Starting with the Imperial Secret Service

The Imperial Secret Service is the long arm of the law and the direct representative of the Emperor’s justice. The ISS forces are mostly teams in service of the Imperial Agents, who represents His authority on the streets of the twin planet system of Yu Jing.

The ISS has a shady reputation. Their jurisdiction allows them to act without explanation and they are licensed to question and detain anyone they suspect for whatever reason. Judge, jury and in some cases the executioner of the sentence.

In the eyes of the loyal Yu Jing citizen, the ISS is the brave institution that protects them from the terrorist and rebellious unruly nationalists and those that wish harm to the Emperor. In the eyes of the suppressed minorities in the Yu Jing State, the ISS is the Emperor’s weapon of terror to enforce and act out his laws that made them second-rank citizens in the first place.

Either way, the Imperial Secret Service is feared and respected within Yu Jing society for their rigorous enforcement of the law. The Imperial Secret Service mainly consist out of the Imperial Agents, different penal regiments, the paramilitaric Celestial Guards and bounty hunters.

Let’s take a look at a couple of starter lists, for those who are willing to make their hands dirty to enforce justice.

The Starter Box

First, we take a look at the Starter Set. This one comes with the following:

Celestial Guard (Combi Rifle)

Celestial Guard (Combi Rifle)

Celestial Guard (Boarding Shotgun)

Imperial Agent Pheasant Rank (Combi Rifle)

Hsien (Multi Rifle)

Wu Ming (Boarding Shotgun + Tinbot L2)

166 Points/0.5 SWC

The Starter Set is a great way to start off with the Imperial Secret Service.

The Celestial Guards are the line infantry of the ISS and you will see them fielded in a lot of lists. They have amazing Willpower for a line infantry, and can arm themselves against many Bio-Technical attacks due to their BTS. In everything else they compare to any other rank-and-file soldier.

The Imperial Agent is in a weird place. Either you love him, or you can’t see the point of the unit. It is somewhat of a Swiss pocketknife; it has high WIP, good BTS, decent ARM, incredible CC + Martial Arts Lv1. They come equipped with a Monofilament Close Combat Weapon and most of the unit’s profiles come either with an X-Visor or a Multi Spectral Visor Lv1. Next to that, many of its profiles come with a Chain of Command Option, which will make them take the roll of Lieutenant immediately when your initial Lieutenant is shot, ignoring Loss of Lieutenant. An amazing set of skills, but…

The thing is, the Pheasants pay through the nose for all these features and they are some of the most expensive Light Infantry in the game. Some know how to utilize the Pheasant’s strenghts to the fullest and can bring down price models like TAGs or expensive Heavy Infantry down with one stroke of the powerful Close Combat weapon. Others do not or can’t find a place for it in their own playstyle. Find out for yourself what works best for you!

Personally, I haven’t found a roll for the Pheasant other than allowing me to link my Bao Troops, another feature the Pheasant is known for. 😉

The Hsien is one of the elite personal bodyguards of the Emperor. Strictly speaking, they are one of the highest ranked Agents, and are send to the conflict as the representation of His will. They can take charge of an operation and show the defensive and offensive capabilities of the armed law of the Emperor.

The Hsiens are elite Heavy Infantry, and come with an overall high statline (amazing CC, good BS, good PH, high WIP, and great defensive in the ARM and BTS department). Next to their amazing statline, they wear Multi Spectral Visors Lv2, Nanopulsers and bear Armour Piercing Close Combat Weapons and a myriad of weapon options in their profiles. Expertise Martial Artist, they even have Martial Arts Lv1.

As a Lieutenant, the Hsien allows you to spend 1 extra SWC in your list, which can be quite a boon if you want to utilize the firepower of the ISS.

An elite killing machine, with lots of specialized uses. That’s the Hsien for you.

The Wu Ming is one of the penal regiments of the ISS. Criminals and political prisoners that work for the ISS to pay for their deeds in the service of the Emperor. The Wu Ming are a bare-bones Heavy Infantry regiment, and in such they are some of the cheapest Heavy Infantry in the game. The cheapest option is under the 30 points, and the most expensive doesn’t cut it to the 40 points. And the Wu Ming don’t lose on their abilities for that; no impetuous models or irregular orders. Just tanks, providing regular orders for you to run them.

The Wu Ming have decent Heavy Infantry stats. Nothing elite, but certainly above average.

They come with a variety of weapon options; rocket launchers, grenade launchers, panzerfausts and can protect themselves with Nimbus grenades, that create a cloud of nano-tech, blocking 1 Burst of every weapon fired through the cloud, and -3 BS. They even come with linkability and a specialist option. You read that right; you can run a full linkteam of Wu Ming (somewhere between 150 and 200 points), tanking themselves into the battlefield, claiming objective after objective. Kinematica Lv1 allows them to dodge that extra inch into any direction, or allows them to engage an enemy model with an extra inch movement. The Wu Ming miss out on big close combat capabilities, but a knife with a CC of 16 is still nothing to sneeze at.

Let’s take a look at three 200 point starting lists, before going off into a fullflung ITS list for a game at 300 points.