All in the Mind

I've been talking with Andy about his experiences at Open War on Saturday and he said that 6 Daemon players finished in the top 15. Along with the large number of Blood Angel players at Warp Storm and Kirby's excellent write up, I've been thinking about changing the psychic powers on my Rune Priests. Specifically, I'm thinking about bringing in Tempest's Wrath.

At the minute I take two Rune Priests both in Rhinos, both with Living Lightning. I can move my pillboxes 6" to ensure I have good shots and then I get two lots of D6 shots of infinite range S7 goodness. This fits in really well with the rest of the long range shooting in my army and gives me some good chances to take out Rhinos and Land Speeders and stun Chimeras and Vendettas. I also take Murderous Hurricane on one of the Priests. 3D6 S3 hits won't do a huge amount of damage by itself but putting the unit that you cast this upon into Difficult and Dangerous Terrain for a turn is golden. So, a unit that wants to assualt you has to take two tests which will hopefully both leave them short of assault and kill another couple of models. Plus if they don't have Assault Grenades, they're hitting last.

Anyway, that's three out of my four powers selected and they're the ones that I'm happy with. I've been taking Jaws of the World Wolf as my other power and it's been a bit hit and miss. In one game against Tyranids it took out a Hive Tyrant, 2 Tyrant Guard and a Zoanthrope in one turn but that was sheer bad luck from the other player. Against Andy's Orks it has proven useful to snipe at Nobs with Power Claws but against his Space Marines it's never done that much damage. Part of the issue there is that it's very much the 2nd power so I spend most of the game using Living Lightning. Is it worth keeping for that 1 in 6 chance (assuming you pass your physchic test) to kill a Broodlord, Lysander, Calgar or any of those other high priced characters? At the moment I'm leaning towards keeping it in my list for regular games but I think I'd probably replace it with Tempest's Wrath for a tournament.

As a brief footnote, I'd like to talk about the other two powers and why I personally don't take them. I tried Fury of the Wolf Spirits once but found it too short ranged, not quite deadly enough and the bonus of Pinning is only useful against certain armies. As for Stormcaller, again I've tried it a couple of times but since I run a mech list I can get a 4+ save by popping smoke rather than a 5+ save by using this.