SO I will do a full review of 7th soon, but I wanted to discuss the biggest change yet first. The psychic phase. Specifically how to own (read BREAK) it...
By introducing the phase to the game, GW has done a few things that will ripple through the meta for eternity. Every phase of the game has players vying for control of it in some way or form. Psychic powers used to be a method to attempt this. Now it is a phase of its own that players will either do what they can to dominate it OR what mitigate the effects the opponent has on them during it. Think back to the introduction of flyers. Pretty much the same thing in that regard.
Because of this effect Psykers are obligatory in virtually ALL armies now. Until codices start coming out with ways to give you warp charge during your opponents psychic phase or to give bonuses to deny the witch rolls without having psykers, the only reliable defense in this phase is to posses psykers of your own.
This really all boils down to the primary driving factor to the psychic phase is warp charge. Warp Charge, for those without 7th yet, is determined by adding up the mastery levels of the psykers you do have and then the player who's turn it is rolling a d6 and adding the result. This really means it is random turn to turn how many dice you have to cast and dispel. Which means to make the phase reliable and predictable for yourself, the best thing to do is take a lot of psykers, and high mastery level at that. This gives you a core of warp charge you can rely on to cast (or deny) devastating powers, the d6 roll being just gravy if it is high, but not truly detrimental if it is low. Plus the more psykers you have, the more squads you can embed them in to improve deny the witch rolls.
So now to get to the point of the post. Breaking the psychic phase. Really this is for all the imperial armies, however since nothing in the allies matrix prevents sharing of Warp Charge, it is usable to an extent by all factions.
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| Nobody Expects Them |
Since you can have unlimited numbers of detachments of any type now OR take unbound armies, your are able to take as many INQUISITORS as you'd like. This mini-codex is really a game changer now with an independent psychic phase. This is because the minimum requirement for an Inquisition detachment is one HQ and the basic HQ in the Inquisition codex is a single Inquisitor. This means that you can take as many one model detachments as you'd like. If you really wanted to mess with some one, you could just take 20+ inquisitors in a game.
Now the basic inquisitor is 25 points, and another 30 to be a Mastery Level 1 psyker with 2 powers. Now these powers don't really matter, because if you are doing this you should take a Mastery Level 4 psyker as your primary detachment HQ and pick powers you want. So what you are buying with the Inquisitor is a 55 point warp charge. Basically a capacitor.
To make this deal even sweeter, since ALL Imperial Armies are Battle Brothers (so this part is unusable with all other factions) with themselves. Independent Characters can join Battle Brother squads, and as such these inquisitors can attach to your squads in your primary detachment and give them +1 to all Deny the Witch rolls. This takes you from a 1 in 6 chance to a 1 in 3 chance to deny a Warp Charge 1 power. This is possibly worth 55 points on its own.
So taking 5 Psychic Inquisitors with nothing extra would cost 275 points, which isn't cheap, but it brings valuable defense to likely all your Troops and then some, and stabilizes your warp charge pool to at least 6 (5+1 on d6 roll of a 1). Add on any other psykers in your primary list and you are looking at a really good pool for both Offense and Defense. This is not even mentioning any of the specialized wargear that Inquisitors can take.
When it comes down to it, Inquisitors are the Power and Dispell scrolls of 40k. And I am sure you will be seeing a lot more of them in the months ahead.
