Weird Casters

So in a day or two, the book will be out for 7th Edition. I am pretty excited about the new psychic phase. I have lamented the daemons losing out entirely on the shooting phase, but here we have a lot to look forward to.

The math crunchers have proven that it is statistically less likely you will cast anything in the new phase. But to me I see a dedicated phase playing out very well with my army. I'll try and break it down by the various pskyers I have models for.

Horror units look pretty solid. Since I have a pair of 18 man mobs each including a herald of tzeentch I will probably run them exactly like that in 40k. The unit itself generates 3 warp charges. If it is blessed with Flickering Fire as a freebie, I can either generate another ability from the Lore of Change giving the unit potentially two shots or pick up a different discipline to either gain an additional attack or more versatility.

Since they have Brotherhood of Sorcery the champion dies first on a Perils of the Warp test that causes a wound. I might be a little more careful on avoiding miscasts because Incandescent Horrors have the option of selecting daemonic gifts. In the past even if you generated a ranged attack you weren't able to cast witch fire powers and shoot in the same turn. For the daemons this meant if you were granted a shooting attack from a reward, only the monstrous creatutes benefitted from having two types of ranged attacks. The heralds and the champions were left having to only pick one.

The heralds themselves look a little better as well. Malefic powers aside even without summoning they just had nearly every psychic power in book open up to them. A lot of people are talking about transforming an inexpensive psyker into a greater daemon with the malefic powers but you only have a 1-in-6 chance of getting that ability. I am pretty comfortable running the discipline with Tzeentch just for the lesser powers. Having Cursed Earth boost your invulnerable save by +1 is pretty solid. Units arriving from Deep Strike don't scatter within 12". If I pick a malefic power on the heralds dropping Cursed Earth and then summoning some daemons nearby would be pretty awesome.

The fact that winged Daemon Princes and Lords of Change can only be grounded on to wound roll instead of a to hit roll sounds pretty neat. And it is only one test per turn. You force your opponent to snap shots in the movement phase, you aren't reduced to the same restrictions. So zooming around the board makes you tougher to hit, and you can to hit your opponents easily either. Even if you cannot assault when you switch flight modes, you can still vector strike, cast in the psychic phase, and shoot if you have ranged attacks in the shooting phase. I have three daemon princes and a Lord of Change who will be flying all over the board blasting holes in my enemies.

I do really like the concept of summoning more daemons, but it is going to be something I really can't afford to do a whole lot of. Dropping Flamers on the board sounds pretty cool because when they arrive they can shoot that turn. Popping screens of flesh hounds is something else I will try as well because I have a pile of them I rarely field. If anything I will grab a few more boxes of screamers. I like they gain a 4+ cover save of jinx, have an armorbane attack, and quite honestly look really cool.

We will just wait and see. I probably won't rush out this week and grab a land raider to embark my blood letters in as a chaos marine ally, but I do have tons of options with detachments and fielding more models now. Four troop choices give me four HQ's. I won't be struggling with how to field all of my units. I will at least wait and see if we get new greater daemon kits because with the new summoning rules I am going to need at least one more.