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Joined: Wed Jul 06, 2005 7:20 pm
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Location: Norfolk VA USA
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(Hena @ Apr. 13 2008,01:08)
QUOTE Doesn't this "leading front and dying" apply to any other important character (such as Supreme Commanders). Why should the Inquisitor be any different. Because, as I've said before, it is an Inquisition list. They are the cornerstone of the list. They are vital part, particularly of the "Inquisitor" formation. The rest of the formation is a retinue to that one individual. An Imperial Guard company that loses it's captain is still a Guard company. An Inquisitor's retinue that loses it's Inquisitor is suddenly a rag-tag band of wierdos.
It also serves to highlight their importance. Imperial Guard commanders are two-a-penny but this is an imperial inquisitor...
Why sniper? If you can pick the target unit already, only bonus you still get is -1 to save. Why BMs is better than hits, is that against unbroken formation, you cannot then remove units. Perhaps d3 BM?
Because I wanted something that would bypass reinforced armour too - assassins tend to have fancy gear that allows them to bypass shields and heavy armour.
A flat MW3+ and D3 BM doesn't strike me as worth the points. Would you bother with it? When you could take a spacecraft?
On the other hand, it is undenyably less unbalancing.
How about this:
MW2+ (Invulnerable saves may not be taken)
D3 additional BM on the formation.
Maybe... 100 to 150 points for that?
But BM is pretty powerful against certain formations. Let's say you have a formation of Terminators and their commander gets assassinated. There are 3 stands and they have so far (including the assassination) taken 3 BM. Would you rather 3 hits or 3 BM?
Sure they do fight alone. However Epic scale means too big a battle that they wouldn't want to waste too many of their own troops. Inquisition doesn't (most likely) have too many of the troops as they are supposed to be elite.
I really need to make an FAQ for this, I don't know how many times I've answered this. 
Yes, the Inquisition can and does deploy Epic-scale forces all of their own. Not always, not even often. But they do. You might think that 5 formations of Grey Knight Terminators hitting the battlefield at once seems unbelievable? But it's happened, and on Armageddon too. The purging of the Relictors is another example of a pure-Inquisitorial strike force.
The list needs to have the option for Imperial allies. But no requirement. If you want to make a pure Grey Knight army, the option is there.
However, I'd prefer this list to have ... less units available, and be less restricted in what allies you can take.
Fact is, it has nigh-every Imperial unit available, for no drawback.
You want less choice but less restrictions?
Once again - I'm not trying to be onerous here, just explain the structure of the list - that was exactly the point.
What I wanted was the feeling that you have unlimited access! Big throaty Inquisitorial chuckle. So indeed, you have access to a large variety of units. Note that these are reasonably limited.
But the catch is (of course) that you can only have one. So if you take Imperial Guard allies, you cannot have any Titans or Air Support. And you're limited to 1/3 of your army this way.
If you think it can be abused, then show me. Make an army list and break it as much as possible. There are a few combos I'm a little concerned about - massed aircraft with gun-cutters, massed artillery with a Black Citadel or Drop Fortress.
But for the most part these don't seem to be any more problematic than any other list. You can make a fearsome air-assault with Space Marines, and an artillery monster using Imperial Guard with Titan support.
I think allowing more "cherry picking" (as in the Admiral's list) is wrong on several levels. Firstly, it feels wrong from a background standpoint. Yes, an Inquisitor can theoretically take multiple arms of the Imperium's forces under control. How many examples can you think of this actually happening? Kryptmann overseeing joint Guard and Ultramarines (and Deathwatch) against the Tyranids. That's about it off the top of my head. Most of the time, there are an Inquisitor's personal troops (or Stormtroopers), Chamber Militant forces and ... usually Navy or Guard forces.
Secondly, it is very hard to balance. You've got to account for every combination. Whereas the way I've got it, it's comparatively simple: Universals+Grey Knights+Allies. Yes, there are a lot of different ally options, but most of the time we're talking about Titans & Aircraft (which is more restrictive than just about any other list) or Guard support units (which I've not found anything particularly abusive in allowing them to ally).
*sighs* I don't know what to do about the assassins, I really don't... My reason for having them as a stand was I assumed in Epic scale an Inquisitor would have access to more than one. Just as in 40k apocalypse there is an assassin formation of around 5 assassins. (Sort of a stands worth really.) Which works fine in prinicpal, but people seem to dislike the idea of it functioning as a unit by itself. And it seems wrong to have it attached to another formation, given how there supposed to work alone... Perhaps there's an alternate soultion to random blast markers, or a stand we're missing somewhere?
I think that deploying them as a stand is very much a mistake. They simply don't operate as units, even if there are more than one of them.
Other options are applying them as a character upgrade or perhaps simply an oddboy-like one-shot weapon.
However, I like my system in theory, if the practicality of it is somewhat difficult. Basically, at some point, out jumps the assassin and pokes your commander inna eye! Then, sucessful or not, the assassin plays no further part (its mission complete, it will likely leave the battlefield).
Renforced armour represents Not only the lord in artificer armour, but his successors in such armour, the medic, and the dispencible minions he uses as a shield.
Yeah, that still doesn't sit well with me. You want to play a game of Inquisitor and we'll see whether your warband can stand up to 5 astartes in terminator plate? Never mind 5 terminators, think your average warband can compare to a tactical stand?
I think 4+ is absolutely the highest armour we can justify. Even with an Inquisitor in Terminator armour and 4 acolytes in power armour, that's still not going to be worth more than 4+
Now medics - that is represented in my rules by the re-roll afforded by support staff.
A basic 4+ just isn't that survivable. Unless you have the last man standing rule, but then he becomes a little silly in really large formations...
Not really. Inquistorial formations don't survive at that size that long. The support staff get slaughtered pretty quick.
The break my spirit goal condition was just a thought, if you don't think it'll work, I'm not sure I have more to say really.
It's a good idea! I like it in principle. I just don't think it will work for tournament games.
As for staff, I think your confusing -employees- and or -minons- with -personal staff- An Inquisitors still a human. He can only deal with so many people as his direct retinue. Sure he has thousands of people working for him across the galaxy. But the chances of any serious number of those being in a given area at any one time is unlikely in the extreme. (Have you read the series of dark Hersey roleplaying books? There isn't a much better source of concentrated Inquisitoral fluff)
Dark Heresy and Inquisitor necessarily deal with covert Inquisitors and ones with managable numbers of personal staff. Even 40K needs to limit things to squad sizes. The Black Library novels tend to also deal with comparatively small warbands - for similar reasons, a novel needs a managable number of supporting characters. That said, there are plenty of references to larger formations. Eisenhorn had at his hight hundreds of personal staff. Torquemada Corteaz I think has more, I'll reference that when I get home.
The Valkyrie thing just seemed silly to me. But I will happily ceed the fact it isn't particularly game breaking. (Unless you shield the valkyries with rhinos which seems really odd.) Nor can I see it being used much.
Exactly - it would be yet another caveat in an already-complicated list.
However on consultation of my deamonhunters codex, you apprently don't need an Inquisitor to field Inquisitoral stormtroops, so it's reasonable propostion to allow the same extentsion in epic. In conculsion, it's nothing something I would ever do, but I don't think it's that broken from a game playing perspective and it seems to be ok fluff wise.
I've done it in small games (~1000 points) where I needed some "filler" units to bulk out the list and I want to keep the army list simple. But I don't do it often.
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