Doom of Mal is better than I thought!

[chicop76]

I dusted of my nids and decided to use the doom. I don't use it cause I think it's broken and overpowered. After arguing via web and in store we decided to put it to the test. Nids vs Grey Cheese, Cheese = Knights. Well I fought Grey Cheese before with nids and it usually turns into if my tervgons live long enough for my poison gaunts with fnp kill his guys due to the sheer amount of poison attacks. Also have to hope that my tervigon keep spawning gaunts. Typically it's a good fight that usually go either way.

I decided to go with Biomancy on my Doom. Strangly you don't see many people do that. Looking over biomanc, which is rather good. You can get at least 3 powers that make the doom awesome.

1. Iron Arm of course. Toughness 5-7. Instant kill that. Makes the Doom Broken at this point. Eternal Warrior to boot. If you get this power I say again. Very broken. Perfect if you roll on average to get 6s.

2. Leech Essence: if you wound once you at least get two wounds back. It's a reliable shooting attack that allows you to get that extra wound.

3. Smite: endurance doesn't stop instant kill, means it's useless and the other two powers is not that great. Smite is a good power due to good bs, decent strength an good ap. It's a good fall back.

Overall you are really trying to go for Iron Arm since pie plate of death with you having a lot of wounds is awesome.

In this game I was lucky to get iron arm, bad rolling pays off. Needless to say I was pretty unkillable. The huge amount of psycannons was scarry, endurance from tyrant realy helped. I had a godd initial ds which I was able to kill 3 models which put me up to 7 wounds with toughness 6 with a +3 invulnerable.

What was great once locked in combat I was able to nuke the squad twice and I was getting one or two attacks through that wounded on 2s during combat. I shut down hammerhand with shadows of the warp.

What was intersting after losing a terminator squad and a regular squad to my Doom. His dreadnought tied up the doom until late game. His aura doesn't work on vehicles and I at best was glancing or need a 6 to pen the dreadnought. I won the game due to the initial damage to doom caused.

I just wanted to say Doom+Iron hide = broken. I'll concede and say without iron hide it's a good model lol.

[mathhammer]

though it is interesting on the turn you deep strike you can't cast Iron Arm and that is the giant window for your opponent to take doom out.

I have seen it done both ways with the powers, and really it is up to who your fighting against.

[chicop76]

though it is interesting on the turn you deep strike you can't cast Iron Arm and that is the giant window for your opponent to take doom out.

I have seen it done both ways with the powers, and really it is up to who your fighting against.


Lol. We completly forgot it's before deep strike so no warp powers if you come via reserve. Funny I remember for my tervigon, but forgot it with my doom. Grant it it was my first time switching out the dooms powers.

[daboarder]

Lol. We completly forgot it's before deep strike so no warp powers if you come via reserve. Funny I remember for my tervigon, but forgot it with my doom. Grant it it was my first time switching out the dooms powers.

It's fun how not broken things are when you actually use the rules.

[Learn2Eel]

I thought the Rulebook FAQ clarified that the player whose turn it is gets to decide which comes first - either blessings or reserves. Wasn't the point of that so if you had a psyker coming out of reserve, they could still cast blessings on themselves? Just curious.

[DarkLink]

You're correct, you can still cast Blessings even when you come in from reserve. Not being able to do so is a relic from 5th ed, where it didn't clarify that you got to pick the order in which stuff at the beginning of the turn/phase happens. Last edition, you couldn't, now you can choose to resolve reserves first then psychic powers, since bother are beginning of the movement phase.


Iron Arm is just kind of a stupid power in general. Stick that on almost anything, doesn't matter what, and it gets a lot tougher to kill.

[daboarder]

I thought the Rulebook FAQ clarified that the player whose turn it is gets to decide which comes first - either blessings or reserves. Wasn't the point of that so if you had a psyker coming out of reserve, they could still cast blessings on themselves? Just curious.


Unless stated otherwise, a unit cannot charge, or use any
abilities or special rules that must be used at the start of
the turn, in the turn it arrives from reserve.

The FAQ does not change this it merely clarrifies that a psyker that is on the table can cast a blessing on a unit that arrives from reserves. if the psyker himself arrives from reserves he is still bound by the above section of the reserves rules.

[chicop76]

The FAQ does not change this it merely clarrifies that a psyker that is on the table can cast a blessing on a unit that arrives from reserves. if the psyker himself arrives from reserves he is still bound by the above section of the reserves rules.

I played it like he can't. Used him today again and let my opponent read how unbroken doom was. This time I decided to use spore mines in my fast attack, you 1/3 chance of giving away easy vps. Anyway the doom worked wonders again. I played Tau and deep striked all my spore mines in the good sections in terrain which forced a good chunk of his army out of terrain. I went first which my mines was able to easily make their points back by blowing up on his troops anyway. When my turn came around I was able to block line of sight with my pod from his instant kill part of his army. Thanks to on Ethereal I max out on wounds early on.

He took two rounds to kill the doom due to los blocking pod and my tygon taking out any strength 8 or higher units. I pretty much forced him to fire all his firewarriors into it and ion head. He did had one turn of clearshooting tx to instant killing the pod with his railguns. In short for two rounds my army advanced and wiped out his army due to the doom.

Now my doom killed off a fire warrior squad and 3 others from another squad, but it's ability to soak up fire and a pod that blocked line of sight from all instant killing weapons really helped. Heck the only reason my doom even died is that I overshot the unit I wanted to charge. If I didn't fire at that squad and assaulted the doom would had live another turn due to it's being locked in combat.

In the end store is 2 on 2 and says doom is broken. Even more so with the pod blocking los and other units tying up or killing the units that can kill the doom.

[daboarder]

I played it like he can't. Used him today again and let my opponent read how unbroken doom was. This time I decided to use spore mines in my fast attack, you 1/3 chance of giving away easy vps. Anyway the doom worked wonders again. I played Tau and deep striked all my spore mines in the good sections in terrain which forced a good chunk of his army out of terrain. I went first which my mines was able to easily make their points back by blowing up on his troops anyway. When my turn came around I was able to block line of sight with my pod from his instant kill part of his army. Thanks to on Ethereal I max out on wounds early on.

He took two rounds to kill the doom due to los blocking pod and my tygon taking out any strength 8 or higher units. I pretty much forced him to fire all his firewarriors into it and ion head. He did had one turn of clearshooting tx to instant killing the pod with his railguns. In short for two rounds my army advanced and wiped out his army due to the doom.

Now my doom killed off a fire warrior squad and 3 others from another squad, but it's ability to soak up fire and a pod that blocked line of sight from all instant killing weapons really helped. Heck the only reason my doom even died is that I overshot the unit I wanted to charge. If I didn't fire at that squad and assaulted the doom would had live another turn due to it's being locked in combat.

In the end store is 2 on 2 and says doom is broken. Even more so with the pod blocking los and other units tying up or killing the units that can kill the doom.

...yeah I don't buy this. for one, spore mines as per the FAQ do not prevent you opponent from deploying near them. Two I fail to see how a single pod prevented an entire tau armies S8 shooting from drawing a bead on the doom or how a trygon could have "killed all the S8".

if this was a true story then it sound like you honestly just out played your opponent. the DoM in this didn't do anything a couple of podded shriekthropes wouldn't have.

[DarkLink]

Or, if the Trygon did kill all the str8+ in, what, two shooting and one assault phase, your opponent's list sucked.


The FAQ does not change this it merely clarrifies that a psyker that is on the table can cast a blessing on a unit that arrives from reserves. if the psyker himself arrives from reserves he is still bound by the above section of the reserves rules.

But a lot of psychic powers aren't used at the start of the turn, they're used at the start of the movement phase:

Q: Blessings are manifested ‘at the start of the Psyker’s Movement
phase’ – does this mean they happen simultaneously with Reserves
rolls, Outflanking rolls etc and if so which is resolved first? (p68)
A: They do occursimultaneously – as such, the player whose
turn it is decides in what orderthese things occur as per
page 9 of the Warhammer 40,000 rulebook.

[daboarder]

Or, if the Trygon did kill all the str8+ in, what, two shooting and one assault phase, your opponent's list sucked.



But a lot of psychic powers aren't used at the start of the turn, they're used at the start of the movement phase:

Q: Blessings are manifested ‘at the start of the Psyker’s Movement
phase’ – does this mean they happen simultaneously with Reserves
rolls, Outflanking rolls etc and if so which is resolved first? (p68)
A: They do occursimultaneously – as such, the player whose
turn it is decides in what orderthese things occur as per
page 9 of the Warhammer 40,000 rulebook.


For the reserves and blessings to be in conflict GW must be using "start of the turn" and "start of the movent phase" interchangeably. we know this because reserves state they occur at the start of the turn, but the above fact give the resolution for a conflict between start of the phase and the start of the turn.

Reserves rules:


At the start of your Turn Two, you must roll

Blessings:


Blessings are manifested at the start of the Psyker's Movement
phase.

We know those two are in conflict as GW has stated that they are, Therefore they must be interchangeable.

This is further supported when we look at the turn sequence.


In a complete game turn, each player gets a player turn, divided
into Movement, Shooting and Assault phases

So the start of the turn is the start of the movement phase, there are only three parts to the turn, and therefore the start must occur in one of the three phases. which is the movement phase.

further support is given in the deepstrike rules


In the Movement phase during which they arrive, deep
striking units may not move any further,

telling us that the unit "arrives" during the movement phase.

Therefore we can determine that sure you decide what happens first but the psyker cannot cast when not on the table and as per the reserves rules quoted above cannot use abilities, and special rules when he does show up.

edit:to be honest I can throw up more quotes if you want as they are pretty proliferate throughout the rule book. (nb:not be snarky just genuinely offering)

[DarkLink]

That quote was from GW's FAQ. If you're going to accept that they're in conflict because GW said they are, then you'll accept that you can choose which order they occur in because GW said so. GW doesn't write its rules well enough to get nit-picky over it. Either play with the FAQs or use your own interpretation.

[daboarder]

That quote was from GW's FAQ. If you're going to accept that they're in conflict because GW said they are, then you'll accept that you can choose which order they occur in because GW said so. GW doesn't write its rules well enough to get nit-picky over it. Either play with the FAQs or use your own interpretation.

I accepted both. As I said, you can choose what happens all you want, still can't cast blessing though, either because the psyker is literally not on the table. or because the Reserves rules specifically prohibit you from doing that on the turn you arrive.

my entire point is that the rules interchange "start of the turn" and "start of the movement phase"

they are the same thing, as evidenced liberally throughout the rulebook.

unless you want to argue that a unit arriving from reserves by deep strike is allowed to move and assault.

[chicop76]

I have to re look, but the reason for no psychic from reserves was do to getting a warp charge. I haven't look yet, but supposdly you can't due to the fact you don't even have the warp charge to even cast.

No spore mines do not stop you from deplyoing, but it stops you from deploying within 1" of them. With 3 3" circles saying x unit can not deply here made it the case. The way they deep striked in before he deployed he could deploy in one piec of terrain at all and he could had deplyed in another rather close to a mine.

I used them in 3rd and 4th until the updated nid codex. I decided to give them a try and see how they worked out. Rules state again you can't place models within 1" of them, since their base is 1" it's a 3" circle you can't deploy in. Than the fact they can blow up within 2" of you makes it a 5" circle. Throw in the fact a large blast is 5" you would want your model 2.5" away and it now becomes a 6" you do not deploy here circle. If you are risk adverse I made your deployment harder with 3 6" circles or if you don't care about the mines killing your guys than it's a 3" circle denial. Either way I can limit or force you out of terrain. It's risky on my part due to mishaps, or scatter. In that game they pretty much split his forces and left a huge gap for me to exploit.

Is your answer to everything is the opponent is bad. Wow, and I was playing against the person who usually wins a lot of tournaments in the North Houston area.

That being said. It's important to note I went and deployed first. Also he decided not to run an Ethereal which is beyond me. The pod blocked line of sight to a good portion of his army. The initial spore pre deep strike split his force into two which tha bulk of my army attacked the half I wanted. To complicate thing I ran with my army twice to be in his face. Hmm let's do the math for you. Run twice 2-12" plus 12" movement will get you very near said players deployment zone. When does the doom come in. Wow turn 2 when your army is in his face. Oh and tervigon gaunts can move 12" due to spawn 6" and move another 6". Ok

I have to admit that +4 cover really helped due to ruins and having endurance and life leech really helped to keep my big guys alive. Too bad no iron arm :(, that pissed me off with 16 rolls on biomancy you would think someone would get iron arm, nop just a lot. Of enfeeble, endurance, and life leech, and smite( lots of 6s). The cover issue only helped when I even had cover by the way.

I killed his riptide due to enfeeble and my trygon plus swarmlord unloading into him with preferred enemy with 24 shots wounding on 3s and 4s with re rolling on 1s to hit and to wound. I cornered the tide with my swarmlord firing at him with leech and my trygon and doom on the other side of him.

So when he fired into my zonathorpe with 10 wounds it was mostly strength 5 weapons. Longshot fire and I with a 3+ invulnerable saved. Riptide fired with his overcharged ion and I saved again. Broadsides could't see due to the pod. The other half was blasting away my gaunts that waswas getting rather close thanks to 12" movement. He managed to kill the doom. He blew away my pod with his broadsides so he can see the doom next turn. My doom died to a lot of strength 5 shots due to the fact that I saved against the sides anyway and swarmlord was eating his tide while my trygon with 5 wounds on it killed long shot. Grant it the spore mines and drop pod hlped the doom on disrupting the players line of sight and blocking line of sight.

He had a lot of plasma, skyfire, and strength 7 shooting. He had a decent amount of stregth 8 and higher which I cut down due to placement and thinking ahead.

At end of game it was ageed broken model. Even if it didn't kill anything or had any extra wounds. It is still soaking up fire power that could had went somewhere else. In the end more nids make it to his lines.

Also throw in the fact he destroyed me 2 weeks ago without the doom and me not deep striking at all last time. Had a lot of iron arm, but he went first killing my stuff before I could do anything :(.

[dwez]

1. Iron Arm of course. Toughness 5-7. Instant kill that. Makes the Doom Broken at this point. Eternal Warrior to boot. If you get this power I say again. Very broken. Perfect if you roll on average to get 6s.

2. Leech Essence: if you wound once you at least get two wounds back. It's a reliable shooting attack that allows you to get that extra wound.
In this game I was lucky to get iron arm, bad rolling pays off. Needless to say I was pretty unkillable. The huge amount of psycannons was scarry, endurance from tyrant realy helped. I had a godd initial ds which I was able to kill 3 models which put me up to 7 wounds with toughness 6 with a +3 invulnerable.

What was intersting after losing a terminator squad and a regular squad to my Doom. His dreadnought tied up the doom until late game. His aura doesn't work on vehicles and I at best was glancing or need a 6 to pen the dreadnought. I won the game due to the initial damage to doom caused.


And if you take Psychic Scream as a Primaris power he essentially gets another chance at Spirit Leech but no cover saves, you have to hit of course and your opponent gets a chance at Deny the Witch but useful all the same as once again for every wound.

Not sure why you would want Leech Essence as everything he kills he gets a wound for anyway. Also his strength is the same as his wounds so if you had 7 wounds = 7St and +2St for Iron Arm why was it so difficult to take the Dreadnought down or had he lost some wounds by then? Yes he can be broken but it makes a change Nids got something good.

[mathhammer]

main rule book
page 67
"On a turn that a psyker arrives from reserves (see page 124) he cannot attempt to manifest any psychic powers that must be manifested at the start of the Movement phase."

[chicop76]

Or, if the Trygon did kill all the str8+ in, what, two shooting and one assault phase, your opponent's list sucked.



But a lot of psychic powers aren't used at the start of the turn, they're used at the start of the movement phase:

Q: Blessings are manifested ‘at the start of the Psyker’s Movement
phase’ – does this mean they happen simultaneously with Reserves
rolls, Outflanking rolls etc and if so which is resolved first? (p68)
A: They do occursimultaneously – as such, the player whose
turn it is decides in what orderthese things occur as per
page 9 of the Warhammer 40,000 rulebook.

That is a direct qoute from the FAQ. Unless Darklink can ulter the FAQ to his liking, so he is correct.


main rule book
page 67
"On a turn that a psyker arrives from reserves (see page 124) he cannot attempt to manifest any psychic powers that must be manifested at the start of the Movement phase."

I just read most of the codex and the FAQ today.

Pg.67 states that you can't basically use any powers that start in the movement phase.

The Dooms scream isn't a psychic ability and he can only swap on power :( and only a master 1 psyker. The swarmlord is the only master 2.

So I can use iron arm the same turn I come in with the Doom, and use any blessing, witchfire, focused, witchfire, beam , maelstrom, or nova ability the turn he deep strikes in.

I had problems with dreadnought since I was strength 5, too many wounds frm getting blasted by entire army.

The reason you go for leech is the fact you rolling biomancy for Iron Arm. Which means if you get leech it's better than smite.

Also another power I failed to say was good was the d3 I and a. If you manage to have a high strength the possible +3 I and A is really good. Remember every time he wounds he get a wound back.

[daboarder]

Mate please no. just stop it.

I'll tell you what, we'll agree the DoM is broken, on the priviso that your not actually playing by the proper rules.

[Caitsidhe]

There are several, known stages of grief Chicop76. I suggest reading up on them and figuring out where you are on that scale. Whenever someone gets curbstomped in a game (or even a couple) they tend to fixate on one model or unit against which it SEEMED like they had no answer. "THAT IS THE PROBLEM I TELL YOU," he cried. It isn't. Get over it. I kill the DOM on the rare occassions it pops up against me with relative ease. It is a good model. Nobody is saying it isn't. It does the job they designed it to do pretty well. That doesn't make it broken or the source of all woe. Get some context. Get some perspective.

[chicop76]

Mate please no. just stop it.

I'll tell you what, we'll agree the DoM is broken, on the priviso that your not actually playing by the proper rules.


So you want me to completly ignore the FAQ that spells out blessings work coming in via reserve and ignore that in the psychic secton it say only powers that can't be used is the ones at the start of movment. Oh wait FAQ overrides the main book which means blessings is exempt. Meaning hello deep striking iron arm doom.

@caitsidihe: well if 130 points can kill at times kill as much as 1 k points thanks to possibily getting Iron Arm I don't think that is broken. It's beyond broken. Only unit that did that was flamers of tzeentch and look what happened to them. I will agree that doom is not broken if you agree the white dwarf flamers wasn't broken.

[Caitsidhe]

@caitsidihe: well if 130 points can kill at times kill as much as 1 k points thanks to possibily getting Iron Arm I don't think that is broken. It's beyond broken. Only unit that did that was flamers of tzeentch and look what happened to them. I will agree that doom is not broken if you agree the white dwarf flamers wasn't broken.

Weird events happen. Fortunes of war. I've had my 170pt model destroy an entire army by itself, all 1850pts. :D That same model went on to be destroyed the moment it arrived the next game, and failed to do much damage at all despite being on the board all game in the third. Weird things happen. It isn't the model. It is the game.

[chicop76]

Weird events happen. Fortunes of war. I've had my 170pt model destroy an entire army by itself, all 1850pts. :D That same model went on to be destroyed the moment it arrived the next game, and failed to do much damage at all despite being on the board all game in the third. Weird things happen. It isn't the model. It is the game.

It's how often said model does it is what I am getting at. Due to randomness anything can be taken out before it does something. I used the Doom 3x in 6th, so far. It had simite one time ,iron arm once, and it's large blast. The smite doom was able to tie up Tau for almost 2 turns and only killed about 130 points. In the other 2 games it just dominated and actualy kill way more models worth it's cost. Even the smite doom earned it's keep since he allowed me to get may army across the board.

The point is not too many units can stop it from nuking once or twice, and shooting, before you can do something back to it. Even if you kill it you wasted energy to do so. Not saying every game it's gonna dominate no model can reliable say it can do that.

Even fleshhounds/ bloothirster falls apart if you keep your cool. The differance is and my point is the relatively cheap cost. He's damn near a throw away unit on top of the other stuff.

[chicop76]

Weird events happen. Fortunes of war. I've had my 170pt model destroy an entire army by itself, all 1850pts. :D That same model went on to be destroyed the moment it arrived the next game, and failed to do much damage at all despite being on the board all game in the third. Weird things happen. It isn't the model. It is the game.

It's how often said model does it is what I am getting at. Due to randomness anything can be taken out before it does something. I used the Doom 3x in 6th, so far. It had simite one time ,iron arm once, and it's large blast. The smite doom was able to tie up Tau for almost 2 turns and only killed about 130 points. In the other 2 games it just dominated and actualy kill way more models worth it's cost. Even the smite doom earned it's keep since he allowed me to get may army across the board.

The point is not too many units can stop it from nuking once or twice, and shooting, before you can do something back to it. Even if you kill it you wasted energy to do so. Not saying every game it's gonna dominate no model can reliable say it can do that.

Even fleshhounds/ bloothirster falls apart if you keep your cool. The differance is and my point is the relatively cheap cost. He's damn near a throw away unit on top of the other stuff.

[Anakzar]

I took the FAQ and not being able to cast while not on board combo to work in the following way.

The Psyker can't come in buffed because he can't cast off board, nor can a Psyker cast a buff after it arrives due to it having to be cast at the start of his movement phase which he used to come in from reserves.

A Psyker that didn't arrive from reserves can cast a buff on a unit that comes in from reserves, provided he casts said buff before he moves. (this is what the FAQ addressed)

The doom's Ability is what's called an aurora rather than a power, since it uses no force points and works automatically if in range. This is the only way the doom gains wounds... unless it has leech or some other power. Just wounding in CC does not give wounds to the doom. But it will gain wounds if the unit it is in CC with fails its Ld roll against the aurora at the start of the shooting phase.

I agree that Iron arm can make the doom really scary but its only a one in 6 chance to roll a 1 for iron arm, not sure its worth dropping stock power for that chance as the stock power is very nice for blasting tanks once the doom is powered up.

Another good power is from Telepathy the one you can get without rolling is Psychic Scream and while it can be Denied it hits almost like the aurora and is unaffected by cover as well as armor, don't get wounds back but still nice.

On named chars I would think you should stick to the powers it comes with since its named but I guess its not spelled out, so you can roll on the charts? Swarmlord gets all 4 tyranid powers but I see a lot of folks rerolling those on the bio chart hoping for both Iron arm and Warp speed.

[mathhammer]

@anakzar.

1) Your view on who can cast and when is spot on. The FAQ question was targeting casting a buff onto a unit arriving from reserve not a unit arriving from reserve self casting a buff.

2) It's aura happens in the later phases so it doesn't matter what the faqs say about the movement phase.

3) If the aura causes any wounds the doom gets wounds, it is not limited to what it is in hand to hand with.

4) The biggest thing with iron arm is if
a) the doom has it
b) the other player will spend his shooting phase trying to kill the doom instead of the swarm closing in.
c) if you can get the doom immunity to ID (as a tyrant casting the other biomancy power on him) then it can eat a turn of shooting.
d) fear is one of it's better attributes in this case, as long as it arrives on turn 2.

5) The doom only gets one power, even though it is a Zoanthrope it doesn't get the Zoanthrope powers. The swarmlord gets all 4 powers (per codex). This was clarified in the faq.

[chicop76]

@anakzar.

1) Your view on who can cast and when is spot on. The FAQ question was targeting casting a buff onto a unit arriving from reserve not a unit arriving from reserve self casting a buff.

2) It's aura happens in the later phases so it doesn't matter what the faqs say about the movement phase.

3) If the aura causes any wounds the doom gets wounds, it is not limited to what it is in hand to hand with.

4) The biggest thing with iron arm is if
a) the doom has it
b) the other player will spend his shooting phase trying to kill the doom instead of the swarm closing in.
c) if you can get the doom immunity to ID (as a tyrant casting the other biomancy power on him) then it can eat a turn of shooting.
d) fear is one of it's better attributes in this case, as long as it arrives on turn 2.

5) The doom only gets one power, even though it is a Zoanthrope it doesn't get the Zoanthrope powers. The swarmlord gets all 4 powers (per codex). This was clarified in the faq.



1. I can see that. Although if the FAQ allows me for example say that reserve is first than blessing second and it's both during the start of movement you can argue that you could cast biomancy before you come in. Honestly I didn't use powers at al the other two times I cam in. Although I did when I used biomancy. I will have to re look in the FAQ, but looking at it this way makes sence

2. Aura is at the start of the shooting phase, so it's going off. In 6 turns that's 12 pops.

3. Spirit Leech ability does not give it wounds all Spirit Leech does is the aura effect of death.

Pg. 58 Tyranid Codex " Absorb Life: The Doom of Malan'tai immediately gains +1 wound, to a maximum of 10 wounds, for every unsaved wound it inflicts"

Absorb Life allows it to get wounds from usaved melee attacks, cataclysm, and spirit leech. If it has any ability that allow it to wound with out saves it gains wounds. Life Leech is 2 attacks it can gain 2 wounds. Life Leech itself gives the Doom and extra wound due to it's ability, so 3 max or 2 min. The blast at high wounds is good, but at low wounds is ok, not to mention it takes d3 wounds off, which makes casting it at 3 wounds almost a possible death. Life Leech you can cast if you only have 1 wound left without fear it will kill you, as long as you past your psychic test.

4. it's worth getting due to being tougness 5 and having eternal warrior. The eternal warrior is enough really, but the extra toughness is a boon. If you get up to 10 wounds for under 100 points you have a strength 10 model that have 10 wounds and have an average toughness of 6. With only 3 attacks and the fact it can deny saves it would be better than most your MCs. It is already more durable than anything you have almost 500 points for 10 wounds all toughness 6 with hiveguard and tyrant. Less attacks but actually more durable to a 3+ invulnerable.

5. Page 89 under Doom of Mal it list one psychic power.

Oh swarmlord gets 4 but only cast 2, and tervigon can possibly get 3 and cast 1. Not broken as well.

The porblem with iron arm it only works on the psyker, so you can cast endurance on the doom which makes it harder to kill, but can only get the it will not die effect if it is under 4 wounds.

[daboarder]

Look your anecdotal evidence is terrible.

I mean I the last three games I used the doom it died withoutndoing a thing to the first krak missile it met. Now tell me. Does that mean that its underpowered? Becaue according to you it would.

[dwez]

I used it in a 3 game tournament where it failed it's first save and was instakilled, game 2 the same thing happened and game three I had to make two saves and it failed one. With T4 it's main purpose is a fire magnet, to totally change your opponents priorities. Gambling on Iron Arm is quite a risk when guaranteeing Psychic Shriek is even more painful and can root out those units in cover. However, it's been pointed out with my track record of saving throws I'm odds on to get it.

Saying that he's been ultra successful in other games, wiping out a bike squad and then Cataclysming 1.5 Landspeeders. Recently against my mate with Guard he has been unstoppable albeit not always Leeching, but if he stays round long enough he becomes the sole thing he focuses on and eventually those Leadership rolls fail and he can cripple the back field. I can imagine with Iron Arm and surviving that first turn he would be a complete nightmare. Personally I don't think he'll make it into the next Codex.

Loads of battle reports with him in on my blog: http://40kaddict.blogspot.com

[mathhammer]

1. I can see that. Although if the FAQ allows me for example say that reserve is first than blessing second and it's both during the start of movement you can argue that you could cast biomancy before you come in. Honestly I didn't use powers at al the other two times I cam in. Although I did when I used biomancy. I will have to re look in the FAQ, but looking at it this way makes sence

Rereading the rule book the reason why the faq is stated the way it is on page 68:


Blessings are manifested at the start of the Psyker's movement phase.

So a psyker doesn't cast a blessing until you select the psyker to move it thus starting it's movement phase.

If all the powers were to happen first then it would have said player's movement phase.

You can't have the psyker cast the power on himself when he comes in from reserves because the rule book says no.

[chicop76]

Rereading the rule book the reason why the faq is stated the way it is on page 68:



So a psyker doesn't cast a blessing until you select the psyker to move it thus starting it's movement phase.

If all the powers were to happen first then it would have said player's movement phase.

You can't have the psyker cast the power on himself when he comes in from reserves because the rule book says no.

I din't disagree with you. Just wanted to re read to make sure that's all.

page 67 3rd paragraph goes on to even mention what happens if you come on via reserves and try to use powers. I jus had to re read the FAQ really.

When you put it the way you did it made sence.

I was doing mathhammer to say how easy it was to eventually instant kill him.

Also that I ran him a few time I never really noticed how you can take advantage of the drop pod blocking line of sight. In a way you also force them to shoot at the drop pod as well.

[mathhammer]

I don't think he (doom) is a bad model. In this 6th edition with people running away from vehicles he becomes a lot more viable.

Would I have been happier if he was a unique unit upgrade, yeppers.

I have him in my current list since he makes the other player sweat reserves more.