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Will there be another Imperial Agents book for 8th? Will they eventually be given an exemption from blowing up Imperial detachments the way commissars, primaris psykers, ect do with IG? They took most of what was considered "Inquisition" and moved it to Ministorum. With no troops, they will be pretty limited.

I would guess that they will get mixed in with sisters of battle and sisters of silence, kind of like how they were in the old days. I just don't see GW expanding the inquisition line to be its own full range.

Ideally it becomes an umbrella under which other forces are recruited to battle xenos witches and demons. And ideally inq forces will gain or not lose benefits when doing so, while other soup type armies should not benefit or should be penalized for say taking a special character from one faction to lead an army mostly composed of another faction, e.g. Girlyman and knights or Celestine and conscripts or ... Other idiocy.

Let's talk about what happens at a practical level.

Surely they will get their own keyword in addition to Imperium. This will give them access to a set of Stratagems that are just for Inquisition units.

While I don't expect them to expand the range, I fully expect there will be a new unit represented by an existing model. A lieutenant, the Inquisition version of an Exalted Champion. This seems to be an important part of all new Codexes right now.

They will have psychic powers other than those available to other Imperial armies. Most likely, they will be anti-Daemon. Betting one will be an advanced form of smite that allows them to pick any unit in range. Betting another will be some kind of banishment spell that causes some form of Daemonic instability.

I am betting there's no equivalent to Chapter Tactics. They are some form of Auxillary similar to assassins. There won't be subfactions, it will all be inquisition. At the same time, they will have access to units from other factions as part of a standard army list. This way, a pure Inquisition army can be fielded without needing separate detachments.

Other thoughts?

They will probably have their own codex as that means more $.

Major Ordos will get their own stratagems, Xenos, Hereticus and Malleus.

GW will probably stick with restricted wargear for each Ordos e.g. only Malleus Inquisitors can take TDA. As little sense as this actually makes.

Deathwatch and SoB will be referenced in the codex and have same keywords as the relevant Ordos i.e. Xenos and Hereticus respectively. If you want to use them you will need to buy the additional codex(s) as this means more $.

Inquisition will have access to a smattering of IG and SM vehicles and units and some Ordos specific units e.g. Malleus have Daemonhosts.

GW will fail to represent the nuances of various ways of thinking within the Inq e.g. radicals, puritans, Xanthites, Horusians, etc. Although the ubiquitous daemon weapon will probably be included.

In summary, Inq will still not work as a standalone army in its own right. Although if proven wrong I would be pleasently surprised.

Just my humble opinion.

First, what kind of book will they get? Inquisition is probably too narrow so I assume it will still be Imperial Agents that will include the 3 types of Inquisitors, retinues, assassins, etc. We know that the Grey Knight codex didn't have options for Ordo Malleus and I doubt the Deathwatch one will have Ordo Xenos. Therefore they must get their own book at some point.

I'm surprised they weren't put in the GK book like they were in 5th.

My gut tells me they'll end up lumped in with the Ministorum. I'd love to see the range expanded, but I have pretty low hopes for it. I have a feeling that Ministorum will just become "the rest of the imperium."

I hope they just do a compilation of all the imperial stuff that can't really form an army with exceptions allowing them in detachments without breaking keyword allegiance.

I'm sure there will be a Codex that wraps all these Inquisition models up. Greyfax needs to be put in a proper Codex after all.

Thing is, we've got Deathwatch that's Ordo Xenos, and Grey Knights that's Ordo Malleus. We just need Witch Hunters (Ordo Hereticus) to get a proper Codex. Traditionally, that was Sisters of Battle, until they were broken off into their own thing.

In my mind, they'll update Sisters of Battle into their own thing, and the have another 'Agents of the Imperium' Codex that will include the Assassins, Inquisitors, Ministorum, and other units that are outliers. Ideally, they'll give the Inquisition some plastic love as well.

I hope they do another agents codex. I'd buy it.

It would seem natural to me that Inquisitors would be allowed to join any imperial detachment without blowing it up. It's not like they are super power OP characters. Primaris Psykers don't blow up detachments and are much more cost effective. 40 points gets you a Psyker with a force weapon. To get the same loadout (with worse powers) you're paying 27 points for a LD bubble.

It's difficult to represent the Inquisition working with its chamber militant without bloating the books involved. Having an inquisitor entry in Codex Witch Hunters and Daemonhunters (later codex Grey Knights) had issues arising from discrepancies between each other (I sincerely doubt the Ordo Hereticus forbids the use of the Land Raider's assault ramp.) and Codex imperial agents was a bloated experiment with annoying 'sample size' chamber militant elements, and was generally less fun to play than codex Inquisition.

As annoying and prevelant as they were in 7th, I think the Inquisition works best as a supplement book. Let the inquisitor be from one of four Ordo options (Malleus, Xenos, Hereticus, and other), have slight variations in available wargear, powers and traits based on that Ordo, and let the inquisitor and their lackeys occupy force organization slots of either guard or their respective chambers militant without disrupting the detachment's subfaction effects.

Offset the lack of units by making the inquisitors themselves extremely customizable again.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
As for subfactions, the breakdown in the index is actually a pretty good starting point for how they could work in a more expanded book:

Give Malleus unique traits and gear that let it do extra damage to Daemons and better reliable hits against chaos forces in general.

Let Xenos give bonuses to make it easier to kill xenos character models, or something to represent their more technologically adventurous nature.

Hereticus can be about anti-psycher warfare. With protective wards like the Null Rod, and abilities to single out psyker characters.

And give 'other' a slightly weaker but more generalized benefit that can is less effective against the army types the other three specialize in, but works against everything, including factions the above three don't cover at all.