It was a spell in 8th edition. I dunno if you're familiar with how magic worked in WHFB, but basically you rolled 2d6 at the start of the turn and then gain that number of magic dice. You could then use any number of that pool to cast as many spells as you want, but 6 dice was the most you could use on any single spell. The Dwellers Below was a spell that was cast on a whole unit (i think, or it was the large template) and required a high number (18 maybe?). If it went off every model in the unit needed to take a strength test and if they failed they just died. Basically you'd cast it on a unit and just kill 75% of the models. Poof, just like that. 8th was kind of insane. There was quite a few spells that could have similar devastating effects. Purple Sun, Mindrazor, Final Trans, Pit of Shades were all just devestating. Like remove hundreds of points of models if I get this off. The Slann felt POWERFUL, but i much prefer magic in Age of Sigmar. Having purple sun drift through your whole army was not fun... until you did it. Then it was lots of fun!
It's a reference to old WHFB 8th ed. The magic phase was based on a pool of dices. You can pick a certain number of dices to cast a spell, and the max number was 6. There were 2-3 spells that were overpowered: purple sun, pit of shades and dwellers from below, all able to win the game by themselves with a successful casting. When you roll a double 6 the spell is a success and cannot be unbinded. There were also nasty effects for the caster but that's not the point . a typical tactic was to use a low level caster and 6-dice the uber spell. With some luck, a 100 pts model was able to wipe away 500 pts of deathstar in a single turn. Not a pleasant gamestyle Edit: and @Putzfrau beated me to it.
The issue is that it's a spell that is badly designed as the baseline effect and unique effect are disconnected. Dealing damage and destroying the artifact are completly unrelated and the condition triggering the unique effect also isn't dependent on the baseline effect. On top of that, the conditional effect is so unreliable you're liable to end up killing your target before it ever triggers (unless it's something like the aformenetiond tree lord). As well as just my general dislike for the balancing philosophy behind high-risk/high-reward abilities like this. Let me try to explain it with some examples of conditional spells & effects that I do think work well: - Blood warriors gorefists; on a save of 6, they deal damage with their spikey shield. This is basicly a representation of the notion that on a perfectly executed save he can counterattack with his shield. It can basicly be read as "use your shield well and you get a bonus" - Magister's bolt of tzeentch: deals damage, on a killing blow there's a chance of spawning a chaos spawn. Again the bonus effect is dependent on using the spell well. - Arcane bolt; deals damage, does more damage with a better casting roll. Again like the gorefists the best scenario basicly can be read as "you casted a the spell perfectly, hence the effect is better". In the aforementioned cases the conditional part of the ability is dependent on using the spell/weapon/whatever in a masterfull way. Either by using it at the right time (triggering a killing blow) or by using the spell or artifact perfectly (e.g. a "perfect" save of 6, or a "perfect" cast of 12). This is much better design as it rewards you for playing well and picking the correct oppertunity to do a thing, or rewards your model for performing well with a "perfect" cast/attack/etc. as opposed to just randomly triggering a disconnected secondary effect lik arcane unforging does.
I think I get what you mean. So would be better if on a 5+ artefact is destroyed then they take d3 mortals( from the item exploding)?
yeah that would be better design as it would give it a clear purpose with a unique selling point. As opposed to the current version where the unique conditional effect and baseline effect go counter to one another. It'd do as advertised and have a clear niche as artifact-breaking spell instead of the current version which is a damage spell, with weird target limitations, that'l randomly blows up an artifact out of nowhere as a weird disconnected bonus (which then also stop you from targetting the same unit so it's not even a reliable damage spell either) It'd still leave issues with reliability and the high-risk/reward balancing approach but those are different matters
I think the design reflects the fluff perfectly. You zap a dudes artifact. It either acts as a lightning rod, and dude holding it takes damage, as the spell courses up his arms. Or, you zap a dudes artifact causing it to explode damaging him. You can not like the spell. That's cool. But nobody has a spell like it, and so, while it's unreliable... It's still an d3 damage arcane bolt. (that you get on an 8 not a 10) So, yes, I may kill the artifact bearer before I destroy his artifact. But ya know what? A dead guy with an artifact is in fact easier to kill than a living guy without one. Like, they don't work at cross purposes at all. Like... Anyone whose artifact I want to destroy... I also want to remove the model... So what's wrong with rolling some dice to see which happens first? If I had to bitch about anything I'd bring the casting value down 1. But hey, with the right constellation and an astrolith, it's all gravy.
while you can position and list build to get a bunch of +1s to casting, I wouldn't say that is masterful casting. At the end of the day I'm rolling dice. Also now I'm even more confused. You are fine with the spell if you cast it and roll again and on a 5+ it destroys the item and does d3 mortals. That is a way worse spell then auto d3 mortals then roll to see if item goes boom.
For me casting is most of time a roll of the dice (as are a lot of parts of this game). The spells offer some good damage potential and I'm going to use that. Just remember a week ago we had no spell lores. A spell that does d3 damage and had a chance to break an articfact, that is just a bonus for me. It offers more playstyles for my Seraphon (something I van appreciate as a Darkling Covens player) and makes me wanna review strategies again. Sounds fun to me
Rolling dice represents your models taking various actions. Yes you can view it purely as an abstract game in which you roll dice, move tokens around a table and if a certain counter drops to zero you remove a specific token from the table. But in the end all those things are supposed to represent soldiers fighting on the battlefield. And representing that in a fun an interesting way so that you can build a story around what your guys are doing is an important part of game design. It's the reason we have fancy miniatures & play on extravagent battlefields and not just plain markers. Similarly an attack triggering a bonus needs to trigger it in a sensible manner. And things like "perfect" casts or attacks are represented by rolling as high as possible, so abilities that represent the mastery of a model are triggered by rolling the highest value you can possibly roll. Yes it's weaker. However it's design is better as it now actually coherent with a clear purpose and no longer has 2 parts that work against eachother. If the spell is succesfull it'l have broken the artifact, period. There are still some other issues, like it being quite unreliable and possibly too weak because of it and might need some tweaking to make up for that. But the design is much improved.
I couldn't, it was part of a group order at a store (my friend was the owner) and there was a dispute that was going on between Forgeworld and his credit card company.