With each new Warhammer 40k Codex we see a huge boost in Psychic capacity, or not. Take for example the Grey Knights – pretty much every unit in the book has offensive and defensive psychic capacity. Now look at the Dark Eldar – they have nothing in the line of psychic offence and barring one wacky special character they also have no psychic defense. Here is a breakdown of each race and their offensive/defensive power levels -
| Army | Psyker Power | Psychic Defense |
|---|---|---|
| Blood Angels | Medium | Psychic Hood |
| Chaos Daemons | None | None |
| Chaos Space Marines | Medium | None |
| Dark Eldar | None | None |
| Eldar | Overpowering | Runes |
| Grey Knights | Strong | The Aegis |
| Imperial Guard | Medium | None |
| Necrons | None | None |
| Orks | Weak | None |
| Space Marines | Medium | Psychic Hood |
| Space Wolves | Strong | Runic Weapons |
| Tau | None | None |
| Tyranids | Medium | Shadows in the Warp |
As you can see from the chart there are more armies that have psychic powers than have psychic defenses. When looking to see if you want to include psychic defense in your army you really also have to look at what you will be gaining in offense. Every army with psychic defense has some very nice offensive powers except for your generic Space Marines. So for me, if I am running Tyranids, Wolves, Grey Knights, Eldar, or Blood Angels I am going to definitely include a Psychic character in the list. If I am running any other army, I am probably not going to unless I have a really neat gimmick. The points you are ‘paying’ for psychic defense just don’t add up if you aren’t getting any significant offensive capacity.
At this point we aren’t quite at the level of required psychic/magic defense like you are in Warhammer Fantasy, but it could easily end up that way. Luckily two of the armies that are up for cew codex releases traditionally have no psychic powers – Tau and Necrons. Time will only tell if this stays the case or not.
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I’ve really been going back and forth on this topic. I’m going to start play testing without one in my Grey Knights. With the Aegis and Reinforced Aegis, you can have some defense. Then throw in a stormraven and you have a psyker hunter, which may be the best defense of all. I faced relatively little psyker heavy armies at WGC, so I’m going to try on a Grand Master in place of the Libby.
If it falls within a reasonable point limit and within what you are trying to d with your army, then yes. For example, I wouldn’t take a librarian in a space marine army for just the hood. If my army relied on say, gate of infinity, I would take it and the hood would be a benefit of taking it.
Good points, man. Never saw all the armies on one table. Makes you think. I would say that by the number of Dark Eldar army successes at WGC, you have a good case for ditching the pys defense and focus on other things.
I’d say the more mechanized the army the less psychic defense the army will generally need or want. Things like Fear the Darkness, Doom, and Paroxysm have no effect on metal boxes and things like Blood Lance and Living Lightning, the former being actual anti-tank, aren’t doing any real heavy lifting.