Iron arm

[iyama]

This is a quick open question to the hive.
I managed to roll for Iron arm for the first time the other day and it was so helpful, but I always read peopletalking about taking iron arm and think to myself that its such a difficult psychic ability to roll for that how can so many people depend on it, or am I missing something about the ability go gain iron arm? isnt it roll for a 1 on a D6? we cant just take it as standard can we?

[ranmafan]

You roll a D6 to generate the powers.

Never, NEVER assume you can roll a specific ability. It's a poor tactician who depends on a specific ability for victory. It's nice when you get it, but nothing should change if you didn't.

[PumpkinHead]

Your strategy should change depending on what you roll for psychic powers. Life is much different if you roll iron arm and warp speed, vs hemorrhage and enfeeble.

[iyama]

yea I hardly ever use the psychic powers that much any way, specially if I want to fire both twin linked devourers for 12 shots re-rolling misses (if the psychics are maledicyion/whitchfire)

[toonarmy]

if you take the swarmlord you are more likely to get it than not. 2/3 of the time you will get it. this is because he gets 4 psychic powers.

it is great though, i was in combat with marines the other day and they couldn't hurt me

[iyama]

May 22, 2013 15:28:27 GMT toonarmy said:

if you take the swarmlord you are more likely to get it than not. 2/3 of the time you will get it. this is because he gets 4 psychic powers.

this is probably a stupid question but why does he get 4? is it because of his mastery level? I must confess that because I dont use the psychic powers all that much that I dont fully understand them and their rules yet

[warfrogger]

May 22, 2013 15:38:49 GMT iyama said:

May 22, 2013 15:28:27 GMT toonarmy said:

if you take the swarmlord you are more likely to get it than not. 2/3 of the time you will get it. this is because he gets 4 psychic powers.

this is probably a stupid question but why does he get 4? is it because of his mastery level? I must confess that because I dont use the psychic powers all that much that I dont fully understand them and their rules yet

\

He gets 4 because our faq for 6th says if our pskers trade in their powers for BRB powers they get one per power they normally would have had.

Swarmlord has all 4 tyrant powers by default so when he trades in he gets 4 rolls to use on the tables we are allowed to roll on. Typically these are all done on Biomancey for most people so he can get 4/6 powers because you can't get the same power twice.

His mastery level as nothing to do with it unlike the 6th chaos marine dex (probably the others too just haven't read them) where they get a roll per mastery level.

[halos]

Tyranids (and some of the other older codexes) generate psychic powers in a slightly unintuitive fashion.

The rulebook states you roll for powers off of the tables equal to your mastery level.
However when the nid book was made there were no mastery levels so instead a Tyranid psyker who wishes to take rulebook powers may roll on the table a number of times equal to the number of powers it has in the Tyranid codex. (This is clarified in the Tyranid FAQ.)
So, a Hive Tyrant has 2 powers and so may roll twice, the Swarmlord has 4 and can roll 4 times.

As for why Iron Arm is so useful; it makes Monstrous Creatures hilariously tough whilst providing the much needed Eternal Warrior to valuable models.
Certainly you might not roll it up every game but if you have, say, two Hive Tyrant and two Tervigons then between them you have 10 rolls on the Biomancy table, and a pretty good chance of at least one or two of them scoring Iron Arm.
It's all about redundancy.

[coredump]

May 22, 2013 15:25:45 GMT iyama said:

yea I hardly ever use the psychic powers that much any way, specially if I want to fire both twin linked devourers for 12 shots re-rolling misses (if the psychics are maledicyion/whitchfire)

Neither blessings nor maledictions are psychic shooting attacks, so you can use a malediction and still fire both TL Devourers. This is a main reason why I swap out from the codex powers.


If you are not using psy powers very much, you are missing out on one of the Nids most powerful traits.

yes IA is only a 33% chance, so you can't be sure. But Endurance, enfeeble, warp speed are also good powers.

[gigasnail]

that's also why you take X3 powers on tervigons, to be fairly certain you'll get something useful.

[scrotatohead]

Psychic powers are also a great in game distraction. Get your opponent thinking about your psychic powers, get them flustered by Iron Arm, and they sometimes forget their game strategy. It suddenly becomes "I've got to take down that Flyrant" instead of "I've got to advance and contest that objective or "I've got to use my shooting as Interceptor instead of saving it for those ymgarls when they pop up next turn".

[Raven]

Considering that in a standard list you're rolling 10+ psychic powers, you have a pretty good chance of getting Iron Arm on a couple of things if you're rolling on Biomancy for all of them.

[zoat]

A nid army can have so many rolls on biomancy, it's insane! 2 for each Tyrant, 1-3 for each Tervigon, 2 or each Broodlord, 2 for each Zoanthrope, 1 for the doom and 4 for the swarmlord.
You can have an army just with units containing psykers that roll for Iron Arm, Endurance or anything you need.
In 1500 you can have (without other upgrades): HQ: 2 Tervs with 6 powers, Elite: 3x3 Zoanthropes with 18 powers(!) and Troops: 5 Stealers + BL with 10 powers.
34 rolls for biomancy, statistically every power almost 6 times. Wanna give it a try?

[kurbutti]

After a while I've decided that Tervigons are almost always better off with their Codex powers... You get FnP at 18" range every time. The chance of them rolling something horribly useless is too high. Some people like to run their Tervigons as some kind of tanks, but I dunno...

'Tis true that psychic powers govern the way you play the game. Maybe it's just me but I've had my share of Tervigons with Biomancy Primaris and Haemorrhage...

[halos]

Tervigons with Catalyst are nice certainly, but a Tervigon with Iron Arm is much more tactically flexible.

At T8 she becomes immune to the majority of small arms and can therefore soak Overwatches, or move out of cover to a better position whilst even heavy weapons have a much lesser chance of wounding.
With 3 powers you're likely to roll up at least one decent Biomancy power, and at Mastery one that's all you need.
-Iron Arm goes without saying
-Warp Speed turns the Tervigon into a S10 smash machine
-Endurance is catalyst but with a better range, and IWND to boot
-And I maintain Enfeeble to be one of the best powers in the game, boosts poisoned attacks, stymies enemy strength, nerfs Thunder Hammers, removes FnP, it can do all sorts.

So 3 powers, if you roll Haemorrage or Leech Life first off then keep it in case you roll it again, if your next roll is also Haemorrage/Leech Life then keep it again, then your final roll is garunteed to be something decent.