmg.
I also can't see how the eversor would ever take a squad of gravis armored space marines. He only has 1dmg weapons. If he uses his power sword he barely takes one (about 2,4 dmg if my math checks out). With the claw it's even less I think.

BioMeltdown? It also gets Stimm Overload which is fight twice, so thats 12 attacks at S5 ap1 D1, with extra attacks if it kills anything. Also it re-rolls all wound rolls with it's gauntet. Then it gets killed and does meltdown, and has a 50% chance to do d3 MW against everything in 6 inches. Thata hell of a lot of burst potential. If the Power sword follows suit, and gets that damage upgrade, thats S4 Ap3 D2 damage per swing.

Yeah if you're pumping in 2cp. And upon death you have a 50% chance to do about 2MW. Its so much rng, I'd much rather take 2 more saggitarum guard than this guy and that is precisely why the eversor doesn't see any play. Also his power sword isn't dmg2, but an argument can be made that it should be.

Ok, but I was responding to someone who literally said the Eversor didn't have good burst potenial, not weather they'd be good at hunting Hyper elites. Obviously Sag guard are better, they are just more consistent, lost half as much, and do better things, plus the 2+4++6+++ doesn't hurt either. They are some of the best units in the game, as basic troops go. But again, I was trying to point out why Eversor's are bursty (my phone keeps changing this to Busty, so I need to change my internet habits) and thus the Calli is a pointless model. It has none of the burst potential of it's range of models, and has no good redeeming abilities, other than a dumb CP thing that still sucks even when it works!

But yeah, Custodes have no need of Assassins. Like at all. Their Terminators do the job far better, and for less points. I'll make the case again. Calladius Assassins are dumb and shouldn't be a thing anymore. Buff the other 3 and legend the Cally.

Well the Callidus should have more disruption abilities. On too of the CP shenanigans, couldn't we argue that they could have a type of turn-off-aura ability?

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Well the Callidus should have more disruption abilities. On too of the CP shenanigans, couldn't we argue that they could have a type of turn-off-aura ability?

Literally see my suggestion from earlier on this page....(Great minds and what not)

I don't see GW going for it though. Maybe just an aura that causes more chaotic gak: roll a d6 on every shooting attach by a model within 6" of this unit. On a 5+ that shooting attack instead hits the closest friendly unit.

Tiberias wrote:

In my book that's not good enough. Sure you could just make them cheaper again, but that is the most boring solution imho. I would even go so far to say that even if you reduce their cost back to 85points, they would almost never show up in any imperium lists.

Hey, sometimes boring is a good thing. Boring in game design can mean that we're avoiding overcomplicating something or creating undesirable fallout from our changes. Not that I'm opposed to buffing assassins, but making them cheaper might be a reasonable approach.

Say we up the strength on a callidus phase blade by 1. I'd be fine with that. Is that small difference really all that's keeping them from being considered good? If so, great. But if we're just buffing them to buff them, we might want to re-evaluate our reasons for that change.

Right now most factions have a unit or units, that do the same job assasins do, but better. They share that with inquisitors. Most factions have some form of psyker support or caster unit, except for Custodes. It's kinda evident that GW is running as fast as possible from the soup game style, and wants everyone to go pure. Just My opinion.