Perfect assassins?

[Lothiack Drake]

This is what I've been using.
Give your assassin an Etheral Crossbow(999 damage, armor negating + underwater usable), an Eye Of Aiming and a Robe of Invulnerability. In his orders tell him to cast Aim(Level 1 Alteration, 1 Air path required) then Fire and flee.

Any sugestion, comments or own "recipes"?

[Gandalf Parker]

You might add that skull talisman (skeletons) or the blood contract (imps). The extra distraction can increase your kills tremendously. The spirit helm will give an extra shot. The trident or stone bird that fight for you can be nice also.

Personally I like to go with 2-blood mage units so they can try to convert the commander. He then fights the units left in that province

[Jasper]

The Ethereal crossbow is slow and allows a Magic Resistance save. It's of little use against the primary assasination target -- mages.

Being able to retreat during assasination is a bug, and likely to be fixed to be ignored. Even now, retreating just means automatic death.

A Robe of Invulnerability on an assasin is a waste of _80_ Earth Gems.

Also, which assasin were you thinking of that has Air Magic?

[Graeme Dice]

The "perfect" assasin would likely be something like:
Lord of the Night with a black heart.
Boots of the Behemoth
Robe of Invulnerability
Spirit Helmet
Lifelong Protection/Ring of Regen/Other Misc.
Some kind of useful shield and weapon combo.
It can trample anything that isn't size 6, which means most commanders will be killed fairly easily.

[NTJedi]

no one has mentioned that death item which explodes when the wearer dies thus greatly increasing the chance of killing your target... even if the assassin dies.

[Taqwus]

Nothing's perfect.
If you can find the magical site that lets you hire Ethereal Stalkers, however, rejoice.