8th Ed. Optimising the New Magic System

That's not how dispelling works.

1. The caster chooses a spell
2. The caster rolls a d6 for Power Dice AND a d6 for Dispel Dice
3. The caster rolls 1 or more Power dice to cast the spell
4. If the spell is cast, the dispeller can choose to dispel or not. Unlike the power dice, you are not required to use at least 1 of your dispel dice.

I played 2 games with End Times magic last night and learned a few things:

1. Because of the random power dice and the larger amount of dispel dice, most spells are not cast successfully. (Most of our magic phases ended with 0 or 1 spells actually getting cast)

2. Because you get 4d6 Power Dice, you can attempt more spells in a turn than you used to attempt in an entire game. There are a lot more miscasts!

3. with 4d6 Power Dice the magic phase can be much longer which leads to noticeably longer games.

4. We had 8 attempts at casting an End Times Spell, and 2 of those attempts were successful (I cast the Fire End Times spell once, and one of my opponents cast the Slaneesh spell once.) Neither spell was a game ender (it did suck to lose control of my Temple Guard bunker for a turn...)

Some questions that we came up with while playing were:

1. Can you recast a successful Remains in Play spell? Or once it is cast and placed on the board do you "lose it" until it has been dispelled?

2. Same question for Vortexes, Hexes, and Augments. Can I cast Iceshard Blizzard on you until you are -8 Leadership, -8 to hit? Or spam Wildform until I'm +5 S, +5 T?

3. When dispelling a Remains in Play spell in a subsequent magic phase, how many dice can you use? As many as you want, or do you have to roll a d6?

 

Trickster's Shard seems more interesting than it once was with the higher volume of spells being attempted and dispelled, assuming you have a single caster who is attempting 14 or so weak spells vs 9 or 10 dispel dice. Either they have to risk multiple wounds or have their army use the dispel dice instead of their wizards.

 

I am not so sure about this. It seems to me that it is not the total amount of power and dispel dice on each side, but rather that difference between those amounts that really counts. In this way, channeling lots will be very useful.. However, i think that the arcane item slot is better filled with the Book of +1 to cast and dispel.

 

As an aside note, it really bothers me that there is not better confirmation as to what successfully cast means. In the BRB it seems very possible for a spell to be successfully cast and then successfully dispelled. This distinction now has even more importance as you can continue to cast a spell over and over until you fail to cast it.

 

I agree that a clarification about when a spell can be recast would be nice, but a spell cannot be both "successfully cast" and "successfully dispelled". A successful cast only happens when a dispel attempt fails (or is not made at all)

However, a spell can "not fail" and also be "successfully dispelled" and the Khaine rules describe two different requirements for a spell to be able to be recast:

1) if the spell has been successfully cast (this requires that it was not dispelled)
2) if the previous casting attempt did not fail (this can happen even if the spell was dispelled as a failed spell is only a spell that did not have its casting cost met)

These rules seem to be trying to say the same thing (one is from the Overview, and the other is from the more descriptive rules section) but they are ever so slightly different.

Oddly enough, the Overview portion of the rules described how generating dispel dice changed, but the more description portion of the rules never mentions dispelling at all. Which is strange... makes it seem like the Overview portion of the rules contains more than just an "overview" of some of the rules.

 

Thank you so much for providing an quote that was searchable within the BRB. I have been trying to find that for ages. My friends and myself have been playing it wrong, whereby Lore attributes trigger if the spell is cast, even if it was dispelled. It made for some interesting games, and actually made the lore attributes matter (the usually do almost nothing in my games).

This makes the new casting rather a bit more straight forward then. There are loads more power dice, but proportionally, the ratio of power dice to dispel dice is reduced, making it much more likely that there will be dispel resources available to dispel.

There is an interesting dynamic here, and perhaps two ways for normal wizards to play. You can go big, and hope that you roll high and your opponent rolls low on the casting vs dispelling D6. This will get spells through, but sporadically.

Alternatively you try to draw out your opponents dispel dice by attempting to cast lots of spells but it is likely that you will only get through and be able to spam the less threatening spells. The two different approaches lean towards different Lores, with the first preferring lores with a few nice big spells, and the second wanting a range of cheap but useful spells.

 

So I was dreaming today about a Level 1 Beasts skink with Power Stone casting Transformation of Kadon every game.

Then I went and checked the copy of the new magic rules that I see online:

"After picking a Wizard and declaring which spell you want them to cast, you must roll a D6. The result of the roll is the maximum number of dice you can use to cast that spell..."

The timing is fine, as you pick the spell you want to cast, roll a D6, then immediately before casting you get to decide whether or not to use the Power Stone. Unfortunately, the wording of this new rule prevents you from rolling additional dice, it seems. I suspect their intent was to say "maximum number of dice from the power pool" but as it stands, RAW prevents a magic item like Power Stone from adding an additional two dice to the casting attempt or a magic item like Wand of Jet from adding an additional D6 afterwards, correct? Unless, of course, you specifically use less dice from the power pool than the maximum, which makes these items almost equally pointless.

Similarly, Sceptre of Stability would not be allowed to add an extra dispel dice at the end of a dispel attempt.

Am I reading these new rules correctly or is there further information on another page that would make Power Stone, Wand of Jet, and Sceptre of Stability moderately useful? Or does the magic item rule trump the other one?

 

Could you use the Power Stone to use more than the maximum of 6 power dice to cast a spell?

 

IRC it think they greatly Erratad Power stone so now it just makes spells cost 1/2 as much to cast. ?
(instead of what it used to do)

 

That was Power Scroll that got errata'd, not Power Stone.

EDIT: And thanks for encouraging me to look at the FAQ! I had no clue they added a magic item with it:

(Reference Section – Arcane Items.
Add “STAFF OF SORCERY 35 points
The bearer receives a +1 bonus on attempts to dispel.”)

Might be worth considering in Slann-less lists for magic defense under this new system.

ANOTHER EDIT: After doing some internet searches, it seems that Power Stone does not allow you to exceed the maximum of 6 power dice under the old rules, so there is no reason to think it would allow you to exceed the maximum of D6 power dice under the new rules. Its a shame, as that otherwise useless arcane item almost seemed useful for a moment.

 

ahh my bad, I forgot there were two power thingies...

 

=> Maybe not godlike, but awesome for sure. Khatep's ability to do pretty much this exact thing was so huge that it actually made the TK army not-entirely-useless under the old system, and that's saying something.

 

So it seems like the biggest beneficiaries of this new magic system out of the Lizardmen book are Focus of Mystery Slann, Wandering Deliberations Slann, and Level 1 Skink Priest, right?

FoM Slann with Book of Ashur has 5 spells to cast on 3+ with Loremaster improving success rate from 67% to 89%.

WD Slann gets access to a zillion spells, including attributes from Fire and Death which help with casting multiple spells during elongated magic phases.

Level 1 Skink Priest for the low magic/monster mash lists get 7 spells for 65 points and make level 2 wizards seem very costly. One with Dispel Scroll and a second with Cube of Darkness or Power Scroll gives you 14 spells and either two strong dispels, or one dispel and one very reliable Comet of Casandora or Transformation of Kadon.

Which I guess leaves Level 2 Skink Priests in the doghouse, Tetto'eko in uncertain territory since its unclear how Herald of Cosmic Events interacts with the new Loremaster, and Lord Mazdamundi and Tehenhauin still too fragile to rely on. And I suppose the real question is how our biggest beneficiaries stack up to other army's big winners...

 

Just out of curiosity, has anyone tried the Wizarding Hat combo with the new magic system? On paper it sounds like you can get at least a 2+ armour, S7 wielding oldblood who is already subject to the stupidity rule since he is already mounted. From the looks of it every lore with access to all spells can provide some benefit in the form of range before you close the gap, and then buff/hex while in combat.

 

2+? on a cold one? That's 2+ without armour. Slap light armour on him, and he has 1+.

I might actually try this out next game, as a slannless army. Just for kicks, i don't expect it to be all that useful, but it might be fun. The loss of a ward save is bad, but depending on what you roll, it might just be a good tradeoff.

But honestly, i don't see it being better than just straight up taking 2 skink priests with heavens and beasts. Worse is you might get one of those two lores, which renders it useless.

I have been tinkering with an all-saurus list for a while though, and the possibility of having a semi-viable wizard does make it more appealing. 3k full saurus characters and all saurus warriors and temple guards?

Setting up the game tommorrow with a friend, either Undead Legion or High Elves. I could make a battlereport out of it if anyone is interested.

 

I'm always interested in battle reports.

 

That's true, I didn't have my BRB with me and wasn't sure if the wizard rule would negate wearing armour... Looks like you can though!

I'd be interested to hear how this goes as well. Should be a very dynamic cowboy... unless he decides to stick his head in the warp

 

This is the list I intend to run.
Lords: 790 points
- Saurus Oldblood (cold one, great weapon, light armour, wizarding hat)
- Saurus Oldblood (Carnosaur (full upgrades) light armour, shield, piranha blade, dawnstone, other tricksters shard)
Heroes: 595 points
- Gor’rok
- Scar Vet (BSB (War banner), Carnosaur (full upgrades), great weapon and light armour
Core: 764 points
- 40 saurus, full command and spears in a horde at first, later reformed to 5 wide to give me steadfast and less frontage
- 24 saurus, full command and HW+Shield
Special: 851 points
- 10 Cold One Cavalry, full command and spears
- 29 Temple guards, full command, razor banner

I'll actually be mostly interested in trying out a battle with only a level 2 wizard. Using the normal magic rules, he'd be shut down entirely by any decent wizard, but using the end times rules... We'll see how it goes, though honestly, an oldblood is still an oldblood, magic items or not. 1+ AS and 5 attacks at s7 is nothing to sneeze at, though I do fear my CoC unit will be nuked out of existance on the first turn. I hope i get a chance to actually see my Oldblood wizard cast some spells

 

I've run 2 lvl 2s with ET vs 2 lvl 4s and I was happily surprised at the resilience. The new magic system shrinks the gap between the power and dispel pool and if you count on your opponent to fail to roll high enough on an initial d6 for their cast allotment for at least one spell, it balances out pretty well.

This sounds like a downright awesome trick, but every link I have found refers to a +2 to channel rather than cast. Can anyone with the book confirm this?

Thanks!

 

It is +2 to channel