6th Edition Psychic Powers, Allies, and Divination

Hey all, so 6th has dropped and I played my first game the other day. for one Tyranids got a whole of a lot stronger with this edition. Originally with the new allies rules I was planning on running Blood angels as allies. Yet with the FAQ's coming out I found out that the sanguinary priests I had just converted up couldnt effect units not from Codex: Blood Angels. So I strongly advise Check the FAQ's before you make a list as a lot of the cross over powers saying that they effect friendly models now only effect models from thier own codex. Yet I still wanted to try out Mephiston with my shrike terminator list as since he was FAQ'd to be able to drop powers for B?G?B powers

(btw shold we now call it the BGB "Big Green Book?"...)

So going through the powers I decided to take divination. After the fact, since I am prepping for tournament 1, 1500 points, for 6th edition he is too expensive and the lack of invul. saves hurts....but I'll get back to my experiences later before I get too off topic as I want to talk about the psychic disciplines in general.

First off I will admit I am surprised. It is very similar to fantasy but there was a trade off. Instead of choosing one single discipline and rolling all on one chart you can manually choose powers from your own book, or drop powers for rolling on any of the disciplines. Yet this traded off the ability to choose powers when a double is rolled. Yet when reading through the powers patterns come out in each of the disciplines. Divination is more about buffing, with a single enemy de-buff, while pyromancy is almost pure offensive psychic shooting attacks. So even if you do have to roll on the chart you are specifically trying to get attack powers or buffing powers (blessings/maledictions vs. witchfire) for the most part.

Now here is a good question to be put up for debate. Now When reading through the FAQ's special characters, as well as normal libies, can drop their powers for BGB (Im calling it that for now) discipline powers. We came to the conclusion if you have two or three powers you could keep any ammount of codex powers and roll on the chart. For instance a libie could choose gate of infinity (as it is still manual for the currently 5th and earlier codices) and then choose to roll for the 2nd power on any of the discipline charts. Now the counter would be they have to choose either all codex powers or all BGB dscipline powers. We ruled this since you select powers on an individual basis and could roll on multiple discipline charts. But please check the rules AND the FAQ's and give your thoughts below as I am not sure exactly how this should be ruled.

Anyway when running through the disciplines there is one clear winner for the best discipline, and that is divination. Divination is effectively very similar to eldar psychic powers. It is based purely in buffing your own units with rerolls of any sorts (thier 5th power lets the psycher reroll hits, wounds and saves while thier 6th power lets you reroll reserves, outflanks, and mysterious forrest tables three times in a turn). Compared to the other disciplines I could not see myself taking aby other discipline as any of the powers listed are fairly useful (even the primaris power lets a unit reroll all to hit rolls on a unit)

Now the issue with trying to use divination is that my boys in blue, vanilla marines, cannot use divination according to the faq (read the faq's). So the only way I could unlock divination is through allies and if I want it to work at all it needs to be a battle brother (so I can cast it on my main detachment as convinence allies cannot cross cast powers on each other). So this leaves, for the most part, only power armored allies. Blood angels, Space Wolves, and Dark Angels being the ones that can take divination. So, as I already stated, I tried using Mephiston with 2 divination powers and wings of sang. (since we ruled that each power is individually taken). It worked fine but he fell fairly badly to psychic shriek which is a very deadly primaris power for telepathy (especially since the death leaper already lowered his leadership to 8).

So going through the books, and focusing on the fact I need a cheap ally that is strong psycher combat character for my mostly combat army I fell upon the gem that is Ezekial in the Dark Angels book. According to the DA FAQ he is allowed to take divination powers as well as his own, and the mind worm one is a little bit better in this edition imho. He  can take three powers, he is a BS/WS 5 S/T4 W3 2+SV MC B pistol/MC F Sword beast and he is only 170 points. Downsides? Well he is only mastery level one (lame! he is a grand master librarian how does that make sense?). Now the fact that I will also take another libie (probably with telepathy for the shriek power). By taking Ezekial it also lets me take a small 5 man RB unit that can take a melta gun (old school books ftw) Overall this comes down to only a 320 point spending for my 1500 point list.

Now Divination will always be the primary discipline I will take but other than that how do the other disciplines look? Well Pyromancy is all about offensive attack spells and I am not a fan of that really. Telekinesis might as well be the Vanilla marine powers copied over. The 6th power for Telekenisis doesn't even work if you move and is a WC of 2 (its a heavy weapon). Biomancy is ok but really you can suffer if you roll crap powers for your game since the primaris power is just smite (lame). realisitcally the next best discipline is easily telepathy. The primaris psycher is psychic shriek, just like a fantasy banshee scream, and can really wreck monsterous creatures or untis with low leadership (roll 3d6 and for every point over your eladership you take a wound with no saves). If not dominate (pass a leadership test everytime a unit does anything or it does nothing) is a good roll, puppet master is an awesome power allowing you to take control of an enemy unit and shooting with it. the 5th power makes you invisible and the 6th is similar to psychotrope grenades and can cause your opponents unit to kill itself.

So all in all Divination and Telepathy are good takes for psychic powers. More rambleing on 6th is coming as Marcus will soon write an article on how Tyranids got a huge boost in 6th...more on this later....