# New Psychic Powers Thread



## venomlust (Feb 9, 2010)

Just figured we should centralize all the coming strategery, bitching, and cheering in one place.

In case you haven't seen the new psychic powers, here they are: http://www.heresy-online.net/forums/showpost.php?p=1734898&postcount=492. 

Because nobody asked for it, I'm going to give a review of each new power and what I think. Feel free to ignore and/or add your own thoughts.


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## Straken's_Fist (Aug 15, 2012)

How this affects me: Prescience now requires a level 2 psyker...Probably means bye bye to Inquisitiors leading blob guard, except for Coteaz (the only level 2 Inquisitor). Though this is probably a good thing, because the Inquisitor+Prescience+Priest in a blob made it ridiculously powerful, and that's not even taking into account things like rad grenades...I'll probably still take Inqusiitors though, if not for rads and the liber heresius alone. Prescience was probably overkill anyway with orders doing the job just fine...And bdesides, there is always primaris pyskers. 
Heralds of Tzeentch must now upgrade to level 2 to use it. Tzeentch Sorceres (if it's true they now get access to divination) need level 3 (due to the compulsory tzeentch power). 
But all in all I think this is good, as Prescience is such a good power it really should take 2 warp charge points. Much more balanced, good.


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## venomlust (Feb 9, 2010)

*Pyromancy:*

Primaris: Same as before. A heavy flamer. I think S6, AP3, or Torrent would have been a little cooler than a stock heavy flamer. At any rate, I guess it wouldn't be terrible if you needed to erase a tightly packed horde of peons. 

Fiery Form: Lost the +2 strength and gained re-roll wounds from other Pyromancy powers. A decent effect, since the strength of the other powers is 4-5. Re-rolling wounds on Molten Beam could be pretty sweet, too. I just question how successful one has to be at rolling the dice to make 2 powers go off and not have them get denied by the opponent's psykers. 

Fire Shield: Well, using it on a unit with shrouded could be cool. I liked the old version's attacks on charging units. Dangerous terrain is a pretty lame substitute if it works as it does in 6th.

Spontaneous Combustion: I like it, but it's not that good.

Sunburst: I'm glad the range got increased, but why did blind get removed? 

Molten Beam: Increased range to 18" would have been better, but it didn't get nerfed. Situationally I've always thought this could be a badass power but I never rolled a 6 the one game I actually tried Pyromancy.


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## venomlust (Feb 9, 2010)

*Daemonology - Sanctic:*

Primaris: As a Chaos player, I think it's a fair debuff. 3 warp charges, though? Dunno if it's worth it. 

Gate of Infinity: Cool! I love the sound of teleporting around the board.

Hammerhand: Sounds great. I'd love to buff a unit of berzerkers and double out an entire squad of guardsmen.

Sanctuary: A reliable +1 to invuln saves sounds good for non-Daemon psykers. Not sure how often Grey Knights chuck huge squads of terminators around, but Hammerhand + Sanctuary together would probably make one helluva murder squad.

Purge Soul: Eh, I really don't like psychic powers that inflict a single wound. I'd rather have a chance for more lower probability wounds. No effect on vehicles, not even a glance? :cray:

Cleansing Flame: A heavy flamer explosion. This is what the pyromancy power should have been.

Vortex of Doom: Pretty cool, but a lot of stuff can go wrong. At least it gives you a chance to insta-kill something really powerful if they fail their invuln.


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## venomlust (Feb 9, 2010)

*Divination:*

Primaris: I agree with @Straken's_Fist, this is more balanced now. I don't mind putting an extra mastery level on my Herald of Tzeentch.

Foreboding: So much for the rumor of a swap to the primaris slot. I like this power. Could make a large unit of Chaos marines a bitch to charge. Orks, guardsmen, cultists, and other weaklings vulnerable to AP5 will get turned into swiss cheese.

Forewarning: Ok, cool. What's not to like about unit wide 4+ invuln?

Perfect Timing: Also still awesome. Ignores Cover sounds like it isn't what it used to be, but it's still nice.

Precognition: Cool but I wouldn't be using Divination on a combat psyker. Rerolling saves is nice. Force weapons sound like they aren't as reliable as they used to be, but nonetheless making it easier to inflict Instant Death can only be a good thing.

Misfortune: Yes! Me likey. If you're using a unit that pumps out a shit-load of attacks like a Cultist horde, then using this on their target before they charge sounds great.

Scrier's Gaze: Yeah, ok... I'd rather kill things than use a power like this, personally.


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## venomlust (Feb 9, 2010)

*Telekinesis:*

Question #1: Why the hell do CSM not have Telekinesis, exactly? Yup, I'm gonna ask it like a stereotypical little whiny heretic: Just couldn't let us have as many powers as the fucking loyalists, eh GW?! :grin:

Primaris: If Monstrous Creatures weren't immune to Strikedown, this would be a pretty cool power.

Crush: Either decent or shitty, depending how you roll.

Objuration Mechanicum: I'd love to use this against a blob of something. Has some utility, for sure.

Shockwave: Not that impressive, but I really like the idea of novas.

Levitation: Useful on turn 1 for moving infantry, as far as I can see it. Cool for moving terminators?

Telekine Dome: A well-placed psyker could provide a pretty good bubble of cover.

Psychic Maelstrom: Powerful but short-ranged.


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## venomlust (Feb 9, 2010)

*Daemonology - Malefic:*

Hell yeah, here we go:

Primaris: Obviously awesome, given the huge range of units that can be summoned. Whatever you're short on, you can make more. Of course, it isn't easy to pull this power off at ML3. I still can't shake the feeling that ML3 powers aren't going to be pulled off successfully very often. I think that's the idea, and I guess I can appreciate it when it comes to conjuring an entirely new unit you didn't "pay" for. At any rate, this power is purely for the greater daemons, daemon princes, and sorcerers upgraded to max warp charges. 

Cursed Earth: Fucking awesome, especially because it's ML1. This will allow a unit of Horrors to buff the entire back field, freeing up the Grimoire for more mobile units. Only need to have 1 model from the unit within 12". Flying Daemon Princes could potentially facilitate a nasty deep strike that also protects the units who arrive. Unfortunately, ML1 is a blessing and a curse in terms of being able to pull it off and also dispel the power successfully. At any rate, the power itself is still good and very useful if you pull it off.

Dark Flame: Great, I love it. This is what the primaris power from Pyromancy should have been. Why is this power not in Pyromancy?

Infernal Gaze: At first glance this sounds good, and I guess for 1 charge on a flying nukeprince it wouldn't be bad. But it's a beam at strength 3, so you're hitting 3 units max. I think fleshbane is far more useful than armourbane on this ability. Practically guaranteed 3 wounds; on a unit of monstrous creatures with bad saves that could be very nice. 18" is great range, too.

Sacrifice: Sounds pretty amazing. "Options" says to me that loci or rewards are both fair game. Grimoire, Portal Glyph, loci... awesome! 1 warp charge and a pawn for a herald? Truly evil. 

Incursion: Not sure I'd ever use this power over the primaris/possession but it's still awesome.

Possession: Whaaaa! This is the one they're gonna deny. As others have been saying, saving this for when you have a single wound left sounds like a decent way of using it. However, the likelihood of perils is pretty high, so you might just lose that wound and get nothing out of it. That's the way it goes, randomness and dice and all that.

What I like most about Daemonology is that you can run it as a nuke/buff discipline. If i'm correct, you can't get a 3 warp charge power unless you're ML3. At least that's the way it would have worked in 6th. Therefore, spamming ML2 psykers would allow you re-roll the powers that you can't cast. That means witchfires/cursed ground/sacrifice are guaranteed over the powers you can't use. Again, that's assuming this works the same way it did in 6th, which it probably doesn't.


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## The Irish Commissar (Jan 31, 2012)

I know it's still early days but I'm not sure if I like the new way of casting psychic powers. If I'm reading correctly for my farseer if I roll a 6 that means i have 9 points. That means if i want cast prescience i have to roll 5 dices to have better then 50/50 odds or less of casting the power, which if i roll a double 6 using 5 dice I perils. That sounds pretty shitty to me. ( that's if I'm reading it correctly)


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## jams (Sep 19, 2009)

no more puppet master makes jams a sad panda. gone are the days i can use my opponent's leman russes to do my dirty work for me :*(


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## venomlust (Feb 9, 2010)

I also wonder how exactly we'll be choosing our powers. Since the Codex specifically limits what disciplines a sorcerer can use, yet all the powers are checked for CSM other than Telekinesis... that has to add up somehow.


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## Double Heretic (Jul 7, 2013)

Looks like until the new errata, any CSM players wanting to play around in the psychic phase will be taking a spell familiar for the now-understandable point cost. :so_happy:


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## venomlust (Feb 9, 2010)

Haha, being the dork that I am, I buy one every single time. I've failed maybe 3 or 4 tests in all the games I've played. Definitely worth 15 points!


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## Moonschwine (Jun 13, 2011)

The Irish Commissar said:


> I know it's still early days but I'm not sure if I like the new way of casting psychic powers. If I'm reading correctly for my farseer if I roll a 6 that means i have 9 points. That means if i want cast prescience i have to roll 5 dices to have better then 50/50 odds or less of casting the power, which if i roll a double 6 using 5 dice I perils. That sounds pretty shitty to me. ( that's if I'm reading it correctly)


That's the correct interpretation. You have something like a 1 in 4 chance of making it with just two dice and just doubling the number of dice to warp charges doesn't make a direct 50% of the time because of the way probability works. I could be completely wrong about this though because my mathematical skills are absolutely terrible. 

I've run the numbers each way that I can and the new psychic phase basically shafts my current army build that uses last memory. This is because the new casting rules makes casting Last Memory at warp charge 2 or 3 so incredibly dangerous you may as well put bets on long-shot horses than even bother with it because your chances to fail and kill yourself are incredibly high. With warp charge 2 using 2 dice, 3/4 of the time your caster dies (75%). With 3 dice at warp charge 3 It's something like a 5/6 chance of killing your caster (83%) if you use just 3 dice. Then to make matters worse you risk dying to perils from wounds or insta gib more and more the more dice you use.

Black Legion are now even worse than the already not so good Chaos Codex it's shocking.


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## The Irish Commissar (Jan 31, 2012)

So bascically anything mastery level 2 or above has a good chance of either killing your psyker or wounding him badly. We also go from reliably casting powers in sixth to barely been able to cast them in 7th. That's pretty shit :angry:


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## venomlust (Feb 9, 2010)

From Zion's review, it appears chaos armies get the primaris of their mark for free, even if you don't specialize in that god's table.

At the very least, now a marked Sorc doesn't have to waste a charge on the mostly lackluster powers.

On the other hand, over all I think it's shittier for us that we can't specialize in a discipline and get the primaris the way other armies can. We can't ever get all the powers in a god's discipline, which is dumb. Maybe that rule will change with the (hopefully) forthcoming errata, but I have a strong feeling it won't.


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## elmir (Apr 14, 2011)

I don't think the cards are 100% accurate. Aparently, the primaris one for Sanctic is WC1, not 3. 

Still, I'm happy with some of the changes. Prescience got a well deserved slap on the wrist. It was too good the way it was in 6th. 


I'm just curious to see how GKs will be erratta'd/faq'd.


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## mayegelt (Mar 18, 2014)

Gunna need to read these rules when I get the book, from the comments above I assume that Horrors of Tzeentch are messed up as the squad is only ever Mastery Lv 1, though can generate an additional Warp Charge if 11-15 models and 1 more at 16+. But likely chance is gunna continually blow themselves up 1 model at a time for no reward.


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## Moonschwine (Jun 13, 2011)

The Irish Commissar said:


> So bascically anything mastery level 2 or above has a good chance of either killing your psyker or wounding him badly. We also go from reliably casting powers in sixth to barely been able to cast them in 7th. That's pretty shit :angry:


Not all powers. I want to stress my pain is from Last Memory of Yuanthos which has a built in kill function. Most warp charge 1 powers are reliable to get off because you will always have a base 2 psychic dice (ml 1 + d6 roll of 1), and you only need 1 success.


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## The Irish Commissar (Jan 31, 2012)

But I play Eldar so I rely on my psychic powers. Things like prescience and fortune will be extremely hard to cast which will make or break my army.


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## Xabre (Dec 20, 2006)

venomlust said:


> From Zion's review, it appears chaos armies get the primaris of their mark for free, even if you don't specialize in that god's table.
> 
> At the very least, now a marked Sorc doesn't have to waste a charge on the mostly lackluster powers.
> 
> On the other hand, over all I think it's shittier for us that we can't specialize in a discipline and get the primaris the way other armies can. We can't ever get all the powers in a god's discipline, which is dumb. Maybe that rule will change with the (hopefully) forthcoming errata, but I have a strong feeling it won't.



It's note QUITE that way, for Chaos. However, you get the primaris for free (from what I've read) if you only roll from one school. Since Chaos sorcerers MUST take at least one spell from their mark's school, then if you stick to that school, you get the primaris. For instance, a level 1 Aspiring Sorcerer in a squad of Thousand Sons will automatically get their Primaris + 1 roll... because they can't have more than one power and they MUST take Tzeentch. Therefore, suddenly they have access to 2 powers as a level 1, guaranteed. I haven't read everything yet, so I don't know whether or not a psyker can cast something with more WC than their level... if that's the case, than in the above example, that same Aspiring Sorcerer still can't take the WC2 power, because they can't go above level 1. So an Aspiring Sorcerer gets 2 powers out of 3 possibilities, with the 4 restricted to HQ.


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## venomlust (Feb 9, 2010)

Hmm, I guess I didn't look at it that way. Getting 2 powers for 1 ML is still good. I've been reading that beams don't reduce strength when passing through targets. Is this true? If so that's badass. Bolt of Change, among others, will melt some fools.


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## Gret79 (May 11, 2012)

I can't find anything in the psychic rules that's stops a ml1 psyker casting a 2 warp charge power. Can anyone confirm?


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## whittsy (Feb 8, 2013)

After reading all the comments, I'll throw my input in.

Mastery Levels only limits your amount of spells.
ML1 = 1 spell, ML2 = 2 spells etc etc. Chaos/Daemon sorcerers on the other hand:
ML1= 2 spells, ML2 = 3 spells etc. The way I read it is that a marked sorcerer MUST take a spell from his Gods lore, done, the primaris that you automatically get now. As for casting those WC3 spells, you roll your D6 at the start of the phase, and roll a 1 (unlucky!) but hey, your sorcerer is ML2, so thats now 3 dice you have. You can now cast a WC3 spell, assuming you get 3 - 4+ rolls on your 3 dice. Here's what I've discovered though with the new Malefic spells.

Scenario:

You play Daemons as your primary detatchment. You take say 2 LoCs with ML3, and 4 Heralds of Tz, ML2 say, all of them. You take your 3 Daemon Princes as Heavy choices and make those 3 MoT and ML2. You then decide to take 4 squads of Pink Horrors, 2 as squads of 10, one as a squad of 15 and the other 17. (4 ML1 psykers with 1WCx2, 2WC and 3WC). You're spells are all from Malefic, and remember they all have their Change Primaris, thats 13 psykers in your army. You roll a 5 for your D6. That's now a whopping 24+5 dice = 29 "power dice". Lets see anyone stop you from summon a fuck ton of daemons. even if you only throw 4-5 dice to cast your Malefic primaris, you can still cast that spell 5-7 times, at least 2 or 3 of those SHOULD cast, and say you do cast it 3 times, and summon 3x10 horrors, your next phase, you how have +27 to your dice roll. That's pretty much making another 1-2 squads of horrors per phase. Fuck it, summon some screamers for a laugh, because you could probably summon 5 squads of 3 screamers in 1 phase if you get lucky, or even sacrifice your pre summoned free squad of 10 horrors for a few Blood Thirsters or LoCs or KoS or GUO. Have some fun -_-


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## experiment 626 (Apr 26, 2007)

whittsy said:


> After reading all the comments, I'll throw my input in.
> 
> Mastery Levels only limits your amount of spells.
> ML1 = 1 spell, ML2 = 2 spells etc etc. Chaos/Daemon sorcerers on the other hand:
> ...


 Yes, yes, Chicken Little, the sky is absolutely falling because every single Daemon player is going to:
1. Take ALL their powers from Malefic, even though the likes of Daemon Princes & LoC are much better served with Biomancy/Telepathy or Divination respectively...

2. Every single Psyker will manage to roll up Sacrifice & Possession all the time. (even those Pink Horrors who only have a 16% chance of getting one of those powers.)

3. Will always manage to make their WC3 casting rolls without fail, and also without ever exploding from Perils of the Warp.

4. Will always bring 3 extra cases containing the 2-3k additional pts worth of models they'll be summoning every single game!


In theory summon spam sounds completely broken. In practice it'll be overall a 'meh' tactic because you won't always have the relevant spells for mass summoning additional Heralds and/or Greaters, and a number of casters will actually be much better off sticking to the spell lores that made them awesome in 6th.
A LoC for example is still much, much nastier keeping to his Divination specialisation, as he'll now auto-get Prescience, while still getting access to staples like Forewarning and Precognition. (which makes him one of the game's meanest combat beatsticks!)

Also, note that the Malefic powers specifically state that _the player must have the physical models they're summoning to the table_!
If some donkey-cave is putting up empty bases as a 'counts as', or else using Guardsman or Banshee stand-ins, then call them out for the fucking cheating bastards they are! (no proper model = no summoning!)

Fantasy players don't let VC or DoC players abuse their summoning mechanics and insist on actual models being used, why are 40k players having such a hard time doing the same?!


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## whittsy (Feb 8, 2013)

experiment 626 said:


> Yes, yes, Chicken Little, the sky is absolutely falling because every single Daemon player is going to:
> 1. Take ALL their powers from Malefic, even though the likes of Daemon Princes & LoC are much better served with Biomancy/Telepathy or Divination respectively...
> 
> 2. Every single Psyker will manage to roll up Sacrifice & Possession all the time. (even those Pink Horrors who only have a 16% chance of getting one of those powers.)
> ...


Im aware that it probably WONT happen, but it CAN happen, which is just plain stupid.


experiment 626 said:


> Also, note that the Malefic powers specifically state that the player must have the physical models they're summoning to the table!
> If some donkey-cave is putting up empty bases as a 'counts as', or else using Guardsman or Banshee stand-ins, then call them out for the fucking cheating bastards they are! (no proper model = no summoning!)


This I know also. 

Its mainly in those 1000 point games where, if luck is on your side, or you sacrificed enough children the day before, you can summon enough extra daemons to turn your 1k point army into a 1.5-2k point army, yeah, they may not be ALL that strong, but when you're adding in extra bodies in a relatively small game and your opponent does have the potential to field a 2k+ army, all of a sudden those measly couple of troops have now boosted their force now allowing him to move up the field without a worry!


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## JAMOB (Dec 30, 2010)

experiment 626 said:


> Yes, yes, Chicken Little, the sky is absolutely falling because every single Daemon player is going to:
> 1. Take ALL their powers from Malefic, even though the likes of Daemon Princes & LoC are much better served with Biomancy/Telepathy or Divination respectively...
> 
> 2. Every single Psyker will manage to roll up Sacrifice & Possession all the time. (even those Pink Horrors who only have a 16% chance of getting one of those powers.)
> ...


To be fair, "summoning" or whatever it's called is the primaris (hint: everyone can get it if they don't roll something they prefer), and he did mention that not all units will make it every time. Still, perils isn't that bad - it actually has a 1/6 chance of benefitting you! Bur seriously, a single pink horror or a single wound off a greater deamon isn't so big a deal.

I agree, though, that the biggest wall before this tactic is the models; that's a lot of horrors. Still, If you have 3k points of demons then you just might want to try this, and I don't see a good way of dealing with it.


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## scscofield (May 23, 2011)

Blast templates


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## Xabre (Dec 20, 2006)

I'm really liking the fact that now my Thousand Sons have a little bit more bite by adding additional firepower with a second spell to each Aspiring Sorcerer.

On the other hand, Ahriman actually just got smacked around a bit, because if you think about it, as Mastery 4, he can't benefit from the bonus power, because there are only 4 powers. And as a marked sorcerer, he can't just go 'ooh, all Divination please!' because he needs at least 1 Tz power. That annoys me slightly.

I have to decide how to best take advantage of this. I'm torn between an army with Ahriman leading, and using a bunch of Aspirings (my current primary list), or building something with Be'lakor, a Crimson Slaughter primary and a Black Legion secondary. Doing that allows me to run 2 Sorcerers plus Be'L, and 3 aspirings in my Rubric squads.

While we're on the subject.... The whole point of the Balestar of Mannon was to give a Chaos Sorcerer divination.... But according to the chart, now they can learn it automatically. Thoughts?


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## Mossy Toes (Jun 8, 2009)

Xabre said:


> And as a marked sorcerer, he can't just go 'ooh, all Divination please!' because he needs at least 1 Tz power. That annoys me slightly.


Players in my area are arguing that the chaos focus primaris counts as the 1 god-specific power you must take. They also argue that since you can then "generate" all of your mastery level based powers from one other discipline of your choice (generate being the operative word in the text, the mastery level powers being the only powers that you randomly generate with a D6), you can get that normal focus primaris too, which strikes me as rather wanting to have your cake and eat it too. I want to check out the wording a bit more in detail before I settle on a ruling, and I'll go with the local FLGS ruling until I get an FAQ explaining that tangled knot, but we definitely need an FAQ for it to see if we can field 1kson Aspiring Sorcs that have 3 powers...



Xabre said:


> While we're on the subject.... The whole point of the Balestar of Mannon was to give a Chaos Sorcerer divination.... But according to the chart, now they can learn it automatically. Thoughts?


Balestar is now a glorified 10 point upgrade on a spell familiar that negates your Deny The Witch bonus. It has gone from a mandatory auto-include in my lists to an item lower on my priorities than the freaking Scrolls of Magnus.

Hmm. Scrolls of Magnus. Now there's an interesting thought to combine with Daemonology...


A question bothering me about the wording of spell familiar and the rulebook I haven't been able to check out yet: with the way the rules interact, do you get to reroll failures with the spell familiar, or just reroll the whole batch? (Akin to the Fleet vs Icon of Wrath versions of rerolling charge distances)


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## mayegelt (Mar 18, 2014)

Mossy Toes said:


> A question bothering me about the wording of spell familiar and the rulebook I haven't been able to check out yet: with the way the rules interact, do you get to reroll failures with the spell familiar, or just reroll the whole batch? (Akin to the Fleet vs Icon of Wrath versions of rerolling charge distances)


Yes, I pointed this out on another forum (I know I'm a sinner for talking on more than 1 at a time ) that yes the wording for it is...
"A model with a spell familiar may reroll failed psychic tests..." then it rants about not needing a model.
I would presume by the wording you reroll all the dice rather than just the dice that fail, in the same way that previously you didn't reroll just 1 of the dice of the LD check (probably that 6 that caused that nice 4 to turn into that 10...)

Here is one of my posts from somewhere else



> In effect the Tzeentch fireballing army is heavily nurfed because your chance to actually cast your spells used to be over 91% pass rate regardless of using flickering fire at WC 3. NOW casting the same spell if left to just the dice they generate themselves they will only succeed 14% of the time...
> If you go for the WC3 version and you add 2 dice from your spare pool it goes up to 50%, add another dice an it is 66%, but that is burning a whole secondary units power to cast a spell that in 6th you could have had 82% to cast both, and 99.19% to have just cast 1 of the 2 between them.
> 
> Of course the deny the witch thing is slightly different as well, and rather than just needing the one roll of 5+/6+ that they could roll regardless. They now have to manage the dice they have to try to roll enough 5+/6+ rolls to stop the spell. So on mass casting with loads of dice, unless your opponent also has loads you should get loads going through.


 Just seeing that (having done the maths) I noticed that this isn't the doom and gloom everyone is talking about, especially if combined with...



> Things like Tzeentch armies of old relied on the fact that every unit of horrors shot fireballs. The trouble seems to be stemming from people claiming an army had a very very large amount of dice and used to make more units for more dice. But as I have said in several threads (including this one I think), that if you are spending all your dice on making new units you aren't killing anyone with them. It would be like having a fully loaded predator / vindicator / leman russ and choosing not to fire the gun because you prefer tank shocking everything.
> 
> If you threw this example at another army it would say be a guard army. You have chosen to give up all those lasguns, heavy weapon supports so in essence sacrificed all your shooting with all your guns and replaced them with walky talkys (E.T. reference there)... but you can get 25% pts of guardsmen each turn, or unarmed guardsmen who can also help summon more.
> Sure you will have mass numbers at the end of the battle potentially, but the likely chance is your enemy has actually caused more damage to you than you can summon, and because you aren't doing any damage to him they will win the game of attrition. Not to mention that just having loads of models doesn't always net you objectives and there seems to be a load more of them now.


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## Xabre (Dec 20, 2006)

Mossy Toes said:


> Players in my area are arguing that the chaos focus primaris counts as the 1 god-specific power you must take. They also argue that since you can then "generate" all of your mastery level based powers from one other discipline of your choice (generate being the operative word in the text, the mastery level powers being the only powers that you randomly generate with a D6), you can get that normal focus primaris too, which strikes me as rather wanting to have your cake and eat it too. I want to check out the wording a bit more in detail before I settle on a ruling, and I'll go with the local FLGS ruling until I get an FAQ explaining that tangled knot, but we definitely need an FAQ for it to see if we can field 1kson Aspiring Sorcs that have 3 powers...



Maybe it's just too early for me to process this correctly, but... I have no idea what you mean by this. Quoted text from C:CSM states (page 70) '_If a psyker has a Mark of Chaos or is a Demon of a particular Chaos God, they must roll at least one, and up to half,....'_ To me, this counters everything you just said. An aspiring sorcerer ROLLS on Tzeentch, as demanded by the rules. Then they get a freebie because they rolled all of their powers from a single school.

I don't mind that the Asp. Sorcerer ends up with 2 powers from Tzeentch, that's actually kind of cool since they have a 50% chance of Doombolt for each, plus Firestorm. I just don't see how that could possibly say that you get one free, plus get to roll a power.

With Ahriman, he gets slapped around with the same rule. As mastery level 4, he could take all 4 Tz powers, but then there's no free primaris for him. Or, I suppose, he could roll 'all three' Tzeentch powers, get the free Primaris, and then take a single power from another school... so that gives him 5, but 4 must be Tzeentch.


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## mayegelt (Mar 18, 2014)

Sorcerers of whatever god in CSM armies HAVE to take 1 power BUT may ONLY take UP TO half of their powers from the god.
So they always have to split schools after ML 1, I think the trouble ATM is that IF the one they have to take from the god according to the book as primus counts towards that total.

In this example I will use Tzeentch.
If it does then on being ML1 can MUST choose from another discipline to not break the 50% rule, at which point they can choose as many as they like from another pool. However at ML3+ you could only be able to take 1 additional power rolled from Tzeentch. However you are still then limited to 2 Tzeentch spells max, 1 of them being the primus.

If it doesn't then only on getting ML2 can they choose from another discipline, as you have to use your ML1 to learn Tzeentch. Until you could get to ML5 like above you are still then limited to 2 Tzeentch spells max, but in this case it comes from your mark + ML1.


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## MidnightSun (Feb 10, 2009)

Having played five games with psychic powers from the Rulebook (and three more games against Tyranids), I'd say that Malefic is bad. Casting the powers is hard, and you still Perils an appreciable amount of the time on double 6s (if you're not a Daemon, then you Perils all the time). If you do cast Summoning, then the unit you summoned dies, because 10 T3 dudes with no appreciable saves are really frickin' fragile. Spawning Heralds just gets the Heralds killed, because if there's one thing more fragile than 10 T3 models it's 1 T3 model with 2 wounds. Possession came up once, with a Lord of Change appearing and then Perils-ing into Fleshbane, Armourbane and a 3++, but it didn't make a huge impact on the game. It died when I shot it with guns. 

Combined with a not-unreasonable chance to roll up Dark Flame, Cursed Earth, Unholy Gaze, and Incursion, all of which are either straight-up bad or bad unless you _also_ have a bunch of Daemons in your army (looks at Cursed Earth), I would usually pass over Malefic in favour of Telepathy or Biomancy - Telepathy is okay (Mental Fortitude still being essentially useless, but I can't really comment as I played Dark Angels with at least one Inner Circle model in every unit and a Stubborn Ld10 ATKSNF GK detachment), but again gets two sweet spots of Shrouding and Invisibility which are both fantastic. Having a good Primaris for your Psychic Focus is a plus, too. Biomancy got a lot of buffs - being able to allocate the wounds from Life Leech to other models is *huge*, making it go straight from 'bad' to 'really nice'. Endurance is stupidly good, Enfeeble got even better since you can move before casting now, Haemorrhage is okay but at least has a reasonable chance to kill a dude with the improvements to Focussed Witchfire and the double Toughness tests. Iron Arm and Warp Speed are much better with a guaranteed +3. Smite is meh, but better than it used to be and I don't think I'd want to swap out any of the powers (and it's free with Focus, so it's often moot that it's not great - it's free, who cares if it's not great).

On the other hand, Sanctic is really nice. Well, actually, it's also pretty bad, but Sanctuary is great with a bunch of Terminators. They still die to Bolters and Autoguns like they always have, but running around with a bunch of Fearless Deathwing Hammernators or Knights rocking 2++ saves is all kinds of nice.

Armies of the Imperium being Battle Brothers makes Grey Knights very happy, as well as anyone who would want to ally with them. My Deathwing Librarian is now a Grey Knight Librarian rolling three times on Sanctic in the hope of getting Sanctuary, Cleansing Flame and Vortex (but Hammerhand, Banishment, and Gate of Infinity are pretty reasonable, the only dud being Purge Soul).

Tactical Objectives also hugely reward mobility (although we houseruled that both players draw from the same deck after a few games, which made it a lot more balanced as you didn't end up with one guy getting three points from one of the objectives in his deployment zone and his opponent getting squat because he had to get the same objective three times, in his opponent's deployment zone). Generally, we liked Tactical Objectives. The lack of Secondary Objectives in the Maelstrom of War missions is a good move too, although Kingslayer is pretty annoying; when someone draws it on turn 6 and simply gets D3 VP for the Warlord having died on turn 2).


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