Yay for 7th ed Psychic Powers!

Well, the new 7th ed Psychic powers have leaked. I won't bother with detailing how the new Psychic Phase works - there are plenty of posts up on the net which do just that. Truth be told, I'm rather chuffed at how it's looking and here's why. In 6th ed, everybody wanted a piece of Prescience. Most of the time, it could be cast with a 1 in 12 chance of failure (assuming Ld10, 1 in 6 at Ld 9), which is practically as reliable as it gets, and it's a pretty massive force multiplier, regardless of what army you play. And since it was a blessing, there was nothing the opponent could do to stop it. Now, take a look:

Not sure if you can see it, but that's Warp Charge 2. Coupled with the fact that now, everybody (but Orks, Nids and Necrons) have access to Divination, this is pretty big. Now, from the previous 1 in 12 chance of failure (about 8%), we have, depending on the number of Warp Charge expended:

1 dice - No way.
2 dice - 75% chance to fail.
3 dice - 50% chance to fail.
4 dice - 31% chance to fail.
5 dice - 19% chance to fail.
6 dice - 11% chance to fail.

Even throwing triple the bare minimum number of dice required, we can't match the reliability of 6th ed Prescience. Now that's assuming you even managed to generate that many Warp Charges to throw at Prescience in the first place. If you're plodding about with a single level 1 psyker, you're not going to come up with 5 dice all that often. And we haven't included Perils of the Warp in our calculation. Or indeed the efforts of enemy psykers to nullify your spellcasting efforts. Good luck to you if you're fighting Grey Knights or Eldar...

And this is AWESOME! I love how this mechanic both eliminates Prescience as an auto-include power and makes all the other powers suddenly a lot more viable. Now having 3 Primaris Psykers with your Astra Militarum does not necessarily mean all 3 will be tasked with casting Prescience. Also, I love how it makes pure Grey Knight armies the psychic nuclear weapons they were meant to be. Time to dust off some pretty old models, I think...