8th Ed. High Magic lore attribute not so effective?

So ive played lizardmen around 4x now and ive used a slann with the high magic loremaster mark. Ive been reading the fourms and reading how people say its so amazing to swap out spells. Personally I think its not effective. Before I start to explain, note that each time I played lizardmen, it was against high elves and the player either had book of hoeth or two lvl 2's.

In all my games I ve only been able to successfully swap out 3 spells AT MOST. The opponent always has dispel scrolls or just naturally dispels whathever i try to cast.

The lower costing spells are generally the ones we want so we dont want to swap them out and the higher casing ones are the ones we want to change but by the time I get to those I dont have any more dice left to successfully cast them in order to swap them out.

So my question is .. how many spells are you usually swapping out in each game? Do you find it that effective?

Thanks

 

I've yet to play a game with the new army book (one game today) so can't really answer your question. However book of hoeth is a really good item that is both offensive and defensive. So HElfs can be hard to overpower in magic.

The winds of magic affects the usefulness quite a bit (like it always does in magic). The more dice you have than your opponent, the more of a chance you have at swapping your spells. But they can't dispel everything. You get hand of glory cast easier because the enemy is more worried you'll cast tempest and then change it to something more dangerous to him.

What you could do is that you swap some spell that the enemy thinks you wouldn't want to swap away. If you get a great dangerous spell (like wyssan's) he'll try to dispel it instead. Then you can cast tempest, switch it to another spell in high magic and hope you get hand of glory back.

I'll see what I get out of High magic against dwarfs (now they're really excel at dispeling!)

 

The key issue is defining what "effective" means before getting into any discussion. If effective is being defined as getting highly effective magic off every phase than I think anything short of the previous version of Teclis with IF on any double is going to be a disappointment. Similarly, if winning the game with a single casting (i.e. the old version of lizzies where dwellers was 6-diced every turn) is effective, then high magic definitely isn't going to fall into the same category. Conversely, if effective is defined as magic contributing to the overall battle plan, then high magic definitely fits the bill.

High magic, along with nearly all the newer, army specific lores, are far more subtle than the main lores in terms of their impact on the game. The ability to switch out spells is very useful but in itself is not game changing with a single casting. However, it does give a tremendous amount of flexibility as one can always change out one of the less useful spells early one (my personal favourite is soul quench for anything). High magic is very useful but it tends to make small contributions to victory every turn rather than being a game winner in a single turn. HoG is particularly useful for lizzies since it helps compensate for lower baseline WS & I in our troops while just about every spell in the entire lore is useful. Here are a couple recent examples where it proved highly useful in games:

Lizzies vs Khorne Daemons: switched out soul quench early on for wyssans and was able to spam it in conjunction with a skink priest. This markedly improved the shooting & combat of skinks units and made the TG bunker a real threat, particularly in conjunction with HoG. Perhaps the heroic moment of the game was getting double wyssans off on turn 4 on a skrox unit that had reformed to shoot a soulgrinder that had already been delayed by two sacrificial units of skirmishers. 20 poisoned, S5 shots later and the the soulgrinder was down to 1 wound, which it quickly lost to a stand & shoot reaction.

Lizzies vs WoC: Again, soul quench was exchanged for wyssans and arcane unforging and fiery convocation were used to draw out the scroll early on after dice were used to prevent the ethereal movement of sallies to the flank of the nurgle warrior horde. On turn 3, the arcane unforging on the BSB sucked up the dispel dice, allowing both HoG & wyssan's to go off on an ancient steg that had charged a block of 6 khorne ogres, allowing steggie to hold up and eventually defeat the unit that otherwise would have flanked the TG. By turn 5 when the critical TG vs Nurgle horde battle occurred, wyssans, HoG & miasma (shadow lore) were used to level the playing field, leading to a slow grind on both sides rather than wholesale slaughter of TG.

It definitely takes patience to use high magic but I personally find it a lot more enjoyable than life since it provides much greater variety, flexibility and fun in the game (no one likes to be on the receiving end of dwellers!). Drain magic is fantastic while fiery convocation can suck up an entire opposing magic phase of dice. The low casting values mean you can generally get 1-2 spells off per phase, none of which are likely to be massive game changers but each little bit helps.

 

So far I have only played one game with the new book (2nd game tomorrow night) I didn't find the lore as a whole as effective as I thought it would be.

However this is down to poor general skills I feel rather than the lore. Firstly I forgot that Fiery something or other is a remains in play spell and secondly did not take advantage of the lore ability.

I got the fiery spell off on the 1st turn after casting a couple of other spells (managed to channel 3 extra dice ), that turn I should have swapped fiery for a lore of metal spell as I was playing warriors and kept bouncing spells and shots off their high armour. The following turns I was casting walk and hand regularly while leaving power dice for the skinks to use on beast magic.

Looking back should have swapped out 1 or 2 spells for metal lore spells which would have helped immensely.

I think that the lore attribute could be very helpful against a number of armies especially thpse with low magic users of their own. I'd imagine that against a strong magic army like high elves the ability is likely to be less useful however as you have said they were able to limit your magic phase.

Tomorrow I shall attempt to use the lore correctly and report back!

 

Swapping out 3 spells is actually more spells than I would have expected. In my mind, you only are really counting on adding one or two spells to the High Magic lore. In the first turn you are just hoping to pop off as many of the damage spells as you can, and you might get 1 or 2 spells off per game.

But really the lore of High Magic is pretty useful in general, so there's only a few spells you want to swap out at any given moment.

My order of swapping would be...
Soul Quench
Tempest
Fiery Convocation
Arcane Unforging

Soul Quench because I will be running with blasterdons, so I'll still have magic missiles to fire off. Also because the opponent is more likely to allow this spell to go through. Tempest because some armies don't have big blocks of troops, or might be too tough or armored to even care. Fiery Convocation is only 3rd because it may not always be worth casting at 19+, because some armies may not have units large enough for it to be worth casting. In the case you can cast it, you are likely not to have a phase where you want to cast it again, so if cast you can probably swap for something more useful. Arcane Unforging, because you will probably target the worst magic items first, before you then swap out for something better.

I'd be perfectly happy with adding 2 or even 1 spell to my arsenal in most games. Miasma combos pretty well with Hand of Glory, possibly dropping enemy weapon skill to where they hit you on 5+. Another Wyssan's is always nice, having multiple people casting the spell can make sure you push one through. Then of course you have Searing Doom for armor, Shem's for Daemons and Undead, etc etc.

The thing to remember is you really are only wanting to get a couple spells per game, but you are mostly using the Lore of High Magic.

 

1) You have to successfully cast the spell. Once it has gone off without being stopped, you can choose to forget it at the end of the phase and roll for a new spell

2) You pick a lore to roll on and get one of the six spells available. You can choose to swap that spell for the sig spell if you desire.

 

Every game so far I've swapped for one of these:
Spirit Leech
Wild Form
Searing Doom

All depending on my opponent.
I haven't faced the high elf book yet; but I'm bringing Tetto, the channel x3 on 5+, and the ability to store a die.

Average Winds of magic rolls produce a 2 dice advantage for the caster.
I should be able to save 1 and channel 1; giving me a 4 die advantage.
After that, it's all about bleeding our opponents dispel dice.
With some low casting value spells around, and a pair of bound 3 Beam of Chotec, I'm getting ~3 spells off per phase.

-Matt

 

Forgive me if Im wrong, but I thought that the wording implied you could swap a spell even if it had been dispelled. it says any spells that "are sucessfully cast" and BRB pg 32 "If the casting result equals or exceeds the spells casting value, the spell is cast (though it may be subsequently dispelled...)". Ive been playing that Ill cast tempest, it gets dispelled and "oh well, swap to metal for searing doom".

 

I need to look into this more but as much as I wish this was correct I do not think you are right. If you were all spell lore effects would happen even on a dispelled spell.

 

Most lore attribute only would matter if the spell got off anyway, and plus Im pretty sure the wording is unique

 

So yesterday had a game against dwarfs. And he was well prepared against my magic. He had a rune lord and rune of balance, so that +3 dice for him and -1 for me. But I did manage to get some spells of. I just had to play little risky, and threw one dice on many of the spells. I didn't get tempest, arcane unforgiving or fiery convocation off, but managed to change drain magic and walk between the worlds to miasma and enfeebling foe. Didn't really need anything else, because I could easily buff my own units with hand of glory and hex his units with miasma. And it went really well, cleared the table and I only lost a skink skirmisher unit, a single salamander and skink chief on ripper (lost total 280 points) and i got about 2400 points + 100 for general + 100 for bsb and 3x 25 for the flags. An almost 2400 victory!

 

Unfortunately if you look at Spell Resolution in the BRB it says "If the enemy failed his dispel attempt (or not even attempt one!), the spell is cast successfully and its effects are now resolved". Given that in the quote you provided it just says "the spell is cast" but not successfully, I think that means you cannot use the lore attribute if the spell has been dispelled.

 

Damn, then Ive been playing this completely wrong :/ That really sucks and kills most of the strategies I had thought of since the new book