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My brother bought me a nightscythe for Christmas to get an army started. I have had some interest in Necrons since they seem to be one of, if not the most, durable armies. Now that the new codex has arrived i can finally make the choice to collect them or not.

So my question is as follows. How much can the psychic phase alter the outcome of the battle. Since the necron has no defense against it besides them being hard to kill in general , how much does it affect them? Grey knights also have great survivability and a lot of psykers. But will that win them more games than, i assume, then added mobility the Necrons have. Or the Eldars mobility and psykers versus their durability.

If armies had durability, mobility and psychic defense/offense as stats which stat would you rather live without? I know armies also has to care for other stuff as well but those are the three points I'm most interested in

I find psychic defense is not that important. The most powerful stuff are blessings and you can't get a special defense against those.

Psykers can be strong, but you have to put points into it. Armies with no psykers are still quite viable.

Well, Eldar have the best unit in the game and if spammed, is the reason they win, not because of Psychic shenanigans.

Honestly, it's not that big of a deal, most armies use one or two powers to boost units and that's it.

There are three armies off the top of my head that actively make use of the Psychic Phase:

CenturionStar: Need Gates of Infinity, Prescience, Invisibility and Perfect Timing for their deathstar to truly be effective. They will have a few Psykers from different Imperium Factions to boost their Psychic Dice. You could negate one power though if you have enough dice and restrict their firepower/mobility/durability though - but it will be tough.

Tyranids: As their best unit is the Flyrant, they will have a lot of dice at their disposal, since they will spam them in competitive lists (myself included in that). Main power is Catalyst to make the Flyrants extremely durable - others include Psychic Shriek and Warp Lance for offense and Horror/Paroxysm for supporting ground units, with Onslaught good for getting round Imperial Knights.

Daemons/CSM: This is the army that utterly dominates the Psychic Phase bar none, so pick a power that has like 4 charges manifested and throw all your deny the witch dice at it as that is probably the power your are most likely to deny. Daemons summon lots of troops with their powers and increase their invulnerable saves and if rocking Belakor, also have access to Invisibility.


To answer your question, I would live without durability. I play Tyranids and DE - so very fragile in nature.

As a Necron player, I deny the existence of this so-called "psychic" phase.

I am quite confidant that, with sufficient... eh, 'volunteers', from among those... 'visitors' to my army, that we will uncover the scientific explanation behind this allegedly supernatural phenomenon.

It can be annoying, sure. Enfeeblement is more irritating than anything, making my superior forces pretend to be on par with the defenders of weak flesh. Invisibility, though... That one pisses me off. It can make a unit almost as resilient as my own, and there's not much I can do about it.

If it becomes too much of an issue, though, there's always the Culexus Assassin. It's "Come the Apocalypse", so a little irritatingly has a 6" bubble of "Don't come too close or we'll glare at each other", but wipes out their blessings and maledictions instantly, for 140 points. I haven't seen the need, but it's there if you do.

caelim wrote:
As a Necron player, I deny the existence of this so-called "psychic" phase.

I am quite confidant that, with sufficient... eh, 'volunteers', from among those... 'visitors' to my army, that we will uncover the scientific explanation behind this allegedly supernatural phenomenon.

It can be annoying, sure. Enfeeblement is more irritating than anything, making my superior forces pretend to be on par with the defenders of weak flesh. Invisibility, though... That one pisses me off. It can make a unit almost as resilient as my own, and there's not much I can do about it.

If it becomes too much of an issue, though, there's always the Culexus Assassin. It's "Come the Apocalypse", so a little irritatingly has a 6" bubble of "Don't come too close or we'll glare at each other", but wipes out their blessings and maledictions instantly, for 140 points. I haven't seen the need, but it's there if you do.

Aside - if anticipating Invisibility, make room for C'tan Shard of the Nightbringer. His psychic shriek equivalent does not roll to hit.

I really like the psychic phase, especially when playing CSM. However, I don't really miss it when playing necrons. Something about that insane durability is just as fun as removing a riptide/Dreadknight with 1 lucky psychic power.

You finally fail that 2+ save on your Overlord, your opponent starts smirking, you pick up that dice and you see him getting anxious again. You roll a 1, he starts cheering and you just pick that dice up again and tell him: "Yeah, I'm re-rolling this" because you fething can. Both of you hold your breath as your dice rolls around, bouncing off of a ruin. Finally... it stops..
you see 4 pips on the top of that dice and your opponent whispers: "You son of a bitch".
That gak is like the nectar of life itself.

DaPino wrote:
I really like the psychic phase, especially when playing CSM. However, I don't really miss it when playing necrons. Something about that insane durability is just as fun as removing a riptide/Dreadknight with 1 lucky psychic power.

You finally fail that 2+ save on your Overlord, your opponent starts smirking, you pick up that dice and you see him getting anxious again. You roll a 1, he starts cheering and you just pick that dice up again and tell him: "Yeah, I'm re-rolling this" because you fething can. Both of you hold your breath as your dice rolls around, bouncing off of a ruin. Finally... it stops..
you see 4 pips on the top of that dice and your opponent whispers: "You son of a bitch".
That gak is like the nectar of life itself.

lol too true. I used to drive our local necron player nuts with my Tzeentch daemons with a 4++ rerolling 1s. Now he's giving it back to me in spades with his 4+/4+++ rerolling 1s. Decurion 'Crons are insanely durable. As a Daemon player, most of my Psychic phase goes to granting specific units in my army similar levels of durability. Crons get that by virtue of existing.

As a chaos player, the psychic phase is high risk/high reward. The necrons don't NEED the psychic phase, as they have plenty of gear. They may not have the versatility of a psychic heavy army, but they don't have to deal with the randomness of it either. It's possible to build an army list around psychers and still have very little happen in the psychic phase just due to bad rolling. But when the psychic phase works in your favor it can definitely affect the game.

There are plenty of armies that don't have psykers at all (Sisters, Dark Eldar, Tau, Knights (although that one's hardly a codex), and they do just fine. If every army that couldn't bring psykers consistently did worse, then I'd say that yes, not having a psychic phase is a drawback. But they're not, and Tau as the best example still do excellently in a competitive setting.