Ravenwing Tactics: Psychic Powers

Ravenwing Tactics: Psychic Powers

I’m not going to go through each psychic discipline and explain each spell. Instead I’m going to talk about the strengths of each discipline and when you want to roll on it. While these are meant for Ravenwing players, most of the broad strokes apply to any army.

Divination
One of the better general purpose disciplines, only the last power in this list is bad for a ravenwing army. Black knights don’t benefit much from prescience for shooting, but grav bikes and multi-melta attack bikes do. Ignores cover is amazing, and a 4+ invulnerable save isn’t a game-changer but if it saves a couple black knights it’s probably paid it’s cost. Overwatch at full BS actually overrides the stipulation that Grim Resolve has on jinking, making you terrifying to charge. Divination suffers from not being the best against any individual any army, but if you’re running a large number of psykers and already got the powers you need you probably won’t go wrong with this discipline.

Interromancy
Ties with Divination as the best all-rounder discipline, and definitely has more strong powers. Mind Wipe is overcosted but it can work as a discount invisibility and allow you to beat enemy death stars, and aversion works in a similar manner. Righteous repugnance is pretty good and can help you get an important round of combat off with your black knights or an allied unit. Trephination is pretty bad and seed of fear is situational. Mind Worm is usually not worth it but combined with the Eye of Vengeance you’ve got a decent chance of sucking someone’s brain out, especially a monstrous creature like a riptide.

Telekinesis, Geokinesis, and Pyromancy
I’m including this entry so people won’t say I forgot three disciplines. There’s nothing in them that you need and can’t get better somewhere else. Don’t bother with them.

Daemonology
Both types of Daemonology have some things to offer Ravenwing, but they really aren’t worth it due to the higher chance of perils. I could see a case for hammerhand and banishment when playing against daemons, but you’re probably better off with librarius for that.

Biomancy
Dark Angels don’t have access to it, but it’s easy to ally in some Space Marines who do. -1 toughness and strength can be pretty good, same for 4+ feel no pain to keep your boys kicking. The shooting attacks are mostly useless, so there aren’t a lot of times I’d recommend this over another discipline because there’s too many bad powers and not enough amazing ones.

Telepathy
Speaking of amazing powers, Invisibility is the best power in the game. I don’t think I’ve heard a single good argument for any power being better than it. Even in ITC format where it’s nerfed, it’s still powerful. Unfortunately the rest of the table is only ok, only being useful against people susceptible to leadership shenanigans like Tau or Eldar. And those are exactly the two armies you’re pretty much always going to use this discipline against. Shriek is great for killing wraithknights and riptides, terrify can run units off the board and spare you the shooting, and invsibility is going to make most your units unkillable. Against other armies this is a toss-up. It can be useful against drop pod alpha strike space marine armies, but I would never use it against daemons, especially sceamers who don’t care at all with their automatic hits. But for daemons we’ve got…

Librarius
Invisibility may be the best power, but Librarius is a strong contender for best discipline. There are few bad powers in here. Null Zone and Veil of time are amazing, the shooting attacks are decent for their warp charge cost, and Scourge can potentially really mess up other psykers. This is the discipline you want against daemons and death stars. Invisibility helps in melee but being able to drop the invulnerable save of thunderstars or reroll your saves against sceamer drive-bys is incredibly important. Might of Heroes is also fantastic if your librarian needs to head off on their own to go decapitate a riptide or something.

Technomancy
Once in awhile in the first round of a tournament you’re going to play against some guy who decided to run a dozen walkers or three knights. That’s really the only kind of person you’ll need this discipline against, because regular vehicles are weak and easily picked apart in melee or with plasma by our bikes.

Fulmination
The Telepathy of alpha-strikes. Most of the powers in this discipline are situational or bad, until you get to electrodisplacement. Unfortunately every tournament format so far has nerfed this power to not allow you to charge after using it, so there’s no reason to take this discipline.

I think I've covered the most requested topics now. If you've got anything else you'd like to see for next week let me know. Otherwise I'll try and cook something up myself.