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I've used mech guard for a number of years now and have never felt the need to use witches until now. With some armies now having access to a lot of psychic powers do I also need to enter the psychic arms race.
Having one or two IG psykers seems inadequate because another army could deny the witch better than you, though the boost they could provide is great (invisible tanks). Just one or two psykers would also mean that it would be very hard for you to deny the witch for any serious powers. You could get lots of psykers but that would eat your points up and you would never be as good as some armies., and still might not deny the witch. Or do I say no to the witch and get more tanks or troops.
Any advice would be great.

I think IG is now in the boat of taking 1 primus psyker, hoping he casts his powers sometimes and otherwise just sit the psyker arms race out.

They are never going to have the dice nessisary to dominate unless you want to take cheasy Inquisitional henchmen allies. Not using any pskyers means you arent using your free power dice.

Dont bother with pyskers, my tAC tourney IG lists have none,

its just simply not worth the hassle with the huge nerfs to psykers in this edition...

where before I was taking every psyker I could to use precience on everything,

now not only are those powers drastically harder to cast, they take more WC's then before to reach a lesser level of probability to cast, I will never get all 5+ psykers to actually cast their spells as their WC's are needed to cast the other psykers spells,

on top of that, the enmeny, even one with no psykers, gets d6 dice to throw at any of them,


TL DR:

powers got riskier to use, harder to cast, cost more WC's to cast, I can cast fewer of them, and its easier to deny blessings now.

not
worth
the
points

I have simply replaced every pt I spent on my divination rolls pre 7th with "more shooty stuff"

and it has so far wrecked serious face

Thanks for the comments. I am leaning towards the no psykers route. The cost of getting prescience on a Leman Russ successfully, you might as well get another Leman Russ. The only thing in the back of my mind is that it is going to be hard to deny the witch with no psykers at all, oh well.

IG has access to more psykers per detachment than most armies, they're just not that good.

Mavnas wrote:
IG has access to more psykers per detachment than most armies, they're just not that good.

Which, in a way, fits with the IG. Quantity being our best Quality.

We have the best power in the game: "Rolling more dice than you."

Seriously though, mass firepower is a better answer than trying to compete with armies built for psychic dominance. You're better off spending the points on units with barrage or more infantry.

I think if you ally with GK to get some more charges it might be worth it, but other than that I think it is a waste of points for IG. Spend points on preferred enemy bubble, or things of that nature.

I actually really like the idea of filling out on astropaths and putting Primaris payers with biomancy into infantry squads. Wyrsvanes seem worth it as disposable divination casters.

I'm gonna try it out, I think payer spam could be fun.

1 Psyker (ML 2 for that lovely extra roll on a table);

+ 1d6 WC.

Has the potential to dominate the deny attempts of all but the most heavy WC armies.

Granted if you roll 1 out of 1d6 WC, its much easier to deny whilst harder to cast.

There is an inbuilt, fickle, efficiency for bringing low numbers of psykers.

I kinda agree with taking just 1 lv 2 psyker if you can spare the points. Seems worth it to me IMO.

I have a game tonight that has 2 level 2s and one level one psyker.

5+D6 to cast between 1-2 powers a turn. Only a small game (1000 points) but its more just to try the rules. Easily not worth the points at the amount of passes I got when test rolling even the most basic of powers.

In theory having them is a lot of fun though.

I think the best option is to either take one or none. Against psyker armies, there is no chance IG will really reliably pull spells off. That coupled with more chances to peril and less reliable tests means that they are far more unreliable makes them far less appealing. That said, it's low enouh that you won't have to worry about not getting to cast all of your spells with it also being rather unlikely for the enemy to successfully deny them. Bring too many and you have largely wasted points when coming up against a Tzeentch spam army, GK player, or Inquisitor lover, heck, arguably even Nids can join this.

Unless you take GK or inquisition allies for the extra WC I would not attempt to spam them.

However a cheap psyker or two rolling on telepathy can be well worth it. Psychic shriek with 18" range is useful for chipping off MC/TEQ wounds. Shrouding and invisibility are well worth loosing a psyker to manifest it at the right time. If the opponent overwhelms your WC dice just 1 dice your available powers to avoid perils and perhaps you get one through, perhaps not. You can still use the psyker's Ld9 to help orders get through.

Overall useful but not absolutely incredible like they were with prescience.

lol... paying you pay 200 pts for 3 WC's from allied coteaz and a GK ss....

Id rather have almost 3 more artillary carrdges, extra tanks, ect.


one thing I have noticed with IG, is that people will vastly under estimate your las guns,

150 pts of las guns will do more every time then 150 pts of warp charges.

My 37 man conscript squad with psyocculum inquisitor agrees whole heartedly with the above statement.

Combined with first rank fire second rank fire.....good times. Gonna run them nullrod now instead of psychic 1.

yeah.. the more I play around with the psy occ in a 50 man unit with 5 HWT's in it...

the more I feast on my enemies tears....

 easysauce wrote:
yeah.. the more I play around with the psy occ in a 50 man unit with 5 HWT's in it...

the more I feast on my enemies tears....

I am working on getting a 50 man with 5 lascannons. psyocculum against psykers means I dont need twinlinking, and then I can use the ignore cover orders instead.

Throw in a nullrod and you basically dont care about daemons with that unit.

 Leth wrote:

 easysauce wrote:
yeah.. the more I play around with the psy occ in a 50 man unit with 5 HWT's in it...

the more I feast on my enemies tears....

I am working on getting a 50 man with 5 lascannons. psyocculum against psykers means I dont need twinlinking, and then I can use the ignore cover orders instead.

Throw in a nullrod and you basically dont care about daemons with that unit.

the added bonus of getting off precision shots is also nice... orders are way better then powers, so much adaptability, cheap/free, and they will almost always go off.

I dont really see the need for the null rod though... very few powers are going to be targeting me as opposed to just being buffs/summons, depends on your meta though, id find it more usefull against biomancy spammers then anything else.

 easysauce wrote:

 Leth wrote:

 easysauce wrote:
yeah.. the more I play around with the psy occ in a 50 man unit with 5 HWT's in it...

the more I feast on my enemies tears....

I am working on getting a 50 man with 5 lascannons. psyocculum against psykers means I dont need twinlinking, and then I can use the ignore cover orders instead.

Throw in a nullrod and you basically dont care about daemons with that unit.

the added bonus of getting off precision shots is also nice... orders are way better then powers, so much adaptability, cheap/free, and they will almost always go off.

I dont really see the need for the null rod though... very few powers are going to be targeting me as opposed to just being buffs/summons, depends on your meta though, id find it more usefull against biomancy spammers then anything else.

Null rod is mainly for additional insurance as well as removing a threat as a equation. With people being obsessed with malific they are not focusing on the huge boost to offensive casting in the psychic phase.

Once I run out of dice they get free reign with their powers. So debuffs, psychic shooting. I believe there are a few novas or things that hit the entire unit. Flickering fire etc. There are a lot of them who can chew through a blob really quickly(Imagine if daemons were spamming flickering fire instead of summoning.....shudders......)

You want a mean warp charge list? Go all offensive casting, heralds with locus etc. Add in the +1 invul and just shoot and shoot somemore until they are gone. Have the heralds go divination for the possibility of ignore cover or prescience....

How does psyocculum works? I understand it works against IC psykers in unit, but what about transports with psyker? What about GK psyker vehicles?

true, novas got a huge boost and are a big threat to blobs,

isnt the cleansing flame range 8" 2d6 hits on each unit hit(or is it per model, i think its per unit)

IIRC there are only two novas as well?




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Lothar wrote:
How does psyocculum works? I understand it works against IC psykers in unit, but what about transports with psyker? What about GK psyker vehicles?

it works against all of those, any unit with even one psyker of any kind is affected, as are vehicles and BOP's

 easysauce wrote:


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Lothar wrote:
How does psyocculum works? I understand it works against IC psykers in unit, but what about transports with psyker? What about GK psyker vehicles?

it works against all of those, any unit with even one psyker of any kind is affected, as are vehicles and BOP's

What about transport without psyker rule with a IC psyker on board?

the transport does not have psyker rule, not is it part of the unit that does, so no benifit from psy occ is gained when shooting the non pysker transport.

 easysauce wrote:
the transport does not have psyker rule, not is it part of the unit that does, so no benifit from psy occ is gained when shooting the non pysker transport.

That means the using of psyocculum is very situational. Psykers rarely walk on foot.

I would say that if an IG/AM Player is not taking Tempestus Allies for scoring stormtroopers, the player should opt for Coteaz over a Lv.2 Primaris. The benefits of Coteaz are well worth the 25pts with the increased focus on mobility. The out of sequence shooting will be very useful to deter warlord assassination attempts and backfield objective grabs.

 Lothar wrote:

 easysauce wrote:
the transport does not have psyker rule, not is it part of the unit that does, so no benifit from psy occ is gained when shooting the non pysker transport.

That means the using of psyocculum is very situational. Psykers rarely walk on foot.

If psykers want to cast any buffs or do anything outside of witchfires they need to be out of the transports on the ground. I think it will be much more useful now.

In addition things like seer councils are out of vehicles and making them re-roll their invul with ignore cover lascannons will eat into the squad pretty well. Which you can now force them to do without any powers and only one order.

Same for things like wave serpents and other jinking vehicles.