Sunday, March 27, 2011

What's a psyfle and can I eat it with syrup?

With the title of flavor of the month, Grey Knights are changing how we view some otherwise, normal army selection.  One such choice is the much vaunted Dreadnought.  If you read you 3++ is the new black, Yes the Truth Hurts, or any of a plethora of other interconnected blogs and forums, you are familiar with the creation of a new vernacular that expands with the inclusion of new armies and units.  The Psyfleman is such an animal. 

The Psyfleman dread is basically a dreadnought armed with two twin-linked autocannons (also known as a Rifleman dread) and equipped with psybolt ammo.  It may additionally have extra armor and other such accoutrements, but the main pattern includings the autocannons and psybolt ammo. 

Well why is this unit so good? 
It takes what is successful about the rifleman and expands greatly upon it making it nearly a no-brainer choice. 

Riflemen and Psyflemen both act as ranged attack platforms. With TL weapons and a respectable BS4 (BS5 for Venerables), they almost always hit with their shots, toting in at a shocking 88% rate to-hit due to being able to reroll to-hit rolls. The Venerable rifleman or psyfleman does even better.    At S7, an autocannon firing 4 shots with rerolls will mess up most vehicles and pose a threat to any lightly to moderately armored infantry unit.  It has high strength shots at a fairly high volume for a single heavy weapons platform.

What distinguishes the psyfleman above his non-GK counterpart is the ability to take psybolt ammo.  This raises the strength value of its autocannons shots by 1.  The psyfleman is then firing 4 shots at S8 which can even glance a land raider, monolith, or the front armor of a leman russ!  This all rings in at 135pt., a mere pittance compared to the various other means required to get a similiar number of such shots. 

If that weren't all, GK Dreads all count as psykers with a LD of 10.  They come equipped with a single psychic power, fortitude. This is the ultimate ability for a vehicle.  Fortitude is cast in the movement phase and if successful allows all crew stunned or crew shaken results to be nullified!  That means that a dreadnought has the ability to totally negate 33% of the damage results on the vehicle damage chart (along with all the other GK vehicles).  This also means that it is very hard to shut down a GK dreadnought firing in its own backfield. 

You can sweeten the deal by bringing along Venerable Dreadnoughts with this weapons pattern as they are allowed to reroll any vehicle damage result on the table.  This means that a Venerable Dread even surpasses the surviviability of a regular GK dread though this comes in at an additional 60pts. 

If played correctly a GK dread or ven dread can stay at  the back of the table, in cover allowing it to negate a vast amount of damage through cover, AV12, and fortitude.  It can then sling back 4 shots per turn at S8 that will plaster most models on the table.  If the dreads are positioned near the back edges of the board, they should be placed outside the range of most psychic hoods (generally 24") meaning that fortitude is also easy to get through. 

Finally, Venerable dreads take up an Elite slot and regular dreads take up a Heavy slot in a GK army meaning that you can place 6 dreads in the army without needing any special unlocking character. 

If you look back at my previously mentioned army list, you can see why this is a favorable form of ranged support for the army.  You can also see what spamming this amazing unit is so easy to do!

1 comment:

Messanger of Death said...

Psyfleman just seem beastly. If I ever play my BT as GKs than those guys would be the first things added to the list.

Great write up as well.

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