The Inquisitorial Agents are a kill team for the Games Workshop tabletop miniature skirmish game Warhammer 40,000: Kill Team. They are available as part of the Ashes of Faith narrative expansion for the game.
In the world of Warhammer 40,000, the Imperium of Man is kept intact by three things: Might, in the shape of the Imperial Army, the Space Marines and the various other Imperial military forces; Faith, as in the psychological as well as supernatural power of the human race’s faith in the power of the Emperor of Mankind; and finally, obedience to Imperial Law and the Imperial Creed. This combination keeps most of the horrors at bay, and keeps the cogs of society turning so the endless war effort can continue, and the hands doomsday clock of Humanity be pulled back from striking twelve one minute at a time.
Sometimes, however, might, faith and obedience get in the way of each other. Perhaps a complex set of mining regulations keep the military forces on a planet from properly putting down a rebellion. Perhaps an alien artefact is needed to win a war, but the Imperial Creed prohibits any contact with anything xenos-related, and so on.
This is where the Imperial Inquisition come in. The Inquisition is a secret organization of extremely powerful individuals who are given access to all the Might and Faith of the Imperium, but who are also allowed to work around the Obedience part of how the Imperium works. They can overrule any local bureaucracy, use their psyker abilities much more freely than anyone else, requisition the aid of local law enforcement without working through any bureaucracy – and they can even consort with and employ mutants and aliens if it helps their one purpose: To carry out the Emperor’s will.
The Inquisitorial Agents are a band of henchmen working for such an Inquisitor (essentially, you, the player, are the Inquisitior they’re serving) to uncover Chaos uprisings and xenos infiltration in the Imperium.
In games of Kill Team, they’re an extremely versatile faction with a bunch of powerful characters, but they can also call upon squads from other Imperial forces such as Sisters of Silence, Kasrkin or even Astra Militarum Veterans, making them the kill team with the most different operative types by a long shot. If you want to be the unconstrained hand of the Emperor’s justice, and be able to field a completely different squad every time you play a game, the Inquisitorial Agents might be just the kill team for you.
[Note: This article is up to date with the Q3 2023 Balance Dataslate.]
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Abilities of the Inquisitorial Agent Kill Team
Inquisitorial Mandate
Inquisitorial Mandate isn’t an ability you can use in the game, and the kill team has no general special rules. Instead, it means that you can have a maximum 30 operatives rather than the usual 20 in your roster to pick from when selecting your team for a battle. This allows you to bring multiple Ancillary Support squads (see below) to a tournament or in a campaign.
Operatives of the Inquisitorial Agent Kill Team
The composition of the Inquisitorial Agents kill team is unlike any other team in the game. You can go about it two ways: You can either field a team of 12 Inquisitorial Agent operatives chosen from the first 10 operative types in this section, or you can field 7 Inquisitorial Agents plus one of 6 different Ancillary Support squads, consisting of between 5 and 6 operatives mostly taken from other kill teams. In this section, we give a detailed guide to the operatives for this kill team that you can’t find in another of our kill team guides, but if an Ancillary Support option consists of operatives we’ve already written a guide for, this section points you in the direction of the guide in question.
Note: Since the Q3 2023 Balance Dataslate, you can only field up to operatives with weapons with the Armour Penetration 2 Special Rule in your Inquisitorial Agent kill team, so keep that in mind when picking Ancillary Support options.
A note on keywords and abilities: Ancillary Support operatives lose their original Faction keyword (such as Kasrkin) and gain the Inquisitorial Agent Faction keyword, so they can interact with Tac Ops and Ploys. Be aware, however, that they don’t get the Inquisition keyword, which is used when determining if they get to use most Inquisitorial Agent equipment.
Inquisitorial Agent Operatives
Interrogator Agent (Leader, 1 per kill team)
The Interrogator Agent is your only Leader option, so don’t build the Enlightener, who is built from the same body as the Interrogator, if you don’t have two Inquisitorial Agent packs! He has 8 Wounds, which is 1 more than the other Inquisition humans in your kill team, and a Save of 5+.
He is equipped with an Extended Stock Autopistol, which is like a regular Autopistol (4 attacks, 3 critical damage), but with an optional Long Range profile that moves it from a Ballistic Skill of 3+ to one of 4+, but gives it unlimited range. Additionally, He is equipped with some reasonably capable 3 attack 3 critical damage Fists.
Neither his stats or his weapons are particularly impressive, but the real utility of the Interrogator Agent comes from his Consecrated Tome ability: When he is deployed, you select either Denunciation or Sanctification as his Consecrated Tome ability for the duration of the battle. Denunciation adds 1 to the Attacks characteristic of friendly shooting and fighting actions made against enemies within Circle/2 Inches of the Interrogator, and Sanctification subtract 1 from the Attacks characteristic of enemy shooting and fighting actions made against friendly operatives within Circle/2 Inches.
Both of these aura abilities are pretty great, and they become even better by the fact that the Consecrated Tome ability you don’t select for your Interrogator becomes active for your Tome-Skull operative (see below), and that if those two operatives are within Triangle/1 Inch of each other, they can swap their abilities once per Turning Point (this is simulating the Interrogator swapping the book in his hand with the book on the bookstand of the Tome-Skull).
This means that the Interrogator and the Tome-Skull work in symbiosis, which is something you can either use by keeping them close together for a massive local advantage (+1 to your attacks and -1 to those of the enemy in a small area), or split them up so the the Interrogator runs close to key targets and the Tome-Skull goes somewhere else to protect your own key operatives.
Since the Q3 2023 Balance Dataslate, The Interrogator and Tome-Skull now has Group Activation 2 with each other, meaning they both activate as part of the same activation.
Enlightener (1 per kill team)
The Enlightener Agent is the other operative you can build using the same body as the Interrogator Agent, so you can only really field it if you have 2 Inquisitorial Agent kits. He is armed with a standard Autopistol and the melee weapon Paired Blades, which has the Balanced Special Rule that lets it reroll one of its 4 attack dice, as well as the Rending Critical Hit Rule that lets it retain one succesful normal hit as a critical hit if you already scored at least 1 critical hit in the attack roll, and Cripple, which makes the enemy operative you’re fighting Injured for the rest of the battle if you strike it with a critical hit in combat, which is a really powerful Critical Hit Rule.
The Enlightener is built for crippling and locking down key targets in melee: He has the No Escape ability, which means that when an enemy operative within Engagement Range of the Enlightener tries to Fall Back, you roll a dice (adding 1 to the result if the enemy is Injured and subtracting 1 if the enemy has a higher Wounds characteristic than the Enlightener), and on a roll of 4 or more, the enemy can’t Fall Back, but keep the Action Points they would have spent to do so.
The chance to make enemy operatives Injured in combat and then lock them down makes the Enlightener pretty invaluable when trying to take down enemy Leaders or enemy operatives with a high Wounds characteristic.
Tome-Skull (1 per kill team)
The Tome-Skull is, first and foremost, the other half of the system around the Interrogator Agent’s Consecrated Tome ability. Apart from that, it can’t really do much: It doesn’t have any attacks, and can only make movement actions or Pass. You have to bring it in your team, though, so it doesn’t fill a slot where you could have put something with a gun anyway.
Autosavant Agent(1 per kill team)
The Autosavant is another mandatory pick for your Inquisitorial Agent kill team. He has a 4+ Save, which is slightly better than most of your other operatives, but keep him out of harm’s reach anyway, since he is only armed with the Mechanical Appendages melee weapon, which hits on a 5+ and does 1 normal and 2 critical damage.
The Autosavant is a specialist operative with a couple of abilities: Scrivener gives you 1 Command Point every time your opponent uses a Strategic or Tactical Ploy (apart from Command Re-Roll) more than once in a game, which is a bonus for you as well as a psychological deterrent from using a Ploy twice for the opponent. Chronicle only affects Narrative play, and gives D3 experience points to another friendly operative every time the Autosavant survives a battle that that friendly operative also took part in.
Finally, the Autosavant has the Irrefutable Report Unique Action, which is really great: It allows him (it? they?) to dominate 1 objective marker close to the Autosavant once per game. When it dominates the objective, the Autosavant is always in control of it, regardless of the Action Point Limit of other nearby operatives, unless one of those operatives is also able to dominate (ie in a Inquisition vs. Inquisition mirror match), and then you just determine control like you normally would.
Being able to dominate an objective is awesome, and since you have to take the Autosavant in your team, Scrivener and Chronicle is just icing on the cake.
Questkeeper Agent (1 per kill team)
The Questkeeper Agent is a melee specialist, armed with an Autopistol (which is just like all other autopistols) and an Eviscerator chainsword for melee with 5 normal and 6 critical damage, the Brutal Special Rule so it can only be parried by critical hits, Unrelenting which lets you reroll one of your attack dice in combat if you’re the attacker, and the Reap 2 Critical Hit rule so you do 2 mortal wounds to bystanders when scoring a critical hit, making it great for taking on crowds. All in all, the Eviscerator is a really fearsome melee weapon!
The Questkeeper also has a bit of survivability in combat due to the Zealot ability, which allows them to ignore an incoming wound on a dice roll of 5 or higher, and if they do get incapacitated in combat, Irrepressible Purpose lets them strike with on remaining attack dice before they go down.
The Questkeeper is pretty straightforward – it can just do a lot of damage in combat, even against crowds. Whether it’s better than the Pistolier that you build from the same body on the sprues is a question of playstyle, but if you build your team from two packs, you can have both.
Pistolier Agent (1 per kill team)
The Pistolier is built from the same body as the Questkeeper, but is entirely focused on ranged weapons. He is equipped with a Suppressed Autopistol, which is a Ballistic Skill 3+ pistol with the Silent Special Rule, so you can Shoot with it even while having a Conceal Order. He is also equipped with the Scoped Plasma Pistol, which has 3 profiles: Scoped for unlimited range and Armour Penetration 1, Standard with 6 critical damage and the same Armour Penetration, and Supercharge with the usual plasma concept of better Armour Penetration at the risk of doing damage to yourself. Both weapons are really useful, and the Pistolier also comes with the rather basic Fists melee weapon.
The Ballistic Skill of the Pistolier’s weapons can’t be modified, and he has the Pistol Barrage Unique Action, which lets him pay 1 Action Point to Shoot both of his pistols, in any order. Unless you have a Conceal Order, Pistol Barrage is always the way to go when shooting with the Pistolier, and it really makes him shine with 8 attacks at pistol range (Pentagon/6 inches) and a potential critical damage output of 36 damage (or 28 normal damage, which isn’t nothing, either)!
Death World Veteran Agent (1 per kill team)
The Death World Veteran is a tough melee combatant specialized in sneaking into melee range. He is equipped with an Autopistol as well as a Knife with 1 attack that hits on 2s, does 7 critical damage and scores a critical hit on a roll of 5 or more. Having just 1 attack means the Knife is only for attacking (if you’re the attacker you can resolve one succesful hit before the defender, so the 7 critical damage comes in handy there), but for other kinds of combat, the Death World Veteran has his 4 attack Polearm, which has the Reap 2 Critical Hit Rule for doing mortal wounds to operatives around its target.
The Death World Veteran has the Hunter ability which lets him Charge while he has a Conceal Order (that’s what you need the Knife for), and the Weathered ability which lets him ignore the damage from one normal hit in close combat once per Turning Point.
Penal Legionnaire Agent (1 per kill team)
The Penal Legionnaire Agent is built from the same body as the Death World Veteran Agent, but he’s a bit more versatile in his loadout: He is equipped with a 5 attack Hand Flamer for area damage, and a 4 attack, 5 critical damage Chainsword.
He is immune to any modifiers to his characteristics and also to the Stun Critical Hit Rule, which makes him strong on objectives (because his Action Point Limit, and thus his ability to control objectives, can’t be reduced), and he can re-roll all his attack dice if he fights with or shoots an enemy operative that has less wounds left than it started the game with. In short, he fights dirty and can hold his own against multiple opponents on objectives.
Hexorcist Agent (1 per kill team)
The Hexorcist Agent wields a 4 attack, 3 damage (of both kinds) Shotgun with Pentagon/6 Inch range, as well as Fists for melee combat.
The Shotgun is fine, but what the Hexorcist really specializes in is debuffing the enemy. He does so with his Hexorcize ability which prevents Visible enemy operatives within Pentagon/ 6 inches of the Hexorcist from rerolling attack or defence dice for combats or shooting attacks, and with his Chasten Unique Action, which lets you pick an ability or Unique Action of a nearby enemy operative that they then can’t use until the end of their next activation. Chasten is especially nasty, as it can keep leaders from using their buffs, or Psykers from casting their powers, so the best tactic for making the most of a Hexorcist is to just get him close to something dangerous and preventing it from pulling off its best trick.
Mystic (1 per kill team)
The Mystic Agent is built from the same body as the Hexorcist Agent, but rather than debuffing enemies, he’s all about buffing his allies. He has an Autopistol which hits on a 2+ and the Indirect Special Rule so its target is never in Cover, which must be due to his great faith, because the Mystic is actually blindfolded – and he also has Fists for close combat.
He has the Icon Bearer ability which buffs his own Action Point Limit to 3 for the purposes of controlling objectives (like most ofther Icon Bearer operatives in other kill teams), and 2 Unique Actions: Divine Guidance , which gives a nearby friendly operative the ability to retain one failed hit as a normal hit or one normal hit as a critical hit in shooting or combat until the end of the Turning Point, and Divine Protection, which which does the same for one operative, but for its Defence roll against shooting attacks. These buffs aren’t huge, but they’ll help the squad you brought to the objective you use Icon Bearer to control, so they’re valuable for objective control nonetheless.
Gun Servitor (1 per kill team, 2 if you’re not fielding an Ancillary Support option)
The Gun Servitor is the big Heavy Gunner of the Inquisitorial Agent kill team, and if you’re not picking an Ancillary Support option for your kill team, you can take two of them!
They are always equipped with a 3 attack, 5 critical damage Servo Claw for close combat, and have 11 Wounds and a Save of 4+, so they’re actually decent tanks on top of their Gunner role. In addition to that, they can be equipped with one of the following Heavy (Dash is the only kind of move you can make in the same activation as shooting with them) weapons: Heavy Bolter, which can reroll hit rolls of 1, split its 5 attacks between multiple targets, and it gains Armour Penetration 1 if it scores a critical hit; Multi-Melta, which is a 4 attack melta with Armour Penetration 2, 6 normal damage and which also does 4 mortal wounds on a critical hit (we love Meltas in all forms!), and finally Plasma Cannon, which is a Plasma Gun with Blast so it hits everyone within Circle/2 Inches of the target.
All of these weapons are pretty good, but having an area damage Plasma Cannon is undeniably awesome. If you go for 2 Gun Servitors, we’d pick a Plasma Cannon and a Multi-Melta.
The main drawback to the Gun Servitors is that they only have an Action Point Limit of 1, unless they are within Square/3 Inches of a friendly operative, in which case thei Action Point Limit is 2.
Ancillary Support Options
As explained above, we’ve already written guides for the operatives in most of the Ancillary Support Option squads you can choose for the Inquisitorial Agent kill team, but that’s not the case for Sisters of Silence and Tempestus Scions, which we will go over here.
Sisters of Silence
A Sisters of Silence Ancillary Support squad lets you field 5 Sisters of Silence operatives in addition to your Inquisitorial Agents. You can choose from the following operatives:
Sisters of Silence Prosecutor (5 per kill team)
Like the rest of the Sisters of Silence, the Prosecutor has 8 Wounds and 3+ Save, making her and the other Sisters a bit more survivable than your Inquisition operatives in general. Also like her sisters, she has the Psychic Abonimation ability, which prevents all operatives from performing psychic actions while within Pentagon/6 Inches of her, and she’s also immune to the effects of psychic actions. That’s basically what the Sisters of Silence Ancillary Support option is all about: preventing psykers from functioning, which can be quite useful if you’re up against the weirdos from the Chaos Cult in an Ashes of Faith campaign.
The Prosecutor is equpped with a Boltgun with 4 attacks and 4 critical damage, lending some needed unlimited range shooting to your kill team, as well as a Gun Butt weapon for close combat.
Sisters of Silence Vigilator (5 per kill team)
The Vigilator is entirely like the Prosecutor, but she swaps the Boltgun for an Exacutioner Greatblade, which is a critical damage 6 melee weapon that scores critical hits on a roll of 5 or higher.
Sisters of Silence Witchseeker (5 per kill team)
The Witchseeker is a Prosecutor/Vigilator, but with a Torrent Circle/2 Inch Flamer as its main armament. Depending on your playstyle, this might actually be the best loadout choice for this Ancillary Support option, since having 5 of those Flamers really, really allows you to cover a lot of ground in deadly fire.
Tempestus Scions
A Tempestus Scions Ancillary Support squad lets you field 5 Tempestus Scion operatives in addition to your Inquisitorial Agents. You can choose from the following operatives:
Tempestus Scions Comms (1 per kill team)
Like all the Tempestus Scions, the Comms operative has 8 Wounds and a 4+ Save, so it lands between the Sisters of Silence and the Inquisition operatives in survivability.
He is equipped with a Hot-Shot Lasgun (which in Kill Team is exactly the same as a Boltgun) and a Gun Butt, just like all non-Gunner Tempestus Scions operatives.
He has the Signal Unique Action, which adds 1 to the Action Point Limit of a nearby friendly operative (which is very useful with some of the Inquisition operatives).
Tempestus Scions Gunner (2 per kill team, but you can only field each weapon loadout once)
The Tempestus Scions Gunner is a gunner operative of which you can take two, and he can choose between a whole bunch of different guns: There’s a Flamer (see the Sisters of Silence Witchseeker above), a Grenade Launcher that launches Frag and Krak Grenades (see the Equipment section), a Hot-Shot Volley gun that can split its attacks between targets and which gains Armour Penetration 1 on a critical hit, a Meltagun with Armour Penetration 2 and 4 mortal wounds on a critical hit, and finally, a Plasma Gun.
All these options have their uses, but the Grenade Launcher covers a role none of the Inquisitions operatives have. An optimal loadout for two Gunners could be Grenade Launcher and Meltagun, but it really depends on who you’re playing against.
Tempestus Scions Medic (1 per kill team)
The Tempestus Scions Medic brings some much-needed healing to your Inquisitorial Agent kill team, with the classic medic combo of ability and Unique Action: Medic! lets you revive a newly incapacitated friendly operative each Turning Point, who can then make a free Dash action towards the medic, and Medipack lets you heal 2D3 lost wounds on a friendly operative (which you didn’t just Medic! back to life) for the cost of 1 Action Point. There are several other medic options in the other Ancillary Support options (in the Exaction Squad, Kasrkin and Veteran Guardsmen), but the general rule is just to bring one if your Ancillary Support option allows it, since your Inquisition operatives (excluding the Gunner Servitor) aren’t all that durable.
Tempestus Scions Trooper (5 per kill team)
The Tempestus Scions Trooper just has a Hot-Shot Lasgun, and nothing else going for it, but due to the restrictions on how many of your other Scions you can bring in an Ancillary Support Option, you have to field at least one in the squad.
Exaction Squad
An Exaction Squad Ancillary Support squad lets you field 5 Exaction Squad operatives in addition to your Inquisitorial Agents. You can read Exaction Kill Guide for more information. You can choose from the following operatives:
- Arbites Castigator (1 per kill team)
- Arbites Chirurgant (1 per kill team)
- Arbites Gunner (1 per kill team)
- Arbites Leashmaster (1 per kill team)
- Arbites Marksman (1 per kill team)
- Arbites Revelatum (1 per kill team)
- Arbites Subductor (2 per kill team)
- Arbites Vigilant (5 per kill team)
- Arbites Vox-Signifier (1 per kill team)
- R-VR Cyber-Mastiff (1 per kill team)
Imperial Navy Breachers
An Imperial Navy Breachers Ancillary Support squad lets you field 6 Imperial Navy Breacher operatives in addition to your Inquisitorial Agents. You can read our Imperial Navy Breachers Kill Team Guide for more information. You can choose from the following operatives:
- Navis Armsman (6 per kill team)
- Navis Axejack (1 per kill team)
- Navis C.A.T. Unit (1 per kill team but only if you also field a Surveyor)
- Navis Endurant (1 per kill team)
- Navis Gheistskull (1 per kill team but only if you also field a Void-Jammer)
- Navis Grenadier (1 per kill team)
- Navis Gunner (1 per kill team)
- Navis Surveyor (1 per kill team)
- Navis Void-Jammer (1 per kill team)
Kasrkin
A Kasrkin Ancillary Support squad lets you field 5 Kasrkin operatives in addition to your Inquisitorial Agents. You can read our Kaskrin Kill Team Guide for more information. You can choose from the following operatives:
- Kasrkin Combat Medic (1 per kill team)
- Kasrkin Demo-Trooper (1 per kill team)
- Kasrkin Gunner (2 per kill team – but this number also counts any Sharpshooter in your team. You can only take each weapon option once)
- Kasrkin Recon-Trooper (1 per kill team)
- Kasrkin Sharpshooter (1 per kill team)
- Kasrkin Trooper (5 per kill team)
- Kasrkin Vox-Trooper (1 per kill team)
Veteran Guardsmen
A Veteran Guardsmen Ancillary Support squad lets you field 6 Veteran Guardsman operatives in addition to your Inquisitorial Agents. You can read our Veteran Guardsmen Kill Team Guide for more information. You can choose from the following operatives:
- Bruiser Veteran (1 per kill team)
- Comms Veteran (1 per kill team)
- Demolition Veteran (1 per kill team)
- Gunner Veteran (2 per kill team – but this number also counts any Sniper in your team. You can only take each weapon option once)
- Hardened Veteran (1 per kill team)
- Medic Veteran (1 per kill team)
- Sniper Veteran (1 per kill team)
- Trooper Veteran (6 per kill team)
- Zealot Veteran (1 per kill team)
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Ploys of the Inquisitorial Agent Kill Team
Strategic Ploys
Denounce
This Strategic Ploy can be used once per battle, and lets you select an enemy operative and roll a D3. In the next Turning Point, that operative’s Group Activation characteristic becomes 1, and it can only be activated when enemy operatives equal to your D3 roll have been activated first, or the enemy is out of other operatives to activate. This is great against “horde” kill teams such as the Chaos Cult that comes with the same expansion box as this kill team.
Intense Scrutiny
This lasts for one Turning Point, and makes all your operatives treat enemy operatives within 2 Circle/4 Inches as having an Engage Order when determining Line of Sight.
Quarry
This lets you pick an enemy operative and make them your Quarry for one Turning Point. Your operatives can reroll one of their attack dice for attacks against the Quarry for the rest of the Turning Point, and if the Quarry is incapacitated before the Turning Point ends, you can pick another enemy operative to be the Quarry for the remainder of the Tuning Point.
Irrefutable Jurisdiction
This lets you pick an objective marker, and for the rest of the Turning Point, you can reroll one defence dice for any shooting attack made against friendly operatives within 2 Circle/4 Inches of that objective marker.
Tactical Ploys
Embedded Agent
This Tactical Ploy can be used at the start of the Scouting Step before a game begins. It lets you select your Scouting Option after the opponent has revealed theirs. It also lets you select and resolve another , different option after the first one.
Absolute Authority
This can be used when your opponent uses a Strategic or Tactical Ploy (apart from Command Re-Roll). The Ploy they were trying to use is then not used, they get their Command Points paid for it refunded, and they can’t use that Ploy again in the same Turning Point as Absolute Authority was used by you. It can’t be used in the Scouting Step. Since the Q3 2023 Balance Dataslate, this ploy can’t be used to stop the same ploy more than once, and it can’t stop ploys that were made for the cost of 0 Command Points.
Relentless in Pursuit
This can be used when the enemy makes a Fall Back action. One friendly operative who was in Engagement Range of the enemy that fell back can then perform a free action, as long as it isn’t a movement action that isn’t Dash (so, for example, you can make a Shoot action).
The Emperor’s Will
This lets you select a friendly operative who can then ignore all modifiers to their characteristics for one Turning Point.
Equipment of the Inquisitorial Agent Kill Team
Armoured Bodysuit
This can only be equipped by Inquisition operatives with a 5+ Save. It lets you count rolls of 4 as succesful normal saves against Shooting attacks.
Refractor Field
This is also Inquisition only. It gives the bearer a 4+ Invulnerable Save.
Servo-Skull
Also Inquisition only. It lets you perform one Mission Action per turn for one less Action Point than its normal cost.
Master-Crafted Autopistol
Inquisition only. It gives a +1 to normal and critical damage for the bearer’s Autopistol or Extended Stock Autopistol, but doesn’t work on the Suppressed Autopistol of the Pistolier.
Power Knife
Inquisition only, but can’t be worn by the Autosavant or the Mystic. Ir gives you a 3 Attack, critical damage 5 close combat weapon that scores critical hits on a roll of 5 or higher.
Frag Grenade
This is the standard Imperial Frag Grenade used by most Imperial kill teams, with Blast and the Indirect Special Rule. It can’t be used by the Autosavant.
Krak Grenade
This is the standard Imperial Krak Grenade with Armour Penetration 1, 5 Critical Damage and the Indirect Special Rule, and it also can’t be used by the Autosavant.
Stun Grenade
The Stun Grenade can’t be used by the Autosavant, and is a one time use action that lets you worsen the Action Point Limit on a nearby enemy operative by 1 on a roll of 4 or highger.
Smoke Grenade
The Smoke Grenade can’t be used by the Autosavant, and lets the bearer perform a one time use action that creates an infinitely tall barrier of smoke within Pentagon/6 Inches of them with a Circle/2 inch radius, and for the rest of the Turning Point, any operative is Obscured if all Cover lines for an attack directed at it are drawn through the smoke.
Tac Ops of the Inquisitorial Agent Kill Team
The Inquisitorial Agents kill team has any archetype, meaning you can choose from any of the archetypes in the Core Rulebook. In addition to those, the team can choose from the following faction-specific Tac Ops:
Seize for Interrogation
This Tac Op can be revealed when you incapacitate an enemy target that’s more than Square/ 3 Inches from its allies. You can then replace the target with an Interrogate token, and your operatives can perform a Pick Up Action on that token if no enemies are nearby. This makes the operative carrying the token slower by Circle/2 Inches. If you control the Interrogate token (you have more operatives with a higher Action Point Limit total than your opponent next to it) by the end of the battle, you score 1 Victory Point, and if one of your operatives is also carrying it, you score another.
No Witnesses
This Tac Op is pretty simple, but great fun: If you get to the end of the battle, and all enemy operatives have been incapacitated, you score 2 Victory Points.
Investigate Lead
This can be revealed in any Turning Point, and makes you select one operative to be your investigator (it can be any friendly operative). The investigator has a Mission action called Investigate Lead, which can be used on any objective marker that hasn’t yet been investigated by your kill team. The second time you perform the action on an objective, you get 1 Victory Point, and if the investigator also survives the battle, you score another.
Playing the Inquisitorial Agent Kill Team
The Inquisitorial Agent kill team is unique in the way it can accommodate so many playstyles:
- Playing it with only Inquisition operatives gives you a versatile kill team of specialists with tons of personality, but a lack of access to regular human stuff such as medics, grenade launchers and snipers. This is definitely the hobbyist’s choice, since each operative is a unique painting challenge, but arguably also the gentleman’s choice, since choosing the other options on this list can make the Inquisitorial Agent kill team a bit overpowered in some matchups. That’s not to say an all-Inquisition kill team isn’t strong! The Gunner Servitor’s weapons are awesome, and if you can play well enough to get all the different buffs and debuffs from your operatives going, they’re a serious threat at medium and close range.
- Playing it as Inquisition+Sisters of Silence makes you really strong against psykers, while also giving you a lot of firepower or melee critical hits, and lets you specialize a whole lot since either Sisters operative can be taken 5 times.
- Playing it as Inquisiton+Tempestus Scions gives you a medic, some extra Action Point Limit and access to some of the classic Imperial guns your team is missing, and that basically also goes for Kasrkin and Veteran Guardsmen
- Playing it as Inquisition+Exaction Squad can give you a lot of melee survivability and great shotguns, as well as a medic (and a dog!)
- Playing it as Inqusition+Imperial Navy Breachers makes it a lot stronger in Into the Dark games.
Regardless of how you play the Inquisitorial Agent kill team, you have a wealth of options for tweaking your playstyle. They have access to all the Tac Ops in the Core Rulebook, and their own have tons of flavour. The main weaknesses of the kill team is that they aren’t that durable, and that playing without Ancillary Support leaves you with only the Gun Servitors providing any real long range firepower.
Building and assembling your Inquisitorial Agent kill team
The way the Inquisitorial Agent kill team has been put on sprues i really weird, to the extent that it might be a dealbreaker to some players:
Simply put, you need to buy two Inquisitorial Agent boxes (or two Ashes of Faith boxes, as we did for this guide!) to field a full team without resorting to Ancillary Support options.
This is due to the fact that the body of the Autosavant Agent and the Tome-Skull are the only “bodies” on the sprues you don’t have to use twice to assemble all the operative types you have access to.
The Interrogator and Enlightener are built from the same body, and the same goes for Questkeeper/Pistolier, Penal Legionnaire/Death World Veteran and Hexorcist/Mystic – and you have to field 2 Gun Servitors, but each pack only has one. This also means that if you buy two packs to field a full team, you end up with a surplus of 1 Tome-Skull and 1 Auto-Savant that you can’t use for anything but your bits box. It’s a bit of a mess, and makes the Inquisitorial Agent kill team one of the most expensive kill teams to get started with.
Even if you don’t go for a full agent team and decide you need an Ancillary Support option, you still have to buy the box for that Ancillary Support option, and often, you only need half of that pack for your team. It’s a bit of a mess.
However, if you’re already a bit hoarder who loves having lots of leftover bits for kitbashes and conversions, it shouldn’t be that much of a problem.
If you bought an Ashes of Faith expansion set to play this team, you get two Ancillary Support options in that: 5 Sisters of Silence and 5 Tempestus Scions.
Visually, the Tempestus Scions are starting to look pretty dated next to newer stuff such as Kasrkin models, so if that’s important to you, you might want to skip that option. Both kits are pretty easy to assemble, and the Sisters are really easy to paint as it’s mostly metals.
The Inquisitorial Agents themselves are pretty straightforward to assemble, but beware that since they’re regular human-sized (which is small in Warhammer 40,000) and have loads of detail, there are a few very fragile bits.
The polearm of the Death World Veteran gets stuck on stuff pretty easily, the handguard on the Eviscerator Chainsword for the Questkeeper was broken in the middle of the guard on both of the kits we built from, and the tiny robot arms of the Autosavant are also extremely fragile. In short: handle with care, and don’t buy this team for your kid.
