Psychic Awakening: The Greater Good Review

Over the weekend, at the previously mentioned AOS tourney, I picked up a lot of products one of my local FLGS’s (Friendly Local Game Store). One of the products I picked up was the new 40k book in the Psychic Awakening series, The Greater Good.

Before giving my brief review, I feel like I have to tell you that I am also a Craftworlds player and picked up the original Psychic Awakening book for the various Eldar factions, and honestly, I found it very lacking. This book, The Greater Good, is much better. I am not a Tau player, at the moment, but the options in here looked solid. The new rules for Shadowsun are stellar, and even seeing those rules got me thinking about building a Tau army again. That being said, I will stay the course, as my current goal is to build an Astra Militarum (Imperial Guard for you old folks) force. As I said the Tau options seemed solid, but one slight disappointment is that a major portion of the Tau section is comprised of “The Eight” for the Farsight Enclaves. They didn’t seem that different than the rules that I got in this year’s Chapter Approved, so I kinda feel like they sold me those rules twice.

That being said, if you are an Astra Militarum player then this book is for you. It adds a few stratagems that help struggling unit (looking at your sentinels), but the real winners here are the Tempestus (Latin for Stormtroopers) and tanks. This book adds tank aces, which are special abilities you can give to tanks in your army. You can take a tank ace ability in lieu of your warlord trait, but don’t. You can also get one by spending command points. Some of these are really solid and shockingly you can take them on artillery as well as the Leman Russ variants. After this section the Tempestus get a whole section to themselves where they get regimental special rules, warlord traits, relics, and stratagems. These are stellar and if you have any Tempestus this is a must have. The second I saw these I went from a planned 15 Tempestus in my army to 30.  Surprisingly, but awesomely, is the fact that there are stratagems for fleet commanders, and Valkyries in this section as well (and they are very good). The only sticking point is that to get access to these you have to have a detachment with only Tempestus (and the navy units). So, if you like Tempestus and Valkyries this book is a must have. Kind in mind, however, that the fleet commander and Valk’s have to be in the detachment with the Tempestus to use the stratagems. That being said, this is easily done.

I honestly, did not pay much attention to the Genestealer Cult rules in here, as they are still doing really well in the meta, so if you came here for my opinion on those, please accept my apologies. I’d rather just admit that I don’t know much about the army instead of giving you a badly informed opinion.

I’ll try to do a few more quick reviews from time to time.

In other news, I wrote this while taking a break from making my board game map/board. I am hoping to have a prototype soon….

Justin