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Yaho,

I've been rolling guard almost exclusively since 8th happened, usually with 3-6 Russ tanks. My local meta is fairly lean on psykers and they rarely survive 36 inches of plasma, so I come to the question:

What's the problem with smite spam?

I haven't seen it in action to any great degree so I don't really get the hostility against it. Is there a particular doctrine that it's broken to draw such negativity?

Well. One smite can kill 9 points of Conscripts or 50 points of Custodes a turn. Or even better, 50 points of Terminators or Deathwing Knights a turn with the same ease they kill 6 points of Conscripts.

If your enemy is spamming psykers for smite, theres two options:
-He is playing orks
-He is playing Imperial Guard

If those two armies don't have screens for their psyker characters... I don't know how is that guy playing his army, but he is playing it wrong.

As a GK player with a few exceptions my Smites are only range 12 and do 1 mortal wound. It's hard for me to really kill anything of significance with my smites.

Smite spam can be a big issue if done correctly, there are quite a few battle reports out there showing how effective it can be. Having said that it's most effective on expensive units. Smite can kill a terminator as easily as a conscript, and if you can get multiple smites off a turn it turns bad.

The real issue is some armies have to play it that way, they don't have much of a chance if they don't.

Take a look at thousand sons / tzeench. Magnus can more reliably get the d6 mortal wounds off, greater deamon of tzeench and fate weaver as well. All rubric marines have an aspiring sorcerer leading them for another weak smite. Horrors of tzeench that's another smite location. Brimstones can even smite, and they are cheap as heck.

Now imagine you play an elite army, you play marines and use bikers and terminators for their better toughness and armor save. Except smite doesn't care about either. Thats dead squads, dead tanks, heck dead marines can hurt your chances if the smite starts flowing.

Smite spam is a thing. And it sucks when it happens to you unless you prepared for it.

When 8th edition rumours started coming in, and I heard Mortal Wounds would be a thing, I suspected they might be a problem; when I heard that the basic psychic power accessible by every psyker in the game would cause them, I knew they would be a problem. Mortal Wounds are just a bad mechanic, especially if not used super sparingly; they are completely disproportionately powerful against certain targets.

 Crimson wrote:
When 8th edition rumours started coming in, and I heard Mortal Wounds would be a thing, I suspected they might be a problem; when I heard that the basic psychic power accessible by every psyker in the game would cause them, I knew they would be a problem. Mortal Wounds are just a bad mechanic, especially if not used super sparingly; they are completely disproportionately powerful against certain targets.

I agree, I think mortal wounds would be fine if everyone and everything psychic couldn't do it.

Heck, change smite to be a wound at ap-3 so that you still get an invulnerable save vs it and maybe an armor save. That would be better than it is now. Then you would be able to make things more interesting for armies like Grey knights. Sure, they can only do 1 wound, but it's a mortal wound. Instant switch in the dynamic.

Allows wounding anything ignoring pretty much any defences target might have(unless they have special snowflake rule to help them out) thus allowing easy solution to get rid of units that pay a lot for survivability. Tanks, terminators, monster. When caster is dirt cheap(IG, orks) that gets issue. Only defence for this is basically screens thus one more reason(apart from alpha strike extreme) leading to screen hammer where you are badly screwed up if you DON'T bring couple dirt cheap units like conscripts, cultists etc.

And how on earth you get characters sniped out that easily? Obviously they should be walking behind the mandatory screens.

 Crimson wrote:
When 8th edition rumours started coming in, and I heard Mortal Wounds would be a thing, I suspected they might be a problem; when I heard that the basic psychic power accessible by every psyker in the game would cause them, I knew they would be a problem. Mortal Wounds are just a bad mechanic, especially if not used super sparingly; they are completely disproportionately powerful against certain targets.

Mortal Wounds are a good mechanic agaisn't Elite armies and Deathstars. But as they are geared towards anti-elite units they shouldn't be spammeable as they are right now. They should be expensive, and limited. Mortal Wounds are to Invulnerable saves what Lasscannons are to Tanks.

Not that elite armies really need that much of a hit...If anything they are pretty weak. Not much guns if any that are actually more point efficient toward horde than elite troops.

Yeah thats another problem of 8th. Not that I have a problem with horde armies being competitive again. But Elite ones are suffering.

I'm fine with the Mortal Wounds mechanic, but GW has - as usual - let their designers go a little silly employing it.

A quick and terribly easy solution to Smite (rules-wise) is to simply apply the same Matched Play limitation on it as all other powers. Problem solved instantaneously.

As the codices are released, almost every army has a secondary psychic power similar to Smite (and often better) so limiting Smite wouldn't hurt much. Provide an exception for non-Smite...Smites (i.e. the Grey Knight power and other garbage like Eldar Destructor).

Again, a lot of this comes down to people you'll play and who you're willing to play. If someone showed up at my local club with 10 Malefic Lords with the obvious intention of Smite-spamming, they can find someone else to play. If you show up with 2-3 psykers in your 2000 point army - all good, let's roll some dice.

I get the feeling (mainly from various podcasts) that Smite will be changed or toned down eventually. I don't find it particularly powerful, but then Eldar can't really Smite spam, so I don't run into it much locally.

There should be some limitation to mortal wounds. They shouldnt be able to hurt vehicles, or only on 5+, for example. A hit from a S14-16 weapon still needs to wound a vehicle, and if it does there still might be an armor or invuln sv against it. But against a simple smite you can have a T10 vehicle, it doesnt matter. Thats just wrong.

Would a progressively more difficult cast value help?

First time it goes off on a 5, next time it goes off on a 6, third casting requires a 7, fourth an 8, etc.

Armies with two or three psykers will probably never have much of an issue, concentrating Smite against a big scary target is still powerful but more difficult, and the power remains useful. It's not something I've personally seen armies built around or abusing much around my neck of the woods.

 Vaktathi wrote:
Would a progressively more difficult cast value help?

First time it goes off on a 5, next time it goes off on a 6, third casting requires a 7, fourth an 8, etc.

Armies with two or three psykers will probably never have much of an issue, concentrating Smite against a big scary target is still powerful but more difficult, and the power remains useful. It's not something I've personally seen armies built around or abusing much around my neck of the woods.

This, with a -1 or -2 to Cast smite for low-level psykers are the suggestions that I have read that I believe are the more balanced.

Just change Smite to regular Wounds, its meant to be a fall back power, and there are usually other MW powers, maybe anyone limited to diet Smite like GK and Warlocks get to keep their 1 MW version

Its far too strong against models that pay alot for toughness and saves.

On the other side of that coin however, its sometimes the only way to deal with such models.

The issue is some armies can take far too much of it (i.e. Chaos, Astra militarum, Tyranids now as well).

Adding one to the difficulty for every successive smite is a very good fix to it. You would still be able to get 3 or 4 off with good odds, but more than that will be hard. This is enough to hurt big stuff but doesn't just delete them off the table in one turn.


As an example, I made a nid list that averages 32 mortal wounds per turn and could deal an additional 30 or so with spore mines if they weren't shot off the table. Againgst conscripts or gaunts its not an issue, but againgst any model that costs more than 12pts per wound its pretty rough.

The main issue is when they have a model that's far too cheap with it.

Mortal wounds are fine, they are a necessary part of the game balance. What is not fine is the easy access to it, like it happens in Age of Sigmar.
40K has been designed much better in regard to this, there aren't many abilities that inflict mortal wounds and they are usually situational. Smite is the only real issue, with it being so widespread and cheap.

I would be OK with progressively harder spams if it also ment more likely to perils. Cast it a second time and you get -1 to your roll, a third time -2, and so on. That means the more you cast it the more you get away from that 11+ for d6 wounds and the closer you get to that double 1's peril. (I know this isn't actually how it works with perils, it's the roll not the end value that causes it but you get what I am saying).

Would you really want to try smite if you roll a value of 2, 3, or 4 would kill you?

Azuza001 wrote:
I would be OK with progressively harder spams if it also ment more likely to perils. Cast it a second time and you get -1 to your roll, a third time -2, and so on. That means the more you cast it the more you get away from that 11+ for d6 wounds and the closer you get to that double 1's peril. (I know this isn't actually how it works with perils, it's the roll not the end value that causes it but you get what I am saying).

Would you really want to try smite if you roll a value of 2, 3, or 4 would kill you?

I think the -1 for every time you try to cast it is good enough. If some of the cheaper psykers need still more tuned balance they can have in their dathasheet a -1 or -2 to cast Smite or Psychic powers. If the best psykers have a bonus, the worst ones should have a malus to cast.

I like the idea of primaris psykers and malefic lords having a malus to cast. I really don't like the idea of there being an overarching penalty to cast smite; that'd just screw elite casters just as much as the gakky ones, which really isn't necessary.

 Arachnofiend wrote:
I like the idea of primaris psykers and malefic lords having a malus to cast. I really don't like the idea of there being an overarching penalty to cast smite; that'd just screw elite casters just as much as the gakky ones, which really isn't necessary.

Except those high powered casters wouldn\t be casting it that much so they wouldn't suffer from that as much.

Though it would still just make cheap psykers give most optimal smite/point ratio which is not good and still makes that hundreds of years of experience allows you still only as good as some basic mass produced psyker of IG or ork weirdboy that has just insticts and not that much control over his abilities to begin with. Not logical.

Would solve spam issue but would still keep cheap psykers as best psykers.

tneva82 wrote:

 Arachnofiend wrote:
I like the idea of primaris psykers and malefic lords having a malus to cast. I really don't like the idea of there being an overarching penalty to cast smite; that'd just screw elite casters just as much as the gakky ones, which really isn't necessary.

Except those high powered casters wouldn\t be casting it that much so they wouldn't suffer from that as much.

Though it would still just make cheap psykers give most optimal smite/point ratio which is not good and still makes that hundreds of years of experience allows you still only as good as some basic mass produced psyker of IG or ork weirdboy that has just insticts and not that much control over his abilities to begin with. Not logical.

Would solve spam issue but would still keep cheap psykers as best psykers.

Making every smite harder than the previous one solves Smite-spam. Giving malus to the cheaper psykers (And bonus to the best ones) solves the problem of cheaper psykers being more cost-efficient and better at casting spells.
But to be honest instead of having malus and bonuses in every datasheet we could have back Psyker levels. You are a Psyker Level 1? -1 to cast. Psyker lvl 2? Nothing. Psyker lvl 3? +1 to cast. Psyker Level 4? +2 to Cast.

I'm more disappointed that GK Librarians don't even get regular Smite.

Smite spam with orks is not an issue since orks don't have any reliable anti tank.

An ork list based on smite spam is always a greentide where orks can only have tons of S4 with no ap attacks and smite. Eventually the lone pk of the warboss and maybe a few shot from the artillery, on average just 1-5 hits at S8 Ap-2 per turn.

And usually orks psykers cast Da Jump and Warpath, so even with 5+ weirdboyz you'll only have 2-3 of them that cast smite. It's doesn't seem that terrible.

I hadn't really used smite until my last game. Storm shield on dreads are super tough my best weapons bouncing off due to those. Smite helped but wasn't ever enough with only one weird boy. One of the local guys has complained about smite but more so about 30 point psyker spam. I think that's more so where the problem is.

 warhead01 wrote:
I hadn't really used smite until my last game. Storm shield on dreads are super tough my best weapons bouncing off due to those. Smite helped but wasn't ever enough with only one weird boy. One of the local guys has complained about smite but more so about 30 point psyker spam. I think that's more so where the problem is.

They are interlinked. You can't have smite spam without cheap psykers and smite gives reason to bring multiple psykers.

I like Smite. It and related attack oriented Psychics are actually useful this edition. I might be wrong, but I think one of the big issues is not necessarily Smite itself, but the prevalence of ultra-cheap Psykers that can spam Smite.

tneva82 wrote:

 warhead01 wrote:
I hadn't really used smite until my last game. Storm shield on dreads are super tough my best weapons bouncing off due to those. Smite helped but wasn't ever enough with only one weird boy. One of the local guys has complained about smite but more so about 30 point psyker spam. I think that's more so where the problem is.

They are interlinked. You can't have smite spam without cheap psykers and smite gives reason to bring multiple psykers.

True enough. I guess I was thinking about a comment above that didn't want smite to hurt vehicles as easily or at all.

As a thought about spam, just how much should a psyker cost then? Just how low of a cost opens up the abuse? I'd like to run 3 weird boys but haven played a game t a high enough points level to find the points for more than one.

Every game mechanic and unit can be balanced by points, no need to make things any more complicated rule wise. Smite for under 50 points is just too powerful - its that simple.

I agree mortal wounds their issues as a mechanic, but they also solve many. Nothing is immune to them. No more unkillable deathstars. They're such a minor evil compared to the woes of 7th Ed.