The Ninth Gate: Psychic Phase

Welcome back - this is the Ninth Gate, a series of rambling predictions about 40K 9th Ed and the tweaks I'd like to see in it. This time - the Psychic Phase!

The Warp, Ancient and Modern

Oldie that I am, I don't really remember much about psychic power in the original Rogue Trader era. There was some? I think? And I think it was sort of like the magic system in Fantasy Battle.

For those of you only born after this lost age, it meant your wizards/psykers got a pool of points, determined before the game and based on how powerful they were. You spent those points to cast or deny a power, and you could over-spend to make them more powerful.

Sound familiar? Yeah, it's not a million miles from what Strategems are now, in some ways. While it brought some of what is cool about Strategems to the game, it generally sucked as a system. Too much extra rules management at a time when the game was already a quagmire of tangled systems. Plus your space wizards usually ran out of juice, often from merely cancelling each other out.

2nd Ed started with virtually no psychic powers, then added in a huge card-based system in an expansion pack. It had some cool ideas, like stuff that stayed on the field (see later!), and lots of now-familiar concepts like Perils of the Warp, denial battles and so on.

Smite!

8th ed gets so much right, I'm not too much of an unashamed fanboy to say. And the Psychic Phase is one such. It started off fun but simple, improved as they balanced the rules in the first few FAQs, and seems decent enough now.

Everybody has enough powers to pick from that there's fun and variety to be had. Deny the Witch rarely gets out of hand and shuts your fun down. Perils are there as a nasty surprise, but they don't go batshit and melt half your army more often than not (unless you're Stylus).

And good old Smite is now a thing! It's ubiquitous, it's the number one cause of Mortal Wounds and you have to pay attention to it as a result.

Mortal wounds - one of the best things to happen to 40K, I'd say in passing. A way of damaging anything that is usually unstoppable! That's one of the best balancing features the game currently has. It laughs at your Lord of War and your 3+ Invuln alike. A great and necessary leveller that we did without for too long.

Smite in particular changes the composition and deployment of whole armies. Those three vanilla guardsmen squads aren't just the tax you pay for a Battalion's worth of command points. They're vital ablative armour for the characters, tanks and monsters that do all the heavy lifting.

For me, the variety of other spells and abilities is fine but middling compared to some of the older, more broken toys. Psykers rarely feel as overwhelming these days as they once could. Which is good! Power to all the arms of your army, I say!

They sometimes feel bland to me as a result, though. Several armies are stuck with a few dull buffs or below-average damage spells that you never see used, partly because Smite is often better. But how would you fix that without going back to older, more broken psychics?

Persistent Spells

I'm not the only soothsayer that sees this in the tea leaves. Age of Sigmar has a box set of spell effect models for each army. Psychic Awakening, the current fluff cycle, is practically screaming at you that something is coming for your psychic phase, for goodness' sake!

And look - I remember 2nd ed. These spells were fun! Eldritch Storm for the Eldar, a randomly-moving maelstrom that killed the enemy. Slapping a big 5" Dome spell down to protect a vital shooty unit in the midfield. Vortex! That's a classic, a deadly damage dealer that could come back to get you. You and I both know, reader, that GW will make any models to represent these look Boss, and if they get the rules right with them, it'll be great.

My prediction is that they'll use the AoS model for these. So the caster can slap something down that stays on the field, usually getting to control its first move for vortex-type things. Then it wanders about afterwards at random, hurting enemies, or stays put and boosts your own team in some way.

They usually cost points, so you select them as part of your army. That's a good way of stopping them getting too game-breakey, they're going to be included instead of something else. And enemy psykers can dispel or sometimes control them, so they're unpredictable.

For narrative spectacle and OTT fun, I'd welcome them back to the game.

Likelihood of Tweak: 95%, you know GW loves a good sales model!

Think Before You Leap

Perils may roll high as well as low

Some predictomancers are also claiming the psychic phase might move to before the Movement phase. Don't know why or how I feel about it, but I hope it doesn't!

So if persistent spells are coming, I can see that letting your opponent try to get rid of that incoming Purple Warp Blob of Magnus before it hits their lines makes sense. I'm not sure exactly what it would hope to add to the game, though.

It would make it harder to smite past screening troops, because your opponent will have counter-moved before you get a chance to cast. Is that good or bad? Depends on how you like your psychic assassins, I suppose.

It would also require an overhaul of various aura buffs or debuffs for the same reason. Most would gain, like the Onslaught or Null Zone for example (you'd know if you had it up before committing to a move). I like the risk involved with using these, that you're gambling that they work. Maybe it's a better thing to have less RND in the game, though.

Likelihood of Tweak: 50%. I hope it doesn't, but I can see why they might

I'm Not A Witch, I'm Not A Witch

I'm Dorothy Gale from Kansas.

Bring back the dispel scroll.

That's all I'm saying - something that would cost you points and let you once per game, no more, shut down an enemy power.

Because some of those swingy Big Smites, for example, are just vicious! Or buff combos that take away some of your best defences. Any T'au player who's been Hypnotised or Terrified knows what I'm talking about.

And bluntly, for any army like T'au who has no psykers, I think it's only fair to give them a lifeline. Just one. And an expensive one, maybe. Limit its range, or make it only available to characters. But if the Psychic Phase is being given extra toys and even the faint whiff of a GW accidental power spike, I'd really want to see this one option back in the bag.

Likelihood of Tweak: 30%. Paying points to spoil your opponent's fun is miserly, but can really stop a random spell of bad luck spoiling yours. 

Tome of Intellect

Last thing I'd like to see, just to spice up the general options, is a couple more generalist spells available to all.

AoS has a smite equivalent. It also has a protective spell that gives an extra pip of save to a unit. This would be a nice option for 40K. Your psychic chap can cost this or Smite in a turn, not both. Make it go off on a 5+, it gives you the same effect as being in cover, job done. Some extra flavour and utility that some armies would probably appreciate.

I know there are powers out there that do this already, as well as Strategems. So why not one or two other generally useful spells? A reroll for Morale tests for a turn. Heal a single lost wound. Something with low returns, of course, but something to keep your magic man busy while he's out of Smite range.

Likelihood of Tweak: 15%, I think the Persistent ones are much more likely to take this slot


I'll be back with more thoughts, next time on Shooting!