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So I was toying with the idea of having a squad of sanctioned psyerks riding around with a primaris in a chimera. You roll up to a particular model that rustles your jimmies, with extra emphasis being on the ones engaged in CC for however long. When the shooting phase rolls around, you hit them with weaken resolve, so that's -8 to leadership, then slap them with a psychic scream. Even leadership 10 models will be taking 1 pt of damage, and that's from triple ones.

I'm unfamiliar with psychic defenses in 6th, but this combo seems like it would be pretty snazzy behind a blob or wall of chimeras. The 12 inch range of the primaris is cutting it, but for 170 pts you can really put the hurt on a single model each turn so long as they stay alive. Average of 3d6 is 9, so even after losing a few psykers you're still pretty lethal.

225 to put it all in a lovely metal bawks

Thoughts?

Unfortunately, you can't cast WR from inside the chimera. Nothing to stop you holding the PBS in back-field to cast WR (36" range), and pushing the PP forward in a chimera though. I've seen a lot of people recommend not to use this tactic because it is (a) cheesy, or (b) doesn't work, but as I've not done it myself, I'm at a loss to know why this should be so..


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It's a terrible idea because you have too many opportunities to fail. Rolling to hit, rolling DtW, rolling your LD checks. And if any part of it fails you do nothing. For the kind of points you're talking about you might as well just bring more guns and shoot the target to death.

 Peregrine wrote:
It's a terrible idea because you have too many opportunities to fail. Rolling to hit, rolling DtW, rolling your LD checks. And if any part of it fails you do nothing. For the kind of points you're talking about you might as well just bring more guns and shoot the target to death.

I'm sure the someone's done the maths before but I couldn't find it quickly, so here's a quick look at why it's regarded as terrible.

Assuming PBS has Ldr 9 and target has no psykers to help DtW:

Chance of failing WR = 1 - (30/36 * 5/6) = ~ 31%

As Psy. Shriek is witchfire, we need to hit and pass DtW:

Chance to fail PS = 1 - (30/36 * 4/6 * 5/6) = ~54%

Chance to fail WR-PS attack = 1 - (30/36 * 5/6 * 30/36 * 4/6 * 5/6) = ~68%

So 68% of WR-PS attacks won't come off. Compare this with, say, the PP spamming Lightning Arc, which fails ~54% of the time, and the PBS spamming Soulstorm which fails 31% of the time (and scatters an average of 2.7" when it does succeed).

From that, you could estimate the number of wounds generated against the kinds of targets you envisage and make the call. Even though WR-PS only works once every 3 turns, only invulnerable saves will help the targets (so inflict a (avg) 8 unsaved Wounds, less invuln saves). Lightning Arcs (avg) 7 S6 AP5 attacks are not to be sneezed at, though many targets will probably take only 2-3 wounds. Soulstorm can be devastating if the dice gods are with you, but on average it'll probably inflict 4-5 S9 AP3-4 hits, resulting in something like 2-3 wounds (and Instant Death :-). I could go through the detailed Wound analysis if anyone was interested, but you can probably figure that out yourself.

So is WR-PS terrible? Probably, especially if you roll like me, but it might not be so bad if you're feeling lucky.

Weaken Resolve is still good at what it's always done (getting a unit holding an objective to run away) so a PBS is still a good option there. The biggest problem with Psychic Shriek is it's range - at 12" the number of chances you will have to cast it each game is going to be tiny.

One advantage of taking Telepathy for your Primaris Psyker is that two of the powers are Warp Charge 2 so you have to reroll those results increasing your chances of getting Dominate or Puppet Master.

The problem with Primaris Psykers is that Lightning Arc has to roll to hit with all 2D6 of it's shots so with average rolls you will probably only kill one marine as it's AP5. Compared to the potential killing power of Psychic Shriek I'd rather have Psychic Shriek - it may be all or nothing but when it works it's ridiculous.

Put a Primaris in a Chimera with a vet squad with Flamers and Shotguns and push them forwards early to stomp an objective with the PBS in a ruin in your DZ. The most important thing about Psychic Shriek is to be aggressive with it so you need that Psyker with your objective grabbers.

One of three things will happen - You pull off the combo and cause massive casualties forcing a morale check on leadership 2, you fail Psychic Shriek but the Vets kill enough to cause a morale check on leadership 2 or you whiff bad and get shot up in the next turn.

In the above scenario Psychic Shriek wins out compared to Lightning Arc but I think the better plan would be to cast Nightshroud on yourself and Weaken Resolve on the objective campers so if they don't run they are very unlikely to be able to shoot you up next turn.