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Hey all

As I have found no definitive answer on dakkadakka or the web, I would like to ask you about the extent of the grey knight’s stratagem “Mental Focus”.

It says:
"Use this Stratagem in your Psychic phase. One GREY KNIGHTS PSYKER can attempt to cast one additional psychic power this phase."

Now, what is the extent of this? Let’s take a Strike Squad for example. They know Smite plus 1 sanctic power. Let’s pick the power Hammerhand. They can normally only cast one of the two powers per psychic phase. During their turn now, they have already cast Smite.
Which of the following cases are allowed when I use the strat “Mental Focus” after:
1) With the wording “one additional psychic power” only a power that my squad knows can be cast. So that means I can only cast Hammerhand in addition to Smite.
2) The strat disregards what the squad “knows” and they can pick any power from the Sanctic tree to cast in addition. So I might pick “Gate of Infinity” and cast it.
3) This last one I actually got from a Spikey Bits article from 2017. It suggests that “Mental Focus” let’s you cast a power that was previously, in the same phase, attempted to be cast but failed to go off. So combining this notion with point 2, the squat would cast Sanctuary, even though my GMDK already tried it just before but failed.

Unfortunately I think I already know the answer (only case 1 is allowed), but to me as a none-native speaker, the wording seems NOT to be 100% unambiguous.

What do the YMDC experts think?

Thanks for your help and cheers!

Situation 1 would be the result.

It states to cast an additional psychic power. Remember the rules say what you can, not what you can't.

So you can cast an additional, that doesn't mean any additional, has to be one they know.

Also the spikey bits is wrong. You cannot have a unit attempt to re-cast the same psychic power they have already attempted this phase.

Agreed. You can only try to cast psychic powers you already know, and you cannot try to cast a psychic power you already tried to cast. Doesnt matter whether it was successful, or not.

2. Make Psychic Test
A psyker can attempt to manifest a
psychic power they know by taking a
Psychic test. To do so, roll 2D6. If the
total is equal to or greater than that
power’s warp charge value, the power is
successfully manifested. A psyker cannot
attempt to manifest the same psychic
power more than once in a turn.

As the others have stated, it's 1.