Email in: Guard Psyker gimicks

"Hey Kirby,

Just some thoughts about Guard Psykers you might find amusing;

With the psychic blast, which is awesome, being a shooting attack you can still give them orders. Ie fire on my target from a senior command squad, x2, gives you reroll successful cover saves - and when 50% of the time you are ap3 (or 33% of the time ignoring feel no pain) it isn't bad. Disadvantage is the psykers have to be out of the transport to use the order. This can be offset if your opponent doesn't have the long range weapons to wipe the squad out, or if he can't draw line of sight (afterall, only 1 psyker needs to be able to see the enemy). Or if your only enemy long range dakka guns are also their anti tank guns, and I want my opponent not to shoot my tanks vendettas :p

With psychic drop leadership, not being a shooting attack, you are still allowed to make a shooting attack. Whilst me killing a single sternguard marine with a few well placed pistols was funny, it is more practical to move 1 guy out of cover/in line of sight, drop leadership, and run 1 inch back out of line of sight :)

Lastly, you can use the psychic blast in combination with Al-rahem. This is just for kicks, but again outside of a transport, you can order them to make a shooting attack, and then move d6 inches (but not run). Thus blast/move out of line of sight.

I presume you know the callidus assassin/divine pronouncement tricks. But also think of dropping in a callidus, burning a unit that has reduced leadership, clipping tank in the process so it can't shoot, and dropping the leadership of that FNP BA assault squad, making them fall back 3d6 inches, within range of the callidus, and falling back another 3d6 inches in their turn.

Lastly, for kicks, I killed 15 genestealers that popped up, simply by dropping their leadership, using divine pronouncement, then assaulting them with my inquisitor by himself (take a leadership test -6 or be destroyed).

Cheers
Jason"

Some nice thoughts. At least nothing was said about tank shcoking :P lol. Wouldn't want my PBS outside of their transport though but always an option if their Chim was shaken. The problem with designing lists/choices around the lower Ld spell is you're relying on that spell to go off for another choicein your army to be effective (i.e. Callidus Assassin or Inq). Whilst you need both of those units to access the Callidus, if your PBS die or their powers are blocked, well that's a lot of points invested in multiple FoC that may be essentially useless.

For that reason Soulstorm (i.e. large blast) is often a better reason to pick the PBS with their Ld lowering ability used as a utility spell. Being able to cast this on an important unit nearing your lines and essentially force them to flee if it goes off is excellent utility but not something you want to build your list around.