Goatboy’s Monday – Mind Bullets, Spells, and Summoning Wingmen
Goatboy here and I will say this – the rumors/rules/changes sound pretty interesting for 7th Edition – expecially psykers!
In fact I haven’t been this excited about 40k in awhile. It might also be the fact Orks are coming out soon – but right now the game is sounding interesting even with all the crazy ideas bubbling up. The biggest piece of excitement so far has been the introduction of the Psychic Phase.
The Psychic Phase
I remember this phase when I first jumped into the grim darkness that is 40k – back at the end of 2nd edition. I enjoyed the battle of wits with mind spells flowing around as you fought to control this phase. I don’t remember much but the idea that we have locked all the spells into one casting location really interests me.
The biggest benefit I see now is you won’t forget your spells again. I don’t know how many times I had to tell someone that it is ok after they started moving and forgot to cast a blessing. Now we don’t have to worry about it as there is a phase we all have to follow to cast our abilities. This will make things a lot easier and hopefully less – oh sorry too bad you didn’t get to have that awesome blessing.
After that I think the other big change up is the ability for your opponent to stop your spells. This is pretty awesome as it gives some interaction in what was once a very soul crushing phase. How many games have you lost where you just rolled a tons of 11’s and 12’s and your perfect storm of awesome was crushed away. Or how about the opponent that has the perfect storm of spells and you feel like you can do nothing as you get washed in the psychic light of maledictions, blessings, and pain in the ass units. This is what I am excited about as now we have pulled in more strategy that wasn’t there before into this give and take phase.
To give an idea on how this all works we will have to wait to see how the spells have changed. Warp Charges are now how many successful 4+ rolls you need to roll when casting a spell. You generate Warp Dice by rolling a d6 and adding all the mastery levels of your casters into a dice pool. Supposedly you can only use Warp Dice equal to 1+ your mastery level. This change up means that we might start seeing some lower leadership levels in HQ characters as that stat doesn’t matter as much anymore.
If you roll any double 6’s you will perils so throwing a ton of dice at a crucial spell might not always be worth it. It also means a lot of death stars won’t be able to rely on casting that special fortunate spell to cover their asses. I see Psychics getting used less as we all know you will need to throw at least 2 dice on a Warp Charge 2 spell to effectively cast it.
Opponents can stop it by throwing their dispel dice at it. You start off needing a 6 with different +1’s based off of different rules. Being a Psyker gets you a +1, being a higher level gives you a +1, having Admantium Will as well helps and I am sure some of the other races might get some war gear changes to help that out.
The New Spells?
Spells are now coming in the flavors of blessings, maledictions, summonings, and witch fires. Since we have a phase that you can cast now I wonder if we might see a change out of how blessings work when you coming in from reserves. The phases seem to be Movement, Psychic, Shooting, and Assault. We’ll see what we end up with – but it would make units who can Deepstrike a lot more powerful if they could cast their blessings after they came down.
I also hear there is bonuses to taking spells all in one Discipline. This comes in the form of the free Primarius spell plus some kind of bonus to casting spells. I bet we don’t see Prescience as the Primarius. I am wondering too at the changes we’ll see as all the old 6th spell cards got shipped back. I am interested in getting them with the new Daemon Cards added in as well. Heck I just love anything evil related. I am just chomping at the bit on the idea of Ork magic. I hope we get a ton of Weird Boyz. Hell the rumored Waagh Charges might actual be true now we see how the Psyhic phase is working.
That’s the basics of the Psychic phase so far as well know and today I want to talk about what could be really strong. Some of the old war gear might get a huge jump in power if they stay the same. Spell Familiars might make the CSM psyker options extremely powerful if they keep the same ability to reroll any psychic checks. I know Tigurius can do it as well and so can an item from the Sentinels of Terra. Most of the Chaos Space Marine books have some kind of new familiar type thing too so I am wondering if we will still see them working that way. If they allowed rerolls during all parts of the phase and you could see the second coming of the Sorcerer/Daemon Prince.
Winners and Losers
You mix this all up with the new Daemonic psyker disciplines and we could see a nice couple months of Daemon sales. This might be the time we finally see those rumored Greater Daemons rearing their ugly mugs. I have a feeling the other power set we haven’t seen yet might be very anti Daemon. It just feels like that as GW’s big claim to fame is the idea of the Warp/Chaos/Daemons. So of course pushing that in their game is something neat.
I think being able to summon new units will help fill in that gap Chaos Space Marines needed. Getting better troops is always a help. Heck summoning Heralds is awesome too and losing your last wound to a Greater Daemon is pretty cool. So far I have just kept on the ideas of the Evil guys but I think Space Marines might have some fun as well. Heck the Seer Council is going to generate a ton of Warp Charges too – and will most likely always have guide for free plus some other random powers. Death Mission for all I say hah.
I look forward to the changes and can’t wait to get my grubby hands on the new rulebook. I just think have more options that have both players interact will always be a benefit to a game. There is nothing worse then gold fishing through a match.
Next week look for some army ideas as we get the rulebook in our hands. I hope to see some FAQ’s pour out that do some good changes to armies and keep some of the nonsense out of the game.
So far it sounds like GW listened a bit and are working towards making a game that is worth our time.
