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8th Ed. BRB Lores of Magic - A Deep Dive

Discussion in 'Other Armies Discussion' started by NIGHTBRINGER, Dec 18, 2021.

  1. Lizards of Renown
    Slann

    Lizards of Renown Herald of Creation

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    AT LAST.

    Okay, this deserves a proper read-through which I'll do when I have a little bit more time!

    Nice one buddy! Looks fantastic already!
     
  2. NIGHTBRINGER
    Slann

    NIGHTBRINGER Second Spawning

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    At least it should provide you with a little bit of 8th edition content. I hope you find it interesting and are able to pull some value out of it.
     
  3. Lizards of Renown
    Slann

    Lizards of Renown Herald of Creation

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    You've got, what, 4 tables?

    This is up there with the Best Close Combat units thread. I totally will.
     
  4. NIGHTBRINGER
    Slann

    NIGHTBRINGER Second Spawning

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    9 tables... some small, some big.

    !!!!!.png
     
  5. Lizards of Renown
    Slann

    Lizards of Renown Herald of Creation

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    [LoR stands and starts clapping]

    This is awesome buddy. Thanks for taking the time to put this together.

    On the whole I agree with all points.
     
  6. NIGHTBRINGER
    Slann

    NIGHTBRINGER Second Spawning

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    I'm glad you enjoyed it. I definitely spent more time on it than I should have.
     
  7. Lizards of Renown
    Slann

    Lizards of Renown Herald of Creation

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    “Fine wine takes time.”
     
  8. NIGHTBRINGER
    Slann

    NIGHTBRINGER Second Spawning

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    So, did you find anything surprising? Anything you might see differently?
     
  9. The Great White Lizard
    Chameleon Skink

    The Great White Lizard Well-Known Member

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    Highly impressive @NIGHTBRINGER ! I don't know how I missed this thread until now. As someone who has never actually ran Lore of Metal in game, it really gets me thinking. Too bad the two armies I play can't really make full use of it (besides the occasional Searing Doom). I know it's a bit late, but I would be more than happy to do the Lore of Death writeup as @Lord Agragax of Lunaxoatl suggested, although as I'm not the most experienced general it would be a lot of Theoryhammer.
     
  10. NIGHTBRINGER
    Slann

    NIGHTBRINGER Second Spawning

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    Thank you, I'm glad that you liked it!

    Sounds great! I've updated the first post of the thread and put you down for the Lore of Death. Looking forward to it.
     
  11. Lizards of Renown
    Slann

    Lizards of Renown Herald of Creation

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    With anyone else, I would have just heaped praise on their creation.

    Because it's you, I'm working on a conversational dissertation in reponse to yours as a discussion starter ;)
     
  12. NIGHTBRINGER
    Slann

    NIGHTBRINGER Second Spawning

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    I guess I'll take that as a compliment. :p

    It's all about the conversation. If I've left some holes in my analysis, let's patch them up! Looking forward to your thoughts on the subject.
     
  13. Lizards of Renown
    Slann

    Lizards of Renown Herald of Creation

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    You should. You should also take it as getting to know something of the Nightbringer. I know that you (like me) like to get some healthy conversation going about the 8th Edition.

    Case in point:
    :D

    I may go back on this by the time I've finished my little review, but from my read through I didn't see any holes in your reasoning. Hopefully the points I come back with expand the dive somewhat.
     
  14. NIGHTBRINGER
    Slann

    NIGHTBRINGER Second Spawning

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    I would urge caution...
    [​IMG]

    :p

    Indeed. 8th edition conversation is pretty sparse these days, it's good to get some going!

    I'm sure they will! !!!!!.png
     
  15. Lizards of Renown
    Slann

    Lizards of Renown Herald of Creation

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    So like I said already, I thought this was a fantastic breakdown of the Lore of Metal. Hopefully this little dissertation proves that as well as some stimulating some quality 8th Edition conversation!

    For an all-comers list, I think what you cover is correct. Unless you know all the armies you are facing, you would do better with a different Lore that will not leave you high-and-dry in a particular match-up.

    In an individual battle, the table with the army breakdowns was very helpful in laying out a reference guide to whether or not you should take Metal against that army. There are some armies that are a unquestionable good choice and some, like you say, are depending on what your opponent is bringing to the table.

    Your last point on this section is really the clincher: If you don’t have one of the obvious choice armies, then you have to roll well on the spells. In most of the other Lores, the Signature Spell is one that you would gladly switch out for one of the crappy dice rolls that you made (Fire – Fireball, Beasts – Wildform, Light – Shems Gaze, Heavens – Iceshard (love this one), Shadow – Melkoth’s, Death – Spirit Leech). The one exception in my opinion, excluding a Slann in a Temple Guard bunker, is that the Life signature spell (Earthblood) is not very useful, since you are trying to keep your caster OUT of combat for the most part. It does has some use against missile fire, but again you don’t want to have your wizard in a position of being shot at.

    Usually, you are hoping to roll well with your spells, but you know that you a) have the chance of a double and b) can always get rid of at least one crappy spell with the signature. If you take away the Signature option you start hampering your spell casting ability as you’ll most likely get lumbered with one spell that you don’t want.

    My head is creaking with the calculations of rolling a double, but it’s definitely with the odds stacked against you. Not impossible, but not likely. I'd say around 1 in 4.

    It comes down to the basic rationale of all of Warhammer: You are doing educated gambling and trying to stack the odds in your favour.

    You want to do that point of out-thinking your opponent, out-deploying him and then out-manoeuvring him to get into that scenario where your gamble has the greatest chance of succeeding. If you’re smart, you’re going to engineer each part of your army around this, including your magic.

    Which brings me to one of my bones of contention with Warhammer: Why the random spells? Surely the general in his game plan would have thought “Well, my tactics will be ______ so I’ll grab a wizard who knows those spells.”

    Anyways, please excuse my mini-rant.

    But my point is that on the Spells you’re again gambling. But you want the EDUCATED gambling with the odds stacked IN YOUR FAVOUR. With the grid above and with some intelligent thinking, you can work out if the Lore of Metal is the one for you in this circumstance by the simple question: Does it put the odds more in your favour? You really want to use it when you know that taking Searing Doom will be a boon to whatever you want to do.

    This means that you would take the Magic Lore that gave you the best chances of ending up with spells that will assist you on the tactics that you’ve adopted for your army (and for what you’re predicting your opponent is going to send against you).

    -

    Your analysis really highlighted the uses of the other spells which I honestly don’t normally think about.

    Searing Doom I know all about and is a great choice as part of doing Wandering Deliberations in a Slann.

    Plague of Rust description was great. I didn’t really look at the long range effect of this in a game, not to mention the effect on a character even if he leaves the unit. I think that I probably did think about bigger units when I looked at the spell, but the write-up definitely brought this home. I definitely didn’t think about the possible ramifications of using this compared with Searing Doom.

    This spell also made think of another point. In my experience, it is not common to successfully cast more than one spell per magic phase and SUCCESSFULLY casting more than two is super, super rare.. In my history, it’s been a battle of dispel dice, dispel spells and special abilities vs my power dice. Normally I get off one spell, sometimes two. Taking into account that most battles don’t last more than 6 turns, with Turn 1 a lot of the time being too out of range for the majority of the spells that you want to cast, you also have to take into account that the long game will be relatively pointless at Turn 3 or 4.

    Thankfully, Plague of Rust is a good spell to get off even once. But the likelihood of getting it off twice on the same key unit is slim.

    Enchanted Blades is a spell that I had honestly overlooked. As I’ve said in previous write-ups and threads, anything that gives a +1 to hit is REALLY valuable. This is quite rare and the fact that it can apply to missile attacks is something that I hadn’t really considered. The fact that you get this and a nice bonus of Armour Piercing is a good combo, magical attacks remains situational as you say. Nice one!

    The other three spells I feel I had duplicated correctly, for everyone apart from Lizardmen Glittering Robes is excellent, the Lead or Hounds spells are ones you should just switch for Searing Doom and Final Transmutation is excellent.

    The army interactions I agree with.

    In your Final Conclusion, the only thing I would add is that if you have an Army that could benefit from 5 of the 7 spells then I would go for it. If your army is not Lizardmen and suffers from bad armour, then you can benefit from Searing Doom, Glittering Robes, Plague of Rust, Final Transmutation and Enchanted Blades of Aiban.

    I will add here that you would need to make sure that your army list would need to include some counters for a) lots of chaff as this Lore doesn’t really have a viable counter for that or b) high toughness units that don’t have a great armour save as it doesn’t have a counter for this either. If you can have anti-chaff and anti-high-toughness covered, then you can actually get away with using this as an all-comers list lore since you can shore up your limitations with these troops.

    The final thing I will say is that magic is fickle and also has a great potentiality in doing absolutely diddly-squat nothing for you the entire game. In 8th Edition, in my opinion, it has been relegated to something that might give you some assistance somewhere but is not something to be relied on. All it takes is some bad rolls in your power phase (remembering that turn 1 will mostly be out of range, so you’ll get something like 3 or 4 magic phases to actually do something) and you’ll get nothing from it.

    -

    Hopefully the above will both serve as a homage to Nightbringers dedicated work to bring us this deep dive and possibly push the dive even further down.

    LoR
     
    Last edited: Mar 26, 2022
  16. NIGHTBRINGER
    Slann

    NIGHTBRINGER Second Spawning

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    Good analysis @Lizards of Renown ! !!!!!.png

    Earthblood isn't really my favourite either. It's not completely useless, as it does provide protection against ranged damage and the lore attribute is solid, but to your point, it isn't a winner like the signatures from most of the other lores.


    +1

    If you simply made the Enchanted Blades of Aiban the signature for the lore of metal, it would make the lore significantly more reliable. Even with the same lineup of spells, that one switch, to your point, would increase your ability to "roll well".

    To a degree, I share your sentiments, but at the same time I think it would open up the game to some inevitable undesirable consequences, such as:
    • many/most spells would never be played
    • players could poach all the best spells across multiple lores through multiple lower level wizards
    • guaranteed spell selection would make it too easy to set up nasty synergies (for instance, Melkoth's + Purple Sun or Enfeebling Foe + Dwellers)
    • it would shift the magic phase towards 6-dice nuke spells, as you could be guaranteed that your expendable level 1 wizard gets the nuke spell (and repeatedly go for irresistible force with little fear of miscast)
    • Lizarden's lore of High Magic lore attribute would be unfairly good
    • the best spells would become auto-includes
    • The Dwarfs army would be negatively affected as essentially all the armies would be gaining a huge boost by being able to pick spells
    • armies with access to a larger range of lores (Elves for instance) would benefit a lot more than armies with a smaller range of spell lores.
    • armies that are especially weak to certain nuke spells would suffer more (Lizardmen and Ogres would see a lot more Purple Suns)

    I think it is why the Loremaster special rule so prized (and rare). It's less about having a larger number of spells and more about guaranteeing that you get the ones that you really want.

    It's an interesting concept though. I wonder how people's general opinion/ranking of the lores would change; would we see a shift in which lores were being selected? Would there be more lower level wizards? Would more points be invested in magic? Which spells would be spammed consistently across army lists?
     
  17. Lizards of Renown
    Slann

    Lizards of Renown Herald of Creation

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    Thanks buddy.

    Right.


    I think that one change would significantly affect the all-comers list capability of the Lore.


    I agree with your points, specifically I hadn't thought about "Suicide Bomber Level 1 Wizards" being given that major nuke spell. I guess (based on circumstances) that would be a tactic: hide the level 1 in a rapid moving horde and then fire when close enough with all your power dice. It could work. It could also fizzle fantastically by not getting a miscast. I suppose you could also give them a magic item that would encourage miscast (like the one where you add another power dice for instance), but you'd still have the factor of fluffing the roll of the dice and not making it. I don't know that it would be as fearsome as you state but still a contender. I feel that the rules for the spell casting are a major factor in magic being relatively neutered in 8th Edition. It would make a HUGE difference in gameplay to be able to pick the spells that you want and would make this part of the game a lot more tactical as you could then really work out a planned synergy for your army list, have that suicide bomber, etc. and bring back a healthy fear of the wizard which I believe is lacking in our 8th Edition mechanics.

    It's interesting that you say this bit:

    It raises two immediate questions:

    Firstly, I think that my spell choices would depend on who I was fighting against and what army list I'd put together. I don't think that "many/most would never be played" is a fair assessment of the number of spells used. I think if you kept in the rules about no wizard being able to have the same spell, I believe it would be the other way round with most/many being used. Probably one or two per Lore not being used.

    Let's say you have a Level 4 Metal wizard: I'd say the Nightbringer choice would be Searing Doom, Enchanted Blades, Final Transmutation and I guess
    either Glittering Robe or the Rust spell. I think your choices for spells never to be played would be Hounds and Lead. I would agree on Hounds, but I think some players would want to have a melee heavy army and would opt for both Enchanted Blades AND Lead to REALLY tip a combat in their favour.

    Possibly a player going up against Warriors of Chaos or a like army would take both Searing Doom and Hounds to get as many attack spells that utilize the Lore Attribute as possible.

    A brief scan through the other lores makes me think that it would be a great minority of spells that would NEVER be played.

    Secondly, really there should be no BAD spells, but I'm with you on this as there are at least one spell per lore that I consider to be crap. But it raises the point that there seems to be crappy spells incorporated into each Lore. Did they really make the choices so that a wizard could end up with comparatively sub-standard spells? It seems so and this is a real game killer as your carefully invested magic user points suddenly become a dead weight (to one degree or another) in your army list.

    Thoughts?
     
  18. NIGHTBRINGER
    Slann

    NIGHTBRINGER Second Spawning

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    Mileage will vary, but here are a couple of examples of how I would choose my spells for a level 4:

    Lore of Beasts:
    I would "always" (95-99% of the time) play:
    • Wyssan's Wildform
    • The Amber Spear
    • The Curse of Anraheir
    • Savage Beast of Horros
    I would very rarely play:
    • Pann's Impenetrable Pelt
    I would never play:
    • The Flock of Doom
    • Transformation of Kadon

    Lore of Life:
    I would "always" (95-99% of the time) play:
    • Flesh to Stone
    • Throne of Vines
    • Regrowth
    • The Dwellers Below
    I would never play:
    • Awakening of the Wood
    • Earth Blood
    • Shield of Thorns

    Lore of Death:
    I would "always" (95-99% of the time) play:
    • Spirit Leech
    • Soulblight
    • Doom and Darkness (except against undead)
    • Purple Sun
    I would very rarely play:
    • Caress of Laniph
    • Fate of Bjuna
    I would never play:
    • Aspect of the Dreadknight

    Lore of Hashut:
    I would "always" (95-99% of the time) play:
    • Ash Storm!!!
    • Flames of Azgorh
    • Breath of Hatred
    I would choose my last spell from among the following play:
    • Burning Wrath (on a mobile caster)
    • Dark Subjugation (against an army with low leadership)
    • Curse of Hashut (if neither of the above are present)
    I would never play:
    • Hell Hammer

    Those were just 4 lore examples. In each case I immediately have 3-4 spells that I am nearly certain to take. Sometimes, there might be a couple of alternates, but these are more of an exception rather than a rule.

    I think things get worse if you consider low level wizards.

    Lore of Shadow on a level two: Enfeebling Foe and Withering
    Lore of Slaanesh on a level two: Acquiescence and Cacophonic Choir
    Lore of Nurgle on a level one: Curse of the Leper
    Lore of Tzeentch on a level one: Treason of Tzeentch
    Lore of Hashut on a level one (if it were possible, I know it is restricted to a level 3-4): Ash Storm
    Lore of Fire on a level one: Flaming Sword of Rhuin
    Lore of Light on a level one: Speed of Light
     
  19. NIGHTBRINGER
    Slann

    NIGHTBRINGER Second Spawning

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    Nothing is foolproof, but even if it isn't cast with irresistible force, you might not be able to dispel it (besides with your one-time dispel scroll). Imagine that you're playing Lizardmen and you have your fancy Slann + Temple Guard uber unit. Your opponent throws five dice at Purple Sun... you dispel it. Now he casts Dwellers from his other wizard.

    I don't think it is neutered. Nearly every competitive list spends a significant number of points on magic. If magic wasn't a major tool/threat, we wouldn't see so many points consistently invested in it. A level 4 is essentially mandatory. Most people then have one or two backup lower level wizards. Some even run dual level fours.

    Magic is fickle, but I think it plays a pretty big role in the game. Sometimes even too great a role. For instance, I think Ogre Kingdoms could be considered an absolute top tier army (alongside the likes of WoC, HE and DE) if spells like Purple Sun or Pit of Shades did not exist.
     
  20. Lizards of Renown
    Slann

    Lizards of Renown Herald of Creation

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    I was thinking about this today and specifically about what you were saying that some spells would never get chosen.

    I think that your experience and knowledge of the 8th is giving you a slightly skewed view of this.

    If you compare it to army lists, I'm sure that there are units that you don't use from WoC or CD because you've weighed all of the Pro's and Con's and as far as you're concerned they aren't worth the points investment. I'm sure you've seen others using them in battles though.

    Same with the magic items lists. There are items that I'm sure you would NEVER use. I'm the same. There are items on there that I consider to be a total waste of space and even destructive to chose (like the Heroes Blade one, where you get more attacks the more enemy heroes there are (Why would you want to get to a situation where you are outnumbered?!?!"), but I have evidence from this forum that there are people who will chose them as they think they have idea on how to use them (hopefullly). I literally saw someone decking out their Hero with the item I just mentioned. It's madness to me, but maybe they thought of a way to use it.

    I think if you let people chose the spells, I think the spells you've noted as being the worst would still get used. Those with more intelligence/ tactics/ wisdom/ experience (call it whatever you want) would probably not.

    Maybe this is too much TheoryHammer, but it made me specifically think of the Hammerers from the Dwarf Army. I love the models and the lore. But the GW with low initiative I think is too much of a liability so I'd never play them. Maybe others would, but I'd see it as playing to a weakness.

    Same with the Troglodon. (Although admittedly I have never seen someone play one of these)
     

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