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So here I am eagerly anticipating getting some Dark Eldar in the mail, and have been thinking about what to do for an army list...

I have an interesting question:

The Crucible of Malediction forces a leadership test (with leadership modifiers) on every enemy psyker on the field. A "wave" sweeps across the field causing every enemy psyker to take a leadership test; if it fails, the model is removed from play. If the psyker passes, you move on to the next psyker and take another test until every psyker on the table has passed leadership, or one has died.

So what happens against a PBS? Or a warlock squad? Does each model take a test? Does the whole unit take a test?

Read the description again. Each psyker, starting with the closest one, makes a test until either one psyker has died or all of the enemy psykers have made a leadership test. That means that it can only potentially kill one model in a PBS or warlock squad.

It wouldn't be considered one of the least useful anti-psyker items still in existence if it didn't just only kill a single model, despite being one use, over-priced and still be restricted to one per army.
Edit: Added more reasons not to take the crucible.

it says each psyker takes a test, so in a unit with multiple psykers, I think each one would test individually on it's own model Leadership.

I could be missing something though.

Yeah, but the PBS counts as one psyker for all purposes, which plays hell with the Crucible.

Cheese Elemental wrote:Yeah, but the PBS counts as one psyker for all purposes, which plays hell with the Crucible.

No it doesn't.

The Psyker Battle Squad is treated as a single psyker for the purposes of using a psychic power.

so, it's treated as a single psyker for a single purpose which does not apply to when being targetted by a crucible of malediction.

Every Sanctioned Psyker in the unit has the "Psyker" special rule and as such would need to make a leadership test seperate to the rest of the unit when the Crucible of Malediction is used.

The only situation where it's hard to say exactly how it works is GK Terminators, where the unit purchases a psychic power as a whole but it manifests only through the Brother Captain. Either the Brother Captain or each model is a psyker (even though they don't have a special rule saying as much it is implied within the psychic power rules in Codex Daemonhunters and a unit must be a psyker to use psychic powers, so assuming you allow the use of the power, something is a psyker.) but it's really hard to say for sure.

Drunkspleen wrote:The only situation where it's hard to say exactly how it works is GK Terminators, where the unit purchases a psychic power as a whole but it manifests only through the Brother Captain.

That's actually a good thing to think about. The B-C uses the power but every member in the squad takes the Perils attack if the psychic test fails. Yet GKT are never listed as psykers. IIRC the 4th edition FAQs had it that only the B-C was actually psychic enough to be affected by anti-psyker powers - I think that would be fair seeing how he's the only one that can use the power.

Spetulhu wrote:That's actually a good thing to think about. The B-C uses the power but every member in the squad takes the Perils attack if the psychic test fails. Yet GKT are never listed as psykers. IIRC the 4th edition FAQs had it that only the B-C was actually psychic enough to be affected by anti-psyker powers - I think that would be fair seeing how he's the only one that can use the power.

The 5th edition FAQ has a similar answer, perhaps the one you are thinking of.

Q. If the Justicar or Grey Knight Hero of a squad of Grey Knights is slain, what happens if the squad is targeted by an attack that targets psykers?
A. It has no effect on the remainder of the squad.

Given this it's probably safe to assume that only the Justicar is considered a Psyker.

That's it exactly; the Witch Hunters have a psyker power, Hammer Of The Witches, that has a similar effect to the Crucible and when you use it against GKs it's only ever the squad leader who takes a test.

As far as a PBS goes I'm not sure; you'd need to find a definitive description of what the game considers to be a Psyker and then apply the effects of the Crucible against all models that fit the bill (unless the DE Codex has it's own definition of "Psyker", in which case that one would take precedence). The simplest way to do it would be to make every Psyker in the squad take an individual test, because the PBS only counts as a single Psyker for the purposes of using powers.

I'd say test all the psykers in the PBS but when/if one fails, then he dies and you stop testing. It says no where in the PBS entry that they are treated as one psyker it only says that when using their abilities they all channel together and it fires out of any one model you want. Quite a different meaning.