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Okey, new Assassines - new ruleschaos.
Im gonna make a couple assumptions in this to make this work in my brain, so if you disagree at any point: interfere!

The Animus speculum states:
An animus speculum is a ranged weapon that is fired in the Psychic phase
instead of the Shooting phase.

First strange thing is this ( BRB ):
If, after resolving a psychic action – such as manifesting a psychic power – the
player whose turn it is has 0 Warp Charge points remaining, the Psychic phase
ends. The Psychic phase also ends if you either cannot, or choose not to, resolve any
more psychic actions. When the Psychic phase ends, all remaining Warp Charge points
belonging to both players (if any) are lost and the Shooting phase begins.

Means: I cant fire the AS last, since after my last power, the phase ends, right?

Order of psychic phase ( BRB ):
Generate Warpcharges.
5 step to cast power ( rince and repeat )
end as quoted above.

So nowhere does it even stipulate you could do something besides casting powers except for this sentence under Manifesting Psychic Powers:
"The most common psychic action is the manifestation of psychic powers."

So technically im not seeing a spot where i could say:
Ima shoot my Culexus!

So RAW i cant shoot it at all.

Okey. So I'm gonna assume they meant to write: Generate Charges - Do psychic action ( repeat )
Then ima count shooting the AS as a psychic action and suddenly i can at least shoot it.

Now from the weird to the funky:
Under the assumption that i have to make up my own spot during the psychic phase where i can shoot it anyways. Is there anything to prevent me from doing it in the enemies shootingphase?
BRB only says:
Only the player whose turn it is can attempt to manifest psychic powers.

It's not a power for sure and the only thing that would speak against it is the wording "instead of the Shooting phase." But Smoke launchers have the same wording and can use them even if they are stunned or have no weapons.

Please someone tell me im wrong and why or which page pf the psychic chapter my brb is missing :(

You'd be hard pressed to say firing the Speculum isn't a psychic action.

Oh, it has to be a psychic action for sure. Problem is the word psychic action says close to nothing in this context.
It's a problem of GW assuming there will never be anything else happening in the Psychic Phase.

'The most common psychic action is the manifestation of psychic powers"

heavily implies there could be other psychic actions than manifesting powers.

I'm not sure why you'd need to make assumptions to make this work. As you noted, the rules for the Animus Speculum state:

An animus speculum is a ranged weapon that is fired in the Psychic Phase instead of the Shooting phase.


It doesn't make it a psychic action. However, it does give it specific permission to fire in the Psychic Phase. So, you follow all the rules for shooting, except for doing it after the psychic phase begins but before it ends (and the Shooting Phase rules tell you that you shoot in your player turn, not the opponent player turn).


The rules for the Psychic Phase do specify when it ends, so you definitely can't fire it when you have 0 Warp Charge points. However, it also ends when you choose not to resolve any more psychic powers. If you choose to shoot the animus speculum, you are not "choosing not to resolve any more psychic powers". You are choosing not to resolve a psychic power right NOW. The psychic phase doesn't end if you choose to look up a rule, or choose to go to the bathroom. I don't think that the rules should be interpreted to specify that you MUST resolve a psychic power immediately after the previous psychic power has been resolved, or you are done with the psychic phase.

While someone could make the argument that deciding to shoot the animus speculum indicates that you are not choosing to resolve a psychic power, I have trouble imagining an application of that rules interpretation that doesn't also disallow you from doing all sorts of game-related 'other activities' without ending your psychic phase. Does looking up a rule end it? Does standing a model back up end it? Does checking range end it?

I think that, barring some other wording that indicates that the Animus Speculum is somehow a psychic action, it's more parsimonious to just handle it as stated, a shooting attack with the specific permission to resolve it during the Psychic Phase.

The only rules-issue I can find is:
"The Psychic phase also ends if you either cannot, or choose not to, resolve any more psychic actions."

In a Psyker-less army, I cannot resolve any psychic actions so the phase would end the moment it starts.
RAI and HIWPI: Allow the player to shoot the weapon, then end the Psychic phase.

Is there anything to prevent me from doing it in the enemies shootingphase?

Let me answer that with a question: Do you have permission to fire it in your opponent's Shooting phase?

Kangodo wrote:
In a Psyker-less army, I cannot resolve any psychic actions so the phase would end the moment it starts.
RAI and HIWPI: Allow the player to shoot the weapon, then end the Psychic phase.

To repeat MasterSlowPokeMade point: you'd be hard pressed to say firing the Speculum isn't a psychic action. After all, witchfire powers are also explicitly "shooting attacks" - so the speculum being a shooting attack doesn't necessarily imply that it isn't also psychic action.

Does it state it is a Psychic Action?

If psychic action is not strictly defined then I would argue any action in the psychic phase is a psychic action.

Dangerous line of thought:
If any action taken in the Psychic Phase is classified as a 'Psychic Action,' and permission exists to carry out psychic actions, then nothing would prevent us from evoking that permission to carry out any action.

Except that you are by definition required to receive permission to do something, so unless it says that an action can be taken in the psychic phase than you cant do it.

Permissive ruleset, not the other way around.

True, do we have permission to carry out 'Psychic Actions' during the Psychic Phase?

"If after resolving a psychic action - such as manifesting a psychic power -...."

"The most common psychic action is the manifestation of psychic powers"

I think that qualifies.

If permission exists to carry out any 'psychic action' during this Phase, with the definition of Psychic Action allowing any Rule evoked to meet that classification, then what prevents us from simply evoking any Rule during this period?
Outside of self-contained Restrictions within the individual Rules themselves, as many Rules exist with such clauses but a few exist without.

I'm sorry I understand this is about RAW but seriously everyone knows exactly how this works, trying to find obscure word traps in the rules just smacks of being obtuse.
There are many badly written and unclear rules you could be picking on but this isn't one of them.

I thought it was pretty clear considering you use the warp charges around you for the shot. Can it be denied?

Nope, and it is warp charges in range at the time of the shot + up to 3 from your pool.

Yeah, and considering you use your own pool it obviously happens during your psychic phase.

Even if your psyker free army, you still get to roll d6 apply up to three warp charges and fire it. Next to a 2 farseer 10 warlock seer council that's 26 shots plus 3 more for the shot pool, reroll all 1's. Not to shabby.