40K: Psychic Protection – Xenos Style
The Imperium now has the best anti-psykers in the game…What about the Xenos?
If you missed the rules on the Sisters of Silence and their new formation, well, go take a look at those first because WOW.
So now we have to ask – what the heck are the Xenos races supposed to do to defend themselves? It’s been bugging us too! So we put together a fun list of units that we think should either make a comeback or maybe need a buff to deal with the Psykers running around these days.
Ork Weirdboy
The Weirdboys have a minders that take them into battle. Perhaps “Drag them” is a better way to phrase that. But once in battle they will take away the Ork’s Copper staff that they use to ground out the psychic payload they are absorbing. This enables them to unload that psychic power on to the enemy, usually with devastating results. At least in the lore. So what’s up with the Copper Staff? Well, it’s Psychic Grounder, right? Lets play with that idea further.
Once per game, the Weirdboy may “ground himself” which grants him the following effects for D3 turns:
- He gains the Psychic Abomination special rule
- He becomes immobile (he’s grounded after-all)
- If he was a member of any unit, the rest of the unit may move away from him
The effect ends at the end of D3 turns or if the model is killed.
I think that this would be a good addition for the Orks. They would have a way to shut down Psychic Powers for a random amount of time – seems Orky to me! Plus, the Weirdboy would also lose the ability to help with the Psychic Phase, which makes sense because he’s, you know, grounded.
Tau Anti-Psyker Drone
Are little blue buddies are a very technologically advanced race. But they aren’t too great with the whole “psychic power” thing. What if they had a drone option that helped with that problem? I would base the drone off the same type of rules the DS8 Support Turret has – meaning that it’s mobile until the turret is “activated/deployed” Once it pops down, it could work in a similar way to the Ork Weirdboy from above. All it would do, however, is gain the Psychic Abomination Special Rule. It wouldn’t have an attack and would function like the Support Turret in close-combat.
Now, if you’re like me you’re probably thinking that this doesn’t make sense from the lore perspective. The Tau can’t travel through the warp and therefore shouldn’t know how to manipulate it or shut-it down either. I get that. Maybe these drones are from another warp fairing race. Maybe they adapted the technology from something else. I don’t know how the writers would work it in, but it’s a fictional universe with all sorts of crazy tech and silly plots – I’m sure it would all work out.
Necron Pariah
The Necron Pariah needs to make a comeback for the Necrons. The Pariah used to be an option in the game – They even had an early incarnation of the Psychic Abomination rule!
I think this is a pretty easy fix. Just change out their old rules for the new Psychic Abomination, ditch the Soulless Rule (because it’s already covered in the new version of Psychic Abomination) and you’re pretty much set. On top of that, you could just roll them into the Lychguard unit as an upgrade option or you could base the new unit off the Lychguard. Seem’s like a real no-brainer to me.
Tyranids Shadow in the Warp
Let’s be honest -Shadow in the Warp need to be better. Right now, it’s not exactly shutting down psykers any more. It’s used to be decent when passing a leadership check was needed to cast psychic powers but ever sense the rules changed it’s been fairly lack-luster. Shadow in the Warp is just outdated and it needs to be updated to match the current rule set.
It should read like this:
“Enemy Psykers within 12″ of this model have -3 Leadership, do not generate any Warp Charges (i.e. they do not add dice to their owning player’s Warp Charge Pool in the Psychic phase) and only harness Warp Charge points on a roll of a 6, even if the unit would otherwise harness Warp Charge on another result.”
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That’s it – that’s all the change it needs. The first part of that (the leadership modifier) is directly from the Tyranid codex. The rest is a truncated version of the Psychic Abomination rule. I think that this fits really well with how the Tyranids play and it allows other armies to still get their units across the board with Invisibility, but once you get “dug in” with the Tyranids it becomes a lot more difficult to maintain your Psychic powers – which, if you read the lore, fits really well.
Eldar Psychic Defense – Being Eldar
Yeah – they don’t get anything.
So what do you think? Do the other Xenos Races need to get some Powerful Anti-Psychic Defense or are they fine as is?
