Warhammer 40K: Psychic Awakening Rules Are Pure Power Creep
Psychic Awakening is introducing a ton of new rules into the game – and it’s looking a lot like power creep.
Ritual of the Damned is about to be the fourth Psychic Awaking book to come out, and by now we have a pretty good idea of what to expect. The first part of the book is a small lore piece, a relatively short section of lore that doesn’t conclude. I’ve already discussed why this is weird. The bulk of the book (the reason why people want it), is the pile of new rules at the end that you can tack on to your army. So far, these rules, rather than the slow burn story, are what people have focused on. The fact is that these rules are pretty much pure power creep – and not in a good way.
How To Do An Expansion – Vigilus
Before we get too far into Psychic Awakening, I want to go back and talk about the Viglus books. These books, while flawed, were an example of how to add rules in a way that made sense and added to the game outside of pure power creep. First off, Vigilus did a much better job on the lore. It provided a ton of lore so that you firmly understood the world and setting. It was honestly a bit too much, and I think that turned people off, but it gave players a real setting to tie things to. Then the bulk of the new rules were thematically linked to the setting and campaign. The specialist detachments represented the units and forces in the campaign and the lore and were focused around that.
While there were exceptions, this grounded the rules. They were there to serve the narrative and allowed you to play out the story better, and add some cool things to your army overall. These tended to be small stuff for specific builds and came with a cost, and they made sense. You didn’t have to ask: “why are the Victrix Guard in this book?” You knew why, because they were a significant part of the story. This works well because the lore and rules complemented and reinforced each other and gave the rules meaning beyond just how to make my army .5% better. Generally, good campaigns do this.
A Contrast – Psychic Awakening
In contrast to Vigilus, Psychic Awakening mostly divorces the rules from the lore. Except for Master Lazarus, these are a random set of rules and buffs. They do not allow you to play out the battles or missions described in the books better. For instance, the Faith and Fury story features Sisters of the Battle and Guardsmen defending a city and being aided by miracles, yet neither the miracles or those two factions get rules for regular play.
Also, the rules often aren’t even for the combat being described. Blood of Baal is about the conflict between the Blood Angels and Hive Fleet Leviathan, yet the rules include how to create your own Hive Fleet. This doesn’t mesh with the lore at all, as there are no other Hive Fleets present. Faith and Fury features three Traitor Legions and three Loyalist Chapters but has rules for six Traitor Legions and generic buffs for all Space Marines. Ritual of the Damned features Master Lazarus of the 5th Company, yet the Dark Angels rules focus on the 1st and 2nd Companies. Repetatively we see rules that correspond to the lore at only at the faction level, rather than a narrative level.
Pure Power Creep
It’s this lack of meshing between the rules and the narrative that makes me call them pure power creep. Since they aren’t meant to represent aspects of the story or let you play out the campaign narrative better, their only point is for the sake of rules. They exist solely to give you new rules unrelated to events. A few of the rules are at least in the vein of giving you more options and customization, at a price. The create your own Hive Fleet and Drukhari obsessions rules fall into this category. A few others fall into the ‘this is a faction rules depository’ category – the Ynnari, Black Templar, and Flesh Tearers all get new rules. These are the best of the bunch as they feel somewhat related to the narrative, and being their own thing isn’t really power creep. But then you just have a host of rules giving people more rules like candy.
Grey Knights, Dark Angels, and Blood Angels, as well as 7 Traitor Legions, just get a ton of new rules. These things have no cost and don’t require you to do anything to use them. If you were playing the army before, congrats, it just got better. Here are free army-wide rules to make you more powerful, go to town.
We might argue that these armies needed the buffs, but that’s not the point. Simply giving armies free rules is power creep. Giving them to all armies in the game contradicts the idea that you are trying to balance the weaker armies. If everyone got a buff, then you are all still where you were before, but the power has crept a little higher, and we’ve got another dozen books to worry about reading and toting around. The rules wheel rolls on and on.
Let us know if you think we are seeing more Power Creep, or if the rules are just right, down in the comments!
