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This thread is a result of a friendly argument I had with a guy at my LGS recently. We were talking about 7th edition Psychics, and I brought up how they had helped a lot with weakening Screamerstar and Seer Councils. He agreed about the councils, but was convinced that Screamerstar had only gotten better.

His argument was:
They can now shoot at one unit and assault another.
As long as you pour enough Warp Charges into the power, you've got a sure-thing on your psychic power to get a 2+ Invuln.
They generate lots of Warp Charges for the pool.
Spending so many Warp Charges to make the unit viable is fine, because the rest of your army doesn't matter.

Meanwhile, my counter-argument was:
Their number of shots for their shooting is reduced from 15D6 shots to 4D6, and casting it is a lot harder without using the whole squad's Warp Charges.
With the new DTW, a reasonably Psychic army or somewhat lucky roller can very easily stop the Invuln unless the Screamerstar player poured a dozen dice or more into the power.
Perils is now almost a garuntee if you want a surefire success that can't be denied easily.
Lastly, in order to use them effectively they won't just burn your army's points, they'll take everyone else's Warp Charges, naking the rest of your army fairly impotent.


So what's the consensus? Better, or worse?

Waaaghpower wrote:
They can now shoot at one unit and assault another.

I was not aware you can shoot a unit and charge a differing one

Waaaghpower wrote:
They can now shoot at one unit and assault another.

"eh". The shooting is significantly weaker.

As long as you pour enough Warp Charges into the power, you've got a sure-thing on your psychic power to get a 2+ Invuln.

Sure. While this is true, it's gone from dedicating a single Herald to buffing to dedicating 2-3 (depending on how risky you want to be).

They generate lots of Warp Charges for the pool.

... And they spend them all as well.

Spending so many Warp Charges to make the unit viable is fine, because the rest of your army doesn't matter.

So wrong it's amusing. Sure - they're scoring now. With Maelstrom missions a single really tough scoring unit isn't that good because you'll pick up a card a turn while your opponent can pick up 2-3.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 ninjafiredragon wrote:

Waaaghpower wrote:
They can now shoot at one unit and assault another.

I was not aware you can shoot a unit and charge a differing one

The rules restriction is:

In addition to the above, a unit that fired in the Shooting phase can only charge the unit that it targeted during that turn’s Shooting phase.

Witchfires aren't used in the Shooting phase anymore.

The problem is, if you fuel alot of power charges into making sure your core spells get through, your heralds are going to mindblast themselves sooner rather then later. and once they do, the star brakes.

The thing that made "screamerstar" weaker is not the fact you need to invest more points into assuring your buffs are up 24/7, its the fact the buffes tend to blow up.
Relying on multiple psyker powers became a serious problem now.

Nerfs the star has taken: vehicle buffs, maelstrom means you can ignore the star, powers hard to get off, perils, jink nerf means you're snapshotting powers, prescience costs 2 WC, you need to take pink horrors as WC batteries, which are awful, etc

It's simply not feesable anymore. If you run it your basically gambling on too many variables going right. And if any one of them goes wrong the star is as helpless as a babe in a crib.

The Screamerstar as we knew it in 6th is dead, but now we've other ways that can build on what it was. Gone are the days of stuffing a unit full of Heralds and being invulnerable and having one unit win the game.

We now have things that can be quite potent. IMO Fateweaver is out, Belakor is in. He has guarenteed Shrouding and Invisibility.

Say take three fast units, ie Khornedogs and two units of Screamers. Belekor can fly up, cast shrouding. With his Jink and the Screamer's Jink both units of Screamers are now rocking 2+ Rerollable Cover and he has a 2+ Cover as an FMC. You still have a Grimiore which can be put on say the Hounds, if it fails, you can always cast Invisibility on them as a backup. If the Grimiore is successful you have another opportunity for Invisibility whether its on Belekor. With a couple of Heralds you have the chance for Cursed Earth to boost those Invuns as yet another backup. Seekers could replace the Hounds, but are much softer, although their offense is truly frightening.

This gives you three extremely hard units that are ridiculously fast. The Grimiore and Invisility Turn 2 are for whatever units are in CC and need. A Juggy Herald with an Axe of Knore makes the Dogs prime candidates to take on Wraithknights etc.

Its not the single invulnerable unit of yesturyear, but its still possible to rebuild out of the ashes what I feel is more flexible, balance, and still an extremely viable tactic.

IMO, Screamerstar as we knew it is dead and good riddance, it wasn't good for the game. But, now we have the options for other powerful units and tactics which can be just as strong, but are better balanced and more fun to play against.

I'm not sure that it's dead at all, I think it has evolved.

Think about daemon summoning. A screamerstar is the perfect platform for this, because you want to be somewhere other than your own deployment zone when you start summoning things in.

Heralds go with screamers, start as hidden as you can make them.

In the ideal scenario, you roll psychics with one of your exalted gift guys first, and hope to get Cursed Earth. If not, and you get possession, this guy gets the portaglyph and try again on the next one. If he does, then he gets the Grimoire, and he's the buff man.

Other heralds, you're hoping for possession, incursion, summoning. The screamers are basically working as a means to getting your summoners in position, and you're letting the flexibility of summoning take over.

I've tried a couple of games with this approach, and it's doing well enough against what I think are other decent builds, but it is by no means fully refined yet, and I'm not sure what the best supporting pieces are.

OP: I'm on your side. Screamstar was never really that reliable and it's only gone way worse for them.

Zagman: I found this to be a very reliable tactic in 6th too, much more TAC than 800-point Screamerstar ever was.

The Screamerstar does it's job of keeping your Heralds alive. Now that we have Daemonoloy, it's slightly better because of Cursed Earth, meaning we can bypass Divination.

That being said, I never run more than 4 Screamers accompanying 1 Herald. Mostly due to conservation of points, other reasons include if you roll for Possession, the entire unit gets wiped if you explode into a Lord of Change / Bloodthirster.

Screamer Council was not very good in 6th, and Screamer Council is not very good in 7th. The problem is the same as ever: a huge point investment in a unit that can accomplish very little. Poor shooting, decent assault, and not much else to recommend them except nigh invincibility. Whoop-dee-doo.

Never, ever dying is a cute trick, but other units can do that too. Difference being, those units come with goodies like Hit-and-Run (Seer Council) or Objective Secured (Draigo-wing) that keep them relevant throughout the game. Screamers don't have any of that, they're just hard to kill. In other words, they're tar-pit bait (or even worse, simply ignorable.)

Screamers will probably still wreck plenty of face at your FLGS (just like they did in 6th), but they're not going to hang with the other top lists this edition. Too weak of a gimmick, too easily countered, even more easily ignored.

All stars have suffered from the changes to 7th edition, psychic powers or not.

Dumping a lot of points into a single unit has less value now that all units are scoring. Stars are not capable of dealing with MSU effectively, and as that is the way most metas are going, stars can not longer determine games as they once did.

Screamers stars in particular have lost a lot of their shooting capabilities, but the screamers themselves may have gained more value, now that MCs have lost their anti armour capability.

It was pretty strong in 6th but now is kind of like " Meh". I dunno not really impressed with it.

Belakor running around casting invisibility seems to be the beesknees right now though.

Spamming invisibility seems pretty decent now. Especially getting it on Soul Grinders.