Agent of the Imperium

Product Information

Two final things on the list of stuff that will definitely get taken – the Banner of Macharius Triumphant still lets an Imperialis Knight gain ObSec, and replaces the counting as ten models (which all big Knights have anyway) with an extra honour point (and losing one if you die, and the Mentor’s Seal, a boost to Preceptors giving them +1 to successfully use their Teachings and allowing them to know once more. Not much to say about these, but they’ll definitely get taken a lot. These changes also update the Agents of the Imperium ability to include the new Arks of Omen and Boarding Patrol Detachments , allowing If your army is Battle-forged, you can include one AGENT OF THE IMPERIUM unit in each IMPERIUM (excluding FALLEN units) Patrol, Boarding Patrol, Battalion, Brigade and Arks of Omen Detachment in your army without those units taking up Battlefield Role slots in those Detachments. The inclusion of an AGENT OF THE IMPERIUM unit does not prevent other units from their Detachment benefiting from Detachment abilities (e.g. Chapter Tactics), and it does not prevent other units from your army benefiting from abilities that require every model in your army to have that ability (e.g. Combat Doctrines). An AGENT OF THE IMPERIUM unit included in a Patrol, Boarding Patrol, Battalion, Brigade or Arks of Omen Detachment in this manner is ignored for any rules that state all units from that Detachment must have at least one Faction keyword in common (e.g. in a matched play game), and when determining your Army Faction. When you select a PSYKER unit to manifest psychic powers, you select one psychic power that unit knows and attempt to manifest it. With the exception of Smite, you cannot attempt to manifest the same psychic power more than once in the same battle round, even with different PSYKER units. The same PSYKER unit cannot attempt to manifest Smite more than once during the same battle round. ACOLYTE units can only be taken at a unit size of 5 models and are considered to have the Troops Battlefield Role.

Jonathan Bland is a Decider, empowered by the Emperor himself to deal with the inevitable crises of an empire. In the service of the Empire, he has killed more people than anyone in the history of humanity, to save a hundred times as many. He died centuries ago, but they reactivate his recorded personality whenever a new threat appears. When the crisis is over, they expect he will meekly return to oblivion. Points upgrades! Get your points upgrades! Exalted Court provides the Imperial Knights with their option to make their guys that much cooler, representing the senior leadership of your Knight Household. There are five upgrade options each for Questor Imperialis and Questor Mechanicus, and they can be applied to any CHARACTER in a Questoris or Dominus Class Knight. That does make these a bit more narrow than some such systems, as you can only apply them to models that are already your chosen CHARACTER for a Knight Lance or who have been given a Warlord Trait via Knight Baron, but given the flavour it makes sense. You normally cannot upgrade Freeblades, but in a Freeblade Lance they get to bypass that restriction – more on that later. An especially deep set of Crusade Rules, providing rules for noble quests and very granular Battle Traits and Scars that can be applied both to your pilots and the Knights themselves. When the Adeptus Astartes fight, they employ a set of combat doctrines to eliminate the enemy. After pounding the foe with heavy weapons, warriors advance to lay down a hail of bolter fire before charging forth with chainswords roaring to finish the foe.If every unit from your army has the ADEPTUS ASTARTES keyword (excluding AGENT OF THE IMPERIUM and UNALIGNED units), this unit gains a bonus (see below) depending on which Combat Doctrine is active for your army. During the first battle round, the Devastator Doctrine is active for your army. From the second battle round onwards, at the start of the battle round, you can change which Combat Doctrine is active for your army, as follows:Bondsman Abilities: Questoris Knights can now hand out powerful buffs to Armigers, meaning your army is especially deadly when it’s working as a team. If you’re a seasoned tournament player, of course, you might also just switch between both as the fancy takes you – magnetise some chaos stars and imperial eagles and swap the ornamentation as needed event-to-event. Simple. What’s in this Book? The Adeptus Mechanicus are the machinists who keep the Imperial war machine going, and they’re not adverse to a little front-line action themselves. If strange technology, strict Doctrina Imperatives, and the logical certainty of steel is your vibe, Mars has the post-humans for you. You’ve got a lot to work with overall, and while losing all-purpose Advance/Charge is a bit of a blow, there’s plenty of power here for Armigers in particular to make up for it. Warlord Traits Agent of the Imperium wrote: If your army is Battle-forged, you can include one AGENT OF THE IMPERIUM unit in each IMPERIUM (excluding FALLEN units) Patrol, Battalion and Brigade Detachment in your army without those units taking up slots in those Detachments. The inclusion of an AGENT OF THE IMPERIUM unit does not prevent other units from their Detachment benefiting from Detachment abilities (e.g. Chapter Tactics, Defenders of Humanity etc.), and it does not prevent other units from your army benefiting from abilities that require every model in your army to have that ability (e.g. Combat Doctrines). An AGENT OF THE IMPERIUM unit included in a Patrol, Battalion or Brigade Detachment in this manner is ignored for any rules that state all units from that Detachment must have at least one Faction keyword in common (e.g. in a matched play game), and when determining your Army Faction.This means you cannot include more than one Agent of the Imperium unit on a detachment unless those units have a common Faction keyword with the rest of the detachment (with the normal exclusions).

The ability to use any Bondsman ability the Knight has an additional time each turn (via the Exalted Court keyword and ability). The release of 10th Edition brings about a complete rewrite of every faction, and in this article we’ll cover how Imperial Agents work. Unlike regular factions, Imperial Agents are designed to complement IMPERIUM faction armies, adding units that can be integrated into other armies without affecting their faction or detachment rules. This means things will be a bit different from the other faction focus articles. Exaction Squads forgo the invulnerable save for more ranged firepower. They get a bonus to hit one unit each round, and have Feel No Pain 5+ courtesy of a medi-kit. Will Knights overcome the general challenges of running them in 9th? We’ll see – the Secondaries being good helps massively, and Bondsman‘s damage reduction is the real deal. I think this book does a good job overall, and I would definitely encourage anyone who’s disappointed on a first read-through (especially coming straight from Chaos Knights) to give it a second pass and really dig in to how it all comes together Army Lists to incoming damage as long as your army is Honoured or Virtuous. This is just thrown in there as an aside at the end of the general rules for Bondsman Abilities, no big deal or anything, Damage Reduction has never been a superstar ability at all.The Questor Mechanicus curve is a bit flatter than Imperialis, with all of Raven, Taranis and Krast looking pretty interesting, and maybe only House Vulker falling behind.

So where does this all end up? Great, honestly – there’s enough to put this on par with your other army construction options. Your Questor Allegiance equivalent is slightly weaker, and your assembly of Traditions will be a bit less focused than an army built around a Household, but you get the payoff of a more powerful set of Stratagems than any single house and some real flexibility around Relics and Exalted Court options. It definitely feels like it’s worth testing alongside other builds, which suggests a pretty well-pitched power level. The Units Rules AdaptationsIf your Faction is AGENTS OF THE IMPERIUM, then the following rules adaptations apply. Ion Shields is vital for keeping your units in the game in the face of enemy shooting, and Super-Heavy Walker makes it harder for opponents to bog your Knights down with chaff (though do note – most Questoris units got a bit slower in this book, so clearing the opponent’s models can be a challenge). Noble Households A new set of Exalted Court upgrades, letting you grant your mightiest Knights new abilities and enhanced buffs for their Armiger squires. It’s far from the only powerful effect though, and in fact goes great with The Knight’s Faith, which provides a 6+ ignore wounds aura for Armigers, which improves to 5+ when they’re under the effect of a Bondsman effect. Damage Reduction into a 5+ to ignore wounds makes something absolutely nails, and this can allow you to construct very powerful moving castles. The other good aura here is The Virtue of Courage, providing the good clean fun of exploding 6s to hit – an easy thing to throw up if you have no other major plans.Player also have the option to use an unnamed Inquisitor which gives the unit its leading Feel No Pain 5+ against mortal wounds and gives the player an opportunity to gain some CP when they use a Stratagem on the Inquisitor’s unit. Two of the others here have some niche interest. Paragons of Honour gives all models with the trait a whole extra oath to play with, which gives you both the option of going army-wide wild with all of Defend the Realm, Refuse No Challenge and Lay Low the Tyrants, or being a bit sneaky and using an embedded Freeblade to help generate Honour. Paragons says that the Troth and Pledge of the extra Oath only applies to the model with it, and while it’s frankly a little unclear how you evaluate that for some of them, Protect Those in Need is pretty clean, giving your Freeblade the ability to Heroic and some Honour for your army when they do, without the risk of the opponent triggering the troth by baiting units that don’t want a fight. Each squad’s Proctor can also use their voice as a weapon to cow the feeble-minded, amplified through the regal nuncio aquila that floats beside them. Enemies who fall victim to the lawbringer’s booming sanctions will find their aim unsteady, intimidated as they are by the righteousness of the Adeptus Arbites.