The psychic phase - Fail or Win?

Hey hows it going guys.  So this week I wanted to talk on the subject of the Psychic phase in 7th edition.  Before sharing my thoughts, I wanted to research both the good and the bad of the phase as this is the biggest change of 7th.  No longer do players have to remember when to cast psychic powers, no more "hey do you mind if I cast this now" , no more remembering that these powers are done before movement, in the shooting, assault, etc.  All powers are done in this phase which definitely makes things a little easier.  Having played several games both with a psychic dependant and non dependant army the phase bring a nice sub game to the game.  However thoughts of psychic powers being cast almost automatic like in 5th or 6th edition are sadly mistaken.  The way psychic powers are cast now make it a little hard to count on in this edition.  Even for psychic heavy armies you can not count on getting every power up every turn.  Yes psycher heavy armies will have it easier by flinging more dice to get the powers off however the more dice they throw the more perils of the warp chances come up.  In this edition, any rolls of double 6 on successful or failed casts result in perils of the warp.   It doesn't take a genius to surmise that the more dice you throw at a power, the more 6's will come up.  This makes it a gamble that if you really want a power to go off, the more chances that a perils result will come up.  Is this a fair trade off for armies that have few psychers or no psychers?   If the player is rolling hot then no, hot dice will always win no matter what.  But let's take it from an average dice thrower.  Not every spell that you need up will always be on no matter how many dice you throw at it.  Which leads me to my first conclusion.  I believe that armies that are not so relient on powers going off will be the ones best off in this edition.  Armies that are extremely relient with powers going off will have their days but will not be so consistent in the winners column.   Armies that can do both will be even better off.  I conducted some experimenting with both a psycher heavy, power dependant army and one that wasn't dependant (just one psycher,  random).  In playing several games, I found that the army that wasn't dependant on getting powers off was consistently winning turns and thus games (scoring more points) than the army that was heavily dependant on getting powers off.  The nature of the psychic phase in 7th edition lends itself to be more fickle if you will then in past editions which I guess is GW's way of balancing out psycher heavy armies.  I guess they didn't count on having somebody with hot dice or armies that can get tons of warp dice to throw at powers by creating more psychers.   All in all though I think GW did something good here.  Giving players a phase to cast all of their powers makes it easier to remember, makes psychic powers a cleaner aspect of the game.  Limiting power dice or even making it that summoned units could only give you at max 1 more power dice would make this phase a genuine winner.

On deck today is my finished Belakor the dark master.  I basically copied the paint scheme from GW as I thought the scheme looked great and was easy to replicate.  I plan on running him with my dark mech army to add in more psychic support or even with my Thousand sons to add in a little more punch. 

Space Wolves again...and Grey Knights??!!

Sup guys.  Wow have the releases been hopping lately from GW.  This last weekend we saw the release of the new Space Wolves codex and coming up on the heels of its release the rumors are telling us that Grey Knights are next.  Rumor no more as various websites and 40K talking heads have confirmed the rumor not to mention a buddy of mine just shot me a pic of next weeks White Dwarf with you guessed it, Grey Knights on the cover.  So before I start with this whole Grey Knights mess, I wanted to give my first impressions of the Space Puppy book.  On first impression the book is great.  It manages to keep a lot of the flavor of the old dex and bring the costs in line with other newer space marine books.  Instead of the beefed up chapter master, they get the beefed up thunderwolf lord with access to runic armor and storm shield at a points discount.  Not just that but thunderwolf cavalry are now cheaper and thus easier to take in lists that will not sacrifice a lot making them perfect bodyguards for your lords.  The new flyer is also very good with the transport one being the true winner allowing you to take 16 models or 8 terminators and still providing great supporting fire once the cargo has been delivered.  The new murderface Dread has great rules and wont cost you an arm and a leg to use.  I can only hope when blood angels are redone they get a special dread too.  The supplement just improves on the rules and gives you the type of flexibility that I as a CSM player can only dream about.  You want to run 6 wolflords, go for it.  You want to run a scout army, do it.  Space Wolves always get great books and this is no exception.  Yes grey hunters got nerfed a bit but you have to realize that they were way under costed compared to other marines (hint, hint CSM).  They were brought in line with other imperial marines and for the most part the strength of the codex and supplement really hides this short coming.  About the only bad thing I would say about the space wolves release is the Grimnar santa sled.  I don't know if someone at GW is hooked on history channels Vikings but making a chariot look like a mini viking longship complete with shields on the side is just horrible.   Overall though the pups got a pair of great books. 

And now Grey Knights??  Wow what a surprise this was.  Right on the heels of the Space Wolves release we get codex Grey Knights.  No models for this release just updated rules which is ok in my book.  There are several armies that need to be updated and a quick rules update to an army that already has great models is good for the hobby.  Release new models with white dwarf rules and your good to go.  Now as expected the grey knights are indeed getting the nerf treatment with the rules leak that I have seen so far.  Removing all inquisition models, most of the special characters and rules, changing psycannons to salvo weapons, losing psybolt ammo are few of the nerfs that are coming.  Along with this a price reduction on all models and some new items including a force weapon gun, awesome formation and maybe the calls of this book sucks could be premature.  We only have a couple of days left until the book is released and so everything will be confirmed. 

Pics are of my almost complete Storm Raven for my blood angels/space marines.  I am hoping to get this army done by October.

2nd 7th ed game and beyond...

Hey guys, well I finished playing my 2nd and 3rd game of 7th and in a word I am inspired.  7th edition has been everything that I wanted giving me my share of laughs, technicality, and most important fun.  Playing in a league definitely helps with this as playing at my buddy's house has its advantages namely alcohol, but also food, and a form of comradre that cant be replicated at a gamestore so easily.  With every wargame, its the community of friends that will determine the success of a game in an area.  With the closing of the gamestore that I played 40K at, games came hard to come by.  In relation warmahordes had a huge explosion of players lately and so I stared playing that as my way of getting my wargaming fun in.  Warmahordes is a tremendous game and something I will play more of whenever I get a chance as I have a great gaming group and thus never longing for a game.  But 40k for a couple of months was a dying game in my area which was sad for me.  So definitely I feel lucky that I have found a league to get my 40k fix.  In my next series of games I did find units that were allstars and that vehicles are still susceptible to be glanced out if you do throw several medium to high strength shots, (looking at you Tau/Necrons).  The definite allstar that I have seen are chariots especially the Catacomb command barge aka the douche canoe (thank you 11th company for a great name).  The fact that it has a 2+ 3++ in the shooting phase, can get up due to everliving, make it a very formidable unit.  The fact that right now it can sweep zooming fliers is a little over the top.  Hopefully this will get faqed soon as I do find this a little game breaking. 

So in my 2nd game I faced the wrath of the Necrons which is one of the older armies that have stayed as one of the top armies in these early days of 7th edition.  They have great transports, somewhat resilient troops, high leadership, and above all great shooting.  Having an entire army full of AV 13 vehicles facing you is pretty tough especially if you are not prepared for it.  On top of that 2 douche canoes that are no slouches in close combat makes for a great army.  The game was a great one in an atmosphere of great friends, good beer, and awesome homemade salsa.  It was close but in the end the Necrons defeated my 3 Juggerlord CC list 5-4 in an emperor's will, vanguard strike game.  The game was definitely going my opponent's way until about turn 3 when the power of the 3 juggerlords became apparent.  Huge disappointment in my CSM squads due to yet again morale issues.  They didnt get sweep due to necron lords having low initiative but really, a 20 man unit should be able to put down a necron lord in a command barge.  They did snapshot a necron flyer down though which was cool and I had 2 csm that were left from a 12 man unit melta bomb an annihilation barge to death before getting shot down by a warrior unit next turn.  The game was close and I still could have pulled it off if the game ended on turn 5 or 7.  Alas it ended on turn 6 and with it the juggerlords lost their first game of 7th edition.  The juggerlords still proved to me that close combat is still viable as long as you have great terrain and amongst all at least one line blocking terrain piece.