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Nemesis Dreadknights: Psilencer vs Psycannon


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I think I researched this but as you may have seen I'm putting a 1K list together (literally assembling it) this week.

 

I came to a head scratcher. In my research most seem to like the Heavy Psycannon over the Gatling Psilencer but I am thinking of running 1 of each. Again in my research, I don't see many people liking this weapon.

 

Before you roll your eyes and declare me Hereticus Idioticus Maximus, hear me out.... ;)

 

1) I am facing more and more armies with access to Feel No Pain. I just played a Dark Eldar dude and by the time I reached him his whole army (I believe) was a 5+ FNP when actually the stupid things have a 6+ save at times. 

 

2) FnP in multiwound models. It makes me cringe when I get through a guy and it's always the FnP saving him. Add in some forces with access to a Phylacter or It Will Not Die, and this can really suck.

 

3.) Necrons. The adjustment to Reanimation Protocols. I know a Decurion is sick, but people playing 'normal' or even Mephrit Necrons, this really hurts as it's on a 6+ and in the case of a Wraith (hey you never know) it's gone. (I play Necrons and stopped using the Decurion, I know how much harder it feels when you're going 5+ to 6+) I don't want to turn this into a Necron debate, but this does seem like a valid thought at this time.

 

4) Nids are rampant in my area. Not only are the multiwounds an issue there, the FnP is gross, and feels like it's in every army now.

 

So for the savings of a.... meltabomb? I think I may equip my Primary Dreadknight this way. I realize there are down sides, and I really think maybe the biggest is the lack of anti-tank hurting the army in the first place, and now I'm potentially removing St7.

 

 

What do you guys think? Am I on to something? Or am I ready for the Emperor's Mercy? 

 

Hey.

I run with both psycannon and psilencer on both my NDKs. You are aware you can pick 2 of the 3 gun options right? I was experimenting briefly with the flamer, and while it is a great weapon I use the NDKs to takr out big scary stuff. Force is usually up regardless so getting 12 shots first turn with a "force overwatch just try me" their turn, before forcing up again and charging in.. I've found it works for me! And if I do shoot hordes I feel more mileage than the flamer regardless because my opponents are masters of spreading out.

 

As for taking long to reach the enemy? Try the nemesis strike force and buy a comms relay,maybe even a cheap inquisitor with servo skulls. Park NDK on comms, reserves turn 1 on 3+ rerollable, low scatter thanks to skulls, shunt move the ndks (personal teleporter), unleash hell.

I take both for my NDKs. The weight of fire is tremendous with a total of 18 shots from each dreadknight. Unfortunately i haven't had the chance to try force on some really juicy targets, but the weight of fire really helps to mow down a lot of infantry.

Heavy psycannon, along with teleport and greatsword, are mandatory upgrades IMO. Never leave Titan without them, DK's just aren't anywhere near as effective. Not to mention the heavy psycannon is our best gun by far. Large blast mode deals with infantry, focused mode deals with armour. 

 

Secondary weapons are completely optional, but they can be great. Heavy incinerator is fantastic at smoking infantry off objectives. Gatling is great for denying FNP on infantry, plus it is pretty absurd against multi-wound (they only need to fail armour and they're dead). Don't rely on killing MC's with it, but it's a nice bonus when you take them out at range instead of having to commit to a charge with your DK (there are MC's that can kill a DK in melee). 

My dreadknights always have a heavy psycannon mandatory, since it's the best all round weapon, and almost always have a heavy psylencer as well, both combined gives the dreadknight as much shooting as a large terminator squad. Plus on rare occasions it's insta gibbed something expensive too.

One time in overwatch too XD

 

Plus a friend of mine started orks with feel no pain and nurgle Marines with it too, so it denies their fnp rolls because force grants instant death.

Oh boy... I just finished assembling my first Dreadknight and now you guys all use the Psilencer? I glued on the Hvy Incinerator and Hvy Psycannon already. 

 

I thought this was the goto. Lately as more and more people move away from PA armies, I'm seeing a greater need for it. Orks in Battlewagons, Dark Eldar in skimmers, crons in Arks...

 

Okay, I'm really glad I made this post before putting DK number 2 together! I'll go Psycannon and Psilencer on him. 

 

So as a side note I need to activate the force on the gun at the beginning of every turn? ( and usually do you guys just try it on 1 D6 or always make sure it's ignited?)

Well with your glued on gun problem, if you have a good modeling knife or a decent pair of cutty pliers, you can snip off the barrel of the gun, put magnets on the end of the bits you snipped , and voila! Instant gun changes whenever you see fit.

I've done this myself, but I used crappy magnets so mine always fall off somewhere in the carry case .... (-.-)

Thanks. I will try this on the second one. I can't believe I didn't think of this as it's just the tip of the gun that changes! The problem with cutting out the weapons is they kind of insert in the sleeve of the gun. I could really mess that up.

 

I will do this with the second DK, and the first one should be pretty valid anyway with Psycannon and Incinerator.  

Oh boy... I just finished assembling my first Dreadknight and now you guys all use the Psilencer? I glued on the Hvy Incinerator and Hvy Psycannon already. 

 

I thought this was the goto. Lately as more and more people move away from PA armies, I'm seeing a greater need for it. Orks in Battlewagons, Dark Eldar in skimmers, crons in Arks...

All good reasons to keep at least one with heavy incinerator.

Haha... I can see this will be a 'magnetic' situation. No matter what I glue on, I can see regretting it. lol

 

I think I asked this in the wrong place.... but do I have to turn on 'Force' for the Gatling? Or is it just Force automatically in the bullets?

The cannon is good but psilencer I take every time. I mix it up between flamer and cannon depending on what I think I'm facing.

The psilencer is a must with the 12 force shots. I play tau often and have managed to kill a riptide twice turn one, and a couple turn two.

It's weak but with so many hits you only need 1 failed save and bye bye.

Best to take one with cannon and one with flamer maybe.

Well I tried ripping off the glued weapon tips and it almost broke. Darn gw glue actually works!

 

I almost finished putting the second dk together and I can see it is quite easy to just glue the weapon tips on

the challenge is kind of doing it so that the tip at least somewhat matches the weapon body or housing.

 

So one of them is stuck with incinerator and psycannon. It's not the end of the world. And perhaps an excuse to buy a third one in the future! Lol

I keep thinking of my last games. Against two wound orks or chaos spawns the psilencer would have been very nice. Actually I didn't get to my de opponent until he had fnp running at 5plus . Denying his fnp would have been Big.

 

Then i think of how the de super shooty boats took a ton of flame damage. And of course all those ork trucks including the loota batylewagon take a lot of damage from the torrent. Now that I think of it both the incinerator and the psilencer would have been huge against my nemesis ork unit... The 12 man ork fnp lucky stick biker squad.

 

The more I think about it the more I think both...actually all 3weapons have a place in all my lists.

It's not so much that the Heavy Incinerator is a worse weapon than the Gatling Psilencer, it's arguably better overal (don't forget it's 10 points cheaper and doesn't ever require a psychic test). It's more that Incinerators can be gotten on other units just fine as well. 5 man Strike Squads with an Incinerator is a really good place to get one. Interceptors is another. Purifiers when running allied pods.

 

Gatling Psilencers just have a really high potential, they can be utterly stupid to play against, the same way ranged Strenght D can be really stupid (it's just that ranged Strenght D is always stupid lol). You rolled a 1? Congrats, your 220 point model just died to a relatively inexpensive gun firing S4.

 

Stupid in this case means you love it.

That is true. It's all a balancing act I suppose.  And then you have the odd game against an aegis line Astra list and wish you had an army of Incinerators....

 

I do find most of my weapon loadouts in the past 6 months have definitely shifted to xenos requirements. Before I was looking for more AP2, now I'm looking to kill fist fulls of crap, denying cover / fnp as much as possible.

 

I supposed I should be prepared to rip the arms off in 6 months when it all shifts again!

Yea, I wasn't thinking... I'm kind of ticked off about it, but at least one will have swappable weapons....

 

What I was thinking about is a lot of the DK advice is to take as many as possible, and I was wondering about the 2 I have in my 1K list for a game this week...

 

How do I defend against a Poison army? I have a good chance of playing a DE guy. Taking the formation, do I just put everything in reserve and cross my fingers? Do I start on the table, and hope my 2+ saves me?

 

Last game I played against DE at 1K I faced approximately 52 poison shots in turn 1. I see Necrons giving me a similar threat.

Psilencer weaponry is really the only broken thing we can do at range, with gatling guns being one of the best places to access them. The other is a psilencer on a grand master due entirely to divination. 

 

Im at the point of forget incinerators and forget psycannons too (well not all but most, due to a few troublesome things like void shields) and instead spam ranged instant death. Anti tank is handled in combat. This makes the army much better against multi wound units and MCs, or in other words makes us good at something besides anti psyker/anti daemon. This approach also means purifiers don't necessarily need to be on the frontlines as long as they are fueling ranged instant death weaponry.

 

Anyway just some musings.. 

The S4 AP- still neuters the effectiveness of the Psilencer versus any targets with better than T4 and/or a 4+ save. If Psilencers were S6, or ignored Armor saves, you would be spot on. Hell, if it was 4+ poison, you'd be right. But as is, the only platform worth taking it on is the NDK, due to it being 12" move Relentless with 12 shots.

 

SJ

Maybe that's true.... maybe the only valid platform (which is kind of strange when you think of it) is the Knight. However, I'm just using the last 6 months as a gauge of how much more important it would be in my games.

 

Maybe it's just my meta but it seemed over 6 months... maybe 12, efficient, low AP (3) was in higher demand. Now spam is huge. Maelstrom and strong, spammy xenos codexes have brought out the need for something like this to be more prevalent.

 

It sure would be nice to have more valid variants of it available elsewhere in the codex.

Yeah as Gentlemanloser said, you don't even need magnets.  You just assemble the gun and the U shaped cable bit that sticks into the hole on the bottom of the arm, and the whole thing will just pop on the arm.  I did this with mine and it's easy to swap them out.  Since they are designed symmetrically you can put either gun on either arm if you think it looks better to have just the sword in one hand and the canon on the other etc.   The gun assembly bits are pretty cheap on E-bay too so you can have all three built for each dread.   I only have one so far but this is how I would recommend doing it. 

 

-Brett

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