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It occurs to me that the "staff of light" portion might actually still be the Eldritch Lance or a new thing; it isn't exactly the same as either weapon.

I doubt he'll be cheap, more than an Overlord surely. The question is if he's worth it, people paid a lot of points for Guilliman after all.

 Arachnofiend wrote:
It occurs to me that the "staff of light" portion might actually still be the Eldritch Lance or a new thing; it isn't exactly the same as either weapon.

I doubt he'll be cheap, more than an Overlord surely. The question is if he's worth it, people paid a lot of points for Guilliman after all.

He'll be really good with Monoliths in three or four years when they get a viable pts cost. His weapon might be a doomsday cannon, like a Doomsday Ark with Character protection and C'tan level melee and a host of other rules. I think his doomsday cannon would be really good, I'd pay more than a Doomsday Ark for him because of character protection with a doomsday cannon and C'tan melee. His doomsday cannon could be range 80 instead of 72 and could be Strength 12 with d3 shots lmao. Wow, I sure would like more doomsday cannons, hehe, staff of light? More like staff of doomsday cannon. I think the tactics will be inevitable when his doomsday cannon goes woooeeew, boom and smashes a vehicle. Maybe he will automatically destroy vehicles and give all Necron Triarch Predators +1 T/S/A. Wow, wouldn't that be cool? What a tactical lynchpin he'll be if he's going to give Tricha Pretadors +1 to hit when he womps a clomp.

I sure hope you were similarly dismissive of the negative speculation on the prior page! Otherwise you might be a hypocrite or something.

A few armies like Blood Angels use psychic powers in melee so it might come up a few times but I agree it seems rather limited.

Its not just rather limited, its useless. About 30/180 psychic powers are 9" or less. That 1/6. Add that to the 1/6 chance of rolling a double. And dont forget your opponent can command reroll. Its almost never ever going to be successful, maybe it will work in 1/100 games. I really hope pariah has better rules than this ability.

“We want models!” <Lift pitchforks>
<GW releases an amazing HQ sculpt with interesting rule>
“Not that one!” <Lift pitchforks>

Seriously, guys, we know nothing about his ability in the context of the model.

And hopefully it’s still only reasonable model that adds a minor additional tool for our arsenal.

Incremental changes are a good thing for the health of the game, guys.

sieGermans wrote:
Seriously, guys, we know nothing about his ability in the context of the model.

We don't need to. We already know the ability in the context of the psychic phase.

sieGermans wrote:

Seriously, guys, we know nothing about his ability in the context of the model.

Right, he could have some additional ability which allows him to increase the range of his empyric overcharger by killing enemy models in melee, and sucking their life energy to power the overcharger. Like, for every model he kills in melee, his overcharger gets +1" range in the next turn. And then he gets awesome melee stats like the destroyer lord, 3 attacks, hitting on 3s, and you have to walk him into melee because he has no dynasty

sieGermans wrote:
1. This model will probably not single handedly fix everything everyone has wanted (which aren’t even all the same thing to begin with).

Good. If it requires special character for faction to work that sucks and is lousy game design. Crutch characters are bad for the game.

Hopefully rest of the PA book fixes issues rather than special character.

I bet his increased size will also lead to increased combat capabilities. His staff was a decent-ish ranged weapon last time around and it's the main feature on the model, so it better melt some faces.

As for the ability, it's really negligible, but GW will probably save the important stuff for later reveals. If this aura can somehow be projected onto other units to extend the range, it might do some work.

His main thing is probably still going to be enhancing key Necron units (hopefully new Pariah), though, so I'm still cautiously optimistic about him. And even if he's completely useless on the table, he will get a special spot in my display case.

No one is complaining about the model. Its awesome. But necrons are in dire need of better rules, so when the first new rule we see is thus bad, it gives people reason to worry that gw doesn't understand our plight on the tabletop.

We'll see when his full rules turn up. Given the model, I'm assuming he has some kinda soul sucking rule, so he may power up by killing psykers or just anyone (the dude on his base doesn't look like a psyker.

 vipoid wrote:

sieGermans wrote:
Seriously, guys, we know nothing about his ability in the context of the model.

We don't need to. We already know the ability in the context of the psychic phase.

That's obviously an inconsistent statement. We obviously need to know the context of the model to understand how the psychic phase and the model will interact--we don't really know the context of the psychic phase without knowing the role of this unit in it, not only internally but also in the context of the phase before it (i.e., movement) and the phases afterward (i.e., shooting and combat).

More-over, the cost of the unit matters insofar as its cost/impact within the psychic phase.

But, I mean, you know all this and you made your statement anyway--so obviously I'm mistaken in a way I don't understand.

...so I guess I'll be buying this anyway for the joy of assembling and painting it. Since this has no bearing on a Tactics discussion, I'll refrain from repeating it.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

tneva82 wrote:

sieGermans wrote:
1. This model will probably not single handedly fix everything everyone has wanted (which aren’t even all the same thing to begin with).

Good. If it requires special character for faction to work that sucks and is lousy game design. Crutch characters are bad for the game.

Hopefully rest of the PA book fixes issues rather than special character.

Agreed--I made this point as well later on regarding incremental changes being better than single-model corrections.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

IanVanCheese wrote:
No one is complaining about the model. Its awesome. But necrons are in dire need of better rules, so when the first new rule we see is thus bad, it gives people reason to worry that gw doesn't understand our plight on the tabletop.

We'll see when his full rules turn up. Given the model, I'm assuming he has some kinda soul sucking rule, so he may power up by killing psykers or just anyone (the dude on his base doesn't look like a psyker.

I really wouldn't assume that one model is indicative of presence/lack of sweeping subsequent changes.

If it is over-tuned, that would suggest GW thinks this would solve all our problems (which it wouldn't shouldn't) or it would get nerfed.
If it is under-tuned, that would suggest GW thinks we are fine OR would suggest that a suite of subtle changes are needed.

So if we can draw opposing reasonable conclusions with the same information--it's obviously not indicative alone in any possible case.

sieGermans wrote:
That's obviously an inconsistent statement. We obviously need to know the context of the model to understand how the psychic phase and the model will interact--we don't really know the context of the psychic phase without knowing the role of this unit in it, not only internally but also in the context of the phase before it (i.e., movement) and the phases afterward (i.e., shooting and combat).

That makes no sense.

We don't need to know the particulars of this model to understand how the psychic phase operates. There are already rules for that.

Nor do we need to see this model's rules to understand the rules and, more importantly, ranges of psychic powers. We already know what they do.

Hence, we can quite easily say that a 9" aura is not going to be useful because the vast majority of psykers can cast powers from well outside of that range. Not only that but Perils on any doubles isn't even that terrifying to begin with.

sieGermans wrote:

More-over, the cost of the unit matters insofar as its cost/impact within the psychic phase.

Why? Even if it cost 10pts, it still wouldn't make this a good rule.

The *model* might be strong, but it wouldn't be because of this rule and it wouldn't automatically mean that this rule would have any significant effect on the game.

sieGermans wrote:

But, I mean, you know all this and you made your statement anyway--so obviously I'm mistaken in a way I don't understand.

Your mistakes are:

1) Claiming that we don't know enough to make a judgement, yet ignoring all the information we already have available. We know how the psychic phase works (so we know from the offset that this ability could affect the entire table and it would still be incredibly weak against every army bar maybe GKs and TSs). We also know that the range of most psychic powers is 18-24", so they have no reason to go anywhere near this model's aura. Finally, we know that the Movement Phase happens before the Psychic Phase, so even if you move your aura into range of a psyker in your turn, there's nothing stopping them from just moving out again during their turn before they cast any powers.

2) Thinking that GW actually know what they're doing. You've seen the Tomb Spyder, right? That's what GW thinks constitutes effective psychic defence for a non-psychic faction.


Look, if you want to hold out for this guy having another special rule that makes this special rule actually worth a damn, feel free. But until I see definite proof of such, I'll simply follow my instincts and experience and assume that it's exactly as garbage an ability as it looks.

sieGermans wrote:
...so I guess I'll be buying this anyway for the joy of assembling and painting it. Since this has no bearing on a Tactics discussion, I'll refrain from repeating it.

Crap ability aside, I'll certainly agree that it's a very nice model.

 vipoid wrote:

sieGermans wrote:
That's obviously an inconsistent statement. We obviously need to know the context of the model to understand how the psychic phase and the model will interact--we don't really know the context of the psychic phase without knowing the role of this unit in it, not only internally but also in the context of the phase before it (i.e., movement) and the phases afterward (i.e., shooting and combat).

That makes no sense.

We don't need to know the particulars of this model to understand how the psychic phase operates. There are already rules for that.

Nor do we need to see this model's rules to understand the rules and, more importantly, ranges of psychic powers. We already know what they do.

Hence, we can quite easily say that a 9" aura is not going to be useful because the vast majority of psykers can cast powers from well outside of that range. Not only that but Perils on any doubles isn't even that terrifying to begin with.

sieGermans wrote:

More-over, the cost of the unit matters insofar as its cost/impact within the psychic phase.

Why? Even if it cost 10pts, it still wouldn't make this a good rule.

The *model* might be strong, but it wouldn't be because of this rule and it wouldn't automatically mean that this rule would have any significant effect on the game.

sieGermans wrote:

But, I mean, you know all this and you made your statement anyway--so obviously I'm mistaken in a way I don't understand.

Your mistakes are:

1) Claiming that we don't know enough to make a judgement, yet ignoring all the information we already have available. We know how the psychic phase works (so we know from the offset that this ability could affect the entire table and it would still be incredibly weak against every army bar maybe GKs and TSs). We also know that the range of most psychic powers is 18-24", so they have no reason to go anywhere near this model's aura. Finally, we know that the Movement Phase happens before the Psychic Phase, so even if you move your aura into range of a psyker in your turn, there's nothing stopping them from just moving out again during their turn before they cast any powers.

2) Thinking that GW actually know what they're doing. You've seen the Tomb Spyder, right? That's what GW thinks constitutes effective psychic defence for a non-psychic faction.


Look, if you want to hold out for this guy having another special rule that makes this special rule actually worth a damn, feel free. But until I see definite proof of such, I'll simply follow my instincts and experience and assume that it's exactly as garbage an ability as it looks.

sieGermans wrote:
...so I guess I'll be buying this anyway for the joy of assembling and painting it. Since this has no bearing on a Tactics discussion, I'll refrain from repeating it.

Crap ability aside, I'll certainly agree that it's a very nice model.

I don't disagree with what you're saying about our ability to extrapolate based on the known information.

I do disagree with the certainty you're applying.

But I'm happy to agree to disagree with a gentle bias towards assuming you're probably correct (and I am wrong) given your experience. [Since I know there is a wealth of snide/sarcasm on this forum normally, please note that I am being genuine here! ]

 vipoid wrote:
That makes no sense.

We don't need to know the particulars of this model to understand how the psychic phase operates. There are already rules for that.

Nor do we need to see this model's rules to understand the rules and, more importantly, ranges of psychic powers. We already know what they do.

Hence, we can quite easily say that a 9" aura is not going to be useful because the vast majority of psykers can cast powers from well outside of that range. Not only that but Perils on any doubles isn't even that terrifying to begin with.

So you don't think there's any difference to 9" aura that is on backrank buffer and one that is head on center of the fight in your face in the midst of enemy army?

18" circle middle of enemy army is "bit" different to 18" circle on your back ranks...Why you think I put my anti-psyker aura's with my sisters army to the melee canoness rather than the exorcist buffer?

We also have no idea are there any upgrades or stratagems that changes things...8th ed is more about stratagems than unit rules anyway.

Its worse then a 9" range when you realize the other guy gets his movement phase before the psychic phase.

With an average move or 6" for slow characters you would need to be within 3" starting the other guys turn.

If you are not engaged they get to advance as well.

So basically this ability will only work with melee psychers and if they move faster then 6" like a jump/winged or biker model it still won't matter unless they want to be in combat with him. SO demon prince, libby dread etc etc. So he better be a beast in combat or that ability really is a gimick.

Lets be honest, this power needed to be a 24" range just like denials are. It doesn't even stop powers. So psychic heavy armies like T-sons can 1cp ignore perils and eldar ignore the mortals on 2's.

I fully agree we need to wait, who knows maybe every unit he upgrades doubles the range when he's nearby or also gives them the ability as well. Could be much better, could be much worse, heaven help us if one of the three random buffs he gives is this.

But with the information we have right now, that power really sucks. It's not new, there are multiple other chaos units that do this exact thing and it rarely matters.

EDIT: for reference the master of possession, who is a frequently played model has this exact ability with a 12" range and how many of you were of aware of that?

If he moves away from that then it can already be good for you. Plenty of psykers out there who don't want to be far away from you. If you get that librarian dreadnought or mephiston go away from you that's already benefitting...It's easy to say "he can move away". Good. Psyker that's moving away is often psyker less efficient and giving up board control.

That thing is unlikely to be "the" thing you take the model anyway. It's tiny thing. You don't take him likely for that any more than you take ghost ark because it repairs wound per turn. GW doesn't automatically show best things first up.

And it works vs psykers who want to engage him or units near him. Unlikely you send this model roaming around alone unsupported....

And as for others with this ability...I have actually been hurt by those.

 Red Corsair wrote:

EDIT: for reference the master of possession, who is a frequently played model has this exact ability with a 12" range and how many of you were of aware of that?

Picked up on that the moment I spotted it, it's an ability we wont get any use out of as it stands right now.

sieGermans wrote:

I don't disagree with what you're saying about our ability to extrapolate based on the known information.

I do disagree with the certainty you're applying.

But I'm happy to agree to disagree with a gentle bias towards assuming you're probably correct (and I am wrong) given your experience. [Since I know there is a wealth of snide/sarcasm on this forum normally, please note that I am being genuine here! ]

That's fair.

I mean, as with many of my predictions, it would be nice to be wrong.

Unfortunately, my experience with GW does not lend itself to any hope on my part.

tneva82 wrote:

So you don't think there's any difference to 9" aura that is on backrank buffer and one that is head on center of the fight in your face in the midst of enemy army?

Honestly? No.

It would need to be at least twice the current range before I would even consider it worth the ink it cost to print.

And it would have to affect the entire board for me to consider it a decent defence against psykers.

tneva82 wrote:

18" circle middle of enemy army is "bit" different to 18" circle on your back ranks

It really isn't. Either are far too short-ranged to make a difference in all but the most niche of cases.

Also, bear in mind that even if you manage to actually trap a psyker in the aura, it still won't do anything about 5/6 times.

I hope that it is just a throw away rule like the Storm Lords rule for Flayed Ones.
Never ever comes up in play at all but with his other abilities he is a competitive model that has seen play.

As an aside, does anyone know why Illuminor Szeras is getting a new model in the first place?

The new one is nice, sure, but I thought he already had one of the newest models in the entire range.

 vipoid wrote:
As an aside, does anyone know why Illuminor Szeras is getting a new model in the first place?

The new one is nice, sure, but I thought he already had one of the newest models in the entire range.

Because almost every faction gets new (HQ) model(s) with PA.

 vipoid wrote:
As an aside, does anyone know why Illuminor Szeras is getting a new model in the first place?

The new one is nice, sure, but I thought he already had one of the newest models in the entire range.

Probably because they saw the biggest potential for a nice model. All other Necron chars are just infatry dudes and Szeras has at least the spider legs to make him bigger and more imposing.

I suppose he is also the easiest character to work as a catalyst for a (hopefully) meaningful advance of Necrons tech/lore, similar to how Caul overhauled the Marines and Bile might overhaul Chaos Marines. If Pariahs are indeed coming back, Szeras would be the one making it possible.

 p5freak wrote:

 vipoid wrote:
As an aside, does anyone know why Illuminor Szeras is getting a new model in the first place?

The new one is nice, sure, but I thought he already had one of the newest models in the entire range.

Because almost every faction gets new (HQ) model(s) with PA.

Eh not that many. Most of books got models for one faction...PA2 got for 2, PA2 for 1, PA3 for 1, PA4 for 1, PA5 for 1...PA6 got for 2, PA7 doesn't seem to get all that much HQ's though admech gets whole lot of non-HQ. PA8 is getting for 1, PA9 for 2.

That's what 10 factions out of around 30 who got HQ out of PA. Hardly "almost every". Not even half.

tneva82 wrote:

 p5freak wrote:

 vipoid wrote:
As an aside, does anyone know why Illuminor Szeras is getting a new model in the first place?

The new one is nice, sure, but I thought he already had one of the newest models in the entire range.

Because almost every faction gets new (HQ) model(s) with PA.

Eh not that many. Most of books got models for one faction...PA2 got for 2, PA2 for 1, PA3 for 1, PA4 for 1, PA5 for 1...PA6 got for 2, PA7 doesn't seem to get all that much HQ's though admech gets whole lot of non-HQ. PA8 is getting for 1, PA9 for 2.

That's what 10 factions out of around 30 who got HQ out of PA. Hardly "almost every". Not even half.

Where do you get 30 from ? GW displayed 18 factions for PA.



On top of these 18 factions, 3 more were added : Militarum tempestus, agents of bile, and officio assassionarum, making it 21 factions.

From these 21 factions 13 have received new models. And there is still one preview to come.

First up, thats 24.....

Secondly, I dont suppose it matters who got models and who didnt, on the whole PA has done good things for every army it touches (sorry GSC)

Even if it's a questionable at best choice of character, I am hoping the new strats and DIYDynasties is good enough to make up for it, like with Faith & Fury giving the other HQ models for SM some extra options, or the Tank Aces & RegiDoctrines for IG

I refuse to be pessimistic about the one and only thing we've been given in the last 12 months (even if I would have preferred it to be The Silent King, that is preference only)

Yeah at the very least his statline should be getting a buff and his cost shouldn't be ludicrous - GW of late are making special characters into bargains. 120pts for Ragnar for example.

I think he's going up to Str and Toughness 5 or 6, probably 4 attacks with his big wacky stick. He'll be the best counter charger character we have until the codex gets an update.

If they buff his modfications rules and get rid of useless stuff like +1 Str and replace with +1 save then he could be a little beast. Maybe even a buff for Immortals/Warriors guns. Or make it so he can affect any unit.

 p5freak wrote:

tneva82 wrote:

 p5freak wrote:

 vipoid wrote:
As an aside, does anyone know why Illuminor Szeras is getting a new model in the first place?

The new one is nice, sure, but I thought he already had one of the newest models in the entire range.

Because almost every faction gets new (HQ) model(s) with PA.

Eh not that many. Most of books got models for one faction...PA2 got for 2, PA2 for 1, PA3 for 1, PA4 for 1, PA5 for 1...PA6 got for 2, PA7 doesn't seem to get all that much HQ's though admech gets whole lot of non-HQ. PA8 is getting for 1, PA9 for 2.

That's what 10 factions out of around 30 who got HQ out of PA. Hardly "almost every". Not even half.

Where do you get 30 from ? GW displayed 18 factions for PA.

Spoiler:

On top of these 18 factions, 3 more were added : Militarum tempestus, agents of bile, and officio assassionarum, making it 21 factions.

From these 21 factions 13 have received new models. And there is still one preview to come.

You didn't say just PA factions. I went with factions in 40k.

And that's 24 factions in pic you show. 6x4=24. 10 is still less than half of 24. Hardly most. And then 3 more added=27. So actually 30 is getting close. In case you aren't aware "around X" is common way in english to say about something. Not exactly that.

And top of that you said HQ models. HQ models so far: eldar, dark eldar, chaos, blood angel, dark angel, tau, space wolves, orks, agents of bile, presumably sisters, necrons. Okay slight error on my part. 11. 11 out of 27 is still hardly most. It's 40.74...%. That's less than 50%. If you disagree please show your unique math that says is most of 27.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

IanVanCheese wrote:
Yeah at the very least his statline should be getting a buff and his cost shouldn't be ludicrous - GW of late are making special characters into bargains. 120pts for Ragnar for example.

285 for Ghaz disagrees.

More accurate would be GW is making marine characters bargains lately. Necrons aren't marines so don't get your hopes. Non marine updates have been often lackluster so far. Not even DIY dynasty can be anymore counted. Orks were left out of that for example.

Ghaz is a little overcosted for sure, but I can see why they were scared of making him too cheap. Some armies really struggle to deal with that 4 damage per phase rule.

Honestly, he'd be worth the cost if he could benefit from normal rules that infantry can - him being a monster is what makes him meh.

Anyway, it's the strats and dynasty stuff that will make or break us. Even if things get back to normal soon, we're not seeing our book for a while I'd wager too. Maybe late July if they rush everything out to get back to their old release schedule?Realistically I think August for us.

So we're stuck without much tactics to discuss for a while.

In the meantime, I've got a question - what units do you use if you don't own (or don't want to use) any Doomsday Arcs?