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Made in us
Longtime Dakkanaut




This still puzzles me. How could GW possibly have thought it was a good idea to gate secondaries behind random dice rolls, and then, on top of that, allow you to use any normal psychic power deny strats to also deny psychic actions, layering yet another random dice roll on top, and then, on top of that, not let the psyker do anything else that round either? A secondary you have to win a roll-off to get the points for is a terrible secondary, especially when it also requires the unit attempting it to forgo doing what it's best at. The result is that they're essentially never taken unless your opponent lacks both a psyker and a deny strat. They're all limitation, with virtually no upside at all.

It'd be like if to deploy scramblers you had to not only get your unit to the right place and do nothing with it, you also had to win a roll off with your opponent. Or to get your points for bring it down, you had to roll a 4+ for each vehicle destroyed, or you didn't get anything. Everyone would laugh at GW if they had done that, and rightly so.

How did these make it through playtesting in their current form?



   
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Gore-Soaked Lunatic Witchhunter







Nobody on the design team has cared at all about psykers since 5e. Their rules have alternated between being broken and being pointless because nobody bothered to think about the consequences of anything they wrote, fix anything they wrote, or pay any attention to the role of psykers in any psyker-heavy Codex.

Balanced Game: Noun. A game in which all options and choices are worth using.
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Loyal Necron Lychguard






It's thematic, 9th is all about that, balance is of tertiary concern.

Pierce the Veil would be bad even if the action was automatic and unstoppable. Having to do 2 or 4 actions with 1 unit vs 1,2,3 or 4 actions with up to 4 different units in Teleport Homer.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
Nobody on the design team has cared at all.

FTFY.
   
Made in gb
Furious Fire Dragon




UK

They likely were different during playtesting, but there were probably a few instances of overcorrections done.

We also know that the new Codexes were playtested at the same time, so potentially something in the psyker heavy armies really tipped the balance somehow.

Of course in games design it can be very easy to over-correct or identify a problem but not really nail down the actual cause, thereby fixing the wrong thing. It happens in GW games all the time but it is by no means unique to them. At the end of the day the design studio is still primarily staffed by narrative gamers and while they do want to provide a balanced game and support the competitive side of things, you can tell they still don't fully understand it or even grasp basic optimization concepts. The statement could be completely untrue, but just go back to the Iron Hands FAQ, where Cruddace stated that they legitimately thought that people would voluntarily go through the Doctrine stages on their own even though the rules (super doctrines mainly) gave you 0 benefits to doing that. Even in a WD battle report from 2019 I think you had Matt Hudson basically staying locked into devestator doctrine for an entire game with his IF army, because in his own words it was "too good not to". And this was in a Narrative battle report!

This is generally why outside playtesting is really important, because designers often have very narrow views of what their creation should be like and are blind to other styles of play or exploits in a system. It's entirely possible the initial psychic secondaries were too exploitable and the playtesters relayed that back. However, a designer actually properly listening to and understand the feedback and also accurately identifying how to fix a problem is another matter entirely.

On the subject of over-corrections they can often be deliberate too, especially when it comes to ongoing balance patches/changes. It's usually not enough for a designer to nerf something, they really want to discourage people from using it entirely so they just nuke [thing] from orbit. I have to imagine the designers for the books saw the prevalence of Centurions in Marines and the spamming of DDA's and Destroyers in Necrons and decided they wanted to push people in other directions for 9th. Not related to the subject I know, but it is an interesting thing that happens.

(I've written a lot about this in the past, former games developer and former QA tester here)

Nazi punks feth off 
   
Made in de
Longtime Dakkanaut




As above.

It's a thematic choice. An evil Chaos sorcerer doing a big-bad doomsday ritual in the middle of the table. An Eldar mystic trying to gaze into the future.

For slightly more balanced games aimed at more competitive minded gamers, GW has stuff like Warhammer Underworlds with more MtG-inspired mechanics, etc..

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/04/14 07:20:23


 
   
Made in gb
Longtime Dakkanaut




 AnomanderRake wrote:
Nobody on the design team has cared at all about psykers since 5e. Their rules have alternated between being broken and being pointless because nobody bothered to think about the consequences of anything they wrote, fix anything they wrote, or pay any attention to the role of psykers in any psyker-heavy Codex.


Pretty much this. I'd go further and say Psykers have been this weird afterthought in 40k since they first appeared. I don't think GW really knows how best to represent them and their abilities as shown by the numerous completely different sets of mechanics they've used for them over the years. We've had a direct copy of the WH magic system, Ld-based rolls to manifest powers, automatic manifestation with other restrictions instead, success/fail dice rolls with dice generation (what a disaster that one was!) and then this non-interactive system we have now that all-too-often amounts to doing a few MW to your target in increasingly convoluted ways.

The psychic secondaries seem like somebody at GW decided they needed an extra category for secondaries and this is the best they could do. The funniest thing about them is the best selection from that category is the anti-psyker one. All the ones that require a psychic action are really bad because they involve giving up the abilities of usually expensive models and in a lot of cases they have extra caveats on top of that, along with the possibility of being Denied. Even just a small change to make them count as one of your powers for the turn would probably improve them.
   
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I have no comment except to say I love this new dakka meta of 9th edition simultaneously being only for competitive players and only for the filthy casual fluffbunny narrative losers, whatever thing I don't like.

"Got you, Yugi! Your Rubric Marines can't fall back because I have declared the tertiary kaptaris ka'tah stance two, after the secondary dacatarai ka'tah last turn!"

"So you think, Kaiba! I declared my Thousand Sons the cult of Duplicity, which means all my psykers have access to the Sorcerous Facade power! Furthermore I will spend 8 Cabal Points to invoke Cabbalistic Focus, causing the rubrics to appear behind your custodes! The Vengeance for the Wronged and Sorcerous Fullisade stratagems along with the Malefic Maelstrom infernal pact evoked earlier in the command phase allows me to double their firepower, letting me wound on 2s and 3s!"

"you think it is you who has gotten me, yugi, but it is I who have gotten you! I declare the ever-vigilant stratagem to attack your rubrics with my custodes' ranged weapons, which with the new codex are now DAMAGE 2!!"

"...which leads you straight into my trap, Kaiba, you see I now declare the stratagem Implacable Automata, reducing all damage from your attacks by 1 and triggering my All is Dust special rule!"  
   
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yukishiro1 wrote:
This still puzzles me. How could GW possibly have thought it was a good idea to gate secondaries behind random dice rolls, and then, on top of that, allow you to use any normal psychic power deny strats to also deny psychic actions, layering yet another random dice roll on top, and then, on top of that, not let the psyker do anything else that round either? A secondary you have to win a roll-off to get the points for is a terrible secondary, especially when it also requires the unit attempting it to forgo doing what it's best at. The result is that they're essentially never taken unless your opponent lacks both a psyker and a deny strat. They're all limitation, with virtually no upside at all.

It'd be like if to deploy scramblers you had to not only get your unit to the right place and do nothing with it, you also had to win a roll off with your opponent. Or to get your points for bring it down, you had to roll a 4+ for each vehicle destroyed, or you didn't get anything. Everyone would laugh at GW if they had done that, and rightly so.

How did these make it through playtesting in their current form?



Ok hol' up.

1) The average points scored on secondaries is about 8-9VP. That includes Oath.
2) Most opponents don't carry opposing psykers. Some have strats, but those have been nerfed to not be auto-deny.
3) A WC of 3 or 4 is pretty damn simple to pass.

Pierce the Veil is really underrated. It is not hard to deepstrike a terminator sorc ( in my case ) into the backfield. Most scary stuff is mid-field, so with terrain he is not visible to anything dangerous. So I drop, cast once, and have to survive one turn to then cast again and earn 8 points.

At that very same time my opponent MUST peel something away to deal with it lest I go unfettered and pick up 15 points. If they kill him then I go hyuk-hyuk-hyuk and resurrect him at the end of the phase. I had to spend 108 points to do that ( 118 with a familiar security blanket ). How many points do people spend to raise flags? Maybe the opponent sees it coming. Then I have 2 or 3 turns to make a hole and cast in turns 3/4 or 4/5. This helps me as well, because fewer models are coming to the middle.

Maybe my opponent has too many backfield models like Orks. Then I switch to Interrogation with my Shaman who doesn't need to see the other character and needs to cast just 3 times to score better than average.

Ritual is a funny beast, because it's 3 casts for a solid 15 points, but you need to stay alive. There is no limit to how many models can perform the same action. IG with super cheap primaris psykers could have 2 or 3 of them casting in the middle.

Psychic actions are a mix of high risk & reward or good list planning to make active use of them. Having an alternate plan helps. We just aren't seeing these in action as often, because no one reports on secondaries and most people are not playing psykers.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2021/04/14 12:37:10


 
   
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Longtime Dakkanaut




What you wrote is a mixture of wrong (no, more than one character cannot attempt psychic ritual per turn) and mistaken analysis. Planning to score 8 points on a secondary is not a good plan. That's the average score because half of all games are lost. It's like saying the average score on primary is only 26.5, so as long as you plan to score 27 points on primary, you should win. No, you need to plan to score what it takes to win, not what it takes to be the average of winning and losing.

Pierce the Veil is usually terrible because there are so many limitations on it that you have to perform an absolute miracle to score above 8 points, and despite that, even getting the 8 is actually difficult against a halfway competent opponent on most maps. Mental Interrogation is usually terrible because it relies on keeping your opponent's characters both alive and close to the caster for 4 turns to get a decent score.

All of them are usually terrible because if your opponent has even a single psyker or a deny strat, they become too risky to take. They all have extremely limited use cases where they make sense, but all of them are hard-countered by your opponent having denies or deny strats, which means you by definition cannot build around them. Secondaries you flat-out cannot take if your opponent has either psykers or anti-psyker strats are always going to be bad choices to plan around.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/04/14 13:32:57


 
   
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 the_scotsman wrote:
I have no comment except to say I love this new dakka meta of 9th edition simultaneously being only for competitive players and only for the filthy casual fluffbunny narrative losers, whatever thing I don't like.

No, both statements are not true, some people are just wrong. Between a lack of formal education in the fine art of waging Warhammer and of designing games it is not a surprise that people get things wrong.
 Daedalus81 wrote:

Pierce the Veil is really underrated...

Ritual is a funny beast, because it's 3 casts for a solid 15 points, but you need to stay alive. There is no limit to how many models can perform the same action. IG with super cheap primaris psykers could have 2 or 3 of them casting in the middle.

Why not just Teleport Homer with your psyker? Even if you manage to only do it once you get 4VP, if you do it twice and the Sorcerer dies then you can do it with a different unit.

Why use 3 Primaris Psykers on Ritual instead of 1 Infantry Squad on Investigate?
   
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Regular Dakkanaut




Part of the issue is that the psychic heavy armies are also very bad at the game right now - Thousand Sons, Grey Knights, Eldar. Which is compounded by Abhor the Witch being a ridiculously good secondary. If Thousand Sons had a good codex, mental interrogation might end up being ok.

That said, the Warpcraft secondaries could probably do with being rewritten.
   
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Shadowy Grot Kommittee Memba






yeah maybe when thousand sons isn't 'one hand behind my back as I fight your W2 marines with my W1 marines that cost the same' psychic secondaries will see use.

"Got you, Yugi! Your Rubric Marines can't fall back because I have declared the tertiary kaptaris ka'tah stance two, after the secondary dacatarai ka'tah last turn!"

"So you think, Kaiba! I declared my Thousand Sons the cult of Duplicity, which means all my psykers have access to the Sorcerous Facade power! Furthermore I will spend 8 Cabal Points to invoke Cabbalistic Focus, causing the rubrics to appear behind your custodes! The Vengeance for the Wronged and Sorcerous Fullisade stratagems along with the Malefic Maelstrom infernal pact evoked earlier in the command phase allows me to double their firepower, letting me wound on 2s and 3s!"

"you think it is you who has gotten me, yugi, but it is I who have gotten you! I declare the ever-vigilant stratagem to attack your rubrics with my custodes' ranged weapons, which with the new codex are now DAMAGE 2!!"

"...which leads you straight into my trap, Kaiba, you see I now declare the stratagem Implacable Automata, reducing all damage from your attacks by 1 and triggering my All is Dust special rule!"  
   
Made in dk
Loyal Necron Lychguard






 the_scotsman wrote:
yeah maybe when thousand sons isn't 'one hand behind my back as I fight your W2 marines with my W1 marines that cost the same' psychic secondaries will see use.

Why should TS cost less than tacticals? IF need Tactical Doctrine to win that shootout.
   
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Longtime Dakkanaut




No, you wouldn't. Thousand Sons psykers need to be actually doing what you brought them to do, they're expensive models that are integral to your plans. Ironically, if you saw more TK and GK, you'd see psychic actions even *less*, because it doesn't matter how good you are at casting, it is too risky to take a psychic secondary if your opponent has any denies or deny strats at all. The more prevalent psykers are in the meta, the less you'll see psychic secondaries.

This is another reason psychic secondaries are terribly designed: they are only doable at the expense of what you bring the unit to do, meaning that paradoxically they are more attractive the more terrible and otherwise useless your psyker is.
   
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 vict0988 wrote:
 the_scotsman wrote:
I have no comment except to say I love this new dakka meta of 9th edition simultaneously being only for competitive players and only for the filthy casual fluffbunny narrative losers, whatever thing I don't like.

No, both statements are not true, some people are just wrong. Between a lack of formal education in the fine art of waging Warhammer and of designing games it is not a surprise that people get things wrong.
 Daedalus81 wrote:

Pierce the Veil is really underrated...

Ritual is a funny beast, because it's 3 casts for a solid 15 points, but you need to stay alive. There is no limit to how many models can perform the same action. IG with super cheap primaris psykers could have 2 or 3 of them casting in the middle.

Why not just Teleport Homer with your psyker? Even if you manage to only do it once you get 4VP, if you do it twice and the Sorcerer dies then you can do it with a different unit.

Why use 3 Primaris Psykers on Ritual instead of 1 Infantry Squad on Investigate?


Homer requires more time - survive two rounds. Pierce needs you to survive just one. Setting up a second unit for Homer can be difficult and then to max it you have to be there turn 1 somehow since it scores turns 3, 4, and 5 after DS.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
yukishiro1 wrote:
What you wrote is a mixture of wrong (no, more than one character cannot attempt psychic ritual per turn) and mistaken analysis. Planning to score 8 points on a secondary is not a good plan. That's the average score because half of all games are lost. It's like saying the average score on primary is only 26.5, so as long as you plan to score 27 points on primary, you should win. No, you need to plan to score what it takes to win, not what it takes to be the average of winning and losing.

Pierce the Veil is usually terrible because there are so many limitations on it that you have to perform an absolute miracle to score above 8 points, and despite that, even getting the 8 is actually difficult against a halfway competent opponent on most maps. Mental Interrogation is usually terrible because it relies on keeping your opponent's characters both alive and close to the caster for 4 turns to get a decent score.

All of them are usually terrible because if your opponent has even a single psyker or a deny strat, they become too risky to take. They all have extremely limited use cases where they make sense, but all of them are hard-countered by your opponent having denies or deny strats, which means you by definition cannot build around them. Secondaries you flat-out cannot take if your opponent has either psykers or anti-psyker strats are always going to be bad choices to plan around.


Can you help me find where it says you can't do the same psychic action?

Games do not always go to 90/100 points.

T'au Tipping #1 player ( 5 wins ) :
87-10
64-62
90-1
63-57
90-5

The goal IS to get as many as possible, but scoring reliably is better than not scoring. Especially if you're trying to get more wins.

The opponent blocking you is a problem, but denying isn't always easy either. Fortunately it is a thing you can plan around since the range is a known quantity ( aside from the 50/50 strats ).

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2021/04/14 16:22:53


 
   
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All the psychic actions can only be attempted once per turn. They all have the same wording re: "One psyker can attempt..." This means one Psyker per turn. It's the same as the wording for all the other actions that are only one per turn, and in contrast to the ones like banners that let you do it more than once per turn.

If you could do it multiple times, you could deep-strike four psykers and max out Pierce the Veil immediately by having all four do it on the same turn, or do Mental Interrogation 5 times on the same character in the same phase and max that out.

You can't plan around denies because ever psychic action is tied to a particular place (middle of the table or their edge) or enemy unit. If your opponent isn't dumb, they'll put their psyker or unit that can use the deny strat in the right place. Leaving it up to RNG whether you score secondaries is not a competitive strategy, so that means they're off the table if your opponent has any psykers or any deny strats (unless I guess they have like only morty or something and you know he's not gonna be babysitting his table edge).
   
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Decrepit Dakkanaut





yukishiro1 wrote:
All the psychic actions can only be attempted once per turn. They all have the same wording re: "One psyker can attempt..." This means one Psyker per turn. It's the same as the wording for all the other actions that are only one per turn, and in contrast to the ones like banners that let you do it more than once per turn.

If you could do it multiple times, you could deep-strike four psykers and max out Pierce the Veil immediately by having all four do it on the same turn, or do Mental Interrogation 5 times on the same character in the same phase and max that out.


Oh right - banners says "one or more". Got it - thanks.

You can't plan around denies because ever psychic action is tied to a particular place (middle of the table or their edge) or enemy unit. If your opponent isn't dumb, they'll put their psyker or unit that can use the deny strat in the right place. Leaving it up to RNG whether you score secondaries is not a competitive strategy, so that means they're off the table if your opponent has any psykers or any deny strats (unless I guess they have like only morty or something and you know he's not gonna be babysitting his table edge).


There is a bit of interplay that you have to consider. Mental Interrogation can be harder, but if you look at their list you can usually know where the characters will be. Ritual is a huge PITA that I only take as a last resort, because I don't have a lot of staying power, but it is not hard to get w/i 6" of center.

If I'm facing Morty then I'm taking Pierce, because there is no chance he'll be in his backfield, but I need backup, which is why I take a Heldrake to block PBC shots.

It's all about making choices based on the factors in play. I'll run my list soon ( even with gimpy rubrics ) on TTS and record it and see how well I can manage against the others on discord.


   
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Secretive Dark Angels Veteran



Canada

 vict0988 wrote:
 the_scotsman wrote:
I have no comment except to say I love this new dakka meta of 9th edition simultaneously being only for competitive players and only for the filthy casual fluffbunny narrative losers, whatever thing I don't like.

No, both statements are not true, some people are just wrong. Between a lack of formal education in the fine art of waging Warhammer and of designing games it is not a surprise that people get things wrong.
 Daedalus81 wrote:

Pierce the Veil is really underrated...

Ritual is a funny beast, because it's 3 casts for a solid 15 points, but you need to stay alive. There is no limit to how many models can perform the same action. IG with super cheap primaris psykers could have 2 or 3 of them casting in the middle.

Why not just Teleport Homer with your psyker? Even if you manage to only do it once you get 4VP, if you do it twice and the Sorcerer dies then you can do it with a different unit.

Why use 3 Primaris Psykers on Ritual instead of 1 Infantry Squad on Investigate?


Psychic Ritual must be successfully attempted by the same Psyker three times to get the VP. This is from the FAQ. https://www.warhammer-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/nnjnTVNO9s0YfZpc.pdf

I have found Psychic Ritual to be a fun, if risky, Secondary. Adds a narrative element as well. Combines well with Oath of Moment.

Pierce the Veil can be combined with Linebreaker. So teleport in a Terminator Librarian with a Terminator Squad escort and harvest those Secondary VPs. The opponent can absolutely frustrate this with the right force and tactics, but if they have poor board/backfield control then you can take advantage. I am not saying its a great Secondary, but its an option.

It is true, though, that if the opponent has a solid Deny capability the Psychic secondaries can net you very little. Maybe that's the design? We'll see what GT Mission Pack 2021 brings.



All you have to do is fire three rounds a minute, and stand 
   
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TangoTwoBravo wrote:

Pierce the Veil can be combined with Linebreaker.


This is my jam. Termie sorc & Heldrake while Armigers jog over to assist and pressure less guarded objectives. I am somewhat fearful of what mono will do to my lists when the codex pops out.



This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/04/14 19:04:18


 
   
 
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