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Long story short, while I love the CCS, I've run into an annoying problem lately. People have learned what it does, and with the added incentive of slay the warlord and first blood, have taken to shooting the ever loving crap out of it every single game I don't get first turn (and even ones where I'm first). It's getting to the point where I either hide them, or don't even both unpacking them, knowing they'll be shot. Yes, I know I can adjust my play by hiding it turn one to fix this a bit, especially since we make heavy use of terrain, but then I'm pretty much just using it as an orders factory and nothing else. These difficulties got me thinking about other options we can take.

Namely the Primaris Pysker. Cheap, comes with decent gear, is an IC, so I can stick him in a big block of guardsmen, or even an ablative pack of conscript meatshields, and he'll have a decent chance of surviving the first turn. But then I realized his main powers are garbage, and started looking at the book to see what my options were. Biomancy is cool, but only a couple of the powers are useful. I've tried this in the past and you rarely get the powers you wish with only 2 pyskers. So I checked out the others. Divination we don't get, and pyromancy are all either redundant or useless.

Which leaves me with two choices, telepathy and telekinesis.

Telepathy

Telekinesis.


So yeah, if you were thinking of putting a pair of primaris pyskers in an IG foot guard list, which school would you take. I'm leaning heavily towards Telekinesis, but I can see merit to telepathy as well. It really feels like the "smart' decision, but maybe I'm missing something. I almost never use pyskers in any capacity, so please point any misconceptions I have. Also, I can't find the "which schools are allowed per army" in the little book anywhere, so if one of these schools isn't allowed, please let me know.

Three mistakes in your evaluation:

1) Gate only helps the psyker's unit, so unless you're willing to put your HQ into a fragile SWS then you're not going anywhere. Meanwhile a large meatshield squad has a suicidally high chance of a mishap, making it a pretty bad idea.

2) Crush is not autohit. It's a witchfire power, so it rolls to hit unless it explicitly says otherwise (and it doesn't).

3) No, OM does not force re-rolls to penetrate armor, since it says nothing about that.


Anyway, the problem with book powers is they're too inconsistent. You can think of situations where they'd be useful (though not game-changing), but they're still all very situational and you don't get to pick which power you get. By taking the primaris psyker you're taking a risk on having a useless unit, and even when it succeeds it isn't all that great. The only benefit is that you make it harder to kill your HQ, and is that really worth it?

Instead, just use the best method for keeping a CCS alive on turn 1 without wasting it: 4x melta/plasma and put it on a Vendetta.

1.)Thanks, have no idea how I missed that.

2.) Thanks again. Saw "target suffers a hit" and for some reason assumed autohit.

3.) Figured on this one, but had a small hope maybe it was in a FAQ that I hadn't noticed.

Definitely puts a damper on my plans, as I thought I had it all figured out. I've been sick all week so I'll use that as a handy excuse for missing all those blatantly obvious things you mentioned on the pysker tables Thanks for pointing it all out though, I'd rather know it now than get to the table and realize I'm boned.

Taking a CCS on foot was just getting ridiculous lately so I was looking for other options. I may try giving them a bunch of plasma and hiding them out of site as a reactionary unit or something.

All I know is that just giving them a heavy weapon and a regimental standard isn't working. People in my area are so hellbent on killing them now it's getting insane. Had an ork player focus 40+ loota shots into them turn one the other day, and the games before that had a couple of eldar players fire every scatter laser shot they had at the poor guys.

Oh well, back to the drawing board.

 MrMoustaffa wrote:
All I know is that just giving them a heavy weapon and a regimental standard isn't working. People in my area are so hellbent on killing them now it's getting insane. Had an ork player focus 40+ loota shots into them turn one the other day, and the games before that had a couple of eldar players fire every scatter laser shot they had at the poor guys.

Is this really such a bad thing? Sure, you give up 1 VP* early, but in exchange you draw a lot of fire away from your main threats and make it more likely that you cripple your opponent's army and win the objective game. If killing the CCS instead of a bigger threat means you end the game holding one additional objective, well, you just got 3 VP and potentially took 3 VP away from your opponent. And that potential 6 VP swing is a lot more than the mere 1 VP you lost with the sacrifice. At least you're not alone though, I see way too many people over-value first blood and hurt themselves in the objective game because they're terrified of losing that 1 VP.

And of course there's still the Vendetta. Keeps the CCS alive very effectively, and gives you an opportunity to deliver a nasty melta/plasma threat if you have a target that's worth sacrificing the VP to kill. You do take Vendettas in your foot list, right?


*You're probably going to lose "slay the warlord" eventually, and losing it on turn 1 is no worse than losing it on turn 5.

Yeah I understand what you're saying, was just getting annoying. I'd rather lose them than a russ or something, but it still hurts a bit. The biggest problem is target saturation though. When your targets are 6 leman russes, several 20-30 man infantry units, or a 5 man infantry unit that also gives you slay the warlord, it's not surprising what they target. Right now I think the best approach may be to just set them up in the open if I've got first turn, and if I'm going second, just hide them out of sight. If orders are really a huge deal turn one, I can move the squad into the open on my turn to establish line of sight.

I've currently got a PCS flying around in my vendetta (only have one), as they're disposable, have 4 flamers, and can score. If I ever found a $140 laying around though I may add a couple more vendettas and try the plasma CCS sometime riding in one sometime. In respects to using dropped units to take out key targets, I usually just use Marbo or stormtroopers. Not as points efficient perhaps, but they tend to get to their targets faster than the flyer bound squad will, which is what matters most, to me at least.

Since foot IG tends to have very slow/immobile scoring units, anytime I've got something with an option to get in the backfield, a scoring unit is going in it. If I was wanting plasma dropping out of that vendetta, I'd opt for vets first, or SWS/PCS if I just absolutely needed to trim points for some reason.

Primaris seems somewhat obsolete now you can take a Divination Librarian for cheaper or for a modest cost make him Mastery 2.

I've tried out a Primaris Psyker with foot guard recently, and he's proven alright. However, I've used Biomancy for my powers. Barring Iron Arm or Warp Speed (neither of which are very good on our humble psyker) the table has plenty of solid options, and Iron Arm and Warp Speed can both be swapped for the Primaris Power. Smite, Life Leech, and Haemorrhage are reasonably potent close range shooting attacks. Smite and Life Leech have an excellent AP as well, so they can drop Marines and the like easily enough. Endurance is fantastic - relentless lasguns and heavy weapons make moving less of a burden and can setup brutal volleys followed by charges, along with FNP to help keep your troops alive. Enfeeblement can make tougher units - including things like Flyrants that Lasguns normally struggle against - much easier to drop, and can keep your men alive if they are subsequently charged. Solid powers all around, assuming you swap for the Primaris in a few cases. As Peregrine points out, it's still inconsistent, but you're at least getting something respectable to throw out with your lasguns at short range with Biomancy, and some solid powers with some luck.

The biggest problem I've had with the Primaris Psyker, though, isn't the randomness - it's that he's not going to keep the IG blob from fleeing on a bad roll. Commissars can keep a bunch of guard in a losing combat, or force a reroll if one of your sarges loses his head (literally, following the Commissar's discipline). Primaris Psykers can't do that. Get hit by an errant Assault Marine squad, make some poor rolls, and you might just lose it all. Brick a morale check after shooting, and enjoying wasting a turn repositioning. Worst of all, if you do stack them with a Commissar to keep things together, you run the risk of giving up your Warlord with one bad roll. Of course, there are ways around that - allied Marines and the like - but that just complicates things further.

Maybe just try a Lord Commissar? He has the benefits of being an IC to hide in blobs, he has great leadership, and he's decent in combat.

Just take 2x CCS in Chimeras, redundancy.

If you don't mind my asking, what exactly is killing your CCS? They get a 2+ cover save and 4 ablative wounds behind an aegis line, so unless you're going up against ignores-cover or barrage firepower, they should't be eliminated instantly.

Anything that manages to get into assault range will tear them to shreds, of course, but you'd be playing a very different game than what I'm used to if you're losing your CCS to assaults on turn 1...

Yeah, I understand what you're saying moustaffa.

For the primaris, there are basically two things I see being all that useful. The first is just going with the lightning fingers. 2D6 S6 shots with BiD can be useful against fliers and select other targets.

The second is TK. 3 of the abilities (gate, crush, and OM) are decently useful, and given that if you roll a 6 or doubles, you get to roll again, you've got a pretty decent chance of getting one of those three.

That said, if you're looking for a non-CCS, I'd actually take a lord commissar nowadays. Yeah, he's going to be more expensive, but he's also going to be a lot better. He can come with a BS5 plasma pistol, and a WS5 power sword or fist (which I'd place above a force weapon, especially since the commissar also gives stubborn, rerolls, Ld10, and comes with a refractor and can take carapace, and has an extra wound), which means he can ACTUALLY be good in close combat as well.

More importantly, though, you get your 12" leadership buff back, which is something you're going to sorely miss without a CCS.

The lord commissar can be rather tougher, and overall fills the CCS role better than the psyker. Seems closer to what you're actually looking for.

Corollax wrote:
If you don't mind my asking, what exactly is killing your CCS? They get a 2+ cover save and 4 ablative wounds behind an aegis line, so unless you're going up against ignores-cover or barrage firepower, they should't be eliminated instantly.

Anything that manages to get into assault range will tear them to shreds, of course, but you'd be playing a very different game than what I'm used to if you're losing your CCS to assaults on turn 1...

Think of any long ranged weapon that can't hurt a leman russ but is overkill on a normal guardsman. Essentially anything S5 to S8. I have nothing on the table besides 5pt guardsmen and av 14 leman russ variants. With nothing for these weapons to shoot, they get focused on my CCS's instead. 40+ loota shots, 6 of the eldar walkers with roughly 48 twinlinked multilaser shots between them, anything with an autocannon, etc. Used to be they would target my HWS's as I would take 6+ at times, but since those are gone the only real target left for them are my 5 man HQ squads. With the added incentive of slay the warlord, its no surprise which target they pick.

I've used the Lord Commissar in the past with solid results by running massive power blobs, but they get points intensive quickly. That said though, they've mulched almost anything they get in combat with with the powerfist, axes, and occassionally krak grenades depending on my mood. I may give them a try again, or just take one as my warlord, and that leaves me with a regular CCS that i don't need to worry about. It would give me a big defensive blob to take care of something that got too close to my tanks, and the rest of my list could be a more typical setup. Either way they're a lot of fun to use so I may start using them in fun games at the very least.

A lot of good points have been made already. I wasnt expecting answers so quickly. Thanks guys this is helping a lot.

Well, you don't need to run a lord commissar in a blob.

He still can make anything go from suck to less suck in close combat, and he still doles out leadership, and a reroll to his own squad.

Think of it sort of like an inquisitor. You CAN sink a lot of points into him, but you don't HAVE to.

You can get the whole package for less than 100 points. Or, roughly the same cost as a CCS. You can't take a heavy weapon, but you get something that's a bit better in close combat and way more difficult to wipe out.

Heck, this might be time for some non-sitnw conscripts even. Would still work fine with vets or PISs, though.