Helm of Spite

As per the topic title. I love the rules for this little beauty. I seem to come up against weirdly few psykers but even in my short time in the game, I've learned the pain of smite spam with no counters. Not just a deny attempt from this cheeky little relic, but an automatic perils roll if you deny too!
But, I find myself wanting a Djinn blade. And I like getting a bit of mileage from my succbus with a bloodlgaive too. It's the best way to make those HQ's earn their cost. Suddenly, 3 CP's to take 3 relics feels a bit expensive. How hard are people working to include the Helm of Spite, or are you just not using it?

I run djinn blade and helm of spite, (1CP for prizes from the dark city) then run alliance of agony to give urien his warlord traint then gain the D3 CP

I use the stratagem to grab it pretty much every time I see my opponent fielding a psyker. In my last game against Astra Militarum the first time their psyker tried to manifest I successfully denied which caused the psyker to suffer perils which caused the nearby commissar to immediately shoot the psyker dead.

That was a good one.

More than anything it depends on 1) what else you were going to spend those CP on, and 2) what the enemy is doing with their pysker.

If you have a big pile of CP from multiple battalions (and a spare character who doesn't mind walking around with it) it's probably worth it. If you've only got a few or want to use Screaming Jets/Webway alot in set up you can probably go without.

If the enemy is using their pysker for game-defining powers (like the Orks Da Jump teleport), then having some ability to at least try and stop it is almost certainly worthwhile. If they're just smiting things, there might be an easier way to stop them (eg, getting a succubus to murder the psyker).

Against some opponents it's absolutely vital, like Thousand Sons or Grey Knights. Bear in mind that Thousand Sons have an objective which can earn 6 VP just for casting powers - we need a way to mitigate that to some extent.

It depends if the tournament or event you’re playing locks you into relics or not. Helm of spite vs Vexator Mask is a decision frequently decided by my opponent’s army.

I don't like to tailor my lists too much between games, so if I'm going from facing say a tau army with no psykers to a marine army with one maybe two psykers tops, I'll stick with my good old favored djinn blade and possibly the blood glaive as well since those items really boost the effectiveness of the characters they are for. That being said if I knew I was going up against a really psyker heavy army, especially GK or TS I would without question take the helm, just too handy in that sort of matchup. If you're constantly having pyskers ruin your plans, definetly an auto-include.

I usually run Wrists as main relic, keeping the Elm as the second one for 1 CP

Great this topic comes up now! I‘ve been reading good things about this relic, but on paper it seems super meh? You get roughly 6 attempts to deny, and that is at best a 50/50 chance. You also have to be in range and on the board (not in a transport) I think. And D3 mortal wounds aren’t exactly amazing. I don’t know, it just seems very lackluster to me, but I’d be happy to be convinced otherwise.

Will be playing Thousand Sons on Wednesday btw.

BlackCadian wrote:

Great this topic comes up now! I‘ve been reading good things about this relic, but on paper it seems super meh? You get roughly 6 attempts to deny, and that is at best a 50/50 chance. You also have to be in range and on the board (not in a transport) I think. And D3 mortal wounds aren’t exactly amazing. I don’t know, it just seems very lackluster to me, but I’d be happy to be convinced otherwise.

Will be playing Thousand Sons on Wednesday btw.

Well, you have to attempt to block that single annoying power per turn (like warptime etc). It's better than nothing. And if you get it, you even have a free smite on the psyker itself.

Seems pretty good to me

BlackCadian wrote:

Great this topic comes up now! I‘ve been reading good things about this relic, but on paper it seems super meh? You get roughly 6 attempts to deny, and that is at best a 50/50 chance. You also have to be in range and on the board (not in a transport) I think. And D3 mortal wounds aren’t exactly amazing. I don’t know, it just seems very lackluster to me, but I’d be happy to be convinced otherwise.

I'm in the same boat. Would it really be too much to ask that it allow you to try and deny 2 powers per turn?

Or else make it that enemy psykers within range suffers Perils on any failed attempt (regardless of whether it was because their power was denied or because they didn't meet the casting threshold).

What's worse is that the Helm represents the entirety of our psychic defence. (Unless you count that once-per-game stratagem whereby a Haemonculus has a 50/50 chance of lightly tickling nearby Psykers. )

While 2 attempts would be nice, do not underestimate that psychological impact of that relic on your opponent. He's not going to be as aggressive with his psykers when you tell him that each deny will cause a peril.

Deamon wrote:

While 2 attempts would be nice, do not underestimate that psychological impact of that relic on your opponent.  He's not going to be as aggressive with his psykers when you tell him that each deny will cause a peril.

I've never been a fan of this line of thinking. I'd prefer to have an artefact that's actually good, as opposed to a poor one that my opponent might overestimate.

Soulless Samurai wrote:

Deamon wrote:

While 2 attempts would be nice, do not underestimate that psychological impact of that relic on your opponent.  He's not going to be as aggressive with his psykers when you tell him that each deny will cause a peril.

I've never been a fan of this line of thinking. I'd prefer to have an artefact that's actually good, as opposed to a poor one that my opponent might overestimate.

Would they even be overestimating it? Giving us a deny is solid enough considering that we completely lack them otherwise, but automatically causing perils is icing on the cake. It's a pretty good relic, although in most cases it is far overshadowed by the others we have access to.

I love running psyker allies but even with them I'd still want to use it in some situations - four or five denies a round, with one of them causing perils, is a pretty hard shutdown for aggressive enemy psychic lists.

Burnage wrote:

Would they even be overestimating it?

Absolutely.

Burnage wrote:

Giving us a deny is solid enough considering that we completely lack them otherwise

Sorry but the fact that our psychic defence is basically nonexistent does not make a bad relic any less bad.

Burnage wrote:

but automatically causing perils is icing on the cake.

Except that it's not actually automatic because it only works if you manage to succeed on your single deny attempt.

Soulless Samurai wrote:

Burnage wrote:

Would they even be overestimating it?

Absolutely.

Burnage wrote:

Giving us a deny is solid enough considering that we completely lack them otherwise

Sorry but the fact that our psychic defence is basically nonexistent does not make a bad relic any less bad.

Burnage wrote:

but automatically causing perils is icing on the cake.

Except that it's not actually automatic because it only works if you manage to succeed on your single deny attempt.

I can't understand this. You have a chance to block a power per turn AND do a direct smite on the psyker, what's wrong with this?

I think the automatic perils is a pretty big deal. Your average psyker I'd say is about 4 wounds. Deny their power twice and that's probably a dead psyker. How is that not going to make your opponent think twice about casting?

Cerve wrote:

I can't understand this. You have a chance to block a power per turn AND do a direct smite on the psyker, what's wrong with this?

Well, first off, you're celebrating something that virtually every other army gets as standard, in addition to strong psychic powers (which we have no equivalent to). And indeed, which most other armies can do far more effectively, since they're not limited to 1 deny per army.

Next, for most other armies, the ability to deny powers is practically a bonus. It's something that comes free with every psyker. If the enemy has no psykers, it doesn't matter because your psykers have still got his psychic powers. Meanwhile, if the enemy doesn't have psykers, the Helm of Spite can do . . . nothing whatsoever.

So we have a tool that skips the main bonus of having psykers in the first place (i.e. psychic powers). And yet, even as a denial tool, it's abysmal. Its only purpose is to deny powers, so you'd think it would at least be good at that one role. Nope. It has exactly the same denying power as an IG Astropath. 1 Deny per turn, no bonus to the roll. You'll forgive me if I'm not seeing the appeal.

TL DR:
- It doesn't have enough deny attempts to be an effective denial tool against multiple psykers/powers.
- It doesn't have any bonus to it's one roll. So it can neither inflict Perils reliably, nor be counted on to reliably deny a key power each turn.
- A single perils, 50% of the time, just isn't enough of a threat or deterrent. And that's even before you consider expendable psykers, psykers who don't care about a couple of Mortal Wounds, psykers that can ignore Mortal Wounds etc.

Soulless Samurai wrote:

Cerve wrote:

I can't understand this. You have a chance to block a power per turn AND do a direct smite on the psyker, what's wrong with this?

Well, first off, you're celebrating something that virtually every other army gets as standard, in addition to strong psychic powers (which we have no equivalent to).

You aren't the only non-psyker faction. Tau, Necron, Khorne, Custodes, black templar, ad mech.
And 2 of those factions can't even ally in psykers like you can.

Getting a deny the witch roll is set as a warlord trait or artifact level power across those factions. Helm of spite being an artifact and causing perils is a significant bonus on top of that.

It should also be noticed that perils is worse than causing a smite, because if it does kill it then explodes outward into more mortal wounds.

While it won't always reliably deny, you get to choose to use your one deny after you see the psykic roll. and so you get to see if they succeeded on a 5 or 6 before going for that deny.

It's not crazy powerful, but between it and Crucible you have better anti-psyker game than any other non-psyker faction.

hexxenwyrd wrote:

You aren't the only non-psyker faction. Tau, Necron, Khorne, Custodes, black templar, ad mech.

Hence why I specifically said 'almost every other faction' as opposed to 'every other faction'.

hexxenwyrd wrote:

Getting a deny the witch roll is set as a warlord trait or artifact level power across those factions.

That doesn't make it good, just overvalued.

hexxenwyrd wrote:

Helm of spite being an artifact and causing perils is a significant bonus on top of that.

It really isn't.

hexxenwyrd wrote:

It should also be noticed that perils is worse than causing a smite, because if it does kill it then explodes outward into more mortal wounds.

Except that Smite works against non-psykers, can be done if the enemy isn't using psykers or casting powers, can be used if enemy psykers aren't in range of your powers etc.

hexxenwyrd wrote:

While it won't always reliably deny, you get to choose to use your one deny after you see the psykic roll. and so you get to see if they succeeded on a 5 or 6 before going for that deny.

Sure. But since you only get to try and dispel one power per turn, you have to really hope that they roll low on the most dangerous power.

hexxenwyrd wrote:

It's not crazy powerful, but between it and Crucible you have better anti-psyker game than any other non-psyker faction.

Okay. But since we've already set the bar so low that it encroaches on Satan's wine cellar, that's really not saying much.

I used it against an Eldar army. Turn one I took out one of their psykers and put a couple of wounds on a nearby unit. My opponent spent the rest of the game staying far away from the helm with the remaining psyker.

Honest question, do you not have much experance playing with psykers this edition?

Unless your out number the amount of psykic power attempts for of your opponent, which not a thing 'most armies' are capable of, you don't out attempt to deny every power. You don't 'hope they roll low on their best power'. You balance the need to deny with the likelyhood of pulling off the deny, and the helm of spite pushes you far to favoring likelyhood of deny.
Your opponent can't just 'oh well I'll see if I can get this last smite off', around the bearer, because they are risking getting that d3 mortal wounds back. This will hurt armies that rely on overloading the opponents deny attempts, which is a tactic armies use, now it's too risky to just throw out tones of mediocre powers (which smite it btw).

Against armies that a few psykic attempts per phase, you not have a deny chance, against armies that throw out tones of powers you present a real risk. That's a significant advantage over armies that are only running 1-2 deny chances from other sources.

As for the value of it being an artifact, that depends a bit on what the list building rules are for the event for 'add extra artifacts' start. If it's something you need to pay for before the event, it has the slight advantage of not being on your warlord which is always a target. If they let you use it after seeing lists it's huge.

Thank you for your valuable insight! I can see where you’re coming from. That said I have played vs Eldar and TS so far, and while it sucked not being able to do anything it never felt super crazy threatening.

Eldar Farseer with Guide for the Reapers will usually hang out way back out of genial range anyway. Against TS I’m starting to see the merits, but does it outweigh say, Vexator Mask or the writ? I’m not sure.

As fomer ce eldar player, who had played against pure cheese cw eldar, you likely won't just be facing a guiding farseers.
At minimum they should be tempted to move their farseers forward to doom, because it's the best power.
After that if they aren't trying to jinx I don't know why. Then you get hemlocks which can't sit in the back because their gun is 18".
A craftworld list that is holding back from using offensive psykers is weakening itself.

You might not have felt that you were doing anything against the cw psykers, but in that case you weren't feeling what jinx+doom does to units.

oops. Double post.