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I thought your stats and analysis was thorough and your conclusions sound. However, I can understand Ailaros's aversion to the axe. And you nailed the reason why. We are talking about a psyker guardsman with a mediocre stat line. The only models he's gonna best up are the Xenos groups. Might as well do that and do that well instead of nerfing yourself further (initiative) to try to fight units and mc that you should be shooting instead. Another reason is lets say I just give my sergeants axes, they aren't that much worse than the psyker in cc and who cares if you loose a couple.

 TheLionOfTheForest wrote:
I thought your stats and analysis was thorough and your conclusions sound. However, I can understand Ailaros's aversion to the axe. And you nailed the reason why. We are talking about a psyker guardsman with a mediocre stat line. The only models he's gonna best up are the Xenos groups. Might as well do that and do that well instead of nerfing yourself further (initiative) to try to fight units and mc that you should be shooting instead. Another reason is lets say I just give my sergeants axes, they aren't that much worse than the psyker in cc and who cares if you loose a couple.

This is my reasoning as well for why he should take the staff.

First I'd like to apologize for my vehemence. Yesterday was . . . let's call it Entertaining, and I let things from outside affect how I was saying stuff here. Not cool.

If all you are going to fight is Guardsmen, Tau, Necrons, and Orks (Boyz only) then yes, the Staff will perform slightly better than the Axe, though Iron Arm is a complete waste from an offensive perspective. The Sword would perform better than the Staff against Sisters of Battle if you still wanted to strike at Initiative. Against Tyranids, Chaos Space Marines, Chaos Daemons, Dark Eldar, and 6 flavors of Space Marines you are better off with the Axe by a large margin.

Just saying, from a TAC perspective you have 10 armies the Axe is superior against, vs 1 the Sword performs close to the same on and 4 the Staff performs better than (or the same as depending on your Biomancy powers). Especially considering the vast bulk of players roll one of the 6 flavors of Space Marines or Chaos Space Marines.

I don't see the point in taking a unit that is only good against a very small subset of potential enemies. I certainly don't see how you can call it "the best" choice. IMO, the "best" of anything is whatever is versatile enough to be effective against multiple enemies. Tailoring a list for a specific enemy starts to fall into casual play where you likely will do fine choosing units purely for fun instead of trying to take "the best" units.

cowmonaut, your reasoning is sound in general. If this were for almost any other model, I'd be saying Axe! Axe! Axe! along with you. However, considering this is a primaris psycher, you have to take into account that he's not going to survive often. I3 may not be amazing, but it's better than I1 - as you pointed out by noting which enemies the PP will be better at killing with the staff. The PP won't survive to swing against many enemies without this (sub-par) initiative. Meaning the axe wielding PP will be chumped by those targets it's supposedly better at killing. Whereas the staff wielding PP will put out some damage before dying horribly.
Then take into account the small chance of getting warp speed, which the axe would entirely waste, and initiative 3 is looking like the key point for me (and apparently OP).

In the end, I think it's all academic. The PP won't do a significant amount of damage with either weapon. So the discussion is like arguing over which species of ant is the toughest. Who cares which one is? I can still incinerate them both with a magnifying glass.

With 3 Wounds and a 5++ you are surviving more than you'd think. Say Commander Farsight charges you into combat and you partake in a Challenge with him. Statistically he's only getting 1.48 unsaved wounds against you, and he's still striking before you because of Initiative 5. You'd have to be receiving over 10 attacks from an opponent with S5 to get taken out before you strike (guaranteed anyways).

And keep in mind if you are trying to get Iron Arm that sucker gets you Eternal Warrior AND increased Toughness, so Instant Death is a moot argument when you have Iron Arm.

I really think you guys are selling the little guy short. He's still never amazing, but he's going to take more than a single turn to take out usually. I really don't see the point in making him next to useless against those kinds of targets, even if he's only going to last 1-2 rounds. You'll want to get in as many hits as you can.

cowmonaut wrote:
With 3 Wounds and a 5++ you are surviving more than you'd think. Say Commander Farsight charges you into combat and you partake in a Challenge with him. Statistically he's only getting 1.48 unsaved wounds against you, and he's still striking before you because of Initiative 5. You'd have to be receiving over 10 attacks from an opponent with S5 to get taken out before you strike (guaranteed anyways).

And keep in mind if you are trying to get Iron Arm that sucker gets you Eternal Warrior AND increased Toughness, so Instant Death is a moot argument when you have Iron Arm.

I really think you guys are selling the little guy short. He's still never amazing, but he's going to take more than a single turn to take out usually. I really don't see the point in making him next to useless against those kinds of targets, even if he's only going to last 1-2 rounds. You'll want to get in as many hits as you can.

Except that he only has 2 wounds. 1.48 wounds dealt against him could kill him outright.

Hell 10 TAC marines can kill him in two rounds of combat, and if the sergeant had a power fist/axe/mace it'd be over even quicker. That's not a CC monster at all. Of course he'd survive slightly longer with iron arm but slightly longer is still only slightly longer...against TACs!

Edit: With the axe, I'd put my money on him dying in almost every challenge. Even with iron arm, if you don't roll a 3+ he's still easy to kill.

TheLionOfTheForest wrote:Except that he only has 2 wounds. 1.48 wounds dealt against him could kill him outright.

Thank you for the correction! Misread his number of Wounds. So he has a 50% chance of surviving against Farsight in a Challenge on the turn Farsight charged. And I think we're all agreed that's a terrible match up.

Griddlelol wrote:Hell 10 TAC marines can kill him in two rounds of combat, and if the sergeant had a power fist/axe/mace it'd be over even quicker. That's not a CC monster at all. Of course he'd survive slightly longer with iron arm but slightly longer is still only slightly longer...against TACs!

I agree he isn't a CC monster at all. Also keep in mind, you wouldn't throw him at a Tac Squad all on his own. There will be other bodies to screen some of the attacks, so if you aren't in a Challenge its only a handful of attacks you'd be having to worry about.

I don't understand this thread why on earth would anyone try to get a Primaris Psyker into combat. If he is in combat it should only be because the unit he is with was charged and therefore should be tooled up to fight defensivly. Most of the things that want to charge you will be killed better with the Axe.

No, if he's going into combat, it's against guard, cultists, tau, kroot, some eldar, some Tyranids.

 TheLionOfTheForest wrote:
No, if he's going into combat, it's against guard, cultists, tau, kroot, some eldar, some Tyranids.

But why? He is very sub par in combat why throw away a 70 point guy in combat. He is there to buff units and can add some extra power attacks in combat if a unit is charged. Other wise keep him out.

He isn't very sub par in close combat, though. Maybe compared to the best close combat units in the game, but not against most stuff. Furthermore, you can certainly injure good stuff down to the point where it's handlable by a WS4 guy with 5 power attacks on the charge (and possibly has +D3 S and +D3 T or +D3 A and +D3 I).

You don't need to be able to beat an uninjured mephiston or swarm lord to make close combat a reasonable option, especially when you're spending so few points on something that still has a primarily shooty role.

Plus he should be with a squad or blob. He's not going in alone.

What I'm trying to figure out is why your investing so much into a model just so he can do option B which close combat when you should be trying to avoid combat with him where possible. It seems like your going to be trying to rush head first into combat.

But he DOESN'T need to avoid combat whenever possible. That's the point. I've been running a powerfist on my senior officer for quite some time now, and there is plenty of stuff that a properly-armed guard model can handle.

Throw in something like an iron arm, and there's a lot of dross that can be hacked through, especially with backup from another squad.

Add to that the fact that it's the cheapest practical HQ apart from a CCS with a lascannon (which ties it, but isn't always the best choice), and that it can shoot, and you get a fair amount for 70 points. Including something that's decent enough in close combat against a bunch of stuff.

Also, I'd like to note that he does only cost 70 points. Comparing him to units that far outstrip his points cost and saying that the psyker isn't as good is much more of a tautology than a valid point against it.

I like the Primaris Psyker and I think he is a good addition to a list. I just don't think he's a combat monster that should be pushed across the board as quickly as possible looking for a fight. As part of a counter charge unit he could preform well and generally the units you will be counter charging are going to be tougher melee based unit that like to close the gap quickly. But his primary job should be for buffing squads with combat as his option B. Generally if I run a Primaris he will be with either an Artillary unit for the T7 or a Blob filled with Power Axes to counter charge something that has come to close not trying to pick fights.

I don't think Ailaros once said that he's going to charge across the table looking for a fight, so that argument is invalid.

The issue with the PP buffing squads, is that he has no guarantee to actually get a psychic power to buff.

His best role is as a sort of counter attack unit, it's just that most of the things that the PP can kill aren't going to be attacking anyway.

I think the staff is almost always the way to go. It gives him possibilities against vehicles the axe lacks, and invulnerable saves are a thing. Staffs don't care about invulnerable saves, and AP4 is still good against a lot of things. The real thing, though, is it doesn't make a ton of difference, so use the one that you think looks cool.

 Ailaros wrote:
Throw in something like an iron arm, and there's a lot of dross that can be hacked through, especially with backup from another squad.

But, again, if you're fighting weak units then you're probably doing better with lightning arc and a shooting squad.

This is the problem, really, you can't figure out what weapon to use because you don't actually have a plan for what the psyker is supposed to be doing better than 70 more points in shooting units. All you have is an idea that you're somehow going to do something in assault just for the sake of having an assault psyker. And that's the wrong way to do it, first you need to figure out WHY you want your psyker to assault instead of shoot, and then you will be able to figure out what the appropriate weapon for that situation is.