IF Defensive Stance and Noble Praetorian PsyPower

By master_death, in Deathwatch

Posted at

I really like the Imperial Fists and I play an IF Tactical Marine with focus on leadership at the moment. The only thing that bothers me is the Defensive Stance of the Chapter and to a lesser degree the PsyPower Noble Praetorian.

If I understand right, if I use this Stance, the whole Squad gets immune to fear, as long as they defend the nominated terrain piece. It costs 3 Cohesion and can be sustained. If I interpret the living errata correctly I have to pay once for the Stance and then can use it freely for the entire mission.

The only effect Fear has is the loss of Cohesion. That means the only mission, were Hold at all Cost is useful, is a mission with lots of fear causing enemies, so that I pay once the 3 Cohesion and suffer no further losses o cohesion throughout the mission, as I can always reactivate the Defensive Stance.

Is this assessment correct?

Posted at

master_death said:

I really like the Imperial Fists and I play an IF Tactical Marine with focus on leadership at the moment. The only thing that bothers me is the Defensive Stance of the Chapter and to a lesser degree the PsyPower Noble Praetorian.

If I understand right, if I use this Stance, the whole Squad gets immune to fear, as long as they defend the nominated terrain piece. It costs 3 Cohesion and can be sustained. If I interpret the living errata correctly I have to pay once for the Stance and then can use it freely for the entire mission.

The only effect Fear has is the loss of Cohesion. That means the only mission, were Hold at all Cost is useful, is a mission with lots of fear causing enemies, so that I pay once the 3 Cohesion and suffer no further losses o cohesion throughout the mission, as I can always reactivate the Defensive Stance.

Is this assessment correct?

It is much worse. Only those who have access to this squad mode ability get to benefit from this power. That means almost exclusively Imperial Fists and successor, unless you have a IF Tac with Tactical Expertise or the like. And while they do benefit from it, they cannot make use of their Solo Mode abilities, nor benefit from other squad mode abilities (Regroup, Fire For Effect or an Ultramarine Tactical sharing Lead By Example rerolls). Further one has to wonder if the losses due to Fear would actually surpass the loss of 3 Cohesion. As you said, only for very specific instances useful. Note that you don't have to trigger it at the start of a mission, only as the need arises.

Yeah, it's utterly worthless since Marines are by default near-immune to Fear anyway. I am not sure if Andy Hoare (who wrote the chapter rules) was thoroughly familiar with the system when he wrote the rules. With the psy power you can at least buff non-marines, so it's not total fail. The only way to salvage the squad mode ability partially though is to make it cost 1 Cohesion. I doubt a KT will be willing to pay that though given what abilties you can get for 2 points. Still I recommend it as a house rule.

Alex