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I was hoping to start a discussion about how the new psychic powers work with the current CSM codex.

I finally got a chance to play a few games this past weekend and just yesterday I sat down with the new psychic powers and tried to analyze them. CSM only get access to Telekinesis, Telepathy, and Pyromancy, so I only looked at those.

There are only 3 guys in the CSM codex that can use psychic powers - a Sorcerer Lord, a Daemon Prince, and the Aspiring Sorcerer that leads units of Thousand Suns.

Aspiring Sorcerer

This guy only gets one power, so he can't use any of the powers that cost 2 warp charges. Both Telekinesis and Pyromancy have one of those, while Telepathy has 2. Telepathy seems like a decent choice for this unit, as none of the powers are totally useless. Mental Fortitude seems like the worst, as there are so many Fearless units in CSM, but luckily the Primaris Power seems good, albeit with a short range. Pyromancy seems to be the worst choice for this unit, as the Primaris Power has the shortest range of all of the available Primaris Powers, Fiery Form is bad in my opinion, and Fire Shield is also not very good. The other possible powers are anti-infantry witchfire powers, though, which means using them against the same unit that the other Thousand Suns are shooting won't be totally useless. Also, Spontaneous Combustion looks great and fun. Telekinesis seems to be the best discipline for an Aspiring Sorcerer. Gate of Infinity is very good, placing the Thousand Suns unit within rapid fire range of a target unit. Objuration Mechanicum is an anti-vehicle malediction with 24" range, which means the Aspiring Sorcerer can target a vehicle with it while the rest of the Thousand Suns shoot at infantry. Crush, Shockwave, and Telekine Dome seem bad, but luckily the Primaris Power has the longest range of all the other Primaris Powers and might be the best amongst them, besides. 18" range beam with Strikedown can be shot at the same unit being targeted by the other models is good.

So, in my opinion, the Aspiring Sorcerer should usually take Telekinesis and hope for Objuration Mechanicum if facing vehicles or gate of Infinity otherwise, and any can be traded for the Primaris Power which is better than Doombolt, in my opinion.

I'll get to the others later!

Puppet Master is disgusting.

While it lacks punch against infantry (as it is randomized on a 6+ on the psychic test), it is devastating with vehicles. I had a nid player run 4 psychers with this power. He made my defiler rip my own army to shreds.

And, to top it off, there is nothing in the rules that would prevent you from casting this same spell on the same model as many times in a turn as they had psykers. So, his 4 psykers could make the same defiler drop pie plates 4 times per turn. I felt violated after playing that game.

Typhus can trade his powers as well for other ones. Having him trade for pyromancy can do wonders.

As a general rule, CSM should use telepathy powers, except for a demon prince, where pyromancy powers work great there (str 8 prince from one power? bonus to invul? Sign me up!)

The basic telepathy power is great, and works stupid well with thousand sons. Pay for doombolt, trade up for the new hotness.

Dominate is meh, trade it for the primaris.

Mental fortitude is meh at best for chaos, trade unless your fighting psyker battle squads.

Puppet master is amazing when used properly, though this power should be on an HQ rather than a thousand son sorc.

Terrify: It's lawl good against somethings, crap against others. Use as needed.

Now the good stuff:
Invisibility: OMGZ. Really. My thousand sons have a 2+ cover save in area terrain? Enemies hit me at WS 1? Amazing when you get it.

Hallucinate: Well well well, my favorite power. This sucker can turn the tide of battle in just one cast. Playing a list I've made with arhiman, a sorcerer and two thousand sons units, I've got 4 guys who can use this thing if they roll for it, and I've got 8 chances to get it. Sounds good to me!

Agreed on the Telepathy.

As a side note, Aspiring Sorcerers are Master Level 2 Tangent. They have the MoT which allows them to cast two spells a turn, which is the definition of Master Level 2. Which makes them spectacular with Telepathy. Yeah, they only get one power, but they can use any of the Telepathy ones!

Mental Fortitude is useful if your opponent has Terrify, but I agree that with CSM it is very situational.

My biggest problem that I've had is range. I have no rhinos, but am seriously considering buying some to get my Aspiring Sorcerer into range that much sooner with less pie plates and small arms fire whittling down his squad.

The majority of the malidiction, if not all of them have a range of 24, that's good enough to hit your targets. You will get more bodies if you don't take your rhinos.

A couple of things...

1) I don't think the Aspiring Sorcerer is mastery level 2 - he only has one power and can only ever have one power, and the MoT doesn't increase the number of powers that he can have, nor does it say anywhere (unless I'm missing something) that the mark increases mastery level.

2) I'm not sold on Puppet Master. Admittedly, I thought it looked really good but the need to get under a 6 on the psychic test is really rough. Agreed that using it on vehicles seems to be the best choice, but with a generally lower vehicle count in this edition, that's not a guarantee. Plus, as Puppet Master is a witchfire power, if an Aspiring Sorcerer uses it against a vehicle then the rest of his Thousand Sons unit are useless for that turn as their bolters probably can't hurt whatever he's targeting.

3) I agree that Invisibility and Hallucinate are really, really awesome, and was hoping to address those in my analysis of the Daemon Prince and Sorcerer Lord. I was hoping to keep the special characters out of it for now, but what the heck!

4) I'm really surprised that no one thinks that Objuration Mechanicum and Gate of Infinity are good enough to consider Telekinesis. Plus, if you don't pull one of those, the Primaris Power is arguably better than the one from Telepathy, especially against high leadership armies like Space Marines.

Anyway, Gate of Infinity seems like one of the best, if not THE best, power to have on a slow-moving, rapid-firing, fearless, scoring unit.

Any psyker has it's master level dictated by mention, or by how many powers per turn it can use. Since MOT allows another power...

Puppet master works great on tanks, otherwise it's meh.

Pyromancy for IC's going in for a beating, telepathy for your support psykers.

The MoT does not allow another power. Page 25 of the CSM codex states that it improves and/or grants an invuln save. Page 88 states that models with the MoT may attempt to use more than one power per turn, but does not state that they actually gain access to more powers. Under the army list entry for the Daemon Prince on Page 92 and the Chaos Sorcerer on Page 93, it states specifically for those models that they may purchase more than 1 psychic power if they have the MoT, but the entry for the Aspiring Sorcerer under the Thousand Sons unit on page 98 makes no allowance.

Just re-read the rules on psykers and I'm convinced that an Aspiring Sorcerer is Mastery Level 2, though he only knows one psychic power. So yeah, DMajiko, you're right! That makes Invisibility really good, and the only thing keeping me from thinking that Telepathy is the best is Gate of Infinity from Telekinesis.


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Sorcerer Lord

Because this guy can be found in many different places, his choice of powers is varied. Wearing power armor and in a unit of regular guys or wearing terminator armor and going solo or being attached to a unit of terminators both carry different requirements.

Telekinesis seems to be the worst discipline for a Sorcerer Lord. Crush is still bad for being too random. Gate of Infinity loses some usefulness when used on anything faster than Thousand Suns, which is everything. Objuration Mechanicum is equally good, though possibly less-so due to the new depth of available ranged weaponry to deal with vehicles. Shockwave gets a little better on Terminator Sorcerers who either deep strike or are brought to the front via Land Raider, but strength 3 with no AP is bad no matter how you shake it. Telekine Dome is obviously good when used on units with no invuln save, but those units may have an equal cover save already and the "bounce" effect of the power is bad in general due to the 6" range of the bounce. Vortex of Doom is obviously powerful, but worse on Sorcerer Lords. It will Instant Death him AND the terminators that he is attached to, and if he's attached to power armor it will be even worse due to no invuln save. The Primaris power is, again, decent, but the depth of weaponry available makes it less-so. So, It doesn't seem like there's much of anything that's a must-have on Sorcerer Lords from Telekinesis.

In Pyromancy, Fiery Form is not great on Sorcerer Lords, Flame Breath and Sunburst have too short of range to my liking, and Inferno, Spontaneous Combustion, and Molten Beam are decent shooty powers if the Sorcerer is alone or attached to the right unit. Fire Shield is, again, decent if used on the right unit, and it's 24" range makes it versatile.

Telepathy seems the strongest discipline for Sorcerer Lords. Not only does the discipline have almost no useless powers for the Lord, but the long range of almost every power combined with the malediction/blessing type of most powers keeps the Lord out of trouble. Give him wings, the MoT, and two Telepthy powers and he will be difficult to catch and/or kill and will be able to reach almost any friendly unit on the board with one of the many situationally good powers from this discipline. Telepathy is still best used against low leadership armies, though, and I can see a few cases where I wouldn't want Telepathy at all, instead opting for Pyromancy and changing my strategy to make the Sorcerer Lord more shooty. As for the individual powers, they're all good in the right circumstance, and each have a feel of "turning a round of bad luck into something that you can handle." I'm still not sold on Puppet Master, though, and trying to get to the right target may put the Sorcerer Lord in danger that he would have otherwise been able to avoid with different powers.

Daemon Prince

For the Daemon Prince, Telekinesis seems poor. Objuration Mechanicum is still good, but there is little else within the discipline worth taking on a Daemon Prince. Telepathy is equally good on the Prince as it is on the Sorcerer Lord, but the close combat power of the Daemon Prince is hardly bolstered by Telepathy and, other than the fact that many Telepathy powers are maledictions and blessings, these powers seem like a waste on a model like this. Interestingly, Pyromancy, which I feel is the weakest of the three disciplines, seems to actually be the best on the Daemon Prince. The only power within this discipline that seems totally useless is Fire Shield. All of the witchfire powers are assault powers, which lend themselves well to the close combat nature of the Daemon Prince. There's a lot of Soul Blaze in Pyromancy, too. Sunburst is still sort-of bad, but a DP with wings is easier to move into position to use this power. Of course, hitting too many enemy models means the DP is going to be in a precarious position, possibly alone. I'm not convinced that the Primaris Power is worse.

The big question with the Daemon Prince is whether or not to take the expensive MoT for multiple powers, all of which are at least 15 points more expensive than Doombolt. I think the MoT is a no-brainer on a Telepathy-using Sorcerer Lord, but not so much on a DP. If the DP doesn't take the MoT, Pyromancy seems like the best choice because the Warp Charge 2 power isn't that great anyway, and there are more powers within Pyromancy that fit the DP than within the other disciplines. If the DP does take the MoT, the question is more open. It may be worth taking one power from Pyromancy and one from Telepathy, because taking two from Pyromancy will more than likely give the DP two witchfire powers, and he can only use one per turn. However, a support Telepathy power and a witchfire Pyromancy power may be strong, depending on the combination. Plus, the DP gets the chance at Invisibility or Hallucination from Telepathy.

I would say that it depends on how many other psykers are in the army. If there aren't many (or any), it's worth taking the MoT for access to a decent support power from Telepathy. If there is at least one other psyker taking Telepathy, it becomes less attractive for a couple of reasons. One, if the DP rolls the same power as the other psyker, the situational nature of those powers makes the redundancy useless in most situations. At the same time, the DP can't just trade that power in for the Primaris Power, because then he falls into the trap of having two witchfire powers when he can only use one. This can be avoided by rolling the DP's power first and then swapping the other psyker's power for the Primaris if he rolls a duplicate, but this may invalidate the taking of a second psyker to be a support who then ends up with a witchfire power.

Tangent read the first paragraph of page 88 in the chaos codex.. where it says models with the mark of tzeentch may use an extra power then normal making them therfore mastery level 2..

A winged Daemon Prince has the spee dto deliver many of the nastiest powers at very good range. As has been said, Telepathy is just amazing for Chaos (too bad we don't get Divination!)

Even the primaris power is quite good for when he is heading toward terminators/Sanguinary Guard/other 2+ targets, softening them up before the charge.

Pyromancy can usually be skipped; it has precious little that an Obliterator cult can't replicate without risk of being shut down by hood, runes of warding, or perils.

Now, what about Ahriman? With three powers and a Mastery Level of 3, should he be kitted out like a Sorcerer Lord? Or because he knows all 5 of the CSM powers should he keep those? After all, Gift of Chaos can be cast by him up to three times in one turn (due to how the faq is worded).

Lets see if I can answer that myself -

Bolt - a 24" Melta without the Melta descriptor. And should I really be using him to snipe vehicles?
Gift - 6"... too close for comfort.
Wind - Again, very short range, but has it's uses
Doombolt - has +6" on his pistol, but a chance to wound him
Warptime - Useful, and yet not. Because I have to reroll even my successful rolls...

So, I don't know about you, but I will be kitting Ahriman out with Telepathy. Maybe if the Gods can guarantee me Fiery Form I'd take Pyromancy. Afterall, a S8 Ahriman with a force weapon is pretty darn cool... (remember, he is at S6 already because of his staff!)

Green is Best! wrote:Puppet Master is disgusting.

While it lacks punch against infantry (as it is randomized on a 6+ on the psychic test), it is devastating with vehicles. I had a nid player run 4 psychers with this power. He made my defiler rip my own army to shreds.

And, to top it off, there is nothing in the rules that would prevent you from casting this same spell on the same model as many times in a turn as they had psykers. So, his 4 psykers could make the same defiler drop pie plates 4 times per turn. I felt violated after playing that game.

He can't use it on vehicles, as vehicles can only be affected by psychic powers with a strength value or if it specifically states that you can target vehicles with it.

Overlord Zerrtin wrote:Tangent read the first paragraph of page 88 in the chaos codex.. where it says models with the mark of tzeentch may use an extra power then normal making them therfore mastery level 2..

I did, and mentioned it in my post. It says they may "attempt to use up to two psychic powers per player turn." This means that IF they know two psychic powers, they may attempt to use them both if they wish, but nowhere does the MoT give an allowance to purchase ANY powers at all, let alone "additional" powers. So, I agree with you - Aspiring Sorcerers are mastery level 2, though they only have one power to cast (plus the force weapon). I said this already... not sure about the confusion here.

Honestly, I'm not sure why a Daemon Prince would want Telepathy against high-leadership targets like power armor armies. Situationally, many Telepathy powers end up being only half-effective, and some end up being totally ineffective. There just aren't enough powers in Telepathy that "soften up" targets that the DP would assault, which is crucial to keeping him alive as long as possible. A good example of this is Puppet Master, because he must assault the unit that he targets with the power and that unit cannot shoot itself, so it remains at full strength to receive the DP's charge. And if you want him assaulting (which is always, I think), some Telepathy powers are literally horrible, like Dominate. Mental Fortitude is still the worst psychic power available for many (most?) CSM armies, as we have so many units that are Fearless.

Good points about Ahriman, and I'm inclined to agree. What about Typhus?

Crazyterran, where does it say that about vehicles?

Tangent wrote:

Overlord Zerrtin wrote:Tangent read the first paragraph of page 88 in the chaos codex.. where it says models with the mark of tzeentch may use an extra power then normal making them therfore mastery level 2..

I did, and mentioned it in my post. It says they may "attempt to use up to two psychic powers per player turn." This means that IF they know two psychic powers, they may attempt to use them both if they wish, but nowhere does the MoT give an allowance to purchase ANY powers at all, let alone "additional" powers. So, I agree with you - Aspiring Sorcerers are mastery level 2, though they only have one power to cast (plus the force weapon). I said this already... not sure about the confusion here.

Its irrelevant for the mastery level how many powers a psyker actually know (Look at Ahriman, he knows 5 powers, but is only Mastery Level 3.), the only thing that matters is how much warp charges (spells in a pre-6th-environment) he can use in a single turn. You could always cast Doombolt with your Asp. Sorcerer and charge after this and use the force weapon. Normally you get 1 randomized power per Mastery Level but the FAQ states that the Asp. Sorcerer is an exception to this as he always gets only a single power.

Righto.

Typhus ussually wants to get into close combat and with only a mastery level of 1 is arguably forced down the pyromancy path. Him with fiery form is a little scary.

protonhunter wrote:Typhus ussually wants to get into close combat and with only a mastery level of 1 is arguably forced down the pyromancy path. Him with fiery form is a little scary.

Daemon Princes (or any big CC beast, really) with Fiery Form are even scarier as they start handing out AP2 Instant death in CC like nobody's business and wrecking any vehicle with rear armor lower than 12 easily. The problem is rolling the right number.

Pyromancy is a bit of a lackluster discipline. Half of its powers are just regular weapons with an extra rule: one is a heavy flamer with soulfire, one is a melta with a beam, one is a weak frag missile that pins. Except the actual weapon can be spammed more easily, don't grant Deny the Witch rolls and don't occasionally kill the bearer.

Since Typhus usually wants to be in CC, the Telepathy Primaris power fits him well. Though he really should be able to pick biomancy!

Ah not true, using pyromancy and getting a blind effect on your enemy does wonders in CC.

Typhus should not trade his powers if he enemy has too much psychic defense, and don't forget to use winds of chaos on overwatch, it's amazing!

juraigamer wrote:don't forget to use winds of chaos on overwatch, it's amazing!

Man! I didn't think of that!

Yea if you want a really beatstick melee unit for chaos, take typhus and a sorcerer of nurgle in terminator armor with winds of chaos, maybe nurgles rot too if you have the points, then add some CSM terminators, give champ upgrades to a few, add the mark of nurgle, some power swords, some power axes and 2 chainfists. It's basically invincible.

With two winds of chaos castings, two nurgles rot castings, maybe some combi meltas, defensive grenades (courtesy of typhus) power axes for some, swords for others, two chainfists for dreads and toughness 5 and fearless, it's amazing.

Crazy points, though.

Tangent wrote:Crazy points, though.

And quite vulnerable to vindicators and other artillery. It's really dangerous, but against some lists you'll be losing 200 points a turn worth of deathstar!

Shadox wrote:

Tangent wrote:

Overlord Zerrtin wrote:Tangent read the first paragraph of page 88 in the chaos codex.. where it says models with the mark of tzeentch may use an extra power then normal making them therfore mastery level 2..

I did, and mentioned it in my post. It says they may "attempt to use up to two psychic powers per player turn." This means that IF they know two psychic powers, they may attempt to use them both if they wish, but nowhere does the MoT give an allowance to purchase ANY powers at all, let alone "additional" powers. So, I agree with you - Aspiring Sorcerers are mastery level 2, though they only have one power to cast (plus the force weapon). I said this already... not sure about the confusion here.

Its irrelevant for the mastery level how many powers a psyker actually know (Look at Ahriman, he knows 5 powers, but is only Mastery Level 3.), the only thing that matters is how much warp charges (spells in a pre-6th-environment) he can use in a single turn. You could always cast Doombolt with your Asp. Sorcerer and charge after this and use the force weapon. Normally you get 1 randomized power per Mastery Level but the FAQ states that the Asp. Sorcerer is an exception to this as he always gets only a single power.

Actually its not irrelevant.
When exchanging for rulebook powers, you use your mastery level, unless you are specifically told you know x amount of powers or you buy your powers, in which case its one for each power you buy. This is why Dark Angels Libbys know 2 powers but are mastery level 1, Farseers can swap for up to 4, and thousand sons aspirings can only swap for one.
I can't recall the exact page but it is under choosing your psychic powers from the BRB.

Crazyterran wrote:

He can't use it on vehicles, as vehicles can only be affected by psychic powers with a strength value or if it specifically states that you can target vehicles with it.

I'm still trying to find where this is stated within the rulebook. Anyone know?

The rule doesn't exist.

Well alright then.