8th Ed. Lore of Death? death indeed...

[Lingbei]

I had a sneak peek at the SoM spells, some are insane (Taking every enemy units WS,BS,I and LD to 1) amongst others. The Lizardmen spell can be quite useful but only v horde armies of when your almost dead anyway

 

[Cravenus]

i personally think as lizerdmen we should ban any army with more ranged combat than our own....

 

[strewart]

When you play the game exactly as it was written and don't change a thing, you are assuming that the game designers got everything right. Everything is balanced, and well written. That is clearly not the case, otherwise there would be no power creep, no need for new editions all the time, and certainly no need for pages and pages of FAQs. The simple fact is the game is flawed.

It really comes down to how you want to play the game. If you want to play competatively, at tournaments or just in general playing hard to win, then sure keep everything in, bring the best army list you can and go hard.

On the other hand, GW has actually said on numerous occasions that people can modify rules as they see fit and the designers have more prepared the game as a fun, relaxed environment rather than as a balanced hardcore tournament game. The simple fact is that a spell that can wipe an entire unit out in one go is not all that much fun to be on the receiving end of. In my gaming group, we play the game for fun. Sure we try to win, but if something spectacular or funny happens that means we lose instead, thats good too. Its about being emersed in the experience.

Which is why we made the decision to ignore the big overpowered spells. Even as the one throwing them, I didn't find it much fun. If we find an army list is winning too much, we weaken it to make the games more fun and even.

Really, I am just explaining my thoughts behind it. There is no right or wrong way to play the game, I completely understand the people who want to keep everything exactly as intended and enjoy throwing out spells that can wipe a unit in one go. No worries there. I also like the opposite way. I actually wish there was more customization of the game going on.

 

[strewart]

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Dammit strewart, you're too good at comebacks. I agree with you: customisation is a good thing, but I really think that banning powerful spells, items etc is a slippery slope that will probably lead to massive exclusions of stuff that you just don't want to fight. I am not prepared to give up my Stegadon because my opponent doesn't like it: let him get his own cool creature ( most of the time, they do. As a result my poor steg regularly comes up against HPAs, warsphinxs, and elven dragons. There is always a way to combat anything: refusing to try is just unfair in my opinion).

Yeah you are right, you need to draw the line somewhere at what to ban, and there is always going to be something that is right at the top and on the line of powerful. No questions there. We personally haven't banned anything at all besides the 6th spells, and thats only because we were finding games including them were not much fun. It really has to come down to common sense and how you enjoy the game.

While we haven't gone as far as banning anything, my Skaven opponent has said he will never take a HPA because he considers it cheesy. Empire player chooses not to take the rocket launcher or steam cannon both because of the fluff and the power. I won't take a star dragon with my High Elves. In fact the magic thing started when I was playing a HE archamge with book of Hoeth; getting Dwellers was too easy. One game I said I would not take it, and switched for a different spell because I didn't enjoy rolling a couple of dice and destroying half his biggest horde unit in turn 1.

I guess I'm lucky that my gaming group is pretty sensible about how we make our armies, we favour the cool looking and themed units and armies over the raw power ones and definitely prefer a fun, close game. And of course none of us look at special characters anymore either, they are ALWAYS unbalanced; either too powerful or too expensive and just make the game focus on them instead of the armies.

 

[kroxigor01]

Combos that in some match ups let you win in the army selection phase are bad for the game. 60 Phoenix Guard that are immune to magic. 3 or more Loremaster Vampires. 150 Longbeard Rangers with 3 indirectly firing Grudge Throwers behind.

If the best lists also make for boring play, the community should nerf/comp until we get to a level where the best lists make for interesting play.

The big nuke spells are part of the problem.

 

[zenoren]

I make it a rule to know what spells all of the enemy wizards have and to know what each one does. Sometimes this does slow up the game, but with the new Battle Magic Cards it has gotten easier for me to keep up.

The reason it is so important is to know about spells like Purple Sun of Doom and Pit of Saurusdeath. I let spells like Fireball go off without even batting an eye so I have 5 dice to throw at Punumbral Pendulum. The 8th Edition magic phase can be really powerful... but we can use that to our advantage too.

You just have to know your opponent and the spells they brought.

 

[strewart]

Well yes, but it is difficult ( if not nigh-impossible) to write rules to make sub-optimal armies that aren't irritating to play with. I know I would be annoyed throughout a battle if I could have won a combat ( and the battle) if I'd just had X (X being Dwellers, my slippery Sam or a blade of realities etc).

I had a game a few weeks ago where I rolled really high on my magic phase, circumstances were such that there was only 1 spell I could throw that would actually be useful and my opponent had a biiiig unit. I thought gee if only we hadn't banned Dwellers, I could throw that and be in a great position instead of a bad position....

Then I remembered why we banned it. The game was very close, but a bit in my opponent's favour. I could have dropped that bombshell, wiped half his horde unit and possibly one of the characters in it, then gone on to win without much trouble at all. But wow would that have made a boring conclusion to the game.

What transpired instead was a typically vicous and bloody affair as games always are between High Elves and Dark Elves. By the end of the battle, he had half of one unit fleeing, half of another unit still in combat. I had a bolt thrower, my Phoenix Guard desperately holding out in battle, and 2 Dragon Princes. I'd take that very close exciting game over me dropping a nuke in turn 3 and comng home comfortably ANY day.

 

[Juhaaha]

Ban power scroll

Problem solved

 

[Idura]

Well, that's one outcome.
I tried banning all lvl6 spells (and the dread thirteenth) in my weekly battle against my mate's skaven.

He changed his tactics completely. Instead of fielding a mix of everything, he took around three hundred clanrats in six teams of fifty. The sheer volume of attacks tore everything to shreds.

Normally in this circumstance, I would have chucked out a Dwellers and halved his unit size. Unfortunately, we had banned it, so there was literally nothing I could do.

We had a laugh, but I am never doing that again. I honestly think that without Dwellers, our only recourse against hordes as lizzies is a similar horde of skinks. Which would suck.


I'm sure I'm wrong about that though, and someone is about to post: duh! You can use XXXs XXX special rule to XXX.

Well, anyone can tell that without those spells hordes become quite difficult to face. But then its all up to what kind of game you want to play. For fun or to win. In my gaming group we play without those spells and we try to make Fun lists instead of lists that are guarranteed to win. I for one always play with Some cold ones, at least one steg and razordons even though they suck, and i get sooo happy when they do perform its totally worth it .

My mates do the same, play with fun models, try to use them to their best potential. Ofc some models are way to worthless to even consider... (zombies).

 

[Questioner]

I personally do not think the solution is EVER ban it. These things are there for a reason, you know.

 

[strewart]

Well, that's one outcome.
I tried banning all lvl6 spells (and the dread thirteenth) in my weekly battle against my mate's skaven.

He changed his tactics completely. Instead of fielding a mix of everything, he took around three hundred clanrats in six teams of fifty. The sheer volume of attacks tore everything to shreds.

Normally in this circumstance, I would have chucked out a Dwellers and halved his unit size. Unfortunately, we had banned it, so there was literally nothing I could do.

We had a laugh, but I am never doing that again. I honestly think that without Dwellers, our only recourse against hordes as lizzies is a similar horde of skinks. Which would suck.


I'm sure I'm wrong about that though, and someone is about to post: duh! You can use XXXs XXX special rule to XXX.

Fair point, that would indeed be a tough army to drag down. Hordes can be frustrating because you can slaughter a load of models, then realise its only like 30-50 points. They retaliate, kill 3-4 models, and its the same or more points.

I guess it works for us because we generally don't take too many hordes, maybe one unit tops. I usually either reform to only 5 wide to minimize attacks, then rely on the eliteness of my units to whittle them down, or go for flank attacks. Getting into the flank of that Skaven army is the doom of it if you can.
Also, what sized table do you play on? 6 horde units of Skaven is 48" wide, 53" if you take into account 1" between each unit. That is a lot of space. We usually run out of room on the table with a horde, there would be no space for him to manouvre at all. I guess manouvring doesn't matter too much if you are going to just roll forward and rely on weight of numbers though.

 

[Leokill27]

Yeah, with proxy we have a limit, 1 or 2 units / big monsters at most. Maybe you should implement that.

Or....

Take salamanders and let him come to you!

 

[Juhaaha]

I personally do not think the solution is EVER ban it. These things are there for a reason, you know.

I lol'd. Reason for power scroll? Retarded designers

 

[Questioner]

Yeah, and everyone I know would prefer the spell not to go off than to suffer a miscast.

 

[strewart]

On a slightly related note, apparently the next White Dwarf will contain a modification to the power scroll to nerf it, and I assume at some point soon the FAQ will have it too... Interesting move by GW.

 

[BEEGfrog]

I wish GW would do a few more proper amendments once an item proves itself too overpowered for the points cost.

Either by nerfing or by amending the cost. It wouldn't hurt to reduce the cost of a few things that never get used now so we get more real variety.

One thing that is now generally over priced, especially when one use only are bound spells. Most of them are costed for being self powered.

The Lizardmen bound lightning spell is one use, needs 2 dice to cast and the spell now doesn't ignore armour saves like it did last edition. At its current points cost it is just wasting space in the book. I very occasionally took it in 7th, but thought it was overpriced, now it just gets in the way when I am looking for stuff.