Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

 lucian the dead one wrote:
Tournament Armies should be drawn from 2 sources only: 1 primary detachment, and 1 other source. Some folks like Formations here, some don't. Some want to see armies able to ally with themselves, some don't. But in general, expect to see 1 primary and 1 allied detachment at tournaments. That is fair, allows for tons of creativity in list building and avoids the situation we had at Adepticon where you had 9/16 finalists with Inquisition...because why WOULDN'T you take one if you can? The paradox of choice is that more choices allowed to players equals less variety as everyone cherry picks the best stuff. No Unbounds lists. Perhaps for specialized events but in general, it just does not work. No, we do not need to try it first to see, simple logic dictates that this is a truism.

No Maelstrom Cards as they are right now. I love the idea of the cards but we've played 8 games with them now and they simply do not work as they are presented in the book. 7/8 games the player that drew the better hand in the first draw won the game regardless of what happened in the game. The 8th game, the player with the better hand tied despite having 4 models left and being about to get tabled. The core mechanic of them simply does't work. With modifications, they could be a lot of fun, but as is: not for tournaments.

The Psychic Phase needs work. If you don't spam Psykers, the new psychic phase is great! It is harder to get powers off than before, and really helps to even out the power of psykers. However, when you spam out psykers, the wheels come off the ship. Combined with Malefic powers, you can reliably bring around 40 Warp Charge Dice to the game which just dramatically throws this phase out of whack and makes the game unenjoyable. Some folks may like the idea of facing an army that can reliably bring 500+ points of new units onto the table every turn, but the vast majority of gamers will not. It is quite clearly a broken game mechanic.

Armies that dramatically skew the warp charge pool will cause all kinds of problems. We need to either limit Warp Charge or in some way limit the psychic phase to bring some balance to the equation. Invisibility is way too good. No one I have spoken to thinks otherwise. We have to ban this or tone it down somehow. As I stated over at Frontline, a T6 target with a reroll 2+ save (which, damn it, are still in the game for some stupid reason) + invisibility will be indestructible. A Bolter has a 1/1296 chance of actually hurting this unit. And, with 40+ warp charge to throw at psychic powers, it is not unlikely at all to get this off every turn I'm wondering what the upper limit on Warp Charge Dice needs to be? If they remove invisibility, and remove daemonic summoning tree no one would care about warp dice

Holy wall of text. Fixed for you!

I don't fully understand why people see the need to nerf the psychic phase at all? Why doe's it matter that someone can reliably have 30+ dice per phase?

If it is specifically because of Summoning then address Summoning.. (personally I do not believe it is as broken as people make out) otherwise you stray into the realm of nerfing Tyranids (for example) without meaning too because you are worried about Daemon factory.

bodazoka wrote:
I don't fully understand why people see the need to nerf the psychic phase at all? Why doe's it matter that someone can reliably have 30+ dice per phase?

If it is specifically because of Summoning then address Summoning.. (personally I do not believe it is as broken as people make out) otherwise you stray into the realm of nerfing Tyranids (for example) without meaning too because you are worried about Daemon factory.

Because if someone outnumbers you in wc dice by 6 to 1, which some armies can do in a single detachment easily, they can literally negate all your psychic powers.

You straight up just don't get to play that part of the game.

 Tomb King wrote:
Found some suggestions from the guys over at front line gaming as well: http://www.frontlinegaming.org/2014/05/24/7th-edition-warhammer-40k-review-the-good-the-bad-and-solutions/

Nice! Quoting over the conclusions / suggestions at the end of the article here:

1. No unbound armies outside of specialized events, such as Ard Boyz for those who enjoy this.

2. Limit the amount of detachments you can use in a list. I still feel that 2 is all we should use as otherwise you end up with situations like Adepticon wherein you have 9/16 finalists with Inquisition. I feel that 1 primary only, and then 1 other type of detachment would be fair and fun and allow for a great deal of variety.
a. Disallow “Come the Apocalypse” allies as they create totally bizarre and unfun combos.

3. Limit Warp Charge to prevent the inane psychic spam armies.
a. If that is not enough to stop the worst abuses, also limit powers like Invisibility, Fortune, and some of the Malefic powers.

4. Limit the use of mission cards so that you have a fair chance to potentially score in a game. If you draw a card that is impossible to score throughout the course of the game, you get a free redraw. I think this combined with a layered mission such as a traditional mission primary (Crusade, Scouring, etc.) with cards secondary and bonus points as tertiary can create some really fun, varied missions. You would also have to come up with a way to limit tampering with the mission cards.

5. Limit the stupid 2+ reroll saves that are still going to be so prevalent as we have already done.

@niv-mizzet

So it's like being Necrons or Tau?

Trasvi wrote:

 jy2 wrote:
The idea is that the psykers are forced to spread the warp dice and not allow 1 single psyker to cast all the powers. So if you have 1 psyker with all the good powers, now he has to make a choice as to which power he needs to cast. This will help to limit all the psychic craziness as well. And there shouldn't be such a thing as a psyker with all bad powers. At the very least, they can attempt the Primaris or do something like cast Flickering Fire (for Tzeentch daemons). What it will force you to do is to even out the casting so that all psykers will be able to do something rather than spending 18 dice out of, say 20 dice, on just 1 psyker casting 3 powerful spells whereas everyone else just sits and watches.

I think you're trying to address a specific problem (summoning) with a solution that is too general (all psykers).
If you look at the other end of the spectrum: an army with one Lv2 psyker, trying to cast prescience and misfortune. Getting even one of those spells off will be difficult if he is capped to 4+(D6/2) dice.

No, this is not targeted just at the Summoning (for that, see my Suggestion #2 - Limited Summoning). This "solution" is targeted at all psykers in general. It is actually meant to limit the "super-psyker". Otherwise, you can get situations like this: Fateweaver casts a 3 warp charge Flickering Fire (4D6 shots), a 2 warp charge Bolt of Tzeentch (or whichever power was the 2 warp charge one), 2-WP Invisibility and 2-WP Endurance (or even the 3-WP Summoning depending on how you want to play it). Or how about Eldrad potentially casting 2-WP Fortune, 2-WP Prescience, 2-WP Invisibility and 3-WP Summoning? There's also Be'lakor and basically any of the Level 3 psykers out there.

As for the Lvl 2 psyker, yes, so now you have to make a choice. You don't get to cast all of your psychic powers like you used to back in 6th, so choose wisely. The psychic phase in 7E is not meant to be as reliable as it once was back in 6E.

It would make the game more manageable in terms of Time. In terms of tournament play, which is what this thread is about, overloading the psychic phase with multiple summonings a turn is what will slow the game to a crawl.

/shurgs. There will always be slow armies and players, and players that manage to run the same army in half the time. A tau gunline can spend more time shooting in the opponent's turn than the opponent does doing anything; a tervigon spawning horde will summon roughly the same amount of models as a daemon summoning army (at least in the first turns) and doesn't have the advantage of quick deployment via no scatter deep strike. Deal with slow summoning players the same way that you deal with anyone else in tournaments.

Slow is just part of the problem. The other problem is potentially getting 100's of points worth of units for free. Even the limit of 1 Conjuration per turn can net you 500+ pts of free units throughout the game (if you are just summoning basic troops) or potentially even 1000+ pt per game (if you are summoning Bloodthirsters).

More importantly, the person doing the summoning in tournament play can control the level of his "slow-playing". Oh, need to burn away time? Let's summon 5 units. What, almost out of time? Forget summoning, I'll just move onto this objective here and the game ends!

And if you think that the only way daemons can remain competitive is to overload on Summoning, then you are sorely mistaken. My advice - DON'T RELY ON SUMMONING as your main strategy. Play a more well-rounded....and dare I say, a funner game.

It's nice of you to say that, but the main competitive daemon builds have been severely nerfed. Witchfire powers are now much more costly, much less likely to be cast, more likely to damage the caster, and more likely to be dispelled. A unit can't cast multiples of the same witchfire (so no Screamerstar or Pinkstar with 4 Tzeralds). Screamerstar with Heralds can't Jink if they want to witchfire the next turn. FMCs took a severe nerf to their offensive power (vector strikes toned down and can't charge on the turn they land). The only competitive daemon list that didn't take a severe beating was hound rush, and that was a mid-tier army at best.

Plus now *every non-daemon psyker in the game* has reliable access to Santic - Banishment, which halves the survivability of all Daemon units.

I disagree. There are many good units in the codex that does not have to rely heavily on psychic powers. All the Fast Attacks, many of the Elites and Soulgrinders as well are all under-utilized units that are very good. The problem here is that you are equating competitive daemons to FMC-spam daemons. Well, the meta has changed. Find a new way to win. I guarantee you that it won't be as hard as you think.

Besides, even with the nerfs to FMC-spam, they are still a very good build. Even with 2 base troops and the limit of 1 successful Summoning per turn, you are looking at most likely 7+ Objective Secured scoring units! Mobility is not a problem, as you move before you cast your powers. That means FMC's can get to where they need to (objectives) and then summon. Not to mention Daemons have the Portaglyph to add even more Objectives Secured troops.

You think Santic is reliable enough to stop Daemons? Other than the grey knights, the caster has a high chance to kill himself. Moreover, try casting powers over a daemon army with 30+ Dispel dice. See how reliable that becomes against Level 3 psykers who will be Denying on 4+'s.

This is how it works. Let's say you have a marine army with 1 Lvl 2 psyker (and thus, 2 warp dice) going against a daemon army with 30 dice. There is no way in heck he will ever be able to cast any powers. The intent of this rule is to curb that. So in this case, the marines can use 2+D6 dice to cast his spells, whereas the daemon army can only use 4+D6 dice to deny it. Otherwise, there is almost no way in hell to get off any power against Daemons or the Grey Knights or Tyranids or the Seer Council for a normal army.

I think the mathematics of this don't really end up changing anything much. You have one WC2 spell that you really need to get off with your Lv2 psyker? You use all your dice (say, d6=4 so 6 dice total) and get 3 successes; the daemon player now rolls 16 - which is probably what was going to happen anyway. You just cap the psychic-heavy player at a 50% dispel chance instead of 75% if he used all 22 dice.
The reality of it is: Yes, if one army stacks psykers and the other doesn't, the stacking player is going to dominate the psychic phase. That shouldn't come as a surprise, and preventing it seems arbitrary. Does a player that stacks melee units then get to whinge and nerf shooty armies to D6 shots per unit to make it fair? Does a player with weak melee units get to reduce his opponent's initiative to 3 or attacks to 2 to stop him dominating the assault phase before the weak models get a chance to do anything?

The problem here is that unless you run a psychic-heavy army yourself, you will have almost no chance to get off any powers against an army such as daemons or even the grey knights. Yes, the psychic-heavy army will still dominate the psychic phase, but at least now the "little guys" (i.e. the psychic-lite armies with perhaps 1 psyker) can still have a slight chance for not being utterly useless with my suggestion. As it is right now, you will see armies start to lose some flavor. It is not even worth it anymore to run just 1 psyker. In turn, that will just exacerbate the problem. 1 farseer is useless. He'll never get any powers off against a strong psychic army. Might as well run a full-blown seer council then, right? It's the problem of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer.

Sort of. Except those armies don't actually pay any points towards it, and have no expectations of participating in the psychic phase.

And other armies have thatoption as well. Armies will still be able to win without a psychic phase. And the two nastiest psychic armies are perfectly at odds with each other and keep the crappiest build in 40k (seerstar) in check. Reason 172 to love 7th!

Where are you getting that summoned units get objective secured? It specifically says they are scoring units.

 jy2 wrote:
m: an army with one Lv2 psyker, trying to cast prescience and misfortune. Getting even one of those spells off will be difficult if he is capped to 4+(D6/2) dice.

No, this is not targeted just at the Summoning (for that, see my Suggestion #2 - Limited Summoning). This "solution" is targeted at all psykers in general. It is actually meant to limit the "super-psyker". Otherwise, you can get situations like this: Fateweaver casts a 3 warp charge Flickering Fire (4D6 shots), a 2 warp charge Bolt of Tzeentch (or whichever power was the 2 warp charge one), 2-WP Invisibility and 2-WP Endurance (or even the 3-WP Summoning depending on how you want to play it). Or how about Eldrad potentially casting 2-WP Fortune, 2-WP Prescience, 2-WP Invisibility and 3-WP Summoning? There's also Be'lakor and basically any of the Level 3 psykers out there.

As for the Lvl 2 psyker, yes, so now you have to make a choice. You don't get to cast all of your psychic powers like you used to back in 6th, so choose wisely. The psychic phase in 7E is not meant to be as reliable as it once was back in 6E.

niv-mizzet wrote:

bodazoka wrote:
I don't fully understand why people see the need to nerf the psychic phase at all? Why doe's it matter that someone can reliably have 30+ dice per phase?

If it is specifically because of Summoning then address Summoning.. (personally I do not believe it is as broken as people make out) otherwise you stray into the realm of nerfing Tyranids (for example) without meaning too because you are worried about Daemon factory.

Because if someone outnumbers you in wc dice by 6 to 1, which some armies can do in a single detachment easily, they can literally negate all your psychic powers.

You straight up just don't get to play that part of the game.

So? the armies that gain that many dice are built to have a competitive advantage over your build in ONE phase. They are (somewhat) sacrificing other phases to dominate the psychic phase, similar to how a static gun line sacrifices movement to dominate the shooting phase. I also challenge your assumption that the 6 to 1 ratio is something that is "easily" achieved in a viable tournament winning build.

The phase itself also has a number of challenges built into it (small but worth mentioning) which can help to mitigate the damage it can do. Unlike my shooting phase example where there is no penalty during the shooting phase to actually use your weapon (unless it gets hot! )

Yes it may suck that your armies with the 1-2 ML1 psykers will get denied there phase against 30+ power dice but I don't see that as a problem. There are many types of lists in the game that mitigate and/or remove the opponents ability to do things within there own phases, this is just another example of it.

Except the summoned units are not selected as part of your detachment and it says troop units from this detachment have objective secured

Except the summoned units are not selected as part of your detachment and it says troop units from this detachment have objective secured

 Leth wrote:
Except the summoned units are not selected as part of your detachment and it says troop units from this detachment have objective secured

But are units summoned by units in a detachment counted as part of that detachment? There's a question that will come up a lot. I support denying the Objective Secured, even though I'm not sure what the RAW is.

Why are people still moaning about the 2+ re rollable?. Has anyone actually played against it in 7th ed.

Bar the baron or a 2+ character having a 2+ RR its a single model, there are plently of ways to get around this. For units only Screamer council and seer council have the ability to get the 2+ RR off all the time. Are people really trying to say it is as powerful as it was in 6th edition, as it plain well isnt.

MarkyMark wrote:
Why are people still moaning about the 2+ re rollable?. Has anyone actually played against it in 7th ed.

Bar the baron or a 2+ character having a 2+ RR its a single model, there are plently of ways to get around this. For units only Screamer council and seer council have the ability to get the 2+ RR off all the time. Are people really trying to say it is as powerful as it was in 6th edition, as it plain well isnt.

I agree with this. The 2++ reroll, while still something that just feels wrong, isn't that much of an issue anymore, I think. The Screamerstar was already far into its last verse, and now being unable to pump out tons of shots, and being unable to split for contesting (to a degree), it's hardly that bad. Especially without HnR. In addition, the Seer Council can no longer steal objectives from troops and doesn't get a 2+ reroll at all times. Especially the former I think is a big deal.

To nerf the psychic phase, make rules that for every 2 mastery more you have than the other player, they get an aditional 1d3 warp charges per psychic phase.

So the powers are now HARDER to cast and there wont be anywhere near as many powers cast as there was before, you now have the ability to stop some blessings (and of course maledications, but there were never as bad as the blessings). But now you also want more chance to stop the powers going off?.

Im not sure people are thinking this through clearly.

Quote from jY2:
"Or how about Eldrad potentially casting 2-WP Fortune, 2-WP Prescience, 2-WP Invisibility and 3-WP Summoning?"

Maximum respect to jY2 for his contributions to this forum, but...

As a rough rule you need to be rolling 3x as many dice as the WC cost of a spell to reliably get it off (3 dice for WC1, 6 for WC2). So in the quoted example Eldrad has chewed through 27 dice and we are ignoring perils, DtW and the good chance that one of those powers failed anyway.
Please show me the game breaking list that features Eldrad and enough mastery levels to generate that many dice.


Also, this whole notion that 7th Edition requires fixing by the comunity is a little odd. Here is my prefered way to play 40k; 1500pts, Battle Forged, single detatchment, no fortifications, no formations, no Lord of War.
I prefer to play this way but this is not fixing the game, this is playing the game- it is entirely consistent with "the spirit of the game" as described in the BRB. People might want the BRB to be a hard and fast competative ruleset but it isnt, its a "framework" that two players can use to play an interesting strategy game the way they like. In a tournament the TO must make these decisions for everyone but I dont see why there needs to be one "fixed" version of the game used at all tournaments. That would not be in the "spirit of the game".

No come the apocalypse allies
No random card objectives
No unbound armies
Limit the number of allied contingents in a tourni to 2
Cap the number of warp charges
No lords of war

As for putting a cap on summoning. Maybe i am biased (since i play daemons) but 3 dice only gives you a 12.5% chance of summoning a daemon for the WC3 abilities. If you have a fair number of dice to throw in response it should be fairly easy to cancel said ability.

If I can throw an opinion out there (I'm not a TO), I don't think there needs to be a ban on come the apocalypse allies. It opens up some fluffy options like chaos knights, traitor guard, and genestealer cults. As has been pointed out before, desperate allies weren't the problem in 6th...it was battle brothers. I think the penalties are stiff enough to not make it a big deal and quite frankly seems to be more a case of people worried about someone running chaos sisters or not liking certain fluff. I personally give the individual player a little more credit than that.
Also, this "problem" is going to be self-regulated: I don't think anyone will win a major event with even a GK-daemons list, but I know that person will be shunned at local events. That army will never get a game in.

Moosatronic Warrior wrote:
Im not sure people are thinking this through clearly.

Quote from jY2:
"Or how about Eldrad potentially casting 2-WP Fortune, 2-WP Prescience, 2-WP Invisibility and 3-WP Summoning?"

Maximum respect to jY2 for his contributions to this forum, but...

As a rough rule you need to be rolling 3x as many dice as the WC cost of a spell to reliably get it off (3 dice for WC1, 6 for WC2). So in the quoted example Eldrad has chewed through 27 dice and we are ignoring perils, DtW and the good chance that one of those powers failed anyway.
Please show me the game breaking list that features Eldrad and enough mastery levels to generate that many dice.

My example is a little on the extreme side. First of all, Eldrad would have to roll to get all of those powers (well, at least 2 of them anyways). However, it is not entirely outside the realm of possibility, at least not when you run a seer council. You are assuming that we need 3 dice just to cast a 1-WC power, which gives you about a 88% chance for success. I am assuming 2 dice to cast 1-WC (for a 75% chance for success). The original way of casting powers (with a LD test) is about 83% chance for success, so using 2 dice is a little less reliable but not really by much. Thus, for Eldrad to cast all of those powers, he actually only needs 18 dice. In a seer council with Eldrad, farseer and 10 warlocks, that unit alone is generating 17 dice, not including the D6 you get every turn and possibly any other psykers in the army (i.e. allies), so it is entirely possible for Eldrad to hog all of his army's dice just to cast his psychic powers. Moreover, Eldrad has a special rule that, every time he successful passes a psychic test, he has a chance to get 1 warp charge back. Finally, he's got Rules of Witnessing that let's him re-roll 1 failed psychic test as well as a Ghosthelm to negate Perils (as long as he still has Warp Charges remaining). In short, the psychic phase is much more reliable for Eldar, even with just using 2 dice per 1-WC. They can generate more warp charges, can cast more reliably and are not hurt as much by Perils as some of the other armies.

Also, this whole notion that 7th Edition requires fixing by the comunity is a little odd. Here is my prefered way to play 40k; 1500pts, Battle Forged, single detatchment, no fortifications, no formations, no Lord of War.
I prefer to play this way but this is not fixing the game, this is playing the game- it is entirely consistent with "the spirit of the game" as described in the BRB. People might want the BRB to be a hard and fast competative ruleset but it isnt, its a "framework" that two players can use to play an interesting strategy game the way they like. In a tournament the TO must make these decisions for everyone but I dont see why there needs to be one "fixed" version of the game used at all tournaments. That would not be in the "spirit of the game".

A uniform standard is always a good thing. This is so players can go from 1 tournament to another and know relatively what to expect. He doesn't have to "relearn" the rules from tournament to tournament, nor does he have to change up his army, including possibly buying/building/painting new models, just to have the same chance for success from tourney to tourney. If there's one thing that pisses people off, it's when you bring your army to 1 tournament and then bring that same army to another tournament, only to find out that it doesn't work quite the way you expected.

@jy2: So your saying its possible to create a list that has a seer council with Eldrad and another farseer in it and that it is possible that eldrad might roll the perfect set of powers and its possible he might be able to cast all those powers despite having significantly less dice than statistically required to do so..... and this list is going to break 40k so badly that we need to change the rules for an entire phase of the game. Seems like unsubstantiated nonsense to me.

Trasvi wrote:

Casting all those spells with fateweaver will take ~22 power dice (all or close to your entire army's potency for the turn). On average dice you cause one perils, at one will fail, likely one will be denied, and at MOST all you've done is put 20 S4 + 4 S5 shots into one target and buff a model who your opponent was going to ignore anyway. You've used 1850 points to get... 7 dead marines, and maybe summon in one unit. That's not a game winning strategy.
If the marine army can't earn back 7 dead marines in a turn, they deserve to lose.

The aspect of funnelling power dice to one psyker is
a) absolutely vital to casting any powers at all,
b) requires the rest of your psyker-stacked army to sit around for a turn and do nothing other than provide dice
c) Not that big a deal when the psykers you list as being able to 'abuse' it could do exactly the same thing more reliably on their own last edition anyway AND have another 1500pts of army backing them up.

It's ok to disagree. You see funneling power dice to 1 "super-psyker" as ok. I don't. Basically, this is the 1st step towards going back to the days of the "super-deathstars" back in 6th. What this one psyker will do is to stack powers upon powers. I'm trying to move away from that. I'm trying to move towards a more uniform approach to the psychic phase where power-stacking is harder to do and where there is more uniformity in power casting. Namely, all the psykers should be there to cast powers rather than to just give dice to their super-saiyan psyker god.

Of course, these are all just suggestions anyways to TO's who want what I feel is a more "balanced" approach to psychic phase. Do with it as you want.

Slow is just part of the problem. The other problem is potentially getting 100's of points worth of units for free. Even the limit of 1 Conjuration per turn can net you 500+ pts of free units throughout the game (if you are just summoning basic troops) or potentially even 1000+ pt per game (if you are summoning Bloodthirsters).

The summoning army is essentially trading the ability to do any damage to summon units. Instead of winning at a points differential of 1500-0 (tabling their opponent) the stratey is to win with a points ratio of 3000-1500 (summon more units). However this relies on a number of vulnerable linchpins - a bunch of T3 W2 models doing the bulk of the work, who will invariably kill themselves during the game from Perils tests. Killing just 1 horror can reduce them by 1 warp charge. Grounding and assaulting fateweaver (which he will likely do to himself once per game with the new Perils rules) will cripple the army.

In this edition, with the exception of Purge the Alien, you don't necessarily have to win by killing your opponent. You win by playing to the objectives and by getting Objective Secured units onto the objectives. That is how you will win in this edition. And psykers don't necessarily have to be T3 2W models. They can come in the form of T6 4-5W flying models that can get to any objective they want. And good luck trying to ground a FMC with the new grounding rules, especially with a re-roll from Fatey. You thought it was hard enough trying to ground them back in 6th? Then you haven't played against 7E Fatey-FMC's yet, buddy.

More importantly, the person doing the summoning in tournament play can control the level of his "slow-playing". Oh, need to burn away time? Let's summon 5 units. What, almost out of time? Forget summoning, I'll just move onto this objective here and the game ends!

Again, that's not a problem specific to summoning armies. Any jerk can play slowly and turbo-boost some jetbikes on to an objective with seconds to spare.

Yes it is. I need to waste time. I'll do some more summoning. I'm pressed for time. Screw the summoning. The problem is that summoning is not easily detectable as stalling. That is because the whole process takes a lot of time, even if you're not deliberately trying to summon slowly.

I disagree. There are many good units in the codex that does not have to rely heavily on psychic powers. All the Fast Attacks, many of the Elites and Soulgrinders as well are all under-utilized units that are very good. The problem here is that you are equating competitive daemons to FMC-spam daemons. Well, the meta has changed. Find a new way to win. I guarantee you that it won't be as hard as you think.

Besides, even with the nerfs to FMC-spam, they are still a very good build. Even with 2 base troops and the limit of 1 successful Summoning per turn, you are looking at most likely 7+ Objective Secured scoring units! Mobility is not a problem, as you move before you cast your powers. That means FMC's can get to where they need to (objectives) and then summon. Not to mention Daemons have the Portaglyph to add even more Objectives Secured troops.

Ok then, build me a demon army that can win with the changes that you're proposing. There is a reason that daemon players gravitated towards FMC. Without their power, daemons are reduced to very few options. Soul Grinders are good, and got better. Screamers are the only reliable option to deal with vehicles. Hounds are good. Horrors without summoning got heavily nerfed. Bloodcrushers and Fiends are ok until someone points a missile at them - which is as soon as they show up because those S8+ weapons don't have any other juicy targets.

Here is my 2K list, involving CSM allies:

Fateweaver
LoC - Lvl 3, Grimoire, Greater Gift
Be'lakor

11 Horrors
11 Horrors
10 Horrors
Cultists

12 Hounds

3x Soulgrinders - 2x Slaanesh w/Torrents, 1x Tzeentch w/Phlegm


I used to run a heldrake as well, but with the nerf to them, I've changed up my list slightly. Still, I can sub in the helturkey for the hounds if I wanted.

You think Santic is reliable enough to stop Daemons? Other than the grey knights, the caster has a high chance to kill himself. Moreover, try casting powers over a daemon army with 30+ Dispel dice. See how reliable that becomes against Level 3 psykers who will be Denying on 4+'s.

Banishment - Warp Charge 1. 75% chance to cast it with 2 dice, 16% chance to roll doubles. Don't be stupid and cast it against a lv3 psyker - target a unit of Daemonettes or Bloodletters and he still only gets 6s.
I'm not saying that it is super-reliable in the face of a 30 WC army. But if you reduce that 30WC army to dispelling on 3 dice, then Banishment does become too powerful.

Huh? Why dispelling on 3 dice? If you have 2 dice to cast, there should be at least 4 dice available to dispel (from an 30-WC army), plus the D6 from the warp pool (assuming you are going off of my Deny suggestion). But hey...feel free to use your limited resources/firepower on a unit that I just created for free rather than going after the source of the problem (the psykers that create the free troops) because that is what I prefer you to do.

The problem here is that unless you run a psychic-heavy army yourself, you will have almost no chance to get off any powers against an army such as daemons or even the grey knights. Yes, the psychic-heavy army will still dominate the psychic phase, but at least now the "little guys" (i.e. the psychic-lite armies with perhaps 1 psyker) can still have a slight chance for not being utterly useless with my suggestion. As it is right now, you will see armies start to lose some flavor. It is not even worth it anymore to run just 1 psyker. In turn, that will just exacerbate the problem. 1 farseer is useless. He'll never get any powers off against a strong psychic army. Might as well run a full-blown seer council then, right? It's the problem of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer.

Still not seeing any real change between that and Tau/Guard dominating the shooting phase. One turn of them with good target priority can shut down your shooting for the rest of the game just as easily as an army full of psykers can shut down your powers.

The psychic-heavy army will still dominate the psychic phase as much as Tau/Guard will dominate the shooting phase. There is no denying that. The problem you will see is the death of the psychic-lite armies, at least in tournament play. There's almost no point in even running a psyker if he cannot get any of his powers off, so you either don't run them or you run lots of them. This will further stymie variety in tournament play and swing armies to the more extreme ends. Running Tiguirius? Forget it. He's useless if I'm facing a 30-WC daemon army. Then let's run him with a bunch of Astra Militarum Primaris psykers or as an ally to Grey Knights. My GK's will never be able to cast their powers over a psychic-heavy daemon army so let's spam those MSU henchmen in psybacks to rack up those WC's. Want to run 1 farseer? Forget it. He's going to get shut down as if he never existed. Let's run a full blown seer council instead. That's what I mean by the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. This is no middle-psyker-class anymore. It will become a game of the extremes. Maybe you won't mind, but I'm betting a lot of people aren't going to like it.





Automatically Appended Next Post:

Moosatronic Warrior wrote:
@jy2: So your saying its possible to create a list that has a seer council with Eldrad and another farseer in it and that it is possible that eldrad might roll the perfect set of powers and its possible he might be able to cast all those powers despite having significantly less dice than statistically required to do so..... and this list is going to break 40k so badly that we need to change the rules for an entire phase of the game. Seems like unsubstantiated nonsense to me.

No, you don't have to do it. I'm just making a suggestion for the TO's who are looking to trying to balance out the psychic phase. To me, it doesn't really matter which way people want to play it. If you're ok with the rules as is, then that's fine. If you don't like, then this is just 1 suggestion you can consider.

Moosatronic Warrior wrote:
@jy2: So your saying its possible to create a list that has a seer council with Eldrad and another farseer in it and that it is possible that eldrad might roll the perfect set of powers and its possible he might be able to cast all those powers despite having significantly less dice than statistically required to do so..... and this list is going to break 40k so badly that we need to change the rules for an entire phase of the game. Seems like unsubstantiated nonsense to me.

I concur. A seer council eldrad and farseer hits 17+d6 WC ceiling until you start bringing in more detachments. That wouldn't leave points for anything useful.

I honestly think the best solution to most headaches in here is simply playing lower points. I have no idea why people are SO attached to 1750-1850. Try 1500, it still leaves enough room to take powerful units, but it will come at a cost. Same for spamming. You over due it and your left with a one dimensional army.

As it stands open ended 1850 isn't broken but lets be honest, its boring as feth. Necrons can take 4 night scythe warrior squads and 6 annihilation barges for 1200 on the nose. At 1850 they have enough to round this off with a wraiths/destroyer lords but at 1500 you can squeeze one mini star in. Makes this list much more one dimensional doesn't it? SO people will scale back the spam on their own.

At 1500, good luck squeezing in a LOW and having a balanced list too.

Psychic phase can stay unrestricted because getting the power dice required to break the phase and run the clock will be terrible.

But no, everyone wants to keep playing more and more points while every edition adds more and more time consuming mechanics. The shooting phase got slower as did the psychic phase. This on top of random objectives making players gruel over a mid game decision. Less points people. Will make the events better anyway. This way games will all make T5 on schedule barring extremes.

My personal thoughts on how to "fix" the malefic stuff:
Make possession, incursion, and summoning WC4.
Make Sacrifice either WC2 or WC3 (not sure which).
That should curb *most*, if not all, of the abuse of it.
And then just throw on daemonic instability for summoned units at the start of each friendly turn.
That brings it down to non-ridiculous levels, without destroying the build.

@jy2 -The issue then is with the design of the game and there is no way around that, some armies are designed psyker heavy, and as such will have a good chance to shut down psyker light armies.

Also your math is wrong in 6th you have ~92% chance to cast any power with an LD 10 psyker (most of them) so 75% is almost 20% less likely. I'm not saying never cast on 2 dice, but if a power is extremely important you'll want 3. If for no other reason that it also diminishes the chance that you get denied.

niv-mizzet wrote:

bodazoka wrote:
I don't fully understand why people see the need to nerf the psychic phase at all? Why doe's it matter that someone can reliably have 30+ dice per phase?

If it is specifically because of Summoning then address Summoning.. (personally I do not believe it is as broken as people make out) otherwise you stray into the realm of nerfing Tyranids (for example) without meaning too because you are worried about Daemon factory.

Because if someone outnumbers you in wc dice by 6 to 1, which some armies can do in a single detachment easily, they can literally negate all your psychic powers.

You straight up just don't get to play that part of the game.

you might as well argue that because tau can out shoot me 20-1, or can pay for weapons that ignore my armour, and "shut down" my save rolls, so they should be nerfed to never being able to roll more dice then me while shooting.

cause after all, I dont get to play the "save" part of the game anymore...

people paid PTS to use powers, and have the power to deny they, just as they pay pts for guns that ignore armour, or markerlights to ignore cover.

its no more unfair to be shut down in the P phase, then it is to be shut down in the shooting phase because the enemy got 1st turn, wiped out more then half your army, and you dont get saves, or to shoot back.

in fact, compared to shooting aphla strikes, being shut down in the P phase is very small potatoes, as EVERY army gets shut down in the shooting phase, but only a few armies actually care if you shut them down in the P phase.

 easysauce wrote:

cause after all, I dont get to play the "save" part of the game anymore...

people paid PTS to use powers, and have the power to deny they, just as they pay pts for guns that ignore armour, or markerlights to ignore cover.

Markerlights and weapons that ignore armor saves don't increase the what you get to bring to the table however. They're not directly comparable.

There's a big difference, especially given how *much* they can potentially increase the size of what you can bring to the table.

Breng77 wrote:
@jy2 -The issue then is with the design of the game and there is no way around that, some armies are designed psyker heavy, and as such will have a good chance to shut down psyker light armies.

Also your math is wrong in 6th you have ~92% chance to cast any power with an LD 10 psyker (most of them) so 75% is almost 20% less likely. I'm not saying never cast on 2 dice, but if a power is extremely important you'll want 3. If for no other reason that it also diminishes the chance that you get denied.

Yes, the issue is in the design. My "suggestions" is basically a re-design of the fundamental mechanics of the game to try to balance it out. In doing so, it will also discourage gamers in running the extreme armies or at the very least, try to encourage people to still run what they want without feeling it is utterly hopeless.

As for the needing to cast a power, just pump more dice into it. In my example, instead of using 4 dice on Fortune and 4 on Prescience, go 6 on Fortune and 2 on Prescience. But no matter what, psychic powers in this edition is just not as reliable to cast as it was in 6th. Nowadays, you're just going to have to choose/prioritize your psychic powers just as you have to prioritize your shooting.