6th ed Psy Power: Molten Beam (Pyromancy)

With the pre-orders for 6th Edition Warhammer 40,000 up for sale at Games Workshop, the news is coming in thick and fast.  On the pre-release page for the psychic powers card set, we get our first glimpse of one of the new power available to certain psykers.

Its called Molten Beam and falls under the Pyromancy umbrella.

On the surface, it is the psyker's melta gun: the same stats and range as a melta gun: S8, AP1, 12" range, assault 1, combined with the melta special rules.  This will give many psykers a tactical edge if the rumours about these powers being in addition to the regular powers turn out to be true.  A deepstriking librarian with access to pyromancy can suddenly turn in to a vehicle killer, in addition to other purposes (turning enemies in to chaos spawn! for chaos ... but interestingly, Space Wolves and Blood Angels apparently aren't getting access to pyromancy  - unlike regular marines of all other types).

The only thing I'm not certain about is the "warp charge 2" words in the top right corner.  I'm guessing that this refers to the psykers level, but wouldn't wager on that.

The image above is of my vintage bone armour chaos champion.  The connection to psychic powers (however tenuous!) is that I used to use this miniature as the Changeling (lower image): a Tzeentch horror with a unique power (the glamour).

That brings me circuitously to my final thoughts: daemons are not getting access to these powers.  I suppose that the principle reason is that daemons powers are not psychics, fundamentally -- they're ingrained and intrinsic in to the daemon themselves (i.e. no psychic tests ever). So I can see that angle.  But perhaps the next daemons codex will give access to them at some cost (e.g. swapping of powers perhaps)?  A forlorn hope maybe...