Rod of death vs. Book of arkhan

[Loempiaketzer]

which one is better? and why?

rod of death vs. book of arkhan

I know book will be better on a deathstar. but please assume my 'badest' units are a unit of 30 grave guard without GW's or perhaps a unit of 40 ghouls in horde and maybe 10 black knights...

im very much torn between the 2 items.

My normal list consists of a lot of core troops and not so bashy. more the "swarm you enemys with big units" kind of list that doesnt have that much punch.

Im very much leaning towards the rod because of the movement penalty (S4) thing.

please share thoughts or redirect if this already has been talked about. (tried searching, negative result)

*side question, can you still spam the dance book??

 

[Adam_Barrow]

I killed half a 40 strong unit of Orcs with the Rod last night because of the S4 move hit. Auto include on a baby necro for me every game now.

 

[Johnny-Crass]

Rod of Flaming Death and here is why.
1. You can have a wight king carry it if you want.
2. It can protect a over exposed unit from a painful charge
3. Who does not love panic tests?

 

[logan054]

I have to say Rod of flame cage does seem so much better for 5pts, I think the problem with the book is if you use 2 dice, normall you will roll much higher and as such your losing your powerdice advantage.

 

[Loempiaketzer]

I have to say Rod of flame cage does seem so much better for 5pts, I think the problem with the book is if you use 2 dice, normall you will roll much higher and as such your losing your powerdice advantage.

the book is 15 cheaper! (but still doesnt reaally compare to the staff i guess...)

 

[logan054]

Sorry I was thinking of cursed book!

 

[Lord Sathir]

Rod of Death is great for slowing your enemies down.

I used it once on a chaos warriors block, who wanted to charge into some ghouls. But thanks to the Rod of Death his charge ended
in him losing more then 50% of his block giving me the advantage in close combat. Which in the end resulted in his unit breaking and being chased down by those ghouls.

Still I think book of Arkhan is a good help as it is a Lore of Vampire spell wich also give the benefits of the lore attribute..
But with the meta (A lot of standard T4 armies) in my gaming group I found the Rod of Ages much and much more helpfull then the book of Arkan.

 

[Loempiaketzer]

Sorry I was thinking of cursed book!

please explain why??
would love to hear it

 

[Lynks]

I'd take the rod of flaming death over the book of Arkhan. it devastates standard units like state troops or seaguard if they choose to move or are panicked into doing so. The only armies i wouldn't take it against would be WoC or Ogres due to wounding on 4s in both cases, WoC has the armour and you won't cause many hits on the ogres.

On the topic of the cursed book, it's a wonderful item for a level 1 to carry round. It gives you access to a great range of spells that would take a massive investment in wizards to get and even if you sacrifice 3 dice, you would have used that to cast most of the spells anyway. a lot of the spells are RiP so you get ongoing effects and punish the enemy's magic phase unless they choose to dispel the first time round, which strengthens your own. Moreover, It's fun rolling on the chart and seeing your opponents face when you tell him you cast a 13+ spell on his prized enemy unit with a single dice and still have an entire phase to go

 

[Sanai]

Doesn't this belong in the tactics section?

 

[Loempiaketzer]

The only armies i wouldn't take it against would be WoC or Ogres due to wounding on 4s in both cases, WoC has the armour and you won't cause many hits on the ogres.

a lot of the spells are RiP so you get ongoing effects and punish the enemy's magic phase unless they choose to dispel the first time round, which strengthens your own.

2 great points you mention here. (the book being the best point mentioned with RiP spells...) didnt think of it that way.
as for S4 vs T4, its good to know but still..
who would like to risk losing a bull (in a 9 strong unit) or losing 5 chaos warriots... every little thing helps!

thnks for the feedback so far.

 

[Johnny-Crass]

Doesn't this belong in the tactics section?

Wow I totally over-looked that. Thanks

 

[Count Darvaleth]

Sorry I was thinking of cursed book!

please explain why??
would love to hear it

I think it was just an honest mistake; unless I'm reading this wrong you're not coming across as incredibly polite. I'm sure you didn't mean it, but please be careful as at first I interpreted that as quite sarcastic and even rude, and had to stop myself to read it again! Just a friendly note of caution.

As for the debate, I'd agree with the overall sentiment displayed here; Rod. This is for two reasons:

1) Big hordes will hate it. They will essentially be forced to remain still if you hit them.

2) If your opponent does move his horde, and you kill off a sizeable portion of the unit, you can officially say they got "shafted" as the magic item is a "Rod". I can't think of any perverted connotations you could infer from a book (help me out here, Sanai) so it's as good a reason as any to take the Rod over the Book.

 

[Johnny-Crass]

Book of Arkhan- Cursed Book? I can see the slip up. Also considering Cursed Book is the best of the three and by far the best magic item we have I would agree.

 

[Fluffytemplar]

Cursed book, after only using it once is now an auto-include in all my armies. I put it on a lvl2 shadow and my MN has the periapt, so I was throwing 2-3 RiP spells per turn on about 3-5 dice. My opponents magic phase consisted of him getting rid of them all every turn.

Rod is now an auto-include for me and I put it on a mounted vampire, it gets the spell where I need it and it's ability to control movement is priceless. Marauders w/ GW, bloodletters, really any horde there is is basically thrown completely out of the game from this one item!

Book of Arkhan has yet to make it into any of my lists since I have yet to not get VH in any game. VH is a great spell, but how often do you really need it twice? And when you do need it once, I want to throw my level 4's bonus to cast at it!

 

[Johnny-Crass]

Yah I have found Vanhels is really one decent in its boosted version as a 4 dice "Chuck it and @#$# It" kind of spell

 

[Loempiaketzer]

@ darvaleth,
i was not being sarcastic or any other bad intention when saying i would love to hear more. The post i was reffering to said something like: "book of arkhan for me."
i just wanted to know why. I dont know why it should be better so i wanted to know this.

I guess i should be looking into the cursed book and the rod of flamy deathyness...
tonight i dine in hell, afterwards, ill kill some beastmen!

 

[Zeleck]

The rod effectivly combines the basic fireball spell, the burning head and fulminating fire cage spells into a neat little package. For some reason in the games I've played my opponent has let it through

 

[Ether Dude]

For some reason in the games I've played my opponent has let it through

Seriously! I played a (wonky) game against dwarfs last night and the rod got through 3-4 times. It was very useful in the early game (when arkhan was not) but less so later on. I was usually chucking 1 die at it, but 2 might have been a better idea. Point being: take all 3 instead of extra levels on your necros.

 

[Fluffytemplar]

I usually try to save the rod for last, especially if I really need it. You should have more dice than your opponent in the first place, so make them make some hard choices. The first time it goes off it'll be a surprise, but every opponent I've had says something like "wow! That's not happening again" and then I get it off every single turn. Even when they know it's coming, with cursed book, lore of shadow, death and/or vampires at our disposal there's always something else they see as worse. My last game I used it to occupy 40 blood letters the whole game because if he saved his dice for the rod it meant I'm getting off VHD, miasma, withering, or bringing my terrorgheist back to full wounds. That one item turned the game into 3000pts vs 2400pts and a nice clean massacre for the VC.