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After my last Success or Failure post it seems like the devil dog might not be as useful as I once thought. Now I have to ask.. Psyker Battle Squads! Has anyone had any success with them in games? What's the best way to play them?

Game changer or point sink?

Absolutely f*cking epic decision. Easily one of the best units in the IG Codex. Stick them in a Chimera, and either pop tanks (not preferable) at 36", or use them as follows:

7-8 Psykers parked in cover in a Chimera use Weaken Resolve on your opponent's heavy weapon equivalent parked at the back of their table. They're now LD 2. Kill enough to force a moral save with a long ranged tank/vendetta/etc. Then just watch them fall off the table on turn 1/2, and have one less serious threat to your armor to worry about. Also, they are positively hilarious for countering a 10man TH/SS termy squad that doesn't have a fearless character. Great way to buy a turn or 2 by making them fall back.

PBS is a seriously competitive option, and I have had nothing but success with them (especially at their points. Super cheap unit for how effective it can be).

Just an Amazing unit. Stick them in cover if you don't have a chimera for them. Ive had nothing but good experiences with them, and the only games ive lost are game where i didn't have them .

Pretty much the same from me. Used them and loved them.

Against some armies, they are absolutely brutal and will be extremely helpful.

Against others, i.e., any army with lots of Fearless stuff like CSM, Demons, and Tyranids, they won't do much.

In the end, the where a too hit-or-miss for my list. But, yes I think they are a huge success and a fairly competitive option.

I will add my vote on the "yes, they are competetive" crowd. Certain armies
will absolutely hate getting hit by a well placed Weaken Resolve.

Even the armies that are fearless or stubbord, they still have a pretty decent shooting attack.

The most henoius thing is getting a massive over costed assault unit to break, then assault it with a 50-60pt SWS and see your opponent squirm as they run through their rulebook only to find out that yes, that unit needs to make a LD check at -9 or die. It's evil.

Very competitive. I play alot of CSM so they have been limited there, but the possibility to force a fall back on the last turn of a game is huge for objectives along with the examples other's have given.

I routely take the squad and have never been disappointed, just not as impressed as some game depending on the army.

PBS are only worth buying for weaken resolve, as the IG codex is full to bursting with units that can shoot large blast weapons, and don't have to take psychic tests to do so. So remember that weaken resolve is the superior power to shooting, and then ask yourself the following questions depending on your local gaming scene:

Do you face a lot of eldar, tyranids, CSM, daemons or GK? These armies can bring either plentiful psychic defense, fearless infantry and/or MCs, which PBS simply aren't effective against. Again, its all about weaken resolve and if these are common foes for you, you would be better off replacing them with something else. Eldar with runes and any GK will shut down the PBS completely and I can't stress how useless you are going to find them against these particular armies.

Do the SM armies you face commonly bring a librarian (or runepriest)? You're going to get a lot less mileage out of the PBS if they are within range of that hood, because they aren't likely to win the leadership contest with an 8 vs a 10. You can try to stay out of the 24" range hood, but that gives you only about 12" of effective fighting distance, which will be difficult to maintain.

If you're answering yes to a lot of the above examples, maybe rethinking taking this unit for something else. If no, then the PBS could well be your MVP unit, and end up winning you a lot of games.

PBS have LD9, not 8. Just FYI.

Psyker battle squad main point is weaken resolve and their effectiveness really depends on what you play against often. They can be quite good against non fearless deathstars like mega nobs/nob bikers, wolfstars, assault terminators, dark eldar beasts, etc as well as fire support squads like long fangs, lootas, combat squaded tacticals with heavy weapon that you can kill a few weaken resolve and have them maybe run off the board. If you play against the above units often the Psyker battle squad is well worth it. If you do not the template is rather lackluster.

Even against fearless/stubborn units, Weaken Resolve still works. See, they're fearless against morale checks, but their leadership is still lowered for purposes of pinning checks. Lower their leadership, whack 'em with a Basilisk barrage, lather, rinse, repeat.

So yes, PBS are quite epic. With the loss of our old frined the Neural Shredder they're not as devastating as they use to be, but the ability to reliably pin anything make them worth it.

I've always gotten good use out of them. Even with all of the psychic hoods that have made appearances in all of the latest marine codexes; I have just had to be more careful about keeping them out of 24 of the enemy Librarian, with their powers having a 36 inch range it is entirely possible, especially when in a chimera.

Some opponents will just shrug them off but they are so fantastic against others that the 1-2 games out of 6 they may do nothing are totally made back up with the other 4-5 games where they shine.

ChrisWWII wrote:Even against fearless/stubborn units, Weaken Resolve still works. See, they're fearless against morale checks, but their leadership is still lowered for purposes of pinning checks. Lower their leadership, whack 'em with a Basilisk barrage, lather, rinse, repeat.

Fearless units automatically pass both morale and pinning checks, so this only works against stubborn units

True. True, shows what not double checking the rulebook can do to a post. However for any OTHER leadership test, it still holds through, be it a Psychic Check or anything that isn't morale or pinning.

they are basicly what i would call an enabler unit. they make any unit leadership 2. then, start shooting and killing off enough troops to make a test. I played against it tonight and the guy just made either my sternguard squad, or tacitcal squad to move off of objectives and take them out of the fight. it is a good unit and hard to get at, especialy in a chimera, that is in cover.

On a 1 to 5 star scale they are between 3 and 5 stars depending on the game.

Against an army that is mostly fearless they do a decent amount of damage for their points. Worst case scenario is that they fill the roll of a reduced range no indirect fire closed top basilisk for about the same amount of points.

Against an army that is subject to standard psychology they are absolutely amazing. Between Vendettas, Chimeras, Penal Legion, and Marbo it's easy to run units off the table after they fail a morale test.

I'm going to stick up for the penal legion here and say one of their best possible use is to outflank and just plain be a body within 6" of a unit that gets PBS'd into failing a morale test.

They are absolutely worth it in an all comers list, the only real debate is how many units of them a player should take.

in a 2v2 game with eldar.

with a farseer with mindwar.



lol

Jihallah wrote:in a 2v2 game with eldar.

with a farseer with mindwar.



lol

Or Nids and the Doom.

I had one ruin all of my commissar platoons in a game a while back. I'm still not 100% on how stubborn interacts with weaken resolve, such a wooly rule if you ask me.

People seem to ignore the blast. Against tactical marines you are wounding on a 2+ and ignoring their armour half of the time. It doesn't seem so bad to me. Plus you can kill vehicles pretty well.

Trickstick wrote:I had one ruin all of my commissar platoons in a game a while back. I'm still not 100% on how stubborn interacts with weaken resolve, such a wooly rule if you ask me.

Stubborn means your leadership isn't lowered for morale tests, so if you get shot and are required to test, lose combat, get tank shocked etc, you still get your highest ld value; no negative modifiers.

However, stubborn doesn't protect you from pinning tests which are considered different. If a pysker squad lowers your leadership to 2 and then you are forced to take a pinning test because of a sniper, barrage weapon etc, you are now you can only pass by rolling snake eyes; the negative modifiers count for this test

omerakk wrote:

Trickstick wrote:I had one ruin all of my commissar platoons in a game a while back. I'm still not 100% on how stubborn interacts with weaken resolve, such a wooly rule if you ask me.

Stubborn means your leadership isn't lowered for morale tests, so if you get shot and are required to test, lose combat, get tank shocked etc, you still get your highest ld value; no negative modifiers.

However, stubborn doesn't protect you from pinning tests which are considered different. If a pysker squad lowers your leadership to 2 and then you are forced to take a pinning test because of a sniper, barrage weapon etc, you are now you can only pass by rolling snake eyes; the negative modifiers count for this test

Yes but you get into the whole "weaken resolve changes the leadership you test against, it is not a negative modifier on the roll" stuff that seems to confuse the matter greatly.

Okay, wow, I guess I'm going to be the first detractor in this thread.

I put PBSs in the fail camp for several reasons.

Firstly, their powers stink. WR doesn't work against units which are fearless, stubborn, or in a transport. Soulstorm, on the other hand, adds an expensive large blast template to an army already packed to the gills with better, cheaper, large blast template options.

Secondly, they're easy to stop. Other than just bringing fearless units, stubborn units, or units in transports (which everybody does), you have things that directly cancel their abilities like psychic hoods. Then you have things which snub ALL shooting-style attacks like deepstriking and outflanking. Then you have the fact that PBSs are tortuously easy to kill. Then you add the fact that PBSs take a nose dive in power before they are even wiped off the board. A PBS with only a couple of psykers left (assuming they survived shooting and passed a morale test to stay on the board), doesn't have strong powers any more.

What you have, then, is powers that in their absolutely best possible case scenario seem pretty cool, but they are so fragile, and so easy for a competent opponent to work around, that this scenario is necessarily rare (or you're always playing against opponents who can't figure out what a full-size PBS squad can do after several games against them).

If I'm taking something that's fragile, and does huge damage but only in the best case scenarios, I might as well just take artillery.

And don't even get me started about what happens when you fail a perils test...

I agree on all points. In fact, I no longer use them becuase of their extreme easiness to counter.

This point may have been beaten like a dead horse but I think it bares repeating here:

Because GK are the new hotness, psychic defense is the new anti-hotness to counter them. More psychic defense = useless PBS in more games. Funny that another army showing up is rendering your unit useless even without facing them in battle.

I think the PBS days as a highly competitive unit are over, they're relatively easy to counter, and people have adapted. They used to be really good, but now the IG has better toys to play with with the points.

Besides, Stormtroopers (Kasrkin models at least) look cooler.

I'd worry more about psychic defense if all the new hoods weren't limited to 24 inches. I almost never have any problems keeping the Chimera I keep my PBS in more than 24 away less it's like turn 4-5+ and I have been utterly unable to kill their hood carrier.

And honestly if the librarian is running through my lines, my PBS not working 3/4's or so of the time is about the last concern I have.

As far as all of the fearless, etc and it just being a complicated template... well all of that is true. Having said that though when you play some armies it's mind blowingly good. I laugh at Ork biker armies, foot IG, marines without fearless termies, etc. If you know who you are going to be playing, maybe they aren't so great, but in a setting where you could play a wide variety of lists they are in my opinion a must have.

I mean I take melta squads in my IG but not every army I play is a field of tanks to truly get good use out of them, does that make them not worth taking? No, because the moment I play that termie army with 2-3 land raiders I need those poor bastards to sacrifice themselves destroying raiders.