Detachment Focus – Imperialis Fleet

In this series of articles we take a deep dive into a specific detachment for a faction, covering the faction’s rules and upgrades and talking about how to build around that faction for competitive play. In this article, we’re covering the Imperialis Fleet Detachment for the Imperial Agents.

Thanks to Games Workshop for providing us with a review copy of the Imperial Agents Codex.

Detachment Overview

The Imperialis Fleet is easily the most promising detachment in the Imperial Agents Codex for one simple reason – it has something for everything in the book, rather than being restricted to a subset of the units. There are some tools in the detachment that are restricted to the VOIDFARERS of the Imperialis Fleet, but has a flexible and fairly potent Detachment Rule that works with any Imperial Agents, and some great Stratagem and Enhancement combos with Deathwatch stuff to boot. It seems very likely that if there’s a real tournament list in this book, Imperialis Fleet is where it lives, so let’s dig in to find out why.

Detachment Rule: At All Costs

This detachment rule represents the Imperial Agents’ dedication to achieving their highest priority goals in style, and provides a choice between two flexible, powerful effects.

In your Command Phase, you can either:

• Select one enemy unit, and give all your Imperial Agents units +1 to hit against it till your next Command Phase.
• Select one objective marker, and give all your Imperial Agents units that are in range of it a 5+ Invulnerable Save, +1OC and +1Ld till your next Command Phase.

Both of these are pretty strong effects. There is not much in this book that hits on a 2+, so almost everything can benefit from the offensive boost, and it works especially well with Deathwatch Kill Teams, as they have built in re-roll 1s to hit against all enemies. It’s not as splashy as some similar effects like Oath of Moment, but when you need something dead, it’s fine to have.

The second effect is very strong, and substantially improves your Primary play, crucial for an army that’s going to lean heavily on this. Just the “obvious” way this plays is pretty good, letting you shore up your defences on an objective you’re going to make a play for, but the fact that you can choose whether and where to activate this in your Command Phase makes it even better – you have perfect information as to whether giving +1OC to the models you have on an objective will flip it to your control, and in combination with the multiple effects in the book that respawn models you get a lot of agency to swipe victory points from under your opponent’s nose.

Enhancements

The Enhancements here range from good to great, and all are priced attractively, giving you quite a few neat tricks to unleash upon the foe.

• Digital Weapons (10pts): This is a cool melee buff for any Imperial Agents model (and especially tasty on a Deathwatch Watch Master). Each time the bearer Fights, you can roll 3d6, and inflict a Mortal Wound with Precision for each 4+. This provides both extra chip damage and will very occasionally give you a huge blowout against a weak or injured Character.
• Clandestine Operation (15pts): Available to any Imperial Agents Character, with this you get to pick three Imperial Agents Infantry units (excluding Grey Knight Terminators) to gain Infiltrators at the start of the Declare Battle Formations step. It’s worth noting that the timing means you will have to use two picks to Infiltrate a unit and the attached Character (as the selection is prior to attachments), but that fully doesn’t matter – I expect any list from this detachment to apply this to a Deathwatch squad with a Character plus some cheap chaff to screen another part of the board. This existing in the same detachment as Displacer Field pushes it to an auto-take, because it allows you to be super aggressive with Infiltrating an alpha threat with far lower risk than normal.
• Fleetmaster (20 points): This is for a VOIDFARERS model only, so either a Rogue Trader or a Navigator, and lets you use either Violent Acquisition, Masters of the Void or Close-quarters Barrage on the bearer’s unit for free once per battle round. This lives or dies on whether there’s a unit combo this makes good enough, and the answer is that a Rogue Trader Entourage with Navy Breachers probably is actually good with this, certainly worth trying.
• Combat Landers (10 points): Good clean fun, this lets you give three VOIDFARERS units Deep Strike. Just having three Voidsmen units with Deep Strike is just generically good utility, and this is so cheap that you probably end up taking it pretty often. If you have this, I think it’s also worth considering throwing a lone Navigator into your list – being able to drop them and their 12” Deep Strike bubble where you need it can be pretty powerful against a foe who is leaning on Rapid Ingress to cause mischief.

Stratagems

The Stratagems in this detachment have a much wider power range than the Enhancements, but the good news is that the upper end of that range is “probably one of the top five stratagems in the whole game”, so the fact that there are some that are a bit niche doesn’t sting too much.

• Violent Acquisition (Strategic Ploy, 2 CP): This gives an Agents of the Imperium unit a hefty boost to their output either at range or in combat, giving all their weapons Sustained Hits 1, Lance and Ignore Cover. Obviously only one of the latter two will apply in a given situation, but it’s a strong boost, if expensive. The two main ways to use this are probably in melee with a Watch Master Deathwatch unit (where it drops to only costing 1CP, at which point it’s very potent), or on a Breacher unit using this for free with Fleetmaster while also activating Close-quarters Barrage for maximum carnage.
• Masters of the Void (Epic Deed, 1 CP): This may be the most niche stratagem yet printed in 10th. It targets a Voidfarers Character, and when activated, it allows Agents of the Imperium units arriving from Strategic Reserves to deploy in the opponent’s deployment zone this turn (other restrictions still apply). This is only ever relevant on exactly turn 2 if you need to bring some Reserves on in your opponent’s Deployment Zone and don’t have access to Deep Strike. Given you have a 10pts Enhancement to hand out lots of Deep Strike, do you ever actually need this? It feels like it was written assuming you can never arrive in your Opponent’s DZ normally.
• Close-Quarters Barrage (Battle Tactic, 1 CP): Gives a Voidfarers unit +1S and +1AP when shooting at a target within 12”. Good clean fun, and helps Breachers actually do some damage, especially if you use Fleetmaster to combine it with Violent Acquisition.
• Emperor’s Will (Strategic Ploy, 1 CP): Lets an Agents unit Shoot after Advancing or Falling Back. Perfectly fine to have access to, especially if you’re leaning on the combo above for damage.
• Displacer Field (Wargear, 1 CP): An unbelievably strong anti-Shooting defensive Stratagem. When your opponent targets a non-Assassin Agents of the Imperium Character unit (which includes anything with an attached Leader), you activate this to give them a 4+ Invulnerable Save for the rest of the Phase. When that enemy unit finishes shooting, your unit then gets to make a 6” Normal Move with FLY. Holy moly. Reactive/out-of-phase moves are consistently strong in 10th, but this is up there with the very best of them. Infiltrated a Deathwatch unit 9” away from the enemy’s line, and you didn’t get to go first? They’re behind a wall now. Draxus’ Veiled unit that looked like they were out of position? Ah, sorry, they’re back outside 18”, try again. Sticking a 4+ Invulnerable Save on some of these units would be good by itself so adding on a reliable move that can’t be as easily played around as Movement phase reactions makes this an astounding package. You can even sometimes use it to mess up your opponent’s Charge plans by moving a screen forwards/value target backwards. Exceptional stuff, and a major part of why this detachment is the hot one.
• Selfless Bodyguard (Epic Deed, 1 CP): Some anti-Precision tech to finish – activate this when your opponent targets one of your Attached units, and until the end of the phase any time a Precision attack is allocated to a Character in that unit, move it back to a regular model on 2+. You probably do have a Rogue Trader you want to protect in lists of this detachment, so while niche this will sometimes save you from a tight spot.

Playing This Detachment

This detachment gives you the tools to play a very effective scoring game. The combination of Clandestine Operation and Displacer Field lets you be very aggressive in positioning some early hammers, which will slow down your opponent at the start of the game. Easy access to Deep Strike on cheap chaff gives you plenty of Secondary Potential, and mid-late game use of the Detachment Rule and Displacer Field lets you keep scoring all the way to the end. You also have some capacity to throw big punches – the selfsame Deathwatch unit can do nasty damage, as can a fully stacked Breacher/Rogue Trader squad. Where you might struggle is in killing enemy tanks, and for that reason I think there’s a pretty good case for at least considering Canis Rex in this army – he helps shore that side of things up a lot.

A Sample List

Let’s assume we’re not taking Canis Rex – this is what I ended up with after a bit of tinkering:

The list - Click to expand

The plan here is to take max advantage of the pressure/scoring mix. You’re obviously Infiltrating the big Deathwatch unit with a Watch Master, plus probably one of the two Subductor Squads. Don’t forget that you can also Infiltrate the Breacher/Rogue Trader unit if the situation calls for it or use Navy Breachers to screen out a lot of Infiltration space, then redeploy them with the Trader. Two Voidsmen squads go in Deep Strike, plus the other Breachers with the Navigator, then the last Voidsmen

All that plus the Assassins will force a lot of early caution from the foe, giving you time to get the staging Rhino into position to control the board. Draxus goes with the Exaction Squad to be an annoying mid-field threat thanks to Psychic Veil, and she plus the Entourage squad gradually chip down the foe while you lock in scoring with your Deep Strikers and Detachment Rule.

Final Thoughts

If you’ve read our main review, you’ll know that our conclusion is that this is basically the only Detachment here that has a shot of being competitive. If you have always yearned to build a really weird horde build and dominate scoring, this could be for you!

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