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Hey guys, so after playing quite a few games with the new edition and using my primaris Psyker in my guard army due to the added rules for "magic". I found myself using soul shriek all the time. I play Space Marines a lot and I have a hard time killing bikers/terminators until I discovered this spell. I mean its crazy how good it is. Multiple games now it has with ease killed swathes of bikers and terminators.

Last night after mind melting 3 of 5 bikers then shooting the rest of them off the board, my friend and I started to discuss if soul shriek was broken or not. We both think it is a little but too powerful no armor or cover saves from the wounds is just brutal. What do you guys think about sould shriek?

Not broken, and not even very good. Once you account for the chances of failing your psychic test, failing your to-hit roll, failing to roll high enough to do a meaningful number of wounds (and remember, anything worth using it on is LD 9-10), and failing to get through DtW you find that your average damage done is pretty disappointing. You have the potential to get lucky and wipe out a whole unit, but that's a rare event and on average you're doing less than just spending those points on guns and shooting the enemy to death.

Does it also ignore invuln saves?

 Peregrine wrote:
Not broken, and not even very good. Once you account for the chances of failing your psychic test, failing your to-hit roll, failing to roll high enough to do a meaningful number of wounds (and remember, anything worth using it on is LD 9-10), and failing to get through DtW you find that your average damage done is pretty disappointing. You have the potential to get lucky and wipe out a whole unit, but that's a rare event and on average you're doing less than just spending those points on guns and shooting the enemy to death.

Ohh okay so we have not been playing the Rules right for it. I didn't know you had to roll to hit even after passing your leadership test. Ill have to re read that section. I must be getting very lucky because it can be pretty awesome in my games. Thank you!

@dragonzord

No it ignores cover and armor

Its not broken.

You had to LD check to cast.
Then you have to roll to hit.
Then he gets a deny roll.
Then you roll 3d6.
Then he makes cover saves/invuln saves and fnp if he has it.

It works great agaisnt low leadership troops like Obits.
But there is a lot of rolls to get through in order to land it and then get a high enough roll to kill some models.

Yes its good and a great primaris to fall back onto.

 L0rdF1end wrote:
Its not broken.

You had to LD check to cast.
Then you have to roll to hit.
Then he gets a deny roll.
Then you roll 3d6.
Then he makes cover saves/invuln saves and fnp if he has it.

They do not get cover or armor saves from it so that makes it more effective. They only get invulnerable saves. But yeah I see your point a lot to hit rolls are needed but when it does go off it's pretty awesome to kill even just 2 or 3 terminators, they are so hard to kill without it I find. Also bikers taking away that cover save is just awesome.

Very efficient against Nobz / Meganobz and Grots as well !
well, maybe not worth against grots ...
(And Taus Exos, lots of eldar/Deldar units ...)

Considering Daemons new leadership values, even with INV save it'd work well against their new common LD7.

I found it can be extremely destructive, but not really broken, per se. The targets that you'll probably be aiming for will usually have a high leadership test, so it usually doesn't do more than a few wounds, but the fact that it ignores armor will make most people upset.

However, when used against low leadership units or when it's used multiple times, it can completely obliterate targets. Ever see Ahriman fire off three shots and Tzeentch decides that the other guy is going to have a bad time?

Good on the Doom b/c you swap out an ability you take wounds from and get another like your special ability.

Cast on Logan with my Void Dreamer. hit, he failed DTW, rolled a perfect 18 on 3d6. He failed 4 and died. Stared at that for a while as this was the final round of a tourney and i had just seen a 75 point psyker blow off one of the harder SW characters to remove. Always taking it now, even if that probably wont happen again.

I don't think it's particularly broken, but it's one of the better Primaris powers, in my particular opinion. It's one of the ones where I don't feel like I got hosed if I default back to it.

 xSPYXEx wrote:
However, when used against low leadership units or when it's used multiple times, it can completely obliterate targets. Ever see Ahriman fire off three shots and Tzeentch decides that the other guy is going to have a bad time?

You can't use the same power more than once in a turn.

 Peregrine wrote:

 xSPYXEx wrote:
However, when used against low leadership units or when it's used multiple times, it can completely obliterate targets. Ever see Ahriman fire off three shots and Tzeentch decides that the other guy is going to have a bad time?

You can't use the same power more than once in a turn.

Ahriman can, and each Sorcerer you take can fire it once.

 xSPYXEx wrote:
Ahriman can, and each Sorcerer you take can fire it once.

No he can't. He may fire three powers in the shooting phase but he does not get any special exception to the "no casting a power twice" rule. You may only use that benefit if you have three different powers to shoot.