Najo's Review of End Times Magic

[Yorga]

@Yorga Warriors of Chaos gain Reign of Chaos. Beastmen gain marks, eye of the gods and Reign of Chaos. Daemons get a better Reign table, but become unstable instead of instability, which has its pros and cons. So Chaos is gaining more than Undead Legions. There are some strong combos we are starting to see too, the Beastmen Braystone with Chaos Wizards being one of them.

Elves get a lot of synergy and power. All their Army special rules are plain better and most of the units cover the weaknesses in the other armies. With that said, the elves are all still T3 everywhere, so that weakness is still there.

Dark Elves even with T3 can dominate most armies. The one main type they cannot is armies with a plethora of 1+ armor saves. In steps the wood elf 'allies' and problem solved. Why take a Supreme Sorceress with the dagger when you can take a HE archmage or Loremaster of Hoeth with the book? The book is much more reliable and doesn't kill your troop.

If you add the 4D6 magic and spell spamming to the equation, a Book of Hoeth bearer will dominate any game. T3 getting you down? Spam flesh to stone. T7 in no time. It's only a mere 8 to cast. Super reliable with two dice and book. You only have to toughen up the troops in combat or who are about to be charged. I own fully painted High Elf and a Dark Elf armies. Having to really fight my urge to make the super army. It would be nothing for me to add a couple of Wood Elf units to my collection.

 

[Quinten]

Man I'm surprised no one has mentioned this but end of times magic has turned a formerly average unit into an absolute monster. The black coach will surely see a lot more playing time with the end of times magic. They could get fully charged turn 1-2 without the dice being absolute gods to you.

 

[najo]

The black coach does power up quickly, but I think the reason it never jumps out when combos are found for it is because it's unreliable against large regiments. It doors great against MSU armies though.

 

[GhoulKing505]

Let's just take tons and tons of zombies and skeletons and spam invos for the first turn or two. Then use a light caster to spam speed of light on those zombies and skeletons. Then on which ever unit is most important cast okkams with our lore of shadow vamp lord. To top it all off get one buff off on a corpse cart and watch most or all of your units get asf.

All of a sudden our 3-5 point models are destroying 10/20/30+ models with ease. And all of ours that do get killed we just bring back; effectively with our unholy lodestone corspe carts.

At 2500 this can be done alongside a casket and a heirotitan. Looks like we got some tricks too. I need to get me more zombies. 500 should suffice.

 

[Sception]

No matter how many zombies you make, they can still all be destroyed in a single magic phase by any opponent with dark magic.

 

[GhoulKing505]

@Malisteen how do you figure? Just out of pure curiosity.

I mean if I start with a unit of 50 skeles and two units of 40 zombies and by turn two those zombies have grown to over 60 each how can dark magic kill them all? I haven't played against dark elves in a while so I've forgotten a little about dark magic. Unless of course you are referring to them potentially having infinite power dice and an endless magic phase due to power of darkness. In which case I'd have to agree... That's completely and utterly broken beyond measure.

 

[Sception]

Yeah, that's what I was talking about. That said, the whole end times magic rules are broken beyond measure, so... *shrug*

 

[Macarian]

Let's just take tons and tons of zombies and skeletons and spam invos for the first turn or two. Then use a light caster to spam speed of light on those zombies and skeletons. Then on which ever unit is most important cast okkams with our lore of shadow vamp lord. To top it all off get one buff off on a corpse cart and watch most or all of your units get asf.
All of a sudden our 3-5 point models are destroying 10/20/30+ models with ease. And all of ours that do get killed we just bring back; effectively with our unholy lodestone corspe carts.
At 2500 this can be done alongside a casket and a heirotitan. Looks like we got some tricks too. I need to get me more zombies. 500 should suffice.

I did something like this yesterday with a Vampire Counts list including Count Mannfred (not the Mortarch version) and a Blasphemous Tome Mortis Engine. The Loremaster makes it so you can use one dice every time and consistently get Invocation of. It's retardedly strong, I started out with 4 units of 40 Zombies which basically doubled in size every turn (we were using paper sheets to represent the Zombies), the limiting factor for summoning more became the amount of room on the board and not wanting to clog up my own army. The enemy can't do a thing because he has to choose between letting the Zombies spawn or burning all his Dispel Dice (he has to use 2 Dispel Dice to my 1 Power Dice to reliably Dispel and even then I can get up to 15 Casting Value out of a single Power Dice) on stopping it leaving me with enough Power Dice to cast all kinds of Death Magic nastiness uncontested. It's extremely powerfull and reliable.

No matter how many zombies you make, they can still all be destroyed in a single magic phase by any opponent with dark magic.

I forgot about Power from Darkness, this greatly saddens me. A lvl 4 Supreme Sorceress with the Cloak of Twilight is now the most OP character in the game. I was actually a bit of a fan of the End Times Magic phase but this is broken beyond repair. Also Bladewind hard-counters mass Zombies as well.

Goddammit Games Workshop

 

[najo]

The most frustrating thing to me is its obvious there was no serious playtesting in these rules at all. They would have caught these issues if they did. Hell, I doubt the rules were edited or even rewritten considering how convoluted they are.

Its unfortunate as it puts a damper on the excitement End Times was building. Let's hope this was a fluke. 9th may still be fine.

 

[Sception]

Yeah, that's the same impression I get. Not only were these rules never played, they were never even proof read (I mean, the lack of clarity & agreement between the 'rules' and the 'summary' is evidence enough of that). And yes, this absolutely sucks out a lot of the excitement I had felt for End Times up to this point. And on top of that, making a distinction between 'regular games' w/ regular magic and 'end times games' w/ end times magic, then tying the elf legion lists to the latter, sets a precedent of legion lists not being for regular games. A precedent that I would be sad, but not at all surprised, to see extended retroactively to chaos and undead legions in many gaming communities.

 

[najo]

The way the end times magic rules work from my perspective and with my experience is:
1) Lords and Heroes 50% is mandatory. No choice. Hence the edit.
2) Undead Legions, Legions of Chaos and the Three Elven Hosts are all legitimate army lists you can use in any warhammer game.
3) Chaos Ascendant rules are scenario only or both players agreeing
4) End Times Magic is not optional. You or your opponent shows with an Elven host or one of your wants to use the rules, then they are in effect.

With that said, just keep it simple and say End Times Magic requires both players to agree to use it. The other stuff is fine for the most part.

What I think happened in GW, is each army list and its characters were written by different designers. They taste like it. Nagash book probably had two designers on it and got the most work and balancing. Glottkin was probably built by someone within the studio working with those designers, which it seems pretty polished but the Chaos Ascendant rules are awkward and poorly implemented for outside of scenario play. Khaine seems like it was all done by one designer outside of the studio as an outsourced project to squeeze it in. The lack of models, the poorly balanced combined army rules, the three lists that feel more like they are for a campaign then End Times combined lists. Then of course the shinning gem of the book, End Times Magic.

If I was to make a guess, I'd say they outsourced the entire book to Gav Thorpe, let him write the fluff and the rules in one go and no one checked his work once it was submitted.

Let's just lick our wounds on this one, and look forward to the next wave of stuff. Rumors are its the Skaven and if you connect the dots, there is the possibility that they are going to get a new army book with models (rat ogres and vermin lord being very likely) and then be featured in End Times 4 where they will get some sort of kits similar to the mortarchs or maggothlords. We will soon see.

 

[Seneschal]

Heh, everyone thinks it's Gav's work. It was actually done by the architect of 7th edition's demise; the DoC book, mat ward. There is a link on druchii.net that proves it was him. He worked on it a long time ago, which shows us that it takes awhile for GW's material to reach distribution from the writers desk. He is also no longer with the company.

 

[Sception]

I'm all down for licking wounds, but I'm going to hold off on 'looking forward' to anything. If the skaven book is better, then great, but if the elves - some of the bigger factions in warhammer fantasy, didn't warrant an new model releases or even a second pair of eyes to look over the rules being written, then I'm not going to hold out a lot of hope for stuff coming out after them.

 

[najo]

Sen, can you link the info about Mat Ward?

Sidenote, Mat Ward gets a lot of flack and if I'm entirely honest, he caused me to sell off an entire Slaanesh Daemon army when the 7th ed Daemons came out. With that said, he is bold and creative in his design and fluff decisions and he tends to not get credit for the good things he has done. He is responsible for most of the good things in 8th. He also gave us the more intermixed but still rivaled chaos pantheon. I think most of his ideas are good and he is a risk taker, but his execution needs a more experienced developer/ designer to keep him in check.

 

[Sception]

I agree. Ward's flaws are the flaws of Games Workshop design as a whole - a lack of serious play testing and editing, a lack of respect for their game as a game - and he cannot be held accountable for those flaws on his own.

 

[najo]

They didn't use to be like that. Its been more recent since the recession. I swear GW cut back the expenses of the studio and minimized the team on fantasy battle.

 

[Sception]

I'm more inclined to think that the play testing was cut back over leaks. I remember play test versions of the 3rd edition tyranid codex hitting the web months before the release, and in progress pics of the then new plastic tyranid warriors being online even before that. I also recall GW getting bitter about that sort of thing.

 

[najo]

Yeah. You might be right about that.

 

[Yorga]

Somebody DID mention the Black Coach in another post. Can't remember who or where. Another big winner is the Reign of Chaos table. Almost impossible to roll the bad results for the Chaos player. But real easy to roll the ones that are a big boon.

I forgot about Power from Darkness, this greatly saddens me. A lvl 4 Supreme Sorceress with the Cloak of Twilight is now the most OP character in the game. I was actually a bit of a fan of the End Times Magic phase but this is broken beyond repair. Also Bladewind hard-counters mass Zombies as well.

Goddammit Games Workshop

Really? More OP that the HE Loremaster who knows 56 spells and can use the Book of Hoeth to one die all the signature spells?

Oh and other game companies playtest just fine without leaking their material. GW just goes about it wrong.

 

[Seneschal]

http://druchii.net/viewtopic.php?f=157&t=76088&start=50

@najo There are two links on page 3 of that thread. The members of the forum discuss Khaine having been written by Ward.

 

[Yorga]

Somebody DID mention the Black Coach in another post. Can't remember who or where. Another big winner is the Reign of Chaos table. Almost impossible to roll the bad results for the Chaos player. But real easy to roll the ones that are a big boon.

http://druchii.net/viewtopic.php?f=157&t=76088&start=50

@najo There are two links on page 3 of that thread. The members of the forum discuss Khaine having been written by Ward.

I'm one of those members and I read it right off his personal Blog. He even talked about how much it pained him to kill off characters. He wanted to make their deaths more meaningful than a 'red shirt' from Star Trek. Yep, looks like that son-of-a-gun got us on his way out the door! Personally ruined not one but TWO editions of Warhammer.

 

[Seneschal]

Well, some things that have worked for me in the games I've played with the new khaine magic are;

-if you are in a meta with elves consider a second level four caster so Deadlocked doesn't screw you. I run a VL with revolving lores that I switched every few games and a Death Master Necro.

VL RF forbidden lore. Periapt. 5++. GW. Hv ar

MN staff of sorcery MR 3. Iron curse icon

Hero necro LoV scroll. Dragon bane gem

I popped all 3 of them into a bunker 30 models strong. The MR3 is crucial against spammed khaine magic. The VL only has the 5++ because I make use of Fulcrums (which are quite helpful by the way) so I saved some points.

-The end times death spell coupled with doom and darkness is a nice combo. I had no problem ripping through a few of my own troops to send it at the foe.

The VL used Fire a couple games and it was great against elf units and Empire. Yeah, fire, sounds weak but kindle flame makes you a walking Hierotitan and fireball spam is death to T3 enemies.

-End times games can seem like whoever goes first has a tremendous advantage, which can feel like the case. Therefore, you want to minimize casualties however you can (magic resist, staff of sorcery and extra units of troops) while being able to counterattack effectively with your own devastating magic phase (casket, Hierotitan, periapt, fulcrum). Lore attributes like those from death and fire are also helpful of course.

-Raise dead for chaff but don't forsake starting the game with a few cheap units. I had four packs of wolves at the outset. They die fast but at least they will protect other units from a few castings of offensive spells.
They may seem pointless but their role is important in my opinion. Keep harrying the foe with expendable forces and be a pain in the butt to his casters.

Summoning back with vamp lore repeatedly is also important, more than it usually is as you can try for a draw if need be.

Finally, i summoned the army of doom keep with my VL once. Sent GW GG into the flank of bretonnians and it was glorious. That spell really shouldn't cost as much as it does but I simply had to try it out. Not a tactic I encourage but it was fun.

I've played six games, won five and drew the last one to a legion of chaos force running song of seduction and Kairos. It was definitely a long game and difficult to deal with kairos but I got the draw by closing the distance quick as I could to deal with his units and score points.

 

[najo]

Great insights Sen! Do you think Nagash is worth fielding?

 

[Seneschal]

Thanks, Najo.

To be honest, I have only used him twice and that was before khaine was released.

It can depend on your meta, I think. Deadlocked will basically cost you the game if successfully cast a few times and with Book of Hoeth they can pull it off more often than I originally believed. You will definitely want to bring a backup caster if facing elves or Seduction.

What concerns me most about giving the big guy a whirl are the high/wood elves using high magic spamming walk between worlds and soul quench on him. Repeated snipes from a death caster may be an issue considering that lores popularity as well as doom n darkness being a factor.

Wish I could offer more advice but with limited experience I don't want to work off of too much theory and conjecture. He is certainly worth a shot though.

 

[najo]

I was thinking that if he gets shutdown you just go into combat mode with him. The spamming soul quench though is really risky. Could be bad, though they only wound on 6, he then get a 5+ and a 4++. So, not much would get through.

What I hate about end times magic, it makes wizards to powerful. You have to go after them and focus fire. Takes a lot of the focus away from the rest of the game.