Editing Warhammer 40,000/8th Edition Tactics/Imperium (section)

=====Elites=====
*'''[[Callidus Assassin]]:''' The Callidus continues to be the odd model of the assassins. She is less of a murder machine (though she is still damn good at it) and more of a tactical threat - if at least one is in your army, any CP your opponent spends on Stratagems (which is all of them) during the first round lets you roll a die; on a 4+, the Stratagem costs 1 more CP to use, and if your opponent can't or won't spend it, the Strat fizzles with the CP already spent lost. Polymorphine improves her Deep Strike so that instead of the standard >9" distance, she rolls 1d6+3" when she Deep Strikes to determine her distance.  Worst case, this is of no benefit at all, but on average, it gets you about 2.5" closer; on anything but a 6, you'll show up close enough to shoot your Neural Shredder, and the net probability of pulling off a Deep Strike charge is 62.50%, which isn't bad, although it's not as good as the Eversor's 74.07%. Sadly, her shredder is garbage, and so is her melee; Usually she'd attack five times at S4 AP-3 D2 that ignores invulnerable saves, and an additional S4 AP-1 D1 attack that wounds non-{{W40kKeyword|vehicles}} on 3+ and {{W40kKeyword|vehicles}} on 6+. You can swap any number of the five attacks for any number of the poisoned attacks of course. She can also shoot and charge after Falling Back.  Take one of her for her ''excellent'' CP fuckery, and use her to harass the enemy backline, not to actually assassinate anything.
**Neural Shredder's profile:  9" Assault 1 SX APX DX: on a hit, instead of rolling to wound, roll 3d6 vs. target's Leadership; on a tie or better, it deals 1d3 mortal wounds.
*** The average of 3d6 is 10.5, which is a bit misleading, because you don't deal more mortal wounds for beating the target's leadership by more.  On the other hand, mortal wounds spill over, so there's no need to use her for assassinating a single target - against single wound units, she'll simply murder 1d3 targets, and she's a ''lot'' better against low Ld targets.  Expected mortal wounds, after accounting for her BS of 2+ (the lower number is for shooting when she drops, since you have a 5/6 chance of being in range to shoot):
****'''3: ''' 1.66/1.38
****'''4: ''' 1.64/1.36
****'''5: ''' 1.59/1.32
****'''6: ''' 1.51/1.26
****'''7: ''' 1.40/1.16
****'''8: ''' 1.23/1.03
****'''9: ''' 1.04/0.87
****'''10: ''' 0.83/0.69
***The net result between her shredder and her melee is that if you want her assassination drop to be productive, it is ''absolutely critical'' you deep strike her close to the target, both so her shredder can contribute and, more importantly, so you have a realistic chance of making the charge.  It is worth spending the CP to re-roll her distance, accordingly, if she has a promising target - for example, assuming she is close enough to shoot and then makes the charge, the net result of her shooting and melee on an Ld9 T4 2+/3++ target with enough wounds to absorb all of her output is 4.38 wounds, on average - and she'll do even better against lower leadership, toughness, and/or armor.  She will straight up murder a company commander, for example - but only if she's close enough, and most of her output is from melee.
** Also note that while the recent changes to arriving from reserves prevent you from making full use of Polymorphine on the first turn, her Reign of Confusion ability works just fine because the rules don't say the model has to be on the table for it to work. 
** She is most useful against Alpha Strike armies; the possible CP drain can prevent an Alpha Strike list from doing everything they would have wanted to do, either forcing them to wait a turn to attempt to mow your forces down, or if the army is small enough, prevent them from using any of their big stratagems at all.
** Despite remaining the same in the White Dwarf codex as in the original index, she's now up from 85 (as of Chapter Approved 2019) to 95 points in order to bring her in line with the other Assassins. Her phase blade now has Damage 2 and she can fall back, shoot, AND charge in the same turn. All this combined allows her to threaten even the infamous Custard shield captain on Dawneagle jetbike (statistically if she shoots and melees the guy, ignoring the odds of making the charge, she'll deal 3.27 wounds a pop; even if he falls back and you have to charge him again, he can't make you need to roll more than a 6 to make the charge, so it makes no significant difference - on average you will need more than 2 turns but fewer than 3 to murder him).
*'''[[Culexus Assassin]]:'''. The anti-psyker assassin, now with a few more nasty tricks, and broadly speaking, the best and most useful Assassin.  His Abomination rule makes him completely immune to being targeted or affected by psychic powers, friendly or enemy, but he subtracts 2 from only ''enemy'' (March index seems to be "fixing" this issue. From now on all {{W40kKeyword|psykers}} will be affected. ) {{W40kKeyword|psykers}} Psychic and Deny the Witch tests within 18".  Furthermore, Etherium means any enemy model attacking him resolves at WS and BS6+ - not a penalty to hit, he just forces their characteristic to a specific value, making him far and away the hardest of the four assassins to kill, and very good at surviving just about anything that isn't piling on flamers until his invuln save gives out on him.  He has an Animus Speculum, which is 18" Assault 1d3 S5 AP-4 D1, increasing to 1d6 if there are any enemy {{W40kKeyword|psykers}} within 18", meaning he's better off showing up near them and leaving them alive to buff him, and a Psyk-out Grenade, which is 6" Grenade 1d3 S2 AP0 D1, inflicting a mortal wound instead of 1 damage on each hit roll of 6+; he can fire both of them in the same Shooting phase (but ''not'' on Overwatch), provided he didn't Advance, and both of them can target {{W40kKeyword|psyker characters}}, even if they're not the closest.  He only has a stock melee weapon, but it completely ignores all armour saves.  
**Not only can he pop up near enemy psykers to debuff them, he always pops up close enough to shoot his speculum, and he's just ''incredibly'' difficult to kill without specific tools - utterly immune to Psychic phase attacks, of course, and only auto-hit Shooting attacks can hit him reliably, none of which in the game ignore his invuln, and there aren't any auto-hit melee attacks, although there ''are'' ways to bypass his defences; for example, Kharn the Betrayer will ruing your day every time, the Imperial Guard stratagem Crush Them! will let a Baneblade hit him on 2+ in melee, since the strat ignores the vehicle's WS, and anything that deals mortal wounds without being psychic or dealing with accuracy will ruin his day eventually, like Nurgle's Gift from the Death Guard. Don't blindly trust him to survive everything - use him intelligently, and he'll make a stunningly effective tank for the rest of your army.
**Remember, he won't shut down psychic buffs, just make them harder to cast in the first place, so a psyker-heavy enemy force will still usually have some tools to fight him, and Abomination's debuff won't stack with itself.  To give you some perspective, Magnus fighting his "weight" in Culexi (about 4.88) of them, having brought Warptime, Weaver of Fates, and Prescience, even with the Culexi debuffing him and shutting down his Smite, will kill the Culexi faster than they can kill him, statistically.  There are two reasons he wins: first, that the Culexus debuff doesn't stack with itself, and second, that they can't actually Deny the Witch, only debuff casting.  They're great, but they won't win battles by themselves.
*'''[[Eversor Assassin]]:''' Smashing through walls and punching dudes like a boss. His stats give him the usual assassin line, but with six wounds and attacks apiece. His executioner pistol is 12" Pistol 4 S4 AP-1 D1 and re-rolls failed wounds against {{W40kKeyword|INFANTRY}}; he also has a melta bomb, which is 4" Grenade 1 S8 AP-4 D1d6 and re-rolls failed wounds against {{W40kKeyword|vehicles}}. As of White Dwarf, his new Sentinel Array ability allows him to make a shooting attack against each unit that Falls Back while within 1" of him as if it was the Shooting phase, which is pretty neat as it can allow you to force a unit to either fall back and be shot, or give up  their own shooting unless they have the {{W40kKeyword|fly}} keyword, also allowing your Eversor a screen against other enemy shooting.  What he's really good at is charging; he charges 3d6", not 2d6" (note, however, that he can still only declare a charge from 12" away; the extra dice is essentially insurance to help you to get into combat), and gains +2A on the charge (to a total of 8), giving him a 74% chance of pulling off a Deep Strike charge.  Once he's in melee, he has a regular power sword, and a neuro-gauntlet, resolving at S5 AP-1, re-rolling all wounds, which is actually better against e.g. MEQs.  When he dies, each ''enemy'' (how they turned off friendly fire on his bomb is a mystery; presumably friendlies know to stay away and the Eversor launches himself into his enemies before detonating) unit he's in melee with takes 1d3 mortal wounds on a 4+ on 1d6, i.e. on average 1 mortal wound.  Since he can't Deep Strike melta bomb, and his pistol isn't remotely worth his points, he's actually best when you can buff his charge range even further; for example, Guilliman's aura raises his odds of a successful Deep Strike charge to 83.8%.  As codices drop, keep an eye out for other sources of charge buffing for him. White Dwarf gave this guy a new absolutely devastating ability that allows him to make an additional attack for each model killed in melee, with these extra attacks unable to generate any further ones, and in addition can consolidate 6" instead of the usual 3". That's potentially 16 attacks, presuming you charged and kill your first 8 targets; against horde army units, this is very possible, and also damned awesome. On average against GEQ, your first set of attacks will cause approximately 5 unsaved wounds. These extra 5 attacks will then cause another 3 unsaved wounds, making 8 in total. That's an automatic Morale wipe on a 10 man Leadership 7 Infantry squad. In case you were fighting something with double the amount of models, use the Stimm Overload stratagem to repeat.
*'''[[Vindicare Assassin]]:''' Everyone's favourite sniper is back, and as punishing as he always is. His trademark Exitus rifle is a phenomenal 72" Heavy 1 S5 AP-3 D1d3 that ignores invuln saves and always wounds {{W40kKeyword|INFANTRY}} on a 2+, and increases to D1d6 on a 6+ to wound, while his pistol is 12" Pistol 1 S4, with the same rules, and his Blind grenade is 12" Grenade 1d6, but you don't roll anything past the rolls for volume and hitting - if at least one hit gets through, the hit unit subtracts 1 from all hit rolls until the end of the turn, making the grenade usually your best bet in Overwatch, especially given how far you can throw it.  All three guns have the Sniper rule (able to hit {{W40kKeyword|CHARACTER}}s even when not closest) and ignore Cover bonuses to saves during the Shooting phase only, plus the Vindicare always hits on a 2+ if he remained stationary (but not in Overwatch).  He inflicts a -1 to hit against anyone trying to hit him with ranged weapons, increasing to -2 while in cover. He competes with the Tau for having sniper rifles that don't deal mortal wounds, but his rifle actually does a better job than most sniper rifles of acting like a sniper rifle; while he's not competent enough to probably kill his target, dealing 1.6 wounds, on average, to a Sv4+/X++ {{W40kKeyword|INFANTRY character}} in cover, he still does more than he would with most other sniper rifles in the game. As of White Dwarf, he received his chance to deal mortal wounds through his Headshot ability: after dealing damage to a model with a ranged weapon, roll a D6; on a 3+ that's one mortal wound, and, if successful, you can roll again, dealing another mortal wound on a 4+ this time, and on another success again on a 5+ and on another success a 6+, assuming you haven't already killed the target.  The net result is an additional 1.13 mortal wounds to the target (which can't spill over, since you only deal them if the target lives to suffer them). Note that you cannot use this with the Turbo-Penetrator-Rounds stratagem. You'll need to field him in incredible numbers to reliably bring a target down - 3 of them to delete an AM Company Commander, assuming he hasn't got an Ogryn Bodyguard, for example - so he's actually at his scariest when using his Blind Grenade on Deep Strike turn (he can throw it farther than his minimum Deep Strike distance), which has a roughly 96.67% chance of inflicting its debuff, prior to charging something else to wreck face in melee. Bringing 3 of them is advisable, especially if you don't want to use vital CPs to take 1.
**He can, however, do wonders against 3 wound characters, likely killing any he wounds. His problem is, like many 1 shot weapons, every miss is felt.
**Due to the new Headshot ability, two of them should now be sufficient to kill an AM Company Commander.  However, most of his output still comes his non-mortal wounds, for which he is heavily reliant on an {{W40kKeyword|INFANTRY}} target.  He's quite bad, for example, at murdering a Jackal Alphus off her bike.


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