Daemonhunters: Wargear and Psychic Powers Pt 1  

Posted by Michael Hogan in , ,

(Units will be gone over in a separate post.)
Grey Knights and Inquisitors have access to the Imperium's highest quality weaponry and armor and don their wargear with honor. In addition, Inquisitors and high ranking Grey Knights may use Psychic powers to boost their offensive and defensive powers. However, the ever changing Warp has rended majority of these powers completely useless against Chaos, and many no longer apply under current rules. First, the psychic powers of the Grey Knight Heroes and Inquisitors that still apply will be briefly given an overview and then the wargear available to all Grey Knights and Inquisition forces will be browsed.


  • Destroy Daemon (15 pts): If successful, this psychic power allows the user of the power to reroll any to hit or to wound rolls against Daemons for the rest of the turn. This may be used at the beginning of any Assault Phase and rerolls must be accepted.
  • Hammerhand (10 pts): Used at the beginning of any assault phase, it doubles the Strength of the user until his next turn if successful. The psyker also has a bonus attack for having two close-combat weapons but cannot use any other weapons until the beginning of his next turn, including power weapons or other special attacks. Note that this does not disallow armor saves or change your initiative value.
  • Holocaust (20 pts): Used in the Daemonhunter's Assault phase, this power places a large blast template anywhere in contact with the psyker and hits all models, friend or foe, under the template at a Strength of 5, allowing armor saves as normal, striking at initiative 1. Models partially under the template are hit on a 4+. A Grey Knight Terminator squad may take this power.
  • Sanctuary (15 pts): Used at the beginning of the psyker's turn, this stops all Daemons from moving within 3" of the psyker for any reason, not drawing line of sight through it. Any Daemons already within 3" are pushed out, retaining coherency if possible, which can effectively end combat. Any Daemon that enters play inside this 3" bubble is destroyed. This lasts until the psyker moves, shoots, or uses another psychic power.
  • Scourging (20 pts): A psychic shooting attack that has an 18" range, S5, and AP5, with a type of Assault D6. Roll to hit and wound as normal, saves as normal but no invulnerable saves.
  • Word of the Emperor (10 pts): This power is used in your opponents assault phase. Any units wishing to assault you must make a Leadership check. If they fail, they may not assault at all this turn.
From a competitive stand point, most of these powers are fairly weak. Destroy Daemon and Sanctuary only work against Daemons, so there is no reason to take them if you don't know your opponent or if you are making a tournament list. So, I'm not going to go into too much detail on either, but they are both decently strong against a Daemon army.

Hammerhand can be well used. Putting this on a Grey Knight HQ allows you to attempt to pop transports/tanks with more ease, but it is relatively weak against infantry and even monstrous creatures. However, I personally would rather have the Thunder Hammer in a Grey Knight retinue, which I will go over a bit more in my next post why.

Holocaust is another iffy power. If you don't know where you can spend your points, consider this briefly. Holocaust gives you a blast template against horde armies and has a relatively high strength. Though position it well is tough due to it having to touch the base of your HQ/Terminator Brother-Captain. Plus, you can other use this on your assault phase. Points can be better spent elsewhere, but if you can't find that other spot you could drop it here. Also, it never says you have to be in close-combat to use this power, so you could hypothetically drop it without assaulting, though the way the rules state it, it seems like you would have to be in an assault.

Scourging is a power that isn't all that great. How come this power doesn't match up with Holocaust, another S5 power? Well, this one is very random with its assault D6. Plus, it is a shooting attack and replaces your ability to shoot a similar, and probably more powerful weapon such as a Psycannon, which can't be shut down by Psychic Hoods. However, if you are tight on points it is something you could consider, though a Psycannon would be much better spent.

Word of the Emperor is an odd ability. It is excellent as it can stop an enemy from assaulting you right out. But... Most assaulting troops have a high Leadership, so you would have to get a bit lucky. However, this works well on some troops like Tyranids and small Ork squads. Just don't rely on it too much if your opponent has psychic defense.

That concludes this post. Next part I'll discuss Wargear options for your HQs and possibly Justicars and hopefully sooner than it took to make this one. Reporting back soon.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 11, 2010 at Sunday, July 11, 2010 and is filed under , , . You can follow any responses to this entry through the comments feed .

0 comments

Post a Comment

Post a Comment