Wh40k 10th Edition Faction Focus: Imperial Agents

[ThePenitentOne]

1 hour ago, Squark said:

I mean, Inquisition armies haven't really been possible for ages. There's just not enough there.

 

The issue is that they were so close to being playable. I've said this before in many, many threads.

 

To be playable at 500 as a faction, we needed a Lord upgrade for the Generic Inquisitor profile- this would explicitly allow you to have two Inquisitors- a Master and an Apprentice. It needs the new Ashes of Faith KT ported in as a retinue. And it needs vehicles on the list so that you can have them even if you don't bring allies. The Ordo Specific Relics, WL Traits, Psychic powers and the strats that we had in PA: Pariah were sufficient.

 

Crusade rules are big deal; Rogue Traders had them in Octarius 1. They weren't super awesome or anything, but they were serviceable, and having them gave RT a way to be meaningful. A 25 PL Crusade was a PERFECT way to play them. And if the Inquisition had Crusade rules in 9th, their 25PL Crusades could have been legendary.

 

A Chamber Militant rule allowing a combined army of an <Ordo> and their respective Chambers with without all the stupid limits to composition in Order to represent the special relationship between Ordo and Chamber; perhaps even allowing the Chamber units to benefit from Quarry while with in range of an Inquisitor Lord or Inquisitor would be nice, but it wasn't 100% necessary.

 

That's literally it. That's actually all we need to be viable in narrative play. Not a single new model required.

 

Arbites have 3 units from one box already, and they all look distinct enough. Give them an HQ and a vehicle and 500 point/ 25PL army would be awesome. Give'em bespoke Crusade rules - something along the lines of Prisoner Acquisition, like how DA hunt Fallen or GK hunt a particular Daemon. Great fun to play from 25-50PL. BTW, a plastic Repressor upgrade sprue for the Sisters rhino creates a new vehicle for both Agents (and Arbites in particular) and Sisters without having to invest in building a whole kit. That's a license to print money with very little investment. But if GW is too lazy to do this despite the return on investment, then even adding a Rhino to the list would do the trick. 

 

Navy? Give'm an HQ, split the squad into elites which CAN have the KT upgrades and troops which can't, add Valkyries and all the other FW guard flyers to their list, add a Navigator and an Astropath for psychic support, and add the Master of the Fleet (he could even be the HQ choice). If the Master is the HQ, once again, not a single new model required to make perfectly viable 25-50 PL army.

 

The Rogue Trader list from Octarius was already sufficient... Though once again, vehicles.

 

Boarding Action detachments are weak. I preferred battlefield roles and 9th ed detachments, because I always saw them as excellent ways to tell stories involving allied factions.

 

Please always remember that most Agent players aren't asking for dexes that support 2k and 3k play. But 500-1k games need viable army rules because 500-1k play is every bit as important as important as 2k play. And no, I don't consider Boarding Actions to be sufficient for 25PL Crusade play. Stories require detachment flexibility, and roster based play really is better supported by 9th's detachment system than 10th's.

Edited June 1, 2023 by ThePenitentOne

[Frogian]

Pity the Ordo/quarry rules seem to be gone. Added a lot of flavour. Also wish they'd bring back a standard Inquisitor in Power Armour & Inquisitor in Terminator Armour

 

I wanna run this dude:

[Frogian]

@ThePenitentOne - it is definitely annoying that GW have fixed points costs, but i think really its about finding a group of people that don't care. I'd happily play a 500-1000pt game against someone who wanted to run Imperial Agents and if they wanted to bring over the basic unit from the relevant ordo i'd be down with that too - though yeah, multiple Inquisitor profiles would be great (proxying using the named character rules is a bit hard due to eagles/wyvach things) - hopefully the retinue will make it over from Ashes of Faith though at least. Will be a bit annoying if they don't have an army/detachment rule though. 

 

Us narrative/off the book players are just going to have a bit more conversation before hand maybe about what is and isn't okay (if you are playing 1500 pts of an Imperium Army,  how many Imperial Agents characters and units can be taken for instance). 

Edited June 1, 2023 by Frogian

[Nova-V]

On 6/1/2023 at 2:17 AM, ThePenitentOne said:

 

The issue is that they were so close to being playable.

 

This was the what killed the article for me. 

 

I'd never considered an Inq/Agents army but throughout 9th through picking up KT boxes and some of the special models (like Erasmus) I realised I'd kind of walked into an AoI army.  As a Guard player I had Ocatarius 1 so could start playing about with the faction in a limited way.  Then they bought out that PDF minidex which was a bit of a mess but at least showed an attempt to get the faction up and running.  Finally boarding patrol rules and even a BP box (which even a full faction like Guard didn't get) were released which allowed the faction to be fully playable in that format.  Once the AoI cards were shown to be coming at WarhammerFest along with everyone else and not just an afterthought it really felt like it was going to be a full faction in 10th.

 

The disappointment that they are being relegated back to add ons to other armies was a blow.

 

It also doesn't help that Ashes of Faith really nicely shows how to organise it.  A core of Agents models backed up by some of the more lore appropriate squads (Scions and Sisters I thought were a great choice).  Add in any Imperial transport and you have a viable army that looks like it has been assembled over time by an eccentric Inq or RT.  As I tend to play smaller games only adding 1 character and 1 squad to an army is not really going to it feel like I'm playing with AoI at all.

[Doghouse]

I'm hoping I can take these guys using Inquisitorial Stormtroopers alongside a main space marine force of Terminators and a Knight Titan to allow me to create a characterful crusading army or a Rogue Trader entourage.

[TheMawr]

As i said somewhere else.. remember that indices likely are based on the status quo as it was. So even though they have been expanding the imperial agents, And there is more and more potential for a dedicated codex, it wasnt likely to happen with the index yet.

Just a subjective take on it ofcourse.

[casb1965]

On 5/31/2023 at 5:59 PM, jaxom said:

Maybe. The army process includes a step where you have to pick a detachment. If AoI doesn’t have an detachment, and it’s mandatory, then no  AoI army.

By that reckoning a SM army can only be a Gladius detachment as that is the only detachment in the datasets.

But the wording for that detachment starts with "If you..." (same as GK detachment in their datasheets) so it could be assumed you can bypass the choose a detachment otherwise you're locked in to that option.

[Lord_Ikka]

17 hours ago, casb1965 said:

By that reckoning a SM army can only be a Gladius detachment as that is the only detachment in the datasets.

But the wording for that detachment starts with "If you..." (same as GK detachment in their datasheets) so it could be assumed you can bypass the choose a detachment otherwise you're locked in to that option.

The wording for detachments is all the same "If your Army Faction is X, you can use this Y Detachment rule." There is no "locked option", unless you count the fact that as of yet only SM actually have alternative Detachments to use due to BA/DA/DW/SW/BT having their "own" Detachments (though these are actually open to all Adeptus Astartes Army Factions to use). There is no way to bypass selecting a Detachment, just like selecting an Army Faction, selecting a Detachment is just part of the process and is not avoidable.

[casb1965]

@Lord_Ikka

If that is the case and you have to choose a detachment then the GK who only have 1 detachment listed are forced to use that one, so why do the rules for it say "if you" when there is no "if", the detachments are either not compulsory and allow for the "not if" situation or are compulsory therefore negating the need for the word "if".

And those armies with no detachments,  such as Imperial Agents, would not be able to field an army at all.

It makes no sense that detachments are compulsory unless there is something still to come with alternative generic detachments to choose from.

[Lord_Ikka]

19 minutes ago, casb1965 said:

@Lord_Ikka

If that is the case and you have to choose a detachment then the GK who only have 1 detachment listed are forced to use that one, so why do the rules for it say "if you" when there is no "if", the detachments are either not compulsory and allow for the "not if" situation or are compulsory therefore negating the need for the word "if".

And those armies with no detachments,  such as Imperial Agents, would not be able to field an army at all.

It makes no sense that detachments are compulsory unless there is something still to come with alternative generic detachments to choose from.

There will be alternative detachments, in the upcoming codices- the indexes are simply there to allow players to use their armies now rather than not being able to play at all due to 9th edition codices being incompatible with 10th edition rules. Unlike the transition from 8th ed to 9th ed, when armies were able to use their 8th edition codices when playing 9th edition because 9th was just a refining of 8th ed rules/gameplay, 10th edition is a full reset of the game with new stats (like OC) and different gameplay functions (like not having a Psychic Phase or the new Battle-shock rules). These are not the final faction rules for 10th ed- there will be individual codices that increase each faction's number of Detachments and GW has stated that those Detachments will be what gives some of the former sub-faction flavors (like Word Bearer's being good at using daemonic allies) to 10th edition. 

 

GK detachment rules, just like every other detachment, does not say "If you...", it states "If your Army Faction is Grey Knights, you can use this Teleport Strike Force Detachment rule." The "can" indicates that there will be further options for them, and that is the important part in this situation, not the "If". The "If" only signifies that your Army Faction has to be Grey Knights to use the Teleport Strike Force Detachment, not that you are able to disregard Detachment choice altogether. Yes, right now GK are locked into their single Teleport Strike Force Detachment, but that is because their codex has not come out.

 

The only "army" without a viable Detachment, thus unable to muster a 10th edition army, is Agents of the Imperium. However, the Assigned Agents rule allows you to use AoI units as long as every model in your army has the Imperium keyword. You can only have a certain number of AoI units, as noted in the Assigned Agents rule, but you cannot have a full AoI army.

Edited June 17, 2023 by Lord_Ikka