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Real basic idea, coupling a cheap Telepathy Librarian with Sternguard.
Psychic Scream matches up well with the special ammo types.

Yeah, I've thought of this as well. There is the little problem of that it's debatable as to whether psykers arriving from reserves even get warp charge, however. I don't know the answer to that.

As far as I can see, there is nothing in the rulebook that stipulates a psyker has to be on the board to generate warp charges, it just refers to 'automatically generates his full allocation of warp charges at the beginning of each turn. Anyway, this isn't a YMDC thread, so for now I'll assume you can.

In which case, it's certainly a viable idea, especially if you have ML2 so you can cast a blessing next turn (this is a good way to deal with the T1 uselessness of buff-only psykers. Another good one is the pyromany primaris, as it adds another heavy flamer which is great out of a pod.

The YMDC thread seemed to back up the idea that they did indeed get warp charge while in reserve. However, they are clearly prohibited from using benedictions when they arrive, so that makes this scheme even better!

Between Tigurius, a Telepathy Librarian, and a bike captain/chapter master, I am blown away by this codex and how different it is from the Blood Angels that I had previously been used to. I've gone from being forced to spend 100 points on a HQ that I didn't really want to being spoiled for choice and I find myself thinking if there's a way I can justify spending 400 points or so and taking 3 HQs.

The best part is you can still go get Mephiston if you want to.

I was originally considering a simple Lv1 Librarian who just uses Scream but Lv2 does give me the option of a second power or to use my force weapon.

Level 2 libbies are the win in C:SM. Hell, you might roll up a 2 cost power in telepathy.

I don't have the Telepathy table in front of me, but there is a really good 2 charge power in there, and most of the other are also quite strong. You might end up with two better powers than Psychic Scream, even. The more I've thought about this thread, the more positive I am about using this exact unit in my next game - 9 Stern and an Epistolary in a drop pod should do a ton of damage.

 tomjoad wrote:
I don't have the Telepathy table in front of me, but there is a really good 2 charge power in there, and most of the other are also quite strong. You might end up with two better powers than Psychic Scream, even. The more I've thought about this thread, the more positive I am about using this exact unit in my next game - 9 Stern and an Epistolary in a drop pod should do a ton of damage.

Most of he telepathy table is blessing/maledictions which you can't use the turn you pod in. However, they are all extremely useful if your epistolary survives the turn he drops in. Hallucinate is a game winner too.

I know that at least a few of them are witchfire, though. Psychic Scream certainly is, and I had assumed that Puppet Master and Dominate (this name might be wrong) were as well.

 minigun762 wrote:
I was originally considering a simple Lv1 Librarian who just uses Scream but Lv2 does give me the option of a second power or to use my force weapon.

The real question is, "Is psychic shriek good?" My short answer is maybe, sometimes.

Think about an optimal target. Something that's hard to kill, has a good armor save and hopefully no invulnerable, and has poor leadership. A Carnifex is t6 that you can ignore, a 3+ save that you can ignore, and ld7. Juicy target?

Test on ld10, you succeed 92% of the time. Assuming they have no psychic defense.
Now you get to roll to hit! Librarians aren't great at shooting. 67% chance to hit.

3d6 against ld7. Results under target's leadership will be counted as 0, results more than 6 above will be counted as 6 because overkill does not help at all. The odds for this are complicated but in the end your average wounds come to 3.34. That sounds pretty dope right?

Factor in your psychic check and to hit. Now you have an average of 2 wounds. Still pretty decent, but this is the ideal target. If they are leadership 8 like a trygon, this goes down to 1.6 wounds. If they have a 5+ invulnerable or FNP, 1 wound. If they are SM terminators with ld9 and 5++, 0.8 wounds. Without getting into totally unsuitable targets like a guardsman, you can see that psychic shriek quickly loses appeal if not against the perfect target.

2 wounds against a carnifex is pretty good.
3 sternguard do 6 shots at 2/3 to hit and 5/6 to wound, 1/3 to pass save. 1 wound, 66p of sternguard. Same cost as a lvl 1. Librarian wins here, but can't do that much else.
4 sternguard cost about as much as a lvl 2, have 8 shots, same odds, 1.5 wounds. Basically tied with the librarian at this point, against psychic shriek's optimal target. If you are taking lvl 2, the sternguard will essentially always be as good or better.

Against that trygon the 4 sternguard tie up the librarian.
The sternguard do the same as the librarian against terminators with their bolters, unless of course they have combi/plasma/grav in which case the sternguard will of course win.
Against basic marines your sternguard will be dishing out 2.7 wounds, about 70% better than the librarian. Again, if they have plasma or grav guns, they start winning by even more.
Against fearless enemies, hordes of orks guardsmen and bugs, etc your psychic shriek becomes less and less important as the toughness/armor ignoring becomes low value.

In conclusion, hallucination, invisibility, and a bunch of other Telepathy powers are pretty good, which means you want to be level 2 to go for them. This also means that sternguard or even basic marines are always better at what psychic shriek wants to do.
A cheap lvl 1 librarian will never be able to use these two blockbuster powers, and so imo is not an attractive option. Psychic shriek alone is not worth it.

For what it's worth you can get 50% more basic marines with bolters than sternguard for the price. Against many targets the humble bolter marine is in fact the ideal option.

Telepathy librarians should be lvl 2. A psychic shriek librarian is only worth it for his shooting prowess a small amount of the time. I would not take a lvl 1 librarian for telepathy unless it was my only HQ and I just needed to fill the slot. If you already have a HQ, do not take a librarian just to shoot stuff unless you somehow really need to concentrate firepower in that one pod at the cost of efficiency, in which case why not just buy 65 points of combi and special weapons?

Erm, you're skewing the averages down hardcore by throwing out any result over 6, especially given that in your own example you mention FNP and invulnerable saves, and thus even 12 wounds vs a riptide with both would not, in fact, be overkill.

Factoring that in i would add at least 1-1.5 wounds to your results, which amkes it a lot more appealing.

Averages are tough to gauge against the maximum potential. I've had a Nemesis dreadknight and a wraithknight both one-shotted by shriek in the past month.

Largo39 wrote:
Erm, you're skewing the averages down hardcore by throwing out any result over 6, especially given that in your own example you mention FNP and invulnerable saves, and thus even 12 wounds vs a riptide with both would not, in fact, be overkill.

Factoring that in i would add at least 1-1.5 wounds to your results, which amkes it a lot more appealing.

True, that is very fair. Including huge overages increases odds against terminator saves from 1.1 to 1.2, for example.

Using your riptide example (5++), my incorrect math would suggest 0.79 wounds, while the correct math yields a mighty 0.87 wounds. A shield generator boosted riptide would thus take 0.44 wounds.

My fault in not thinking thoroughly enough, but as you can see even including results over max wounds there is not an enormous difference, and unless something else comes up my points are unchanged.

Think of it this way.

Is the Vampire Counts Terrorgheist shriek good?

If yes, then this is good too, maybe not as formidable as I believe you add its current wounds to the number and is 2d6 instead, but that's like an average of 2 more than psychic shriek.

BronzeJon wrote:
Think of it this way.

Is the Vampire Counts Terrorgheist shriek good?

If yes, then this is good too, maybe not as formidable as I believe you add its current wounds to the number and is 2d6 instead, but that's like an average of 2 more than psychic shriek.

1) I don't know if that's good. I've never heard of it.

2) The rules for that sound like they're not at all the same as Psychic Scream, and that it exists in a wildly different context.

3) These abilities exist is radically different games with radically different rules, rules of engagement, objectives, etc.

They are not entirely different.

3d6 - LD = wounds with no armor saves

vs.

2d6 - LD + current terrorgheist wounds = wounds with no armor saves

Why not ally Imperial Guard, take a psyker battle sqaud. They just point, pass a psychic test and can lower the leadership value of unit down to a 2. (dont even need a roll to hit)

Then hit em with psychic scream.

I allied IG with my Deamons just to get this squad, took the exalted "Doomstone" gift... not very nice when a big deathstar with 3 characters all die with no saves of any kind allowed.

I'd say it's worth it for that odd time it does great. Math-hammerers put too much stock in average results. In the past I've obliterated whole marine squads with shriek. I don't take it to do the same average damage as a plasma pistol, I take it because it might do 10 wounds to those space marines, and ignore their cover and armour.

OT: great idea. simple execution, not much can go wrong. ML2 is a must, it's so cheap and always worth it.

Average results dominate over the course of many games. You can't count on statistical outliers like you are speaking of.

In a game of dice, outliers are just as likely as average rolls.

Henshini wrote:
In a game of dice, outliers are just as likely as average rolls.

Think about that statement for a minute and tell me why it's nonsense. Hint: it has something to do with the definition of "outlier".

Martel732 wrote:

Henshini wrote:
In a game of dice, outliers are just as likely as average rolls.

Think about that statement for a minute and tell me why it's nonsense. Hint: it has something to do with the definition of "outlier".

I've actually got a concern about the Libby + 9 Sternguard idea though... why take 9 of them? Would it not be overkill against most targets to take more than ~6 plus the Libby? I just say this because I'd usually take 10, but only to combat squad them for flexibilities' sake. It's unfortunate that pods are capped at 10 models, but 9 plus a shriek Libby sounds like serious overkill on 1 target (barring Hammernators or Flesh Hounds and the like).