All right.

Hello, everybody.

You're tuning into the TTP field manual.

It's me, Joshy.

I've got Johnny here with me today.

We're going to be talking about the Imperium.

Doesn't that just excite you, Jonny?

Oh, I mean, about as much as I can.

Right.

For someone who's obsessed with chaos.

Yeah.

I'm really just dragging you along at the moment, starting you off with Imperium forces, aren't I?

Did you enjoy Space Marines last week?

I mean, it was interesting.

There was definitely some stuff to learn.

Yeah.

Do you like them a bit more now or are you still about the same level of meh?

There's definitely some more interesting stuff in the faction I was unaware of as a whole, but they're just so basic.

Look, they are.

They're basic.

They're going to be your gateway into the hobby.

They're easy enough to pilot on the tabletop, they're easy enough to buy, easy enough to paint.

But, yeah, for people like you and I who play some other armies, it's a bit.

It's a bit just okay, isn't it?

Yeah, but as I said, there's some cool stuff I can't hate on them too much.

Yeah.

Well, we're going to be talking about more of the Imperium today.

We're going to talk about the remaining eight factions that fall under the umbrella of the Imperium, which, if you don't know, is essentially just humans.

Humans and all of their friends, both the cybernetic and the fleshy.

We are going to be running our Slag analysis, our Slag method, as we are calling it.

Would you like to recap for the audience what the Slag method is, please?

So, Slag stands for style, lore, accessibility, and gameplay.

It just gives us a simple four step method to compare the different armies and how they play and how they look and help you decide where your inspiration and future army may be.

Yeah, absolutely.

We are using each category, a five point measuring system, totaling them at the end.

So from a total of 20, from five points to each category.

Last week we had the Space Marines.

Most of mine were above average.

Where were yours?

Pretty average.

Maybe a little below.

What was your least favorite faction using the Slag?

Oh, that would have had to have been the Blood Angels.

Really?

They were my favorite.

They were my favorite, dude.

They got a 16 score from me.

They received an 8 for me.

An 8.

The only thing close to 8 I had were the Space Wolves, Sad wolf.

Which were out there for me at 16.

I'm going to wolf jail, aren't I?

Yeah, for sure.

Without giving too much away in terms of who got what, how's the rest of the Imperium looking for you, Mr.

Chaos?

Honestly, they're struggling.

They're struggling a lot.

There's just something about being human in a world of sci fi that just doesn't draw my eye up.

Imagine 21st century soldier man.

I can't think of anything worse to be.

They are 21st century esque humans in a world where everything is bigger, more painful, stronger.

And it's really an army that focuses around the audacity and tenacity of the human race and their ability to overcome anything by just having more stuff.

More guns, more bodies, hundreds of guys.

Armored columns of tanks.

These.

This is your faction.

The lore about them can be quite interesting though.

You know, you've got your basic soldiers, you've got your tanks, but the flavors they come in have really had lots of variations over the editions.

The earlier editions of Warhammer 40,000 had a few different factions.

Around the second to fourth edition of the games, you had forces that were more like Arabic Desert Raider.

You had sort of an Eastern European Slavic nobility.

You had Predator one Jungle Fighters.

You know, you had so many of these options in the lore.

Lots of places you could take this faction and that's pretty cool.

But right now it's more just that sort of generic line soldier and tank, isn't it?

What do you think about the lore?

Very much so.

Well, while it can be fun and interesting to see the kind of things that people are writing about these simple humans surviving terrible atrocities, they are kind of just dudes in uniform with tanks.

They have two sort of parts to their army.

There is your infantry and there is your heavy armor support.

So their tanks are actually pretty cool, but they're kind of just tanks.

But for the most part it's just a bunch of cheap linemen with okay guns that get them through very expendable feeling with some neat, interesting stuff to add a bit of flavor.

Like some shock troops and you know, weird people that grew up on planets full of dead deadly stuff.

So only a year or two ago did what are known as the Cadians get a lot of new models.

The line troopers, the tanks, they exist quite sizably at the moment.

You have, you know, gun platforms, tanks, you have like scout walkers, you've got aircraft, you got a couple of smaller additions to the faction from a couple of additions back, such as hulking ogre, like humans.

You've got some sort of shock trooper individuals the side game to 40k kill team has a couple of kits to really sort of flesh out your infantry men, but not so much more than that.

But the gameplay does revolve around those key figures, your sergeants, your leaders giving out orders to the various units and tanks.

So it's a very micromanaging army.

Did you have any insights to how they play on the tabletop?

Anything that really enticed you?

To be honest, not really.

As you said, it is a very micro managey sort of army.

They.

They do have kind of something for every situation, but you have to pick your timing.

But for the most part, it just feels like cannon fodder.

Throwing bodies in front of the enemy while backing them up with some very heavy artillery.

Yeah, absolutely.

In the current version of the game, the Codex for the Imperial Guardsmen has not released for the new edition.

They have one core play style at this point where characters will give out various orders that boost the core statistics of the individual units.

This can really catch unprepared opponents off guard.

If you really know your units and you know what you're playing, you can win just through the sheer overwhelming fire and suppression that the guard has always endured through the setting.

Just sending millions of bodies against the enemy until they're drowned in bodies and gunshots.

Eh?

For style, I gave them a one because once again, they're just.

They're just dudes and tanks.

It doesn't really feel sci fi to me.

It kind of just feels very modern age for law.

I gave them a one.

Okay, again, I.

They're just people.

While it can be super interesting to see how the regular person adapts, I just feel like lore wise.

There's so many other factions and characters in the narrative that are much more interesting to focus on for accessibility.

I also gave them a one because they are a very expensive army to collect.

That is true because the infantry is very cheap on points, so you end up having to spend a lot of money to fill your list unless you focus on tanks.

And whether you focus on infantry or tanks, there's another army that does it better.

They kind of feel very middle of the field.

They do a little bit of this, little bit of that, but nothing stand out.

And then for gameplay, I gave them a two, mostly because I think that there's some argument for running like a heavy tank list with some interesting heavy weapons and just really going ham.

But for the most part it's very boring to me.

I always find it quite interesting when you get good Astra Militarum novel where you have characters really going through them, you know, just the crazy war zones and you get to see the perspective of just generic trooper up against all these horrifying situations.

But I would give it, I would give them higher.

If all these books were of, you know, equivalent writing for accessibility.

I gave them a three.

We just had the Cadian range refresh, so that's quite optimistic.

And it has been confirmed that next year another of the styles of Guard, the Death Korps of Krieg.

So we are getting a lot more models for the faction.

And I understand some people would be very well engaged with this sort of modern playstyle in a sci fi world.

But for us it's just not as interesting as some of the other things you can do.

The few thousand years before the Horus Heresy, mankind was separated from one another by horrifying reality warping storms that covered the whole galaxy.

The various kingdoms, empires, settlements of mankind was cut off from one another.

You had a couple of different sort of flavors of humanity that came out of that that have existed into the 40,000 setting.

And that's going to start us off with the Adeptus Mechanicus.

I want you to explain to us Johnny, the style of the Mechanicus.

See, you're going to make me look like a real bad person here.

You're in a sci fi universe and there's these guys running around who are 21st century soldiers and then there's these wild west steampunk themed weirdos that worship machines running around on mechanical horses and that grew up on Mars.

And that is the Adeptus Mechanicus.

Yeah, the Mechanicus really are the one faction in this setting that does steampunk but also western.

They have these cyborg foot soldiers you mentioned.

They got the robot horses and various other animals, they got eccentric vehicles, but they are really led by these, what they call tech priests.

These people that during this really terrible time before that Horus Heresy turn towards technology as a religion.

And a lot of the lore about them is that they worship technology, right?

They replace parts of themselves like flesh and organs and stuff with cybernetics and you know, prosthetics.

They're really interesting mix mash of themes.

You've got the, the sort of through line religion, you've got the crazy body horror, you've got the cybernetic, you got the western.

But they build everything.

They build everything for the Imperium.

You will see a lot of design overlap between the factions, but the Adeptus Mechanicus really take that and dial it up to like 13 on the weird scale.

Oh yeah.

What else do you have to say about these interesting little fellows, Johnny?

Honestly, I think they have some fairly an interesting spot in the lore.

As you said, they're kind of like the producers of everything mechanical for the entire Imperium.

But for the most part, most of the Imperium also shuns them a little bit.

It's like they keep them at arm's length.

Belisarius Call is a very interesting character, being one of their main epic characters for the range.

He's a bit of a weirdo nutcase that went off the beaten track, even from the Mechanicus perspective.

But personally, I'm not a big fan of the Wild west steampunk crossover, but I can definitely see why some people would really resonate with the imagery.

I love that there's kind of crazy though.

They almost refuse to invent things because out of this weird technological religion, they revere old technology as a divine thing that exists.

And they, you know, can't possibly reach to the heights of the divine and make new stuff.

So they have this very crazy backslide and a lot of their models have this old style.

A lot of their units have an almost Da Vinci esque aspect to it.

You know, you've got the old Da Vinci wings, you've got the sort of the steam bellows, you've got the mechanical exosuits.

The models themselves are actually hard to get into though.

In the hobby, it's the most expensive army at the moment, I'm pretty sure.

To collect the range itself.

Yeah, they have a couple of dozen units overall.

Some are sort of variations of other units though, so it doesn't really feel like a couple of dozen.

They are very expensive to collect, especially when you compare it to the Horus Heresy game, which is a sort of a separate game in of itself, where they have their own range inside that game that really leans into these more robotic automata machine slaves.

And their lore and their gameplay even really reflect this sort of crazy divine arcane science that they have.

But can you tell me about the gameplay that they bring to the current edition of Warhammer 40K?

They are your stereotypical ranged army for the Imperium.

They focus very much on.

On the shooting phase and less so on the fighting phase.

They're.

They seem very glass cannony in a way.

Like you do not want to get these guys into melee, but for the most part it's.

Yeah, it's.

It's kind of just like a bunch of scout guys.

Some strange automata that they've got running around with bigger guns.

And everyone just kind of shoots and flees.

Have you looked into their various detachments since their Codex came out?

No.

Do you want me to give you the quick breakdown?

Go on.

So their basic way of playing, I like to call the war crime.

Oh, no, they're called the Rad Corps, as in Radiation Bombardment Corp.

They start the game by bombarding the entire board with mortal wound bombs.

And it keeps going throughout the whole game.

And so it really forces your opponent to take cover and not come out of their hidey holes while you then place the army in key locations away from that.

You have a few different versions, which either focuses on their cyborg infantry for more of a commando esque playstyle.

You have what's called the Data Sam Conclave, which really focuses around those tech priests utilizing their various auras and buffs to make themselves and their various units stronger.

You have the Explorator Manipul, which is really good at objective controlling and really taking control of the board.

And as well you have the Cohort Cybernetica, which really improves the vehicles that the army has.

Any of those sound interesting to you?

Out of those, probably the Rad Bombing.

Same.

There's something about just making the battlefield significantly more difficult to traverse that appeals to that.

Yeah, it's pretty fun.

How do you score them higher than Militarum, but not by really.

Okay, so for style, I personally gave them a one, but as I said, like, I do understand why people would resonate with it.

It's just not for me.

For Lore, I gave them a three.

I think that they have a lot of decent Lore implications and they're really involved in what's happening in the world.

But I also just think that Belisarius Call is a very interesting character because he breaks the mold.

He goes against their religious ideology, and he's the only one that's actually inventing stuff in this world where everyone has stopped evolving.

Essentially for accessibility, I had to give them a one.

As you said, they're the most expensive army to collect at the moment, but if that changes, they could become a higher score.

And then for two, I wasn't too aware of how exactly they play in the game, so I had to give them a 2.

But for gameplay, yes.

Yeah, it's just gives you a total of a seven.

For me.

It's just not my jam.

I also ranked them a 7, but like slightly differently.

Yeah, Footstyle, I gave them a three.

I actually kind of like them.

They very unique in their appearance.

I desire them to have a bit more though.

I love the Masher themes.

I love me a good cloak and lever action rifle.

What can I say for the Lore?

I have read a couple of the Mechanicus books.

Belisarius Call has his own novel called Belisarius called the Great Work.

Can't stand them myself.

Honestly, I find the admech a little too crazy.

Like they're crazy for the sake of being crazy.

So for me that's a two for the Lore.

For accessibility, I gave them a one.

I found them very hard to justify buying when other armies are a lot cheaper.

As well as having no access to the brand new Horus Heresy Mechanicus units, which are quite cool for gameplay.

I also gave them a one.

Not necessarily because I think the gameplay is uninviting or anything.

They are a tricky army to run because they have a lot of buffs and auras to consider for a really effective setup.

But when you compare it to again, the Horus Heresy, there's a lot more finessing you can do in that setting.

With this faction, you can really pick and choose your own army with lots of different equipments and buffs and really like engineer your own Mechanicus.

And that's just something I don't see in Warhammer 40k at present.

I think their crusade, which is the narrative expansion to 40K, has a little bit of that, but overall it's still a seven for me.

Yeah.

Any other notes before we move on?

Not for Mechanicus.

Did you say mech?

Do you wanna.

Do you wanna start us off on the next faction?

We're gonna talk about the Imperial Knights.

Now you're getting into my jam.

Yeah, this is your jam.

Sell me on Imperial Knight.

Sure.

It's Gundam meets 40K.

It's people in giant robot mechs stomping across the battlefield doing as much damage as possible in a.

With a very feudal, old school vibe.

They're all knights in shining armor.

Only their armor is a futuristic robot.

Very like noble households and stuff like this.

They.

They refer to their.

Their knights at.

In a similar way to what a knight would refer to their horse.

It's.

Yeah, no, it's.

It's super cool.

It's well themed.

The theme just works from both like the narrative as well as the crossover perspective.

And it's so cheap to build an army when you.

And paint and everything.

When you've only got to do six or seven models and there's your whole army.

Right.

It's so nice to see you actually excited about a faction.

I know, right?

We just had to get through some of the lower ones first.

Yeah, yeah.

You basically said the notes.

I have.

I found them very straightforward and easy enough to understand from like a what they are perspective.

I wrote Pacific Rim instead of Gundam.

But yeah, easy it's Grimdark mecha.

And the reason for these things existing is because you know, during that terrible pre heresy time these were your like frontier worlds that got cut off.

These knights were just mining and agricultural supports, you know that were reconfigured to be war platforms to defend against alien invaders and apex predators on planets.

But because they were so isolated, they really did fall into that feudal medieval like heraldry and nobility.

And it's quite fun.

As the Imperium expands still the modern time they.

They find these worlds and sort of bring them back into the fold.

Right.

You mentioned they're really easy to grab.

I've.

I found out they were actually introduced in 6th edition, but weren't actually more than one or two models until 8th edition where they brought in the smaller sort of helmsman knights to join them.

They're really easy to acquire.

Expensive to buy, but cheap to field.

No, I feel like I said that wrong.

They have a good points per dollar ratio.

So while one kit might look expensive, it's worth a lot of points in game.

So yes, like you are going to spend a little bit more on an individual kit, but you need significantly less of those kits to build up your army.

And Magnetizers, Best friend Magnets.

How does then this particular faction work in game when you've only got like six or seven of them versus like 40 other bodies at least from the.

Other person in the current edition with difficulty to put it nicely because you have only a couple of models running around the table, it can be hard to play the objective as effectively as some of these smaller, more hordish armies can.

But oh boy, do you just sweep through hordes like there's no tomorrow.

You've got two sort of classes of knights.

You've got the Armigers and then you've got the Questorus or like the bigger actual knights.

The armigers being like you're three times the size of a space Marine.

Ish.

Very similar to like a walker from like Star wars or something like that.

Just like a chicken legged thing running around the battlefield, pulling, doing objectives, trying to disrupt your opponent while your big towering weapon platforms lumber up the field just doing what they need to do, which is polish off everything in the field.

Yeah.

More specifically the Imperial Knights focus on like a buddy system so you'll have one big knight who buffs up his friends around him through the bondsman ability, which is their army rule.

Yeah.

From what I've seen, the Imperial Knights are really sort of focused around what you just said.

Really benefiting from these Hail Mary plays.

Right.

Where if they kill a particular target, they're stronger for the rest of the game.

Or if they're blown up, they'll still keep fighting one last time.

And really quite noble aspects, which is quite interesting.

I'm not as into these guys as you are.

Do you want to lead us in with flagging them?

All right, sure.

So for the store, for the style, I gave them a four.

I really like how clean and both detailed but simple they can look on the tabletop.

They look superimposing because they just like stand over everything, terrain or other people's models alike.

I think that the medieval focus is done in a way that works.

Whereas in the Adeptus Mechanicus I don't feel like it vibed quite as much for me.

And it's a simpler connection between like the knight and horse to the pilot and the machine, you know, for their lore, I did give them a 3.

Again, touching on what we did.

But outside of that basic premise, there's not a lot of in depth material yet.

They are very simplistic, they work exactly how you would expect a medieval knight would act.

And the same themes are portrayed throughout them all for accessibility.

I gave them a four.

You have so much room to do cool, interesting fancy stuff.

You've got all these big flat panels if you want to get into free handing.

Or you can do a very simple color scheme like what I did and really make them pop.

You, you, you buy seven dudes and you've got a full army.

It's like three kits total and you've got whatever you want to do.

Being an Imperial Knight faction, they also have more access to games Workshop products that'll be released.

Like we have an upcoming Christmas battle force as well for them.

But also their individual night kits are one kit to build multiple different knights.

So you've got a lot of extra pieces left over for kit bashing.

You've got a lot of all of this idea to magnetize, to have the different weapon loadouts.

And then for gameplay I gave them a four as well.

They got one of my higher ratings so far at a 15.

Just because it's a lot of fun just stomping these giant machines up the field and just like wiping away everything in front of you and watching your opponent try to deal with what is essentially an army built around vehicles.

I Do give them a bigger bonus over the Chaos version of this faction because they have access to the Imperial agents to act as objective monkeys, which even previously they really struggled with, but have really got that support now to help play the smaller game.

Okay.

You might have actually convinced me to bump my ratings a little bit, if I'm being honest.

Did that with some of mine too.

Oh, I was a little harsh on these guys actually at first.

But a couple of my categories, you've really bumped up a notch, I will admit.

I do remember with just nightmares, your face of glee as you run your knights against our infantry and just watching us scramble to figure out how to deal with you.

I can definitely see how that would be quite fun.

Yeah.

For me, I gave them a two for style, actually, which is interesting.

I love all the big robots.

You know, grew up with Transformers.

Loved them.

But whenever I see these guys, I kind of like scratch my head a little bit and feel like I should be playing a different game, if that makes sense.

Oh yeah, for sure.

But they're cool.

I like them.

I think I prefer the vibe of the Chaos counterpart you mentioned, just because there's a bit more, like, edginess to it.

Oh, same for sure.

But yeah, we're in the Imperium here.

Yeah.

For the lore, I was around about a 2.

I've gone up to a 3.

I like the premise.

I was still into them at this idea that they were just there, like agricultural robots.

I really like how you put it with them sort of being knight and chariot.

That's really cool.

So three, Cool premise.

For accessibility.

I would have given them a 5, except for the fact that they don't have any sort of infantry unique to them, which I think is something that's quite missing.

Whether that would be some type of bannermen that's very like medieval esque to go with their feudal background.

Yeah.

But they are very cheap, cheapest army to get.

And that's great.

I love them for that.

And sometimes I just consider picking up knights just for the sake of having a whole army relatively cheaply.

For gameplay, though, I did give them a two.

It just doesn't quite appeal to me having a few really big models.

I would rather the next faction, which is very elite but still regular dudes.

So overall, for me, if I can math, that's 11, I think so.

The highest today.

The highest today so far.

Shall we move on to the next one?

I was about to say, I'm sure this next one is going to have a much higher rating for you.

You would Think so, eh?

So take us away with Adeptus Custodes.

Adeptus Custodes, Imperium faction number four of the day.

So we've had regular guardsmen, we've had cybernetic weirdos, we've had Grimdark mecha.

We now have like Space Marines plus plus.

So the Adeptus Custodes are in essence Space Marines, but in comparison, they make Space Marines look like guardsmen.

The Adeptus Custodes were made on Earth by the Emperor of Mankind when he was still around and kicking as a sort of personal bodyguard.

These guys are literally like hand sculpted in a science lab.

Right.

They're very few numbered, but their reflexes are down to the microsecond.

They're nigh immortal.

Like, they just don't age except like, you know, 10 to 20,000 years down the line.

Their gear is just old world technology that just will not break.

Their armor is perfectly crafted to withstand, like any projectile and scrape and.

Pretty cool, you know.

What do you think about their style?

I really like the image of show where they show comparisons between, like the different size categories and seeing like humans looking at the Astartes as super soldiers, but then the Asadis look at Custodes as super soldiers.

Like one one of these custodies is the equivalent of many of the Space Marines.

Like, I think their model range looks really good.

They look really pretty on the field.

There's a lot of detail in their armor.

Their forge world stuff is also very good.

It looks a lot more delicate than the normal Space Marines, but also looks so much more tougher and stronger.

Like, it's really imposing looking.

I really like the Custodes as well.

Yeah, I really like them too.

For the longest time in the setting, they were just sort of relegated to aspects of the lore.

They were kept on what the setting calls Earth.

They call it Terra.

And they just stayed there defending the homeworld.

In recent years of the setting, they've actually been sort of sent out into the wider Imperium to help out.

They have various aspects to their organization.

They do have the core, you know, dripped in gold armor.

Their poster boy, Adeptus Custodian color scheme is gold.

And they defend the Imperium, they defend key figures.

But then you also have individuals who go out as these sort of spy network.

You've got some of the Custodians just draped in black armor, and they actually hide out on Terra defending all these artifacts of mass destruction.

They are actually partnered up with a group of individuals called the Sisters of Silence, who are just the coolest chicks ever.

They are essentially immune to this idea of the warp where all the demons and all the magic and stuff is drawn from a sort of parallel reality and they're just genetically immune to it.

They are sort of like a light switch that walks around with the Custodians to really improve their defenses further.

You did mention the Forge World.

Forge World for the longest time was a sort of secondary company to Games Workshop doing their own sort of stuff within the overall setting.

They have been since folded into Games Workshop officially.

Forge World were the ones who originally started the Horus Heresy tabletop game where they created the Adeptus custodians.

4.

Unfortunately, this is probably the only faction in the whole game where roughly half, if not more of your army and more crucially, all the vehicle aspect of the army is all not in plastic, but in resin.

At least for the most part it's in resin.

These are a bit more expensive, bit harder to actually assemble and a bit harder overall to actually obtain the sort of Forge world.

Half of the Adeptus Custodians haven't had any indications they will get turned into plastic in the future, which is the baseline for all the various miniatures in the game.

But they are super cool.

You have absolutely gorgeous looking tanks, infantry, war walkers, weapon platforms.

Just, just really great overall.

Really puts all the space Marines to shame.

Sure does.

So yeah, moving into that Slag rating for style, I gave them a four.

They're cool, they're really fun, they look really neat, their style is very on point.

You know exactly what you're getting into.

For Lore, I did give them a one.

Now this is mainly because for the longest time they have kind of just existed on the sideline.

They were the bodyguards of the Emperor.

He almost passed away, it's debatable.

And they never did anything after that.

They kind of just sulked a little bit that they.

They failed their one job.

But hopefully after them being sent out into the field, we should get an increase in like their appearance in Lore and really flesh them out for accessibility.

I gave them a three.

Now this would have been higher if it wasn't, as you said, for the necessity of the Forge World range to really flesh it out and the fact that the resin is very expensive, heavy, brittle.

It's just a.

Not as good a product for when you're playing on a tabletop.

But without it, the army is significantly reduced in range.

And then for gameplay I gave them a three.

They have this cool like martial theme where they can adapt their prowess to the different style of gameplay and you really feel like every guy matters.

Like they're so strong and tough and hit hard and.

Yeah, I think it's a pretty sick army.

Absolutely.

For myself, I gave them a four for the style.

You see these guys in artwork and they're just absolutely ballers.

You see them in amongst the battlefield and they're 1v11ing the enemy.

You know, they just don't break sweats.

It's very cool, very power fantasy.

But there's not much character actually to them, as you pointed out.

So I gave them a two.

For the lore.

I would love to see more, especially those sort of separate organizations.

They have like the Shadowkeepers that are draped in all the black.

They got the Solar Watch, who are white with red.

Just a few different aspects of the Custodians that we just haven't really seen fleshed out yet for the range.

If they had more of their plastic.

Sorry, if they had more of their resin stuff turned to plastic, it would be an automatically 5.

You buy like 2 boxes of these guys and you've got a full army.

Because of their gameplay, they are so elite, so strong.

You only need like 20 guys and you got a whole army.

Whereas with Imperial Knights, you need like five or six tanks for this.

You just need like a dozen to two dozen individuals.

A space Marine squad can go into like 5 to 10.

Custodians are like 3 to 4.

They are so strong that it's kind of ridiculous.

It's hard to balance them though.

And at the moment, this addition, they're a little bit middling because they've kind of had the oomph taken out of them a little bit just to keep them fair.

They don't have as many sort of tricks to sustain them against some sort of harder hitting faction.

They have a couple of different ways to play them, whether that's individual characters who are a bit stronger or combining them with those Sisters of Silence who are indeed models.

But overall, you're gonna have an easy time.

They're really strong.

You just gotta be careful where you put them, who you send them against, because if they die, it's like a huge chunk of your army.

Which brings me to a total of 13.

If I didn't say it, it was a three gameplay.

I gave them an 11 in total because they lost a little bit on that lore implication.

Right.

So we have four more factions left, but it's kind of one plus, if you really want to think of it like that, the next four are all folded under the Inquisition.

The Inquisition is like the secret police.

That keeps the Imperium in line.

Essentially.

They go around and root out corruption.

They fight off the most evil horrors the galaxy has to offer and kind of keep the general population in ignorance so that the whole, you know, cog of society can just keep rolling on.

You know, it's worth mentioning that the Inquisition has three separate orders.

You have one that focuses around the aliens or what they call Xenos.

You have one that focuses around the warp shenanigans and chaos and demons.

And they are called the.

Oh my goodness, what are they called?

Automalus.

So the anti demon guys.

And then you have the Auto Hereticus, who's more of like the internal police more than the other two are.

They root out the corruption, the heretics, the sort of the cult leaders, if you will, that hide away in society.

Each of those three has their own particular military and usually represented to a full extent as an army on the tabletop.

After we go through those three, we'll wrap up with this sort of mega faction which brings them all into one grouping.

I assume you need me to sort of take the reins on the Death Watch.

Yes, for sure.

The Death Watch are a very interesting force.

They came up with a very limited range in the seventh edition of the game this year.

Very controversially, they were kind of cut off at the knees and were no longer a force.

The community was so outraged that come Christmas they should actually come back with some sort of independence.

The Death Watch.

Back to our first episode.

Just Space Marines.

No real special features like the Custodians.

They are just Space Marines, but they are like The Avengers or G.I.

joe or the Expendables version of the Space Marines.

They are a black clad mix mash of Space Marine chapters fighting in small commando units.

This is the only time that Space Marine squads will actually be comprised of aesthetically different individuals.

Each of them with unique loadouts.

The Death Watch represent the Auto Xenos.

And these guys are brought together almost like a tithe from all the various Space Marine chapters.

A Space Marine chapter might sort of second their best.

Alien killer, you know, the guy with the most experience.

True to Death Watch for like a tour, if you will.

And they are basically stationed in various galactic or space fortresses, taking on specific aspects of Xenos fighting.

You'll have ones that target the orcs more specifically.

You'll have ones that target the Elven Aeldari more specifically.

And these guys really are just your black ops Space Marine individuals.

They don't really have a range.

They had rules which really incentivize you to kit bash these squads together.

There was originally two squads and two characters and one plane.

Beyond that though, there was four or five different squads that really rewarded people who like to make each of their guys a little bit different.

One guy has a hammer, one guy is a Blood angel and has the wings on his shoulder.

You know, just a very mix match style and the gameplay really rewarded that.

You have squads that were more gun focused, you would have squads that were more melee focused.

And a lot of their shenanigans revolved around equipping them to do specific circumstances.

You might equip them to be better at anti infantry with like a fire bullets, you know, so forth.

But that's kind of it just very mix mashy.

Hyper Elite Commando Space Marines.

Do you want to add to that?

I think you kind of hit the nail on the head there for me.

They.

They got fairly low ratings, but that was not necessarily because of the characters, the lore or anything like that.

Mostly just the way they've been handled as an army as a whole.

Yeah.

Do you want to jump into your ratings then and wrap these guys out?

Because they're not really a faction at the present time.

We don't really need to talk about them all that much.

Yeah.

So for style, I've given them a three.

They definitely suffer from their lack of a range and not really being supported as much as some of the other Divergent chapters.

Hence why they ended up in this episode, not the previous one.

I do think that the.

The idea of it being specifically veterans and having all this like mix of different chapters really does help.

It makes it really unique and cool.

And from a Kibash perspective, I do enjoy that.

For their lore, I gave them a 2.

Their lore is actually pretty good.

As I said, being veterans and working alongside the humans, more so than what a lot of the other space Marine factions do as part of the greater Imperial Agents.

But it just kind of makes their lack of support more depressing.

For accessibility, I've given them a one.

Again, mainly down to the fact that you have to kit bash and if that's not something you're interested in, this army just doesn't work for you.

And then for gameplay, I've given them a one as well, because they're just such a small percentage of what is now the Inquisition Codex with their hopeful rules coming out in December, maybe that could potentially come up for me as well.

Yeah, I was similar to you for the style.

I gave them a three.

Despite the, you know, separately to the accessibility of the range, I Think the style of them is very cool.

You know, you might have like an Ultramarine Terminator next to a Raven Guard, Sneaky Boy next to a Blood Angels Assault Marine.

And that's, that's pretty cool.

If you like a lot of different Marines, you can bring that sort of unity to the tabletop, which is fantastic.

The Law really surprised me.

I didn't really care about them in the past.

I never read any of their Death Watch novels, so apparently they're quite good back in the more grim, depressing style of the story.

But they have so many different sort of micro narratives, lots of different sort of Black Op engagements, lots of these sort of secretive Watch fortresses scattered throughout the galaxy.

And just the idea of these bounty hunting Marines really tickled my pickle.

They got a 4 out of me.

The accessibility though was a 1.

I think if you're a brand new player, having to be told to like buy a bunch of different kits that interest you and then build them uniquely with bits you won't have yet is pretty inconsiderate when you don't have a generic Death Watch unit to sell instead.

So they got a one from me.

This is one of the few times I can't really rate the gameplay because if the rules come back I could give it a score.

The rules they had really got more of like a three to four out of me.

Just really retool your war gear on the fly.

Pretty sick at the moment.

I want to give him a zero because they just don't exist.

So it kind of like minimum eight, but it could go up to like 13, you know.

Oh yeah, for sure.

And that's the part of why my rating for gameplay was so low as well is I have to base them off what they've currently got available, not what might be coming, you know?

Yeah.

How much do you know about nuns with guns?

Man, these guys are sick.

Not going to lie.

The Adeptus Sororitus, it's your, your poster army of females and they're wicked, dude.

They're.

In my opinion, it is radical religious ideology done right.

They are terrifying to look at and at the same time so beautiful to look at.

Their model range is super thematic.

It all blends in together.

It all makes sense.

And some of their character models are some of the cooler models in all of GW's range.

Like, oh man, so cool.

Yeah.

Sisters of Battle actually were an old, old range from like the second edition of the game that weren't really an army since until the game really picked up again in the eighth edition and then had like a whole wave release again in the ninth edition.

Everything is brand new, as you said.

Fantastic sculpts.

Everything looks unique.

This is probably one of the most cohesive factions in its entire, like, you know, from infantry to character to vehicle.

You have these warrior women, you have battle suits, you got flamers, you've got a lot of clerical themes, candles, stained glass, tanks, you know, bolters, flamers, melters.

It's like space Marines just toned down like a bit more to like the Squishier Imperial Guard but with all of the tools, the tanks, the guns.

And it's really just sick to see what they come out with considering that these guys are girls.

Sorry, frightening.

They are the Auto Hereticus military.

They really hate when the church abuses its power.

They have been known to turn their back on what is known as the ecclesiarchy in the earlier part of the law, which is when they got a lot of their sort of independence.

They're just sick.

They have been known to believe in the Emperor with their faith so hard that literal miracles happen.

They've got literal saints that appear on angelic wings as like good demons.

It's sick.

What can you tell me beyond that?

Can you say much about their gameplay?

From a gameplay perspective?

I think they are also a really fun looking army to play.

They use a weaponized faith mechanic where you can influence your dice rolls because these chicks just believe so much that it just happens, you know.

From a gameplay perspective, I think it's probably the Imperium army I would play over any other.

Partially because the range looks sick and partially because the gameplay looks like a lot of fun.

They, they kind, as you said, they have that like squishy space marine vibe.

It's kind of like bikini armored space marines but without the actual imagery.

They have this really weird, sick like maiming, torture and self sacrifice vibe.

Like very heretical.

Not heretical, that's the wrong word.

Very evangelical, very radical.

That anything to keep their faith and keep their religion.

And in the Greater world of 40k there is this overarching narrative that, you know, if, if enough people believe in something, it can have a psychic resonance that can cause these things to come true.

We see it in orcs when we talk about them in the future and these kind of fit into a similar vein.

Like they believe so hard that things just work.

Absolutely.

The sort of dice manipulation is something that not many of the other factions in the game get to access.

They have a few different play styles since their codex came out.

You've got the army of Faith, which really doubles down on this dice manipulation tactic.

You've got the Blood of the Martyrs detachment, where they actually get stronger if they get hurt but haven't been, you know, wiped out.

You've got the Penitent Host, which is a whole other episode on what that means, but essentially the sort of dishonorable members of the Sisters of Battle get given chainsaws and just told to go wreck face.

And so you have a whole detachment that focuses around these sort of bloodthirsty sort of sacrificial lambs.

You've got the Bringers of Flame Detachment, which really makes their fire based weaponry even stronger.

And so you have a lot of different sort of ways to take them.

There's heaps of different books you can read that focuses on many of the different girls.

Because they're all girls, no guys.

What did you score them?

All right, so overall I gave them the highest rating of any Imperial army at a 17.

Wow.

So for style, I have given them a 5.

I really like this religious ideology, the stained glass and angel wings and all of that is super cool.

For lore, I gave them a four.

Now this probably went up fairly recently with us watching some of the more animated stuff as well.

Like, it's just so dark and gritty, but also just like so religiously over the top.

You've got, as you said, the penitent host.

These people who have just disgraced their ch.

Their religion and therefore have to go out and prove themselves by stripping off their armor and running into battle with a big chain sword.

And if they survive, they get let back in.

Like, it's just really cool.

And it's all in the name of the God Emperor, you know, for accessibility, I gave them a four.

They have some small detail and serious, which some seriously small details which can be both an upside and a downside.

I think the theme, as we said, the theme comes across in every single model.

They look very cohesive.

And having a very newly refreshed range from the last couple editions means that all of the models look very nice on the table.

And then for gameplay, I gave them a four.

Because who doesn't like to manipulate dice in a dice game?

Absolutely.

I'm very similar.

These are my favorite peeps in the whole episode and even higher ranked than my beloved Blood Angels from the previous episode.

I gave them a five for the style.

It's immediately just so eye catching, so unique.

You look at it and you think, what?

Like, I gotta learn more about that?

You know, it's so flavorsome.

And seeing an actual faction of women in a setting like this is also, you know, not without its merit.

I would rank their lore higher if I wasn't a little turned off by the absolute zaniness of them from most of their stories.

You know, I love the, you know, the Trial by Fire.

I love the, you know, fight until you can no longer fight.

I love the defend the Weak.

That's all great stuff, but holy moly, are they crazy?

Like, the penitent host stuff's actually a bit of a turn off just from the lore.

I don't like how they, like, do that to their own ladies.

Even the models themselves are cool.

So for as cool as they look, I don't resonate with the lore as hard, but the actual, like, accessibility of them is great.

They are a little bit more on the expensive side, so I could be, you know, persuaded down to a four, but I gave them a five.

They're probably my favorite faction to look at and you can buy everything.

Everything came out in the last few years.

Everything is still there.

They have lots of flavorful, epic heroes, lots of, you know, unique characters.

The tanks are cool.

The gameplay, I haven't yet managed to play them despite having a few of them at home on Spruce.

The vibe I've got from them is that they're actually quite hard to play because they are a little bit squishy.

If you don't have the right combo pieces, you're going to just fall apart and you'll likely lose a lot of your first battles as you sort of wrap your head around how they actually play.

You might have to sort of keep them hidden for a couple of rounds and then strike with everything all at once from very strategic positioning.

Until I give that a go.

I can't give them a five, but I think the concept is really cool.

Out of four.

So that takes us to my second favorite faction in today's episode.

What do you think about Grey Knights?

I think they are very cool, very neat.

They have a couple of models that are a little zany and wacky.

One specifically.

I think their premise is really good, but I think they're in desperate need of a refresh.

Absolutely.

Do you need me to take point on what they are and who they are?

Oh, you'll probably have a lot more information, but I can give us a general.

These are space marine psychics, essentially.

These are your psykers.

These are your anti demon hunting automallios.

I think it is.

Yeah, you got it.

Oh, getting there.

They have some very detailed models, but they are very old models.

They're.

The Dreadnight is an interesting decision.

The old baby carrier, it's kind of like a mech suit, but the dude that's in it is hanging off the front like he's in a baby straw baby carrier.

Which is a bit weird, but, uh, it is.

It's definitely a thing.

Their.

Their lore is interesting, but they're kind of a little over the top for me in a way that you'd think I would gel with, but I just don't.

They're.

They're your secret police that are denying that Chaos exists, essentially.

And if one of these guys shows up and you're nearby, you're probably dead.

Because there can be no witnesses to Chaos existing in the Imperium Ezelot as a whole.

And these are the people they send in to quiet the situation completely.

They are perfectly sculpted to combat Psykers and Chaos.

And they're essentially space Marine.

Plus they sit somewhere between like a space Marine and a custodes.

As like the best of the best, but slightly better than the best you can get out of a space Marine.

Yeah, I really.

I really gel with the style.

You know, they are this sort of Space Marine psykers, but they're also like holy paladin Space Marine.

You know, you think of your D and D, your fantasy setting like the shiny white knight Paladin.

That's these guys.

They got spears, they got magic helms.

All their armor is adorned with scripture.

They are meshed with the gene seed of the Emperor.

They are incorruptible.

They are hidden away on Saturn's moon Titan.

That's their base of operations.

They're very secretive, as you mentioned.

They do mind wipes, they do assassinations.

These guys were like a elite strike force even in the days of the Horus heresy.

They do need an update.

I will definitely agree with you.

There they were.

How they are.

Since the fifth edition, one of their characters that you can buy is from the third edition.

They've had a couple of character resculpts that look alright, but the whole faction needs to be redone.

They can look so cool.

They had a video game in the last couple of years called Chaos Gate.

It's like an XCOM style game and you really just sort of see just the sheer chadness of incorruptible space marines that are each like a Jedi, you know.

Yeah, they.

They jump around the battlefield, they cast spells.

You know, they walk into chaos and just say F off.

Pretty cool.

There's not much more to say.

About them than that, really.

The gameplay is at the moment, a lot of sort of teleport in and out shenanigans with a lot of like, hitting really hard when they arrive.

If they are sort of left out by the person controlling them, they're a lot more vulnerable.

They're all Psykers, which this addition of Warhammer really doesn't benefit much.

A lot of armies have like an anti psyker keyword weaponry somewhere around.

And when your whole army is a Psyker, it's a bit of a ugh moment, you know what I mean?

But they're space marines with magic.

That's the whole shtick.

Do you have anything else to add to them?

Man, I think the teleport shenanigans looks super cool and it did boost my rating for gameplay because I think it'd be a fun gameplay perspective to like, work around and have that strategic asset.

But yeah, I don't know, it's just.

I feel like a range refresh and a codex might just be enough to make them look pristine on the table.

Absolutely.

They're a bit small at the moment.

They've got the classic old space Marine, like, squat pose.

Yep.

So they're naturally a bit shorter from the scale of the miniatures.

And then they also squat.

Yes.

For a Slag rating.

Shall I start us off?

Go for it.

I gave them a five for style.

They're my favorite space marines.

No argument there.

It just pains me that every other aspect in the Slag, I've rated much lower than 5.

They are the coolest marines.

I love to see them.

But like lore, I gave them a four because, you know, their lore speaks for itself.

They're secret, high paladin space marines.

You don't need to do too much with that to make it cool for me.

So I gave them a 4.

Could be a 5.

They actually had characters besides a Mimi one.

They scouted two for me for accessibility because they're all just old miniatures and that's, you know, a bit unfortunate.

If you buy them and then they make new ones, you're going to feel bad for gameplay.

I just gave them a 3.

Middle of the road could be fun, could be janky.

I don't know.

I haven't played them.

Gave me a 14 overall, so slightly.

Higher than I got.

I gave them an 11 overall with a 3 for style.

I think it's good.

There's just a few things that don't quite gel with me as much, but that's definitely still perfectly fine.

I think some of the I think some of the details in their models look really cool, even for very old sculptures.

For Lore, I gave them a four.

Their lore is pretty cool.

It's.

It's neat, it's interesting.

It's different from what you would normally see.

Accessibility.

I gave them a one as well.

It's just.

They just need some help.

They're so close to being amazing.

And then for gameplay, I've given them a three again.

I think the teleport shenanigans could be pretty cool.

Yay.

We did our Inquisition homework, Johnny.

The last three factions, the Death Watch, the Sisters, the Grey Knights, they all have been a little bit blended into this year's brand new force, which is updating a much older army, the Imperial Agents.

This will be our last faction for today.

Thank you for sticking around.

The Imperial Agents, I really want to say, is my jam.

Like my guys, unfortunately, they're a little sucky right now, aren't they?

Oh, poor people.

Oh my goodness.

Just to be human, you know.

Imperial Agents, I would like to kick us off with the Imperial Age, please.

I think it's so cool when a faction like this exists and it brings in all the various aspects of the Imperium and just puts it all together in this like big soupy army.

I think it's really cool.

The Inquisition is not just those military guys and Inquisitors.

This does mainly cover the Inquisition and the Ecclesiarchy.

But in amongst these guys, you've got the Adeptus Arbiters, which are like your law enforcement police.

You've got the Officio Assassinorum, which are assassins and they're very strong and cool.

You've got the Sisters of Silence from the Custodians.

They join in here.

You've got the Rogue Traders, which are these sort of pirate freelancer members of Imperial society.

You've got the Imperial Navy, which is your Void faring forces just all blended together.

You know, they're mostly humans, but you'll see them bring along like the Death Watch and the Grey Knights for a little bit of space marine support.

I love it.

The whole visual aesthetic has this really nice blend of.

Over there you've got your crazies, the church people.

Over there you got your flashy, you know, space Marines.

You've got the really standout, unique Assassins.

You've got a couple of really cool like named Inquisitors.

And there's just so much lore because this group of, you know, characters and sculpts have like, basically predates the setting.

You know, it's been there since the earliest artwork.

And that's.

That's cool to me.

I assume they're not that cool for you though.

I gave them an okay rating.

So it's a total of a 10.

So take that as you will.

Like, I get it.

It makes sense.

And I do think there's some good themes.

So I really like that there's these separate groups that have a very specific purpose.

It feels very police ish.

Like you've got a department for each area of expertise, which I like.

I think that feels very human reaction to the current circumstances in the world.

I think the big thing that let them down for me is like these guys all just seem like terrible people.

If you are living in this universe, these are the guys that scare you the most.

These are the guys you don't want showing up in your town.

And it's just.

Yeah, it's really hard for me to gel with people who are just bad for what feels to be like the sake of being bad.

Yeah, the Inquisition does get a bad rep, but there's definitely extremist elements within the lore.

Oh yeah.

When I was choosing my rankings for this, I was going more off the idea of bringing all the various aspects of the Imperium together, not necessarily Inquisition.

If this was just straight up Inquisition, I would definitely share your opinion there.

They are not the greatest people for style.

I gave them a three because they have some really cool models.

I think the assassins are all sick looking models.

I think the theme really shows across the range.

Like the theme kind of being that there isn't really one.

Like there's all these separate departments which I think works very well.

I gave them a two for the law because these guys suck.

And you say like it is more specifically the extremist groups.

But if you've got Assassins showing up in your town, that's probably not a good thing.

If you've got the Grey Knights showing up, that's probably not a good thing.

If you've got the sisters showing up, that's Sororitus showing up.

That's.

That's probably not a.

Like, if these guys show up in your town, you're gonna want to hope you're not in town or on the whole planet.

Right.

These are the guys that decide if your planet is no longer gonna have life on it.

For accessibility, I gave them a four.

Like with the new Codex coming out, they're more available than ever.

They got a.

A decent range.

You've got access to a lot of the imperial tools because you can play with Grey Knights, death Watch Adeptus Sororitus, the assassins.

You could play with all of these different groups, which I think for accessibility is great.

But for gameplay I had to give them a 1.

I think that detachments are thematic, but they're just underperforming at the moment as a whole.

And they all have such a specific niche that playing a detachment really comes down to what your opponent's playing more than what you bring to the table.

Absolutely.

The gameplay was a one for me as well.

It defines the fluffy list.

You might bring these guys into like a narrative game and have fun.

One of the detachments, you know, they have one for each of those autos.

One literally keywords, killing demons.

In about 30ish factions in the game.

There's one that's called Chaos Demons, you know.

Yep, yep.

There is a detachment which is doing okay.

It relies on a lot of like deployment and objective control shenanigans.

But you're not going to do wowzer stuff with them.

They do have this interesting caveat though where you can actually bring a small amount of Imperial agents and add them to any other Imperium force.

So for me, Imperial Knights, I feel like they need infantry.

You can just bring in some of these Imperial Navy.

There you go.

There's your infantry if you got space Marines.

But you need like one little backfield assassin.

There you go.

Assassin.

If you bringing Sisters of Battle, they're a bit of a squishier body.

Ah.

Just give them some granites they can tank, you know.

I love that.

That's great.

Wonderful to see.

But a lot of the potential models they could have brought in did not get brought in.

There was no real resculpts.

None of the Grey Knights Death Watch.

Nothing was redone.

Bread and butter of the faction comes from the various kill team releases which is the standalone small scale skirmish game.

If it wasn't for that game, we probably wouldn't have gotten this faction brought back in.

I would love to see what they do potentially next edition or with more kill team support.

But right now it's a two for accessibility because there's just not a lot of great options in the army's not good to play one for gameplay because it's just not competitive.

But for the style and lore, I'm pretty up there.

Overall I gave them a 12.

Would love to see them do better.

I love this sort of bring various aspects of the Imperium together.

Which wraps us up by the fact that we brought all the various aspects of the Imperium together.

Yeah, right.

It's almost like we're through.

Humans.

Well, the good humans, the questionably good humans.

Do you feel any better on Imperium?

Or even perhaps worse on Imperium after doing all these?

Oh, I think I definitely feel better about it than beforehand.

For instance, there's at least one Imperium army I would consider picking up.

Whereas previously that was probably not going to happen as the guy that owns while working on his third Chaos army.

The Sisters, isn't it?

Yeah, for sure.

And like, if I didn't already have Chaos Knights, Imperial Knights, now that we have access to Imperial Agents, could potentially have been a good one too.

But when we get to the Chaos episode, we'll find out just how good nights can be.

Chaos episode.

You're 20 out of 20 and I'm over there.

Like, they're okay.

They're a little bloodthirsty for my liking a little bit.

But yeah, that's going to be the Imperium.

I actually.

A lot of things I gravitated towards before, I'm gravitating towards less actually.

And just things I already knew I liked, I'm realizing I like more.

Yeah.

Interesting to give a little bit of analysis, but that's going to wrap us up for Imperium.

Thank you for listening for so long.

Next week we'll do either the Xenos races or we'll do the Chaos.

We're not sure yet.

Stick around.

Thank you for listening.

You have a great one.

Enjoy your hobbying.

Farewell.

Eh?

Bye.