AoS General's Handbook MKII Early Look!

A teleport enemy spell would be incredibly powerful, I believe some of the old chaos magic allowed you to turn an enemy model into one of their own. I had a game of 8th where my slann blew up and become a harpy or succubus or something like that. With each battletome they are reworking some of the old spells to fit in to the AoS brand.

 

They wouldn't necesarly need to be the same size,and making a bunch of em should be straightforward enough. They only real downside to it would be that you could rapidly end up having to carry quite a lot of stuff around with you. Though that shouldn't be that much of an issue either.. Most places you play at should be relativly prepared, plus for a lot of them fairly simple markers can make due. In the worst case just leave the giant standing there and put some marker on it to remember what happened with it.

To be honest interesting effects that we currently seem to be missing and what would help make magic vastly more interesting would be the following:
- conjuring stuff that affects the shape of the battlefield; summoned walls of flame, petrified Giants...
- disrupting the enemy; teleport an enemy out of the way, scare some unit so it breaks formations and turns tail to flee, enrage a unit causing it to just attack everything in sight friend or foe, mindcontrol.....
- Lasting effects, pretty much all abilities and spells need to be continuously reaplied. Which causes the whole spamming of your 1 usefull spell every turn. Having lasting effects would open up a lot more tactical use of wizards. If only because it would open up the option of shielding the unit and then providing firesupport until the shield needs to be reaplied. A default cleanse would also be needed in this case, but you could potentially use the unbind mechanic for it (unbind the new spell, or unbind the existing (de)buff)
- Effects that increase or diminish over time. A curse of impending doom that wipes out the target after "X" turns would lead to interesting situations. Put it on the opponent's big scary thing and now run away from it till it dies horribly. Similarly a blessing of greatness that causes your puny model to become more powerfull each turn until finally it starts oneshotting dragons & Giants could lead to interesting tactics (do I kill the puny dude now before he becomes a threat, or do I kill his big scary thing that's actually a threat now?)

And finally:
- some way for spells to interact directly. All the spells are oneshots that don't particularly effect eachother. The most you really have "I cast 3 things so my important trick is guaranteed to work" It would be wonderfull if there was actuall interaction. Conjure up a patch of oil which causes the enemy to slip, once they enter it set it on fire. Petrify that giant, now shatter it pelting its allies with shards of rock. Even just the simple "you cast X so I cast Y to minimize its effect".

Admittadly this last one would probably require some rework of how magic currently works since we don't get to respond to the opponent before the cast is finished.

Also, the increase of duration and the effects that would change over time would probably require significantly longer matches.

 

I remember something where a hero[?] could turn into a spawn. I used a Fenbeast model for that.

I don't remember a spell that turned anything into a Fury or similar.

I wish they would scrap most direct damage spells by renaming them to Vanish.

DD spells still have a place against things with multiple wounds I suppose.

 

Direct damage is fine, there just need to be variations of them and they shouldn't be overpowering. Give me a spell that works against clustered groups of units. Give me one that deals with a horde unit. give me one that is good at annihilating a small elite unit. Give me one against behemoths. Give me one against armor. Give me one against demons. Give me one against mortals. Give me one that has secondary effects (starlight against chaos demons). Give me ones that can deal a lot of wounds, but can be saved. Give me one that can deal mortal wounds, but only a few. Give me one with rend. There are loads of variations possible. All of which can add tactical depth to the wizard. Especially if you add interaction to spells & have some choice as to what you give your wizard. Now also give specific shielding spells that gain an advantage towards the various tyes of attacks and wizards suddenly become relevant, instead of being fairly minor supporting units. To make sure that stuff like khorne doesn't get curbstomped, give them wizard-hunters and other mechanics specifically countering wizards...

There's plenty you can do with "just" DD spells if you actually create variation and interaction...

 

It was the daemonic possession spell, my slann failed leadership and blew up. I think he used something other than a herald because I was already losing pretty badly.

 

Eighth edition had lots of DD spells. All the variations were usually just changing the # dice rolled or the ST value or both.

@Canas ,
Your notions of what makes a variant would be an improvement.

Also, I liked that oil-slick idea.

 

With current DD spells, there are a lot of units that I struggle to deal with. Chaos warriors for instance have 2 wounds at 18 points each! Their statkine is comparable to Saurus guard so I do not want to deal with them in CC. Maybe a spell that does more damage for more wounds in the unit?

 

DD spells, like all magic, desperatly need variation. A spell to take down armored opponents, a spell to take down hordes, a spell to take down clustered units, a spell to take down monsters and so on.... to be honest if they are going to fix magic this would probably be one of the first things they do. I just hope that in this case they don't make everything do mortal wounds like it does now. Mortal wounds are too overpowering, plus having "normal" wounds would actually allow for variants of spells to exist. Now virtually all spells do D3 damage. With mortal wounds if you go for D6 you start oneshotting heroes if you get Lucky, and with less than D3 your spell is far too weak... At least "normal" wounds wouldn't have that problem which gives more oppertunites for making variants.

 

I think if you take a look at the Tzeentch/Stormcast book it shows they are working on magic a bit at least.

 

I just hope they'l apply some of those to everyone in the general's handbook... if they're going to do it per battletome & we need to wait 3 years to get a new one it'd be even worse than just sticking to the current mess since the updated ones will wipe the floor with the unupdated ones...

 

I agree, Slann can only do summons now pretty much. While they are supposed to be the most powerful spell casters in existence par none.

 

As do the bonesplitterz

 

They really just need to do that for all of em in one go... this is such an odd way to do that.

On a sidenote, how many freaking stormforged units are they making, they just went to 43 with the new archers... none of the other armies even compare to it. I get that they are the flagship army of age of sigmar, and probably one of the more popular ones, but this seems excessive. Give the other factions some love..