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Hey, I'm kind of new to Blood Angels, so just to make sure I'm doing things right, can a Epistolary use the same psychic power twice?

Thanks

The Bringer wrote:Hey, I'm kind of new to Blood Angels, so just to make sure I'm doing things right, can a Epistolary use the same psychic power twice?

Thanks

In short, No. PSA can't be used twice since you can only fire one weapon and the rest happen at the start of the phase, so if you use a power, and fail, it is no longer the start of the phase, so you cannot attempt to use it again.

Gwar! wrote:

The Bringer wrote:Hey, I'm kind of new to Blood Angels, so just to make sure I'm doing things right, can a Epistolary use the same psychic power twice?

Thanks

In short, No. PSA can't be used twice since you can only fire one weapon and the rest happen at the start of the phase, so if you use a power, and fail, it is no longer the start of the phase, so you cannot attempt to use it again.

Okay, but what about other things that aren't a PSA? Suppose you used Fear of the Darkness, could you use it twice on different units?

The Bringer wrote:Okay, but what about other things that aren't a PSA? Suppose you used Fear of the Darkness, could you use it twice on different units?

Fear of the Darkness
<Blah Blah Fluff Blah>
"This power is a Psychic Shooting attack..."

Page 63, Codex: Blud Angles of Blud.

Dang, that stinks... I didn't notice that.
Thanks Gwar!

You can go nuts with Sword of Sanguinius and Unleashed Rage, though.

Magnalon wrote:You can go nuts with Sword of Sanguinius and Unleashed Rage, though.

You can actually argue that you cannot.

You must use the power at the start of the Assault Phase. Once you use (for e.g.) Sword, it is no longer the start of the Assault phase so you cannot use Rage.

That's one way of looking at it anyway.

Gwar! wrote:

Magnalon wrote:You can go nuts with Sword of Sanguinius and Unleashed Rage, though.

You can actually argue that you cannot.

You must use the power at the start of the Assault Phase. Once you use (for e.g.) Sword, it is no longer the start of the Assault phase so you cannot use Rage.

That's one way of looking at it anyway.

Wouldn't another way to look at it be to use them both at the exact same time?

"These dice are this power, and these dice are for this power"

*rolls both simultaneously*

Agreed with GWAR - depending on who you play with, they may not let you.

I'd just have a pool of powers ready, and check with your opponent before you play

So, if you have two librarians and both want to use a "start of blah phase" they sit there and go "you go", "no you go"?

That means, Eldrad can't Fortune two units or Guide two units or whatever?

I cry BS. When GW says do this at the start of the blah, it seems to mean before the normal activities of that phase.

This would extend to things that occur before the game starts: once one happens, another can't happen as the game has started. This is a slippery-slope to start down.

If an opponent started going ultra-RAW, or as I like to say: get Gwar-barian on me, I'd whip out my copy of the fun list of RAW fun and watch them like a hawk!

Homer

Who said the start of the assault phase couldn't last for several minutes?

The Bringer wrote:Who said the start of the assault phase couldn't last for several minutes?

The English language?

Gwar! wrote:

The Bringer wrote:Who said the start of the assault phase couldn't last for several minutes?

The English language?

I disagree, Gwar.

Start doesn't mean "the very first thing that happens", it means the general beginning, before you've gotten into the core of the thing.

So, doing multiple things at the start of a phase is fine, just as long as you don't start moving/shooting/assaulting, which is the middle of the phase.

Gwar! wrote:

The Bringer wrote:Who said the start of the assault phase couldn't last for several minutes?

The English language?

I don't think that is completely right. I believe the English language would permit both an Instant and an indefinite amount of time to be the start of something.

I feel like somehow you will weave the whole "is the ruler on or off the table" deal into this...

Both of these sources say that the start a beginning:

Wikctionary defines the beginning as "The initial portion of some extended thing. "
Portion can either be an infinitely small time period to a larger one.

The Webster-Merriam Dictionary says "a rudimentary stage or early period"
period can be either be an infinitely small time period to a larger one.

Gwar! wrote:

Magnalon wrote:You can go nuts with Sword of Sanguinius and Unleashed Rage, though.

You can actually argue that you cannot.

You must use the power at the start of the Assault Phase. Once you use (for e.g.) Sword, it is no longer the start of the Assault phase so you cannot use Rage.

That's one way of looking at it anyway.

Awesome, only 1 psyker per phase can attempt psychic power, since y'know, after the first attempt of the first psyker it is no longer the start of the Phase.


this gets even better with powers that can be used at the start of "any Assault Phase"; as soon as your opponent states he is going into his assault phase immediatly blurt out that your psyker is using his "beginning of the assault phase" powers and deny the opponent so much as the opportunity to use any of his!

(Your Mileage may very with some PSAs).

Kommissar Kel wrote:

Gwar! wrote:

Magnalon wrote:You can go nuts with Sword of Sanguinius and Unleashed Rage, though.

You can actually argue that you cannot.

You must use the power at the start of the Assault Phase. Once you use (for e.g.) Sword, it is no longer the start of the Assault phase so you cannot use Rage.

That's one way of looking at it anyway.

Awesome, only 1 psyker per phase can attempt psychic power, since y'know, after the first attempt of the first psyker it is no longer the start of the Phase.

(Your Mileage may very with some PSAs).

No, because you do them at the start of the Librarians phase (i.e. When you select them to do something in that phase) which is not the same as the start of the phase itself.

Wierdboyz beg to differ on that point.

As do Eldar Farseers.

Warptime also does this.

Both broodlord, and 1 of the tervigon Powers are the beginning of Your (blank) phase.

Kommissar Kel wrote:Wierdboyz beg to differ on that point.

As do Eldar Farseers.

Warptime also does this.

Both broodlord, and 1 of the tervigon Powers are the beginning of Your (blank) phase.

Then that means that one possible way of reading the rules is that you can only use of of them.

Gwar! - but by the very definition of the word, start can either be an instant, or a indefinite period of time.

Wikctionary - "The initial portion of some extended thing. "

Portion can either be an infinitely small time period to a larger one.

The Webster-Merriam Dictionary - "a rudimentary stage or early period"

period can be either be an infinitely small time period to a larger one.

Gwar! wrote:

Magnalon wrote:You can go nuts with Sword of Sanguinius and Unleashed Rage, though.

You can actually argue that you cannot.

You must use the power at the start of the Assault Phase. Once you use (for e.g.) Sword, it is no longer the start of the Assault phase so you cannot use Rage.

That's one way of looking at it anyway.

Wouldn't that approach also stop you using two different librarians to use powers? The first one uses a power - it's no longer the start of the phase.

Maybe an analogy to convince you?

All pilots are told to have landing gear fold in at the start of a flight, namely takeoff.

Just because one plane folds landing gear in at the start of a flight, takeoff, does not mean that takeoff is over, neither does it mean that other planes can't fold in their landing gear.

By the English language, do you say that takeoff can not be at the start of a flight? Grammatically speaking.

Scott-S6 wrote:

Gwar! wrote:

Magnalon wrote:You can go nuts with Sword of Sanguinius and Unleashed Rage, though.

You can actually argue that you cannot.

You must use the power at the start of the Assault Phase. Once you use (for e.g.) Sword, it is no longer the start of the Assault phase so you cannot use Rage.

That's one way of looking at it anyway.

Wouldn't that approach also stop you using two different librarians to use powers? The first one uses a power - it's no longer the start of the phase.

No, because it says to use it at the start of the Librarians Assault phase, which is when you select the librarian to do something in the assault phase.

Again, just one way of seeing it, that's all.

Gwar! wrote:No, because it says to use it at the start of the Librarians Assault phase, which is when you select the librarian to do something in the assault phase.

That's an interesting definition of Assault Phase that you have there. It's a shame that there's no support for it in the rulebook. The Librarian's Assault phase is his controlling player's assault phase because there's only one assault phase per player turn.

solkan wrote:

Gwar! wrote:No, because it says to use it at the start of the Librarians Assault phase, which is when you select the librarian to do something in the assault phase.

That's an interesting definition of Assault Phase that you have there. It's a shame that there's no support for it in the rulebook. The Librarian's Assault phase is his controlling player's assault phase because there's only one assault phase per player turn.

There is also no support for the letter "a" in the rulebook either. Wanna go down that road now?

The "start of the Librarians assault phase" is not the same as "the start of the players assault phase". It's simple English.

I'd like to hold this up as one of the many threads that people should read before eyeballing peanut-gallery wisdom, unofficial faqs, &c.

The 40K rules are not computer code. There is no hard definition of "start of the phase" unless you figure it means "the beginning."

If you want to play this way, great. Can't imagine those who do play many games against actual humans.

ghost11 wrote:

I'd like to hold this up as one of the many threads that people should read before eyeballing peanut-gallery wisdom, unofficial faqs, &c.

The 40K rules are not computer code. There is no hard definition of "start of the phase" unless you figure it means "the beginning."

If you want to play this way, great. Can't imagine those who do play many games against actual humans.

Correct, they do not define the "start of phase." Neither do they define rolling dice - I believe anyways.

They don't include definitions for everything in the rulebooks or codi. They expect you to use common sense and knowledge to define a simple term. However, in this case, it isn't so simple.

The word "start" does have a definition, and the rules clearly dictate what a phase is.

If I understand this whole discussion correctly, it is the term, "at the start" that many are believing to be an infinitely small time period that you can only do one psychic power on. However, the definition of the word "start" could both infer a point, or a period, of time. Thus, there is some disagreements on how one should take the rule. People seem to be taking both stances and disagreeing with each-other.

Read the rules for upgrading to an Epistolary. If he couldn't use two powers in one phase why would they have bothered with this upgrade?

BloodThirSTAR wrote:Read the rules for upgrading to an Epistolary. If he couldn't use two powers in one phase why would they have bothered with this upgrade?

To use 2 Powers a turn?

Gwar! wrote:

solkan wrote:

Gwar! wrote:No, because it says to use it at the start of the Librarians Assault phase, which is when you select the librarian to do something in the assault phase.

That's an interesting definition of Assault Phase that you have there. It's a shame that there's no support for it in the rulebook. The Librarian's Assault phase is his controlling player's assault phase because there's only one assault phase per player turn.

There is also no support for the letter "a" in the rulebook either. Wanna go down that road now?

The "start of the Librarians assault phase" is not the same as "the start of the players assault phase". It's simple English.

... because it's absolutely impossible for two different English phrases to mean the same thing or refer to the same thing with different wording?

On the one hand, there's the rulebook which spells out the three phases in each turn, and states that each player's models act during those phases during their player's turn. So, by RAW they're the same thing. And there's the old comedies such as two Tyranid players playing the same army using the previous codex's Catalyst power and saying "It says I can do this during the Tyranid player's assault phase, so that must mean both, right?" for a reason to change to a different wording.

On the other hand, there's the apparent claim that GW invented sub-phases by the introduction of one particular set of phrasing without proving any details about those sub-phases at all. And then add on the fact that a model can act during three discontinuous time periods during the assault phase.

How is the claim that the Librarian's Assault Phase isn't his controlling player's Assault Phase supposed to make sense, again?

Oh well we play you can use 2 other than PSA during the same phase ... simply for the fact 50 points is a semi large investment.