Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Emperor's Dilemma: Mystics

When i started playing 40k again after a 5 year break i came back with a truck load of random space marine stuff, and a fully fledged Daemonhunters army.   Complete with no less then 30 grey knights, 10 grey knight Terminators, 3 God hammer land raiders, 1 land raider crusader, 2 Inquisitors, loads of minions, and both Characters from the book.

So Naturally i took them up and played with them for a bit, added a few figures and even got second place in a local 1k tournament with them.



Eventually i played a cool version of them where i converted some of the minions into inquisitors with Psycannons, and played a force with 4 Inquistors with full blown pew pew squads and mystics ect.

This force proved fun ish, if ineffective against hard armor at range, and i educated a few folks around here about what an amazing unit the Mystics are.  But then i got the urge to add some IG to them for more model support, which snow balled into an IG army, which led to me not really being interested in my Daemohunters anymore until they revamp them some day never(or soon, if every rumormill is to believed every month it seems)

Now to the point of the article, and poll, sense playing my IG i have not ONCE used mystics.  I say this with pride because my stance on it is clear, Mystics are very very powerful for an IG force at this time.  The IG of today is very good at being a gun line, they can outshoot any army with ease and little skill from the controlling general assuming he's not completely crap at list building.  the best way to mess with them is to actually get your units into their line some how, at which point most guard armies begin to crumble or begin to show seriously lower ability to react to ranged threats while they attempt to remove the cancer.  So Deepstriking units are your ticket, outflanking as well to a lesser degree.

Thanks to a 32 point investment on the part of the guard player however this is no longer an issue, instead the guard player relish's the opportunity to get in some extra shots on your army as it drops in near by.  This is pretty wrong, more so when you consider then length of time between the two books.

What should happen?
Should they be more points?  Sure thats an option, a lot more for sure say in the 150+ range might help do the trick.
Should they be changed to require first LOS from the Inquisitor and second some sort of leadership test as well?  Probably.
Should they be limited to only firing themselves, and not being able to relay the order to any other unit within 12 inches or perhaps not to other units not in the daemonhunter codex?  Sounds very reasonable to me...

All good ideas for keeping the theme, but for now their out there and in use by many players who are looking for the best possible IG list for winning.

So what say you, is it fine to use them or is it a clear sign of a power gamer?

3 comments:

  1. I've only played a couple of games against the setup and in those it was effective but not overpowering, b/c I had some DS but wasn't relying too heavily on it.

    I think that it is too cheap, in conjunction with the sort of stuff available for IG, or even SM armies. In an actual Inq army it's not so bad, or when it's used for the Inquisitor's retinue itself (servitors, etc.).

    At a basic gut level, it's also kind of sad that such a high-ranking member of the Imperium is so often reduced to functioning as a minder for a glorified psychic radar dish.

    With the IGOUGO type system, anything that can break that up is going to be powerful. I don't mind there being that sort of thing, but it should be a bit more expensive. If we're going to have anti-DS things, I would also like to see the return of something like the 3rd ed Auspex, getting you shots against Infiltrators (and add in outflankers) - for a reasonable price.

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  2. They are definitely brutal if you aren't prepared for them, I can say that much... but still, 32 poinnts for some fairly reliable anti-DS power is really cheap for it's effectiveness.

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  3. Hey Cole, don't know how else to contact you so, could you send me George's # (my email is jeffadow@gmail.com) or at least tell him that if he brings his orks to muldoon on Friday I'll buy 'em off him.
    -Jeff

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