Ordo Xenos, Alien Hunters: The 11th-Edition Imperial Agents Deathwatch Detachment

At the start of your Command phase you can select one of three Mission Tactics. It is active until the start of your next Command phase and applies to all DEATHWATCH units from your army. Each Mission Tactic can only be selected once per battle.

• Furor Tactics. Weapons equipped by Deathwatch units from your army have [SUSTAINED HITS 1]. The horde answer.
• Malleus Tactics. Those weapons have [LETHAL HITS]. The tough-target answer.
• Purgatus Tactics. Each time a Deathwatch model attacks, on a Critical Wound that attack has [PRECISION]. The character answer.

The once-per-battle clause is the entire design. Across five battle rounds you have three activations of the detachment rule and two turns with nothing. That converts a passive buff into a planning exercise, and the planning is worth doing before the game rather than during it.

A rough guide to sequencing. Furor Tactics is worth most on the turn you expect to be shooting into massed cheap infantry, which for most missions is turns two or three. Malleus Tactics belongs on the turn you commit to killing a specific hard target. Purgatus Tactics is the narrowest of the three, because it only pays out on Critical Wounds, so it wants a turn with a lot of attacks going into a unit holding a character worth sniping.

Now the gate that catches people. The rule applies to DEATHWATCH units, not to every Ordo Xenos model. That is not a distinction without a difference, as the new datasheet section below shows.

The Faction Pack's newest character is Inquisitor Kroyle, printed in full on pages 4 and 5. He carries the ORDO XENOS keyword. The obvious conclusion is that he belongs in the Ordo Xenos detachment.

He does not benefit from it at all.

His full keyword line is Mounted, Character, Epic Hero, Imperium, Grenades, Ordo Xenos, Inquisitor, Kroyle. DEATHWATCH is not among them, and Deathwatch Mission Tactics applies to Deathwatch units. All three tactics do nothing for him.

Where he does benefit is the two detachments whose rules name INQUISITOR models: Ordo Malleus, Daemon Hunters, whose rule gives Inquisitor models a Hit roll of 1 re-roll and a Wound roll of 1 re-roll against Daemons, and Ordo Hereticus, Purgation Force, whose rule gives Inquisitor models [IGNORES COVER] on their ranged weapons.

That second one is worth pausing on. Kroyle's Jindarii tox-cycler is a 36 inch weapon with [ANTI-MONSTER 2+, HEAVY, PRECISION], and his Tox-cycler ability adds 2 to its Strength and Damage for the rest of the battle once it scores a hit, up to a maximum Damage of 6. A [PRECISION] weapon with [IGNORES COVER] bolted on is a character-killing tool, and it is available in a detachment whose name has nothing to do with his keyword.

The lesson generalises. In this faction, read the detachment rule's keyword gate rather than the detachment's name. Ordo Xenos means Deathwatch here; Ordo Malleus and Ordo Hereticus mean Inquisition.

Both amendments are first-party from the pack's Rules Updates section.

Armour of Contempt (1CP, Battle Tactic), Effect section rewritten in full:

Until the attacking unit has finished making its attacks, each time an attack targets your unit, worsen the Armour Penetration characteristic of that attack by 1.

The scope is the thing to notice. It lasts until the attacking unit finishes, not until the end of the phase, so a second enemy unit shooting the same target gets nothing. The pack applied this same standardised wording across several factions in this pass, including this faction's own Truesilver Armour on the Daemon Hunters card.

Rapid Tactical Relocation (1CP, Strategic Ploy), Effect section changed from 9 inches to 8 inches. One inch, and it is one of several 9-to-8 reaction tightenings the pack applied this version. If you learned the card at 9 you are now consistently a step out of position.

The other four are mirror-sourced: Adaptive Tactics (Strategic Ploy, 1CP), and three special ammunition cards, Dragonfire Rounds, Hellfire Rounds and Kraken Rounds (all Wargear, 1CP). Three ammunition stratagems on one card is the largest wargear cluster in the faction, which is very much in the Deathwatch tradition, but the pack does not print them and we are not reproducing wording we cannot check. Read them in the Warhammer 40,000 app.

All four are mirror-sourced.

Beacon Angelis (30 points). WATCH MASTER model only. Models in the bearer's unit have Deep Strike, and you can target the bearer's unit with the Rapid Ingress stratagem for 0 Command Points. The most expensive enhancement in the faction.

Amulet of Auto-chastisement (25 points). WATCH MASTER model only. At the start of your opponent's Shooting phase, select one enemy VEHICLE unit and apply a disruption effect to it.

Two Watch Master enhancements on one card, and one model cannot carry both. If you want both effects you need two Watch Masters, which is a real list-building constraint and one worth checking before you plan around either. We track no Watch Master product under this faction, so that unit renders without a link on this page.

Blackweave Shroud (15 points). AGENTS OF THE IMPERIUM model only. The bearer has Feel No Pain 4+. The only enhancement on this card with no datasheet restriction beyond the faction keyword, which makes it the default for a list without a Watch Master.

Universal Anathema (10 points). Agents of the Imperium model only. Melee weapons equipped by the bearer gain [ANTI-INFANTRY 2+] and [ANTI-MONSTER 4+]. Ten points for two anti-keywords on one model is the best raw rate on the card.

Enhancement points are dataslate-volatile and none of the four carries a change marker in this pass.

Plus [Veiled Blade Elimination Force](/40k/armies/imperial-agents/detachments/veiled-blade-elimination-force) (1 DP, total 3). Exactly a Strike Force budget, and the only detachment this one can pair with, because every other Imperial Agents detachment also costs 2 Detachment Points and 2 plus 2 is 4. That is arithmetic rather than a recommendation.

It happens to be a good fit anyway. Deathwatch Mission Tactics reaches only DEATHWATCH units, so an assassin brings a damage profile the detachment rule cannot touch, and Prime Target's Warlord clause covers the enemy character a Deathwatch firing line is worst placed to reach.

No Unique Tags are involved. This faction has none.

The buying warning, and it is a big one. A disproportionate share of this faction's eighteen Legends datasheets are Deathwatch: the Deathwatch Terminator Squad, the Veteran Bike Squad, Kill Team Cassius, the Deathwatch Armoury, and the Fortis, Indomitor, Proteus and Spectrus Kill Teams. That is eight of the eighteen, and several of them are exactly what a new Deathwatch collector would buy first.

What is not Legends is the Deathwatch Kill Team datasheet, Watch Captain Artemis, the Watch Master, the Corvus Blackstar and the pack's new Aquila Kill Team. We track Watch Captain Artemis under this faction, and he is the cheapest way to get a Deathwatch character on the table. Check the full list on the army guide before your next purchase.