End times magic shenanigans

[Demian]

x°x I meant to say that the rules deny re-casting of a spell if either the wizard doesn't meet the required dice roll, or another wizard stops him the 1st time =)

 

[Dakaar]

Theres a debate on the tomb kings forum saying a failed attempt means only if the casting value isnt met, and a dispel doesnt make it a failed spell, just a stopped spell.

 

[najo]

The problem with it not including dispels is it leads to broken combos with dark magic and dark elf sorcerers plus removes all ability of your opponent to disrupt you spamming a spell. With stacking spell effects and lore attributes (like fire) this could get way out of hand if an opponent doesn't have a method to curb it. It does most likely include dispels, because aside from stating failed casting in the rules themselves, in the overview it states that all previous attempts to cast the spell must be successful in order to cast a spell again.

 

[LordTobiothan]

The problem with it not including dispels is it leads to broken combos with dark magic and dark elf sorcerers plus removes all ability of your opponent to disrupt you spamming a spell. With stacking spell effects and lore attributes (like fire) this could get way out of hand if an opponent doesn't have a method to curb it. It does most likely include dispels, because aside from stating failed casting in the rules themselves, in the overview it states that all previous attempts to cast the spell must be successful in order to cast a spell again.

Except by current rules if your wizard fails to cast a spell he cannot cast anything for the rest of the magic phase. If that included dispels then your opponent only needs to stop the first spell your level 4 throws to basically end your magic phase. And I'm pretty sure no one thinks it works that way.

 

[najo]

Except by current rules if your wizard fails to cast a spell he cannot cast anything for the rest of the magic phase. If that included dispels then your opponent only needs to stop the first spell your level 4 throws to basically end your magic phase. And I'm pretty sure no one thinks it works that way.

Isn't that why they say to ignore Broken Concentration, which is the reason Wizards have to end their casting? Though, then that could be the reason they put a rule in for spells not being able to recast.

 

[Count Gery]

Hi Everyone. New blood here on the forum, long time reader, first time poster... but I really wanted to join this discussion, because I hate this new magic system.
I have the BRB in front of me, and from my reading dispelling a spell does not make it a failed attempt to cast. It sais if the dispel is successful, the spell does not take effect. So it is still cast, but you just stopped it's effect. And you only break concentration if you fail to equal a spell casting value, or your natural dice scores is 1 or 2. Dispelling a spell doesn't count.
Now, I don't have the Khaine book. Does that change anything? I hope it does, because as it is now I really dislike the magic of the end times. Granted I only played 1 game with it, but I was banished of the table, because he could spam it, and I couldn't stop all of them

Oh, and sorry for any grammar issues, English is not my first language

 

[PureSphinx]

Hi Everyone. New blood here on the forum, long time reader, first time poster... but I really wanted to join this discussion, because I hate this new magic system.
I have the BRB in front of me, and from my reading dispelling a spell does not make it a failed attempt to cast. It sais if the dispel is successful, the spell does not take effect. So it is still cast, but you just stopped it's effect. And you only break concentration if you fail to equal a spell casting value, or your natural dice scores is 1 or 2. Dispelling a spell doesn't count.
Now, I don't have the Khaine book. Does that change anything? I hope it does, because as it is now I really dislike the magic of the end times. Granted I only played 1 game with it, but I was banished of the table, because he could spam it, and I couldn't stop all of them

Oh, and sorry for any grammar issues, English is not my first language

That's the way I read it too, and from the pages of Khaine I've seen it doesn't errata that. So as long as you can get above casting value its real easy to spam spells. Loremaster is just rediculous hand in hand with that.

No 12 dice cap means if I take two Great Bray Shamans in Lords and five Bray Shamans in heroes i can get seven more dice for free. Now put in lore of Beasts or Death, or even Shadow, and the Beast item that gives all beast casters +1 to cast. Spamming low cost spells like soulblight, miasma, Wyssan's, even Savage Beast and stuff, my enemies will have almost straight ones while I'll be buffed to possibly double my original stats.

Dark Elves with their sacrificial dagger could, if allowed, stab their teams to death for a purple sun even if they only roll one for their PD limit. This gives them more dice to cast more spells, and you aren't limited to one casting anymore, so multiple purple Suns from all your loremasters and repeatable spells could theoretically give dark elves an unlimited magic phase with death magic.

These armies that can boost their dice have become rediculously powerful, and the only errata that can save the game is to say that a dispel equals a failure. At least, that's the pessimistic point of view.

 

[Count Gery]

I didn't even think of combos like that. That is ridiculous

 

[PureSphinx]

I didn't even think of combos like that. That is ridiculous

Yeah.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the Extra Attack special rule is the only one that stacks. Now lets do my friend's favorite TK army: Tomb Guard Death Star. Level 4 Light, and level 3 or 4 Nehekara caster. An average magic phase for TK will land him 16 dice. Since TKs are the kings of nickel and diming with spells he could get off a nice 8 or so spells. He likes to give them WS 10, I 10, ASF from lore of light. Now just cast Righteous Smiting 5 times and your TG have 7 attacks with stats twice as good as your average elf. They also have Killing Blow. There are also 50 of them. Insanity.

What if I took four or five fire wizards? Literally every enemy unit is in a flame cage, and I'm just melting them. It's like every wizard is Lord Kroak now

And speaking of him, a level 4 Wandering Deliberations Slann Mage Priest with Book of Ashur, who's also an ethereal BSB with Magic Resist. Basically a level 5 Loremaster of the entire BRB and is practically unkillable. He can heal himself with life magic (IIRC) buff himself with Light and Beasts, and debuff the enemy with Shadow and Death. He's got 10 S10 WS10 ASF attacks, T4 I think, with 5 healable wounds, and the only thing that can hurt him is CR. If you can pass him in CR. If he's in temple guard good luck lol.

I'm making myself sick, but at the same time this is awesome

 

[Count Gery]

And most of the time you have no means to stop this. Your only hope is that he rolls a 1 on his limit of PD and fails to cast a spell. But then he just switches to something else. Crazy. Or am I missing something? Is there a way to stop this, apart from trying to snipe all his wizards?

 

[PureSphinx]

And most of the time you have no means to stop this. Your only hope is that he rolls a 1 on his limit of PD and fails to cast a spell. But then he just switches to something else. Crazy. Or am I missing something? Is there a way to stop this, apart from trying to snipe all his wizards?

Yep. Assuming you roll average on the Winds and have a decently leveled Wizard or two, you have a reliable magic phase spam of spells with less than a 15+ cast value, and can reliably 2-3 dice them. Then there's all the 7+ or lower spells that a baby wizard can 1-2 dice. At 14 dice and not rolling a 1 for PD you're getting a lot of spells. Mega spells are obviously harder, but a spam of "regular" spells easily has the same level of devastation, if in a different way. Worst case you are probably getting 2-3 spells a turn, which is still at least twice as good as worst case for the old magic rules.

 

[Infernal Skull]

Looking through the Arcane items, a good chunk of them are defensive and used in lieu of a dispel attempt. Things like the Hex scroll, Leeching, and Feedback may see more use. Although you can only have one arcane item per wizard, so you can't kit out your army too much.

Maybe taking a lot of level 1 wizards to help channel extra dispel dice and serve as scroll caddies?

A lot of it will depend on your individual group meta. Will everyone go all in on wizards, or will people keep a healthy troop selection and focus on getting into combat and (somewhat) out of the line of fire?

 

[PureSphinx]

Wait, another shenanigan: fit as many wizards as you can in VC, and make your army wizards and hexwraiths. A million VDM lol.

 

[Yorga]

I'm making myself sick, but at the same time this is awesome

Awesome until you see someone with a simple fireball eliminate three beefy units of his opponent's army in one phase and then watch THAT guy rage quit and pack his models. As you stand there watching what is likely the end of the hobby you might rethink your definition of 'awesome'.

Sad that maybe less than 1% of the players own this new book. But if the rules are as poorly written as the copied pages I have seen on various forums indicate that they are, then this debate will rage on. It has to work as many have stated, that a dispelled spell is unable to be recast. Even taking that position, if you have 3 wizards you have access to 21 spells to cast (not including EoT super spells). :slapface:

 

[LordTobiothan]

Awesome until you see someone with a simple fireball eliminate three beefy units of his opponent's army in one phase and then watch THAT guy rage quit and pack his models. As you stand there watching what is likely the end of the hobby you might rethink your definition of 'awesome'.

Sad that maybe less than 1% of the players own this new book. But if the rules are as poorly written as the copied pages I have seen on various forums indicate that they are, then this debate will rage on. It has to work as many have stated, that a dispelled spell is unable to be recast. Even taking that position, if you have 3 wizards you have access to 21 spells to cast (not including EoT super spells). :slapface:

And then my 50 zombies all roll 6 's and kill your deathstar. /sarcasm

Rolling a D6 to determine max power dice will kill this more often then make magic decimate an army. And even with enough dice for a spell, low rolling exists as much as high rolling does.

 

[PureSphinx]

Awesome until you see someone with a simple fireball eliminate three beefy units of his opponent's army in one phase and then watch THAT guy rage quit and pack his models. As you stand there watching what is likely the end of the hobby you might rethink your definition of 'awesome'.

Sad that maybe less than 1% of the players own this new book. But if the rules are as poorly written as the copied pages I have seen on various forums indicate that they are, then this debate will rage on. It has to work as many have stated, that a dispelled spell is unable to be recast. Even taking that position, if you have 3 wizards you have access to 21 spells to cast (not including EoT super spells). :slapface:

I don't think its quite the end of the hobby. One guy gets a lucky magic phase, whoopdy doo. Call me Druchii, I feel no sympathy for a rage quitter. He agreed to play with Khaine magic, and I know that to be true because 1) he agreed to the game in the first place and 2) Khaine's rules explicitly state its up to the players.

And lets be real, I don't care if I'm shooting the fire, getting shot at, or a bystander, an entire army engulfed in flames is kinda still freakin awesome to imagine. And for him to have killed three "beefy" units with just fireball he would have had to have a level 4 fire Mage and been using heavily weighted dice, or had sacrificed many an Empire Virgin to the dice gods pre-game.

 

[Drakhaol Von Carstein]

I would like to point out the similarities in wording regarding the "successfully cast a spell" aspect of this discussion.

I recall not too long ago a good amount of debate as to the same wording in the lore attribute for vamps. the arguement at that time was do you get to use the lore attribute to heal a wound if your opponent dispels the spell and of I'm not mistaken the consensus among the various forums was "no". the discussion was mostly focused on the wording of "immediately after you successfully cast a spell blah blah blah" in the lore Attribute.

am I off base off base with this?

 

[Yorga]

I don't think its quite the end of the hobby. One guy gets a lucky magic phase, whoopdy doo. Call me Druchii, I feel no sympathy for a rage quitter. He agreed to play with Khaine magic, and I know that to be true because 1) he agreed to the game in the first place and 2) Khaine's rules explicitly state its up to the players.

And lets be real, I don't care if I'm shooting the fire, getting shot at, or a bystander, an entire army engulfed in flames is kinda still freakin awesome to imagine. And for him to have killed three "beefy" units with just fireball he would have had to have a level 4 fire Mage and been using heavily weighted dice, or had sacrificed many an Empire Virgin to the dice gods pre-game.

And then my 50 zombies all roll 6 's and kill your deathstar. /sarcasm

Rolling a D6 to determine max power dice will kill this more often then make magic decimate an army. And even with enough dice for a spell, low rolling exists as much as high rolling does.

Forgive me for using an over simplified example. My point is that if a dispelled spell does not count as 'failure' then it possible to spam off a huge portion of your opponent's army in one phase. NOBODY will wish to play if that becomes the norm. Imagine Death Magic with refilling dice pools. One magic turn could last an hour possibly.

 

[PureSphinx]

Forgive me for using an over simplified example. My point is that if a dispelled spell does not count as 'failure' then it possible to spam off a huge portion of your opponent's army in one phase. NOBODY will wish to play if that becomes the norm. Imagine Death Magic with refilling dice pools. One magic turn could last an hour possibly.

I agree, however the only spell that can really give you more dice than you spent on it is Purple Sun, and I just remembered (somewhat contrary to my earlier post) that you can't cast the same 15+ spell twice, regardless of success or failure. Add to that the D6 dice limit like @LordTobiothan said, and you may not even get that off. And like @Infernal Skull said, take defensive magic items and suddenly you aren't losing half your army to a lucky magic phase. Emphasis on lucky. Plus you should have the same magic phase as your opponent, so really you can't complain

 

[Woolly.Mammoth]

This blows the game wide open. For better for for worse, this gets people talking about warhammer.

Magic has always been a heated subject. Some clubs have gone so far as to ban the magic phase. Everyoen has their own opinion on how the magic phase should play out. This is the way GW is telling you it's going to be. This, like many of the end times, is most likely some type of play test for 9th edition.

As per the rules you can simply deny end times lists and stick to standard 8th magic rules if you choose. I'm sure all tournament organizers will clearly state one way or the other. End Times tourneys will probably be labeled as such.

Personally, I like it. Obviously there needs to be some cap on power dice going on, such as how many dice can be generated by a herdstone or purple sun lore attribute. But otherwise this finally balances individual spell nonsense.

- purple sun, and other mega 15+ spells are now a pita to get off. No more game changing super spells spammed at you. Its much much harder to "6 dice" as you need to roll a 6. So now we can block a game destroying spell first turn with our dispel scroll, and every spell has a good chance to dispel, provided you saved you dispel dice appropriately. IMO purple sun is the biggest cheese in this game and I'm happy to see it taken down a notch.

- Doomfire Warlocks also got a kick to the balls. The can no longer 6 dice like crazy. they have to rely on their wizard level and get enough dice to cast a boosted spell. Sure they can cast purple sun and death snipes, etc. but these spells are nothing new in DE lists. Alternativley, Sisters of the Thorn now get access to spells like Wildform, amber spear, savage beast. I'd say they are equal now, which is a big boost for WE players.

- Low casting lores, such as vampires, got a huge boost as its easy to spam spells. With everyone having loremaster, vampires with forbidden lore blow our game wide open.

- Mortarchs can choose 2-4 lores. Mannfred is now a loremaster of Death, Vamps and Undeath! Neferatta looks pretty damn good now picking 3 of 4 lores to master.

- As for the end times spells, you have to be a lvl3+ wiz to cast them. All they really do is make every army similar to skaven with the dreaded 13th. Everyone has a super spell that is very risky - to even attempt a 20+ spell with a lvl4, you need to roll 5 dice to even have above 50% chance to get it off. Attempting these spells burns though dice quickly, which is why we have more to play with.

- Demons table is obvious. just roll 2 separate dice if you're doing end times, to determine the #. Or roll two dice (thats your number), then roll the next two, and thats your final roll.

I think they should say something like "aside from channeling, a maximum of 3 extra dice can be generated from any special source each magic phase" and then the shenanigans will stop and we can enjoy this interesting tweak to the magic phase.

 

[LordTobiothan]

Forgive me for using an over simplified example. My point is that if a dispelled spell does not count as 'failure' then it possible to spam off a huge portion of your opponent's army in one phase. NOBODY will wish to play if that becomes the norm. Imagine Death Magic with refilling dice pools. One magic turn could last an hour possibly.

If we feared everything that was possible this game would have died years ago.

 

[najo]

I would like to point out the similarities in wording regarding the "successfully cast a spell" aspect of this discussion.

I recall not too long ago a good amount of debate as to the same wording in the lore attribute for vamps. the arguement at that time was do you get to use the lore attribute to heal a wound if your opponent dispels the spell and of I'm not mistaken the consensus among the various forums was "no". the discussion was mostly focused on the wording of "immediately after you successfully cast a spell blah blah blah" in the lore Attribute.

am I off base off base with this?

Yes, I was a part of those debates. Basically this is related to that as to the definition of successfully cast/failed spell.

Without dispel shutting a spell out, the phase becomes very dominated by the caster and many frightening combos around simple to cast spells surface.

 

[Emicrania]

I gotta say,the glottkin and this new magic phase are the only 2 things that have been arousing me on this End Time stuff so far..
As for me is always totally up to me to accept to play like that or not, I can see the whole excitement about,even if stinks like a big commercial operation,considering we are due to a new BRB..

However I would like to share this link so we can all have,who does not have it already, a clear idea about % of rolling and feel a bit less afraid of mega blasting spells:

http://www.ehergert.net/drop_folder/Mathhammer.pdf

 

[PureSphinx]

I think they should say something like "aside from channeling, a maximum of 3 extra dice can be generated from any special source each magic phase" and then the shenanigans will stop and we can enjoy this interesting tweak to the magic phase.

I don't think that should be a rule. All it does is cripple armies that want to use that play style, and it defeats the entire purpose of their being those "shenanigans" and "special sources" in the first place. I'm spending my army points to make my magic phase good, and then someone comes along saying "nope that's less than half as good as it was before for the same points." At this point you may as well take away the 50% lords because Warriors of Chaos can take two Daemon Princes or unkillable Disc Lords, or put a cap on every unit in the game because Ogre Gutstars are nearly unstoppable without initiative or die spells. Each army has their strengths and different builds, and taking away the Beastmen Herdstone or the Dark Elf Sacrificial Dagger just because you can't beat it or don't want to deal with it isn't fair. All of this is just my opinion of course, probably because I play Beasts and Dark Elves, but to me it makes no sense.

 

[Count Gery]

I have to agree with Najo, in this system the caster can easily dominate the magic phase even without the crazy combos. But prove me wrong. How would you stop a spell that you absolutely must? Like a couple of soulblights on your combat unit, or spammed banishment? Can you have any control of what you will let through, or you just have to hope that your opponent will roll low eventually?