Editing Psychic Awakening (section)

== Reception ==
=== Story ===
For the most part, the entire Psychic Awakening event has been met with [[skub|mixed results]]. In regards to the stories that they each tell, for the most part they come off with the same old "status quo" storytelling that GW used to tell, with there being no clear winner in most books and no groundbreaking changes for the factions involved within them. (Part of this is because GW has started taking a "no exact dates" policy with the lore; to wit, none of the PA books state any specific date, and current lore is that thanks to the [[Great Rift]] endlessly fucking with time there's no way to know for sure when anything happens. It's hinted that PA events happened before/during/after the [[Indomitus Crusade]], depending on the exact book and events.)

Complaints have come about the quality of the writing: for example, the lead up to the Tau PA book had a lot of mention of Death Guard, but they were suspiciously absent from the book. Ghaz vs Ragnar were talked up as the greatest of rivals, forgetting Ghaz's famous rivalry with Yarrick. In the end it felt less like these books were written in respect to existing lore and more to fall in line with the release schedule GW wanted to put out.

From general discussion the books which received most of the praise for the best tales and story were
# War of the Spider
# Faith and Fury
# Ritual of Damned

The ones that were consider least popular for story were
# Saga of the Beast
# Blood of the Phoenix

For many, War of the Spider was popular as it took several unlikely groups and has them battling it out in the Cadian System. Ritual of Damned was also praised for its less classical match-up, opting to instead bring in the Dark Angels and Grey Knights against the Thousand Sons.

=== Army Updates ===
As for army updates, while every faction has walked out of it better off then they did going into it, for the most part, there is clear and obvious disparity between who got more love from GW's game designers.
* Grey Knights and Genestealer Cults. For the latter, the Grey Knights were effectively brought back from the dead: they received such a boon in terms of buffs and new mechanics that they can now hold their own against most anyone, not just daemons. Are they competitive? Not really, but they're in a far better place than they were before (excepting the Psi-Bolts Bolter Discipline cheese).
* As for Genestealer Cults, they ostensibly received the same treatment that other factions got - custom cult abilities, new psychic powers, and stratagems - but theirs were of such lower quality that they were practically unusable in comparison to the options found in their main codex.
* The Dark Eldar fared even worse with no usable custom obsessions, no psychic powers (not that they had any anyways) and '''no''' stratagems at all, only receiving a slight tweak to Drazhar's profile and a weapon option for the Klaivex which already existed in the Index.
* The Deathwatch and Harlequins also got shafted, since GW decided they weren't worth making an actual book for (or even a single new model between them, unless you count a [[derp|Harlequins character given to Sisters of Battle]]) and had their respective rules shunted to two separate White Dwarf articles in what legitimately feels like an afterthought addendum. To be fair, 9th edition is around the corner, and GW has stated that this edition will focus on humanity vs xenos, so they are probably going to get a decent update anyway. Still doesn't justify keeping the combat doctrines' update away from the Deathwatch until the very end of 8th Ed., though.
* Orks received a big boon to their army with the inclusion of a new Ghaz statblock, Makari, and Big Mek with KFF being brought back from Legends limbo. Additionally the stratagems gave new life to some models, such as Da Biggest Boss which gives the Warboss a much needed Invul Save. But the Custom Mob rules didn't match up to the custom sub faction rules of other armies as you couldn't mix or match to create your own Clan.
* Craftworld Eldar received some long overdue updates to their ageing range, what with new Howling Banshees and, hopefully, the First update for the ancient Phoenix lord models. Rules wise the Craftworlds experienced a mostly lateral power movement, what with most of their new rules having to be swapped in/out for pre-existing ones, unless you use up command points.
* Space Marines fared very well, despite most flavours of Marines only getting very little content with this series of books. Iron Hands, an already absurdly strong army already, got a solid boost by letting them go from 6+ FNP to 5+ FNP by upgrading an Apothecary with a new Stratagem. Psychic Awakening served to bring Dark Angels and Blood Angels up to the new absurd level of power that Codex Marines 2.0 brought and once again brought Blood Angels up as one of the armies to watch out for and removed Dark Angels from the very bottom of the 40k tier list and gave the Wolves some more play.
* Chaos Space Marines received more warlord traits, relics and stratagems than any other army from Psychic Awakening, existing disparities between Legions due to balance issues from Legion Traits meant that despite armies like Word Bearers and Night Lords getting some very strong Stratagems they still could not compete with Alpha Legion. Non-Legion warbands got absolutely nothing though so there was still something to be salty about for Chaos players.
*Talons of the Emprah share the same update flavour of the Death Guard or the Thousand sons, with a relic-warlord trait-stratagem per sub-faction. Nice new universal stratagems, but no new universal rules. Maybe they have gifted them to the Space marines.
* The Tau recieved new stratagems and custom sept tenets like other factions as well as prototype weapon systems that can be picked instead of relics and often affect entire units. Some, like the Magna Rail Rifle, seem to represent what some weapons should have looked like from the start. The big winners though were Farsight Enclaves: They received a new abilities, the option to take more commanders and got a host of dedicated stratagems that made a more aggressive playstyle actually possible although still not great.
* Necrons and Sisters of battle got... nothing. Not one thing. This is because they will probably be amongst the earliest 3 codices of 9th edition along with Space Marines, but considering that Space Marines got their Psychic Awakening goodies 3 months after the release of their updated 8th edition codex that seems a poor excuse.

=== New/Updated Models ===
In regards to new/updated model releases, GW also hasn't exactly been equally considerate of each faction. Outside of Phoenix Rising, Saga of the Beast, Engine War and Pariah, most Psychic Awakenings only released a single new model per entry, most of which are simply updated versions of existing named characters (a welcome change but still a touch lackluster). Thus far, the ''only'' faction to actually get anything strictly new is the Adeptus Mechanicus, who will be receiving three kits split into seven brand new units for their army. Contrast this with factions like the Imperial Guard, Tyranids, Genestealer Cults, Death Guard, Deathwatch and Thousand Sons who received diddly [[squat]] and it's not hard to feel left out (especially Imperial Guard, losing their rough riders to Legends only for the AdMech of all factions to suddenly get two cavalry options). Especially when some of these aforementioned factions had mediocre-at-best army updates to begin with.

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[[Category:Warhammer 40,000]]