---
title: "Assassins 3rd edition codex"
subtitle: "Book review"
author: Seth
publish_date: 2025-05-30 00:01
date: 2025-05-30 00:01
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    tag: [ settings, wargame, scifi ]
---

I've been building a Vindicare Assassin for **Warhammer 40,000**.
I have the rules for Assassins in the **Imperial Agents** 10th edition codex book, but by chance I saw the 3rd edition Assassins codex at a second-hand bookshop.
It's only 12 pages long, so I picked it up, and this is my review of it.

With just 12 pages, it's a pretty sparse book.
I can see why the modern codex has incorporated Assassins into a larger book.
The inside front and back covers feature painted miniatures, there's a page of lore, and stats for assassins from each assassin temple (Eversor, Callidus, Culexus, and Vindicare).
The lore is of interest, of course, but what I did not expect were 2 page packed with game ideas.

## Solo Warhammer

Page 8 of the codex is titled "Gaming with Assassins", and it contains game ideas for both 2-player and single-player games of 40k.
In both cases, the book proposed Space Hulk terrain (I didn't even know that existed back in 3rd edition, but maybe it's talking about the board game?).
The modern equivalent, I guess, would be Boarding Actions, but it would be just as easy to use **Doom** or **Heroquest** boards as an alternative.
Essentially, you take a single Assassin into an environment with several sealed rooms, each one containing an enemy unit.
You don't actually deploy the unit until the Assassin enters the room, at which point you roll to see which of your available units is revealed.
If gunshots are fired, you roll dice to determine whether a unit in a nearby room has heard it.
On a 4, 5, or 6, a nearby unit has heard the noise and activates.

It's bascially a dungeon crawl, and a mechanic that I've already been using for solo Boarding Action games.
What intrigues me is that Games Workshop was thinking about solo play back in 3rd edition, and even a solo mode that allows you to just pit a single miniature against several others.
One of the disadvantages of trying to play even a small skirmish game solo is that you have so many miniatures on both side to manage.

It's one thing to manage 8 or 10 miniatures on your turn, but somehow doing that all over again for the enemy side feels like you're suddenly playing a second game.
Managing just a single miniature on your turn means you only have to think about literally one set of rules for yourself.
You know exactly what tools and tricks you have available to you, so you can sink right in to your turn without ever having to come up for air.
Your turn is always just about you, not about cross-referencing rules and special abilities from 8 different sources.
Switching over to the enemy side is complex, but that's board maintenance.
That part of solo gaming is often complex, and that's acceptable because emotionally it's not "your" turn.
It's just setup.

I'm curious about how a solo game would go.
An Assassin only has a 2 Wound threshold, but then again it's not a guarantee that a unit can target an Assassin to even attempt to impose a wound.
I'm absolutely going to try solo mode as described, with my Vindicare Assassin and Boarding Action rules.

## Scenarios

On page 10, there's the Warhammer 40,000 game scenario called, appropriately enough, "Assassination!"
The Assassin's goal in this scenario is to assassinate the enemy commander.
This isn't a single-player or a one-against-many scenario, this is a standard army-against-army game.
It's a pretty universal scenario, some edition-specific army building terminology notwithstanding.

## Fun booklet

It's hard to call 12 pages a "book".
It's more of a pamphlet, and I actually like that a lot.
I love the periodical format, which is why I enjoy **White Dwarf**.
I don't need all gaming materials to be in hardback books with foil covers and colour photos.
I enjoy getting supplements that feel supplementary.
The 3rd edition **Codex Assassins** feels a little like an aside.
But that doesn't mean it lacks impact.
This is a fun book, with more content than you'd expect from 12 pages.