One of my chief time/money/sanity sinks for my limited hobby time is the fantastic Games Workshop (GW) game, Warhammer 40k. GW actually makes several great miniatures games, and their IP has spread to several successful board game and RPGs from board game giant, Fantasy Flight Games (FFG). Unfortunately, both GW and FFG also make extremely expensive games/products, which means I can't play everything that interests me in their ranges. For GW, I've selected 40k, the sci-fi hero scale table top miniature game... which makes me a super geek.
I have collected three armies over the years (since the 2nd edition of the game), but the greatest amount of time, effort and money has gone into my massive Space Marine army. They were the army that drew me in (like the majority of 40k geeks), and have remained my main focus. Accordingly, when I throw 40k topics up here, they'll probably have a very strong Astartes focus.
One thing that I have seen change dramatically (several times) over the various editions of 40k is the psychic phase. In 2nd edition (particularly with the introduction of Dark Millennium), you were pretty much guaranteed to lose a game if the other guy brought a psyker and you didn't. The psychic phase could quickly dominate every game... which was kind of silly. The psychic phase dried up very quickly in 3rd and 4th, but the psychic phase has slowly started working its way back into the game with each new codex in 5th edition.
Because Space Marines were one of the first releases in 5th ed., their powers are not quite as useful as those that have been introduced in later army releases, but there are still powers that have some useful bite... and some that are kind of useless. Everybody has their opinion as to which are the best and worst powers, much of which is largely situational, but here are a couple of my favorites and least favorites of the nine available to the Vanilla crew:
Best:
Two of my favorite Space Marine psychic powers are Might of the Ancients and Avenger. Although I never put both of these powers on the same librarian, I find that these two are the most useful to me in a given game.
Avenger is useful because: (1) it never misses, (2) at S5 it can wound most infantry in the game on a 2 or 3, (3) at AP3, only terminators and a few rare exceptions are going to get an armor save, and (4) since it is a template weapon, nobody is going to get a cover save. How is this power not pure win? It thins out bunched up troops like nobody's business, softens up hordes for an assault, and even has a 1/3 chance to put wounds on a random monstrous creature or two. Whether you prefer a gate-librarian in terminator armor, or just keep your bare bones libby in a rhino, this template power is very handy against just about anything you'll face on the table.
Might is perhaps a more controversial power, but one that I still like to bring to the table. Since the only way you're going to get an invulnerable save on a librarian is to put him in terminator armor (typically with a storm shield for even greater protection), most people don't like to put their librarians in a close combat situation. They are not the combat powerhouses that they used to be, so it's a tricky call. This power often falls by the wayside for several good reasons... Typically, if you're putting a librarian in combat, he's got terminator armor and a storm shield -- which means he's probably using the Gate power to jump around the board leaving a single slot left for a psychic power. A lot of people prefer to use for a shooting power so that they can soften up an assault (like with the Avenger), or more likely, so that they feel that the librarian is actually contributing to every phase of the game. If the libby is not in terminator armor, you don't want him in close combat, so this close combat power isn't a brilliant idea. And unless you've invested the points in an Epistolary, you only get one psychic power/test per turn, which most people will want to reserve for their force weapon to take down multi-wound creatures/characters.
Hey, those are all good reasons, but I think they miss the bigger picture. At S4, your librarian still has to wound the big bad monster/character he's swinging at in order to use the force weapon. That's going to be tough against anything over T4 because of the librarian's limited combat profile -- and most of the big bad monster/characters that have multiple wounds are generally stronger than T4 or will strike so much faster than your librarian that he will probably not get a chance to hit the bad guy at all.
Might is useful because it makes your librarian S6, which means you're going to wound a typical monstrous creature half the time, and multi-wound bad guys at T5 or less even more often. Further, it also makes him a threat to most vehicles in the game. At S6 and 2D6 armor penetration you are very rarely going to fail to penetrate most armor in the game. Face it, a Might infused librarian hits very hard. And since the force weapon is a power weapon, you have a very good chance to wound with every strike you make. Light-characters will still fail, and even four-wound monsters like the dreaded hive tyrant, who is not going to enjoy your terminator armor and storm shield, will be wary of this power. Further, since he's only S6, there is a distinct possibility that the other guy will prefer to target the much scarier S8 thunder hammer terminators that are typically escorting this librarian into combat (and haven't struck back, yet). And if you have invested in an Epistolary, there is a good chance that you're still going to be able to use the force weapon the turn you assault (since you can't assault from a deep strike like Gate anyway), which means even the toughest multi-wound monstrous creatures are going to fear your humble librarian.
The Bad:
On the flip side, there are also powers that I very rarely find any use for in the game. The two I find least useful in most cases are Machine Curse, and more controversially, Force Dome. The first of these, Machine Curse, is the easiest to dump on because it is such an obvious stinker. In order to use it, you've not only got to pass your psychic test, you've also got to hit it like a shooting attack -- and there are no re-rolls. Then, if you do hit, you're only going to do a glancing hit. Now, the glancing hit is not necessarily a bad thing, especially when looking down the barrel of a demolisher cannon, but having to roll to hit makes this power much less appealing. Frankly, I think GW realized this one was not enough of a sure thing which is why the more recent Space Wolf and Blood Angels psychic powers are much more effective at accomplishing similar tasks. In my opinion, if you've already got to roll to hit, you might as well take something with a little more punch, like Vortex of Doom that will probably hit something, and has a very good chance of taking out the enemy vehicle (or anything else it shoots at) completely out of the game.
The other power that I dislike, that other people seem to find useful, is Force Dome. On the face of it, sure, giving a 5++ invulnerable save to the librarian and his unit sounds good in principle, but I just can't put much stock in it. I find that it is typically very very easy to maneuver your troops in such a fashion that they're going to get some kind of cover save -- and that's usually going to be a 4++ save. Further, since it is limited to the librarian and his unit, this is only going to be useful if your librarian and his unit are not in terminator armor, which already has a 5++ save. And finally, let's face it. As a frequent Guard and Dark Eldar player, I am acutely aware of the fact that 5+ save is not that impressive -- especially given the point about the cover save above. Yeah, it's a 1/3 chance to survive AP1, 2, and 3 weapons when you've left your troops out in the open, but as often as MEQ players complain about the increased amount of that kind of firepower in the game these days, it isn't nearly as frequent as people think it is.
In my experience, the only time this power is worth the slot is when your unit is about to be trampled by a squad of power weapon wielding bad guys. Unless I am sticking my librarian with an objective holding squad, which is very rare, the kind of units he's running around with typically already has that 5++ save (i.e. terminators), or is being used in conjunction with another squad that will most likely be able to come in and mop up that power weapon squad in the next round (e.g. power weapon heavy Vanguard). In that latter case, I'd actually prefer a little Quickening so that I could get my own power weapon swings in first anyway!
And those are my thoughts on my favorite and least favorite Astartes psychic powers. With the exception of Machine Curse, I think every power has its uses in a given situation, but I find that it is poor tactical planning to assume that a specific situation must arise in a given game. You're much better off taking choices that are going to be useful in the largest number of situations so that you don't fall prey to the inevitable paper,rock, scissors of gimmicky tactics. That's not to say that you shouldn't experiment, because that's half the fun of fielding a jack-of-all-trades army in the first place; but if you are betting on certain situations arising during a game such that the enemy has to blunder in between your hammer and anvil to pull off the win, you're probably going to lose.
