GW News: BIG N' SMALL WAAAGH! COMIN'

A very small handful of spells and only against very specific opposition (for example: Purple Sun versus Lizardmen). Limit the spells to do only a single wound per model and allow ward saves to be taken. As a bonus, magic resistance becomes a viable purchase.

Additionally, I'd entertain the idea of limiting spell #6 Nuke spells to level 4 wizards and increase the danger of miscasts when casting with 5 or 6 power dice. Now if the player wants to cast the big spell reliably, it comes with a big risk to his expensive wizard.

 

AoS (and now TOW) magic still sucks because it a watered-down and largely unstrategic system, but I do agree that it also sucks for the reasons you mention...

Overall, this does not bode well for TOW.

Glad you like it!

 

I see this like we don't have a magic phase anymore, but several small ones per turn.

We still need to see the full lores, pretty much like the full rules, once again, but I don't mind if spells are a bit less powerful than in previous edition if this means a more agile game.

 

They seem to have been attempting that with 40K as well. Honestly not a terrible idea, spreading it out a bit, especially if you get some reactive spells (e.g. "O no, that big thing shot at me, quick put up a shield").

But knowing GW, I doubt that will happen

 

I'm not a huge fan of the new magic rules either (but I'll wait for my final judgement until we know more), but 8th by no means have a great magic system as it is. Like it all you want, I do too in many aspects, but it was only made for roughly 2500 point games and flawed on more levels: No reliability, potentially wasting points on magic through spell selection, and a rather hard cap on point investment of wizards, lv4 wizards being way better than lower level wizards, irresistible force is just not a great mechanic, miscasts either being too forgiving or too harsh, bound spells being useless most of the time, some form of allowance for spell duplication/casting - I would not call it small tweaks to fix those issues - I would however have liked tweaks to that system, instead of what we see for TOW, at least as an initial reaction.

 

I can't really speak on this as 99% of all the games I've played have been at an even 3000pts. The only time I recall playing at a lower point total was as part of a 2000-2000-2000 point team up. And even then we implemented a house rule that the selection allowances were across the team as a whole, so it was more like a 6,000 point game. As such, you might very well be correct in this regard.

Do others feel that the 8th edition magic system failed at sub 2,500 point games? @Lord Agragax of Lunaxoatl @Killer Angel

I like it that way. Magic in the Warhammer world is fickle. I've always found it to be reliable enough without ever being a sure thing. It also made models with access to loremaster that much more special.

How so? I've seen huge variations in magic investment in the games I've played. From no wizards to dual level 4's supported by lower level wizards. I've always found my sweet spot somewhere in the middle of those extremes, but the game was fairly flexible while restricting people from going completely overboard.

As it should be. Choosing a level 4 (specifically at point levels where running dual lords is not possible) represents a greater army focus towards magic. Choosing a level 4 in such an instance means sacrificing the combat potential of a combat lord and the superior leadership they offer to your army. Personal taste, but I don't want to see 3 skink priests equal the magical might of a single Slann.

If multiple level 2's could easily match a level 4 wizard, then there wouldn't be much reason to field a level 4. Multiple lower level wizards can be in more places on the battlefield, are harder to remove than a single character and offer redundancy should one be killed.

This is where my suggested tweak would help....

Limit the miscast risk when casting with 2-4 power dice (remove the chance of the wizard being cast into the warp and limit a potential Power Drain to the loss of a single wizard level).

Conversely, increase the miscast risk when casting with 5-6 power dice (allow the chance for the wizard to be cast into the warp and keep Power Drain at d3 lost wizard levels).

Additionally, you could have your opponent be able to shift your miscast table result depending on how many power dice were used

• +/- 0 for a miscast resulting from 2-3 power dice used
• +/- 1 for a miscast resulting from 4-5 power dice used
• +/- 2 for a miscast resulting from 6 power dice used

This would completely change the cost-reward dynamic of casting. The enhanced risk would limit the number of times that players would throw 5-6 dice at a spell and consequently you'd see less irresistible force castings. Also, the punishment from a miscast would be much less random and more in line with the risk the casting player was willing to take.


Keep in mind I'm just spitballing ideas here. All this could be refined until we found the right balance. Or choose another simple mechanic.

I wasn't a huge fan of bound spells either... with a few exceptions (like innate bound spells).



In the end, I guess we have very different opinions on the quality of the 8th edition magic system (and that's okay). I'm in far more agreement with @Killer Angel that a few uber spells needed tweaking but not much else. At the end of the day I love the 8th edition magic system because I had fun with it. A simple reason, but the most important one. It was easily my favourite phase of the entire game.

 

I mean, GW games in general tend to be a bit of a mess at lower point values. So an impactfull mechanic like magic is definitly going to be in the category of stuff that doesn't work well at the lower values.

See, this is why explicit levels where a higher level results in a flat out more powerfull wizard don't really work.

Either your level 4 wizard utterly trounces the puny level 2 wizards thanks to all of his bonusses, making minor wizards a tad pointless. Or the minor wizards can keep up, making the level 4 wizard an expensive liability without redundancy.

If you want both to be an option then they need to be equally usefull, but usefull in different ways. Which I don't think has happened in any warhammer game ever.

 

Like I said, I never play at such low point values. I'll have to take your (and @ASSASSIN_NR_1 's) word on it.

It's hardly unexpected though, Warhammer Fantasy is a large scale rank and file game. It isn't designed with small games in mind. It's meant for 2000+ point games. Sure it can be played at lower values, but there will be a few hiccups. For a small scale game a skirmish game is a better option.

They are useful in different ways. They both have their relative pros and cons.

Level 4's represent a major investment in magic, skewing an army in that direction. They are more dominant than multiple lower level wizards, but also represent a very squishy target worth a large number of victory points. They also inhibit/limit the inclusion of the most powerful combat characters in the game (who are also the characters with the best leadership).

Level 1 or 2 wizards are more of support wizards or for armies not focusing as much on magic. Multiple low level wizards are harder to remove from the battlefield, can be in multiple places at once and don't represent such a concentrated point sink as their level 4 brethren. They also offer a redundancy, since if one falls, the other(s) are there to continue casting/dispelling.

It depends what you want. Most people opted for the level 4 route, but others went with lower level wizards or no wizards at all.

 

The last time 8th was a flagship game was in 2015, and it lost that status when it was discontinued. Of course it's not a 'dead' game either as people play it, but it is very much a game that is in the middle between those two, hanging in limbo without any further company support (not helped by some armies being left in a rockier position than others).

All armies are going to get rules on launch, and that's mainly what I'm interested in - even if the nine focused-on factions gain further supplements down the line which boost them with powercreep, there will still be a threshold tier of all the original Fantasy factions starting in the same boat, as 6th Edition achieved with the Ravening Hordes book. I'll be perfectly happy with this as at least a reasonably balanced way of playing TOW.

To be honest I think the rest of TOW, from what I can see, looks better and more complicated than 8th was, with just the Magic Phase being watered down. I do agree that it's a shame that they've made that one phase of the game a lot less complicated, but I can see why they've done it. When I first started to play the game back in 7th, the Magic Phase was the one phase that just seemed unnecessarily convoluted (it didn't help that I mainly played Dwarfs and thus didn't need to participate in it much, but as I started to play more armies and got my hands on more Wizard models I still had to learn it, and I still found it the most bureaucratic part of the game). Of course nowadays the 7th and 8th Magic systems look like nothing to me having played both for so long, but I can see how watering it down will make it easier for newer players to get into that side of the game, especially with the rest of the game being arguably more complicated than 7th and 8th were.

Huh, didn't know that... mainly because the armies I play I've not had the chance to use Monstrous Cavalry...

Most of my games have been below 2500 points, and from what I've experienced it's largely been fine, but bear in mind I've always played 'fluffy' armies with the models I have and not much of a focus upon competitiveness, and most of my opponents have been the same. At best my army has usually consisted of either a couple of Level 1 or 2 Wizards or one Level 3 and one Level 1 or 2. I've certainly not fielded an army dominated by Wizards across the character slots, so can't say what one would be able to achieve at that level, and I've also not had the chance to cast many of the dreaded 'uber-spells' (mainly because either the Wizards I have don't use the lores containing those spells, or the spells haven't come up when generating them).

As a whole, I've never openly disliked the Magic Phase, but it's never been my favourite phase of the game personally, principally because it added almost another game's worth of rules and also because I'm more of a fan of moving my armies across the table, setting up charges and getting to the shooting and melee stages, so toning Magic down and spreading it across those other phases certainly looks more satisfying to me on paper. Additionally, I myself am already used to the lower-level sort of magic system that TOW has inherited, not in AoS because I've never played it, but from 5th and 6th 40K. In those games Psychic Powers were cast in the Movement Phase using a standard Leadership test, and in 6th the target rolled a single dice to attempt to 'Deny the Witch' and dispel the power on the roll of a 6 (or better if the target was another Psyker, had Adamantium Will or had any other Special Rules that improved it). Indeed I would say 6th 40K, my favourite 40K Edition, is probably the closest analogy for what TOW's magic will be like - a similar casting system (though TOW's is better with different casting values, a 2D6 dispel roll and dispelling ranges) and the different spell/power types all inherited from 8th Edition Fantasy, and Psychic Powers were largely seen as fine in 6th 40K.

So I certainly understand people’s disgruntlement, but personally it’s not dimmed my enthusiasm for the new game much.

 

The issue is that with such explicit power levels one of the two options inevitably becomes dominant.

For example, it's great that the level 2 wizards can be in multiple places at once. But if a level 2 wizard can't really cast/dispell when faced with a level 4 wizard then that doesn't matter terribly much. That level 4 wizard can easily shut down the weaker wizard in the areas of the battlefield where it matters. The fact that you can go stand in a corner and cast some spells there doesn't really add much value if the level 4 wizard controls several objectives.

And don't get me wrong, there'll always be some lists that bring the level 1 wizard, if only because it can be usefull in match-ups against other non-magic focused armies. But such explicit powerlevels always end up feeling a bit frustrating when one side goes all in and the other only brings a low level wizard for some utility, which then promptly gets denied anyway.

Which is why such explicit power level design should be avoided.

 

I did say it was discontinued. It's a discontinued flagship level game. The scope and size of the game remain unchanged, even in the face of being discontinued.


I will concede the point that some armies are were left in a rocky position, namely Bretonnia and Beastmen, because they didn't get an updated 8th edition book. I don't really count Skaven among this group simply because their 7th edition book works so very well in the 8th edition landscape. Other armies did receive weaker books (TK and O&G), but that sort of stuff is par for the course even in the case of a supported game.

Those free pdf rules are utterly meaningless in my eyes. Have we forgotten the lesson taught to us by AoS? TK and Bretonnia were eliminated once it became convenient to do so and the Legion of Azgorh persist in a state of insignificance (tbh, I'm not even sure if they are still around).


Once the new rules and updates for the nine featured factions start rolling out, those free pdf rules will be worthless.

How did you arrive at that conclusion?


First, consider complexity. The movement, shooting and close combat phases seem to be relatively on par. The magic of ToW represents a significant drop in complexity, and as such, the game of TOW as a whole (based on what little we have been shown) is tactically inferior to 8th.


By an increase in complexity are you referring to the slightly updated break test mechanic? I'm honestly at a loss on how you came to your conclusion (other than the fact that your conclusion is the opposite of mine, and we must always find ourselves on opposite sides of every topic). If GW is aiming the game at the current (TikTok) generation, I think their overall aim will be to dumb things down rather than make them more tactically complex and demanding. At best I was hoping that they would hang onto the current level of complexity; a hope that died with the magic reveal.


As for TOW looking to be better than 8th, I don't see any evidence of that. There have been many promising reveals, but also some potentially troubling ones (potential incentivization for ultra ultra wide units, Frenzy making a unit essentially useless and now magic). Truth is, aside from magic, it is hard to tell one way or another.

A fair enough preference. Each of us may differ in which phases of the game we find most enjoyable. For me it was always the magic phase, but I can understand if others feel differently.

Nor should it. We all have different priorities for a wargame. Just because something doesn't suit my tastes doesn't mean that it won't be an amazing game for you.

 

Yes, but like I said, the single level 4 wizard is a massive squishy target that is worth a lot of victory points. So he has a greater capacity to effect the game in your favour but also a greater chance for your enemy to exploit. He can better win the game, but he can also better lose you the game.

If your level 4 can out duel my two level 2's but I send in my Hortennse WoC lord (who I purchased by saving points by omitting a level 4) and kill your wizard, who has the advantage?

Also, its not like the level 2's can never get a spell through. For instance, if a player with two minor wizards rolls a pair of fours for the winds of magic, then he should get a spell through as he has 8 power dice to the opponent's 4 dispel dice.

Bringing a level 1 wizard in such a case is for magic defense. It gives you the ability to bring a scroll. It gives you an additional +1 to dispel. You won't be able to neutralize your opponent's level 4, but you might be able to block an additional spell or two that would have gone through had you not have fielded him. Also, what toys did you bring on the points you saved? A couple of war machines? A unit of skullcrushers? A K'daai Destroyer? Such a player merely diverted some points from magic to bring other things on the battlefield. It's hard to analyze such a thing, but it's not guaranteed who will come out on top.

I like people being able to field different types of armies. If you take a level 4, then you should have a magic advantage over someone who doesn't. That's a big investment with inherent weakness, and as such, it should confer advantages as well.

 

It's called passion

It fails both for smaller and larger games - it depends on the armies somewhat but most spells are devastating at lower points levels, and the amount of power dice is relatively larger pr. point spent.
On the other hand, the magic system does not scale AT ALL, so you cannot really put more points into magic, or at the very least the return on investment trails off hard. It basically never makes sense to actually take two level 4 wizards, bar redundancy, but that is a hefty price for almost no gain, as long as both wizards are alive, as most of the time, there simply isn't enough power dice. Scale to 3 lv 4 wizards and now it's just comical how little you get out of it. This is also different from every other phase in the game: You much more closely get a return on investment for shooting and close combat.
To an extent, this means you cannot truly make a magic focused army.

I agree to an extent and I'm not saying it should be completely reliable; But I personally think 8th is too unreliable, making it so investment in magic is way more unreliable than others.

I agree to a point, the issue I have is that level 1 wizards quickly get so outmatched that they become almost useless. I'd rather have level 4 wizards being able to do more and some things somewhat better, than doing a few things so much better that lower level wizards do not have a chance.

The Irresistible force and miscast I agree is an easy fix, and your ides could work. Hard to say for sure, but by the face of them, better than what is there.

Innate bound spells sort of had their place, but still, they all cut into the magic dice pool, meaning they effectively gave less resources to your wizard, making the investment worse and they were so much easier to dispel. Did they work in corner cases: Yes. Did they work well as a whole: Absolutely not. I liked the 7th edition version much more, though that might have been too strong, given the prevalence of bound spells in 8th in comparison.

 

As you say, magic is less impactful in really large games... but it still works. I play 3,000 point games and magic is very well balanced at that sized game. If someone is intent on playing a truly large game (and they feel the need to scale magic), it's such an easy fix, just use a roll of 4d6 for winds of magic. That said, those types of games are pretty rare. I'd wager that most game are played somewhere between 2,000 to 3,000 points and magic seems well balanced at those point levels.

That's true (with the exception of Beastmen and to a much lesser extent Tomb Kings), but is that such a bad thing? It ensures that people don't go completely nuts with magic and potentially break the system. I think an unrestrained magic phase would open up all sorts of balance issues.

I guess we differ in this regard. However, it was never so unreliable that people abandoned magic investment. If anything, I believe most army lists invested too heavily in magic.

Innate bound spells do have their disadvantages as you point out, but not fearing miscasts is a nice feature. There have been quite a few occasions where I've thrown 6 dice at my Casket of Souls' Light of Death spell without having to worry about it blowing itself up.

I think innate bound spells worked as a good backup (if the wizard had no viable spells to case, failed to cast or was killed) or in cases where someone did not invest heavily in wizards. As such, I think they had their place.

 

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I think at this point it's become a case of grasping at straws until TOW actually gets released.

 

It working at larger games and scaling is very different, and obviously you can add your own rules, but it does not change the fact, that baseline, there is no scaling - which I personally don't like and look at as a flaw. Still I will grant that at most of my games have been around 2500 points, and it is fine there.

I think so. Why should it not be possible? You can specialize an army for every other phase, so why not allow it for the magic phase?
I'm not talking about breaking the system, rather have the system allow a wider breadth of possibilities in specialization, if wanted.

This I think had more to do with some spells being too strong, at least that is the experience in my gaming group.
But sure it was not so unreliable that you could not do anything with it. Still personal preference from my side, is that it was too unreliable.

Agreed, some select innate bound spells had their place. the issue I have is that more or less all of them where either backup or a trick to draw out dispel dice, which in my eyes looks like failed design.

 

Sure, but the issue lies in what those advantages are, and how big the advantages are in comparison to the baseline set by a "low" or even "medium" investment.

As it stands, the level 4 wizard is flat out better in every aspect. And not only is he better, but he's better to such an extend that he can basicly swat the level 1 wizard away in a straight up duel. This essentially results in magic being a flawed mechanic which is only interesting if you have an even match-up. The moment the match-up is uneven the mechanic becomes rather onesided and quickly falls apart as an interesting thing to interact with. Which is boring.

And yeah, you can bring your WoC lord or some other solution to deal with the level 4 wizard so your level 2's get free reign, but notably those solution mean you avoid really using magic yourself untill that level 4 is dealt with.