8th Ed. Slann and the new magic, having your cake and eating it too.

Lizardmen gained the Lore of High Magic, I believe same spell choices as that of High Elves. You can only take the Lore Master if you want it with Lore of High Magic. The other great ability is the new Lore Attribute that the LM have for the High Magic, at the end of the magic phase that a spell was successfully casted the slann and choose to forget that spell and roll a new spell from any of the 8 lores, just as if it was the begging of the game .Now I am not 100% sure on all effectiveness of the spells of the new Lore of High Magic. Only a few I really see necessary, Drain Magic, Fiery Convocation, and Possibly Hand of Glory. So I am wondering if you guys think it might be an effective strategy to take the lore master of high magic and just try to cast through the spells you don't want till you get to the ones you want that you can roll on in the main book so you would have both High Magic and any of the main rule book ones.

Now I was wondering if you guys feel this is a viable tactic or do you feel it take too long to setup?

 

Re: Slann and the new magic, having your cake and eating it

i'm starting to think to get a high magic loremaster slann just to swap all the spells and have a life or light loremaster slann...

 

Re: Slann and the new magic, having your cake and eating it

The catch is having to cast them first though; you'd spend half the battle just switching out spells while you should be casting good spells with your expensive Slann -- spells you probably don't want to switch out.

 

Re: Slann and the new magic, having your cake and eating it

I think the High Magic is very effective for Lizardmen: Hand of Glory is an amazingly effective (and cheap!) spell to boost the somewhat measley WS of Saurus; Apotheosis is great if your have a lot of monsters, it's cheap and you recover D3 wounds so that's your Stegadon sorted; Walk Between Worlds sounds like a devious way for getting your Salamanders or Stegadon out to positions that'd really annoy your opponent, or moving our slower/weaker units out of harms way; Fiery Convocation is a horrible spell to be at the receiving end of (speaking from personal experience); where-as Drain Magic is just another way to push your Slann into dominating the Magic Phase.

I'd say High Magic is a great lore for the Lizards. I'm thinking of exchanging a few for spells form the Lore of Light due to the higher chance of rolling on an decent buffer. With Loremaster then you can keep the spells you really want and exchange the less attractive ones (eg. Tempest) to make your Slann a ridiculously versatile mage. All the HM spells are fairly decent too, so even if you are having to cast a spell you don't really want to have, it'd still have a decent effect. Still, it could mean that the first few turns will devolve into a push to exchange all the unwanted spells for tastier ones, so a balance would have to be struck.

All in all, I'd say that's a pretty big, tasty cake!

 

Re: Slann and the new magic, having your cake and eating it

Yeah, with the new Slann not being able to cast loads of spells you're looking at what, 2 at most a turn? So getting even 4 signature spells will take at least two turns. Add in the fact that you're opponent will still likely have a scroll left and that means 3 turns without casting any useful spells. Since you're probably paying around 750 or more for this magic and it's bunker, I don't see it being a good investment.

To swap out one spell for searing doom I can see being a good idea, any more than that I can't see it being worth it.

 

Re: Slann and the new magic, having your cake and eating it

When you choose to roll for a new spell, can you opt to take the sig from the chosen lore ie. you cast drain magic and then swap it out and role for a new spell in the lore of metal and get golden hounds. Can you then swap that for searing doom?

 

Re: Slann and the new magic, having your cake and eating it

the swapping ability only comes from the Lore Of High Magic. So once you swap a spell and take another from a different lore you can't switch back.

 

Re: Slann and the new magic, having your cake and eating it

Yeah I realise that, what I meant is when you have rolled up hounds for example can you choose searing doom instead because it is the signature in the same way as if you were rolling at the start of the game. Does that make sense?

 

Re: Slann and the new magic, having your cake and eating it

I guess it could be pretty useful to gain access to a key Signature spell to exploit a weakness in your opponent's army.

 

Re: Slann and the new magic, having your cake and eating it

If you're a Loremaster (High Magic) you automatically know every spell in that lore.

The Lore Attribute allows you to forget a spell to gain access to a different spell.

But, being Loremaster, you then automatically get the spell you forgot back, as the special rule gives you all the spells of that lore.

Discuss.





NB: There's an FAQ regarding the 10-12 result on the Miscast table, involving forgetting spells, the ruling being that they do in fact lose the spell. Still, one can dream...

 

Re: Slann and the new magic, having your cake and eating it

If you decide to swap a high magic spell for one from a regular lore, you roll up the new spell as normal. Therefore, you can swap for the sig spell if you so choose.

All in all, I don't see the loremaster ability being that attractive. With the loss of the bonus casting die, the bound spells that our we can get from some of the monsters, and the fact that you will want to be casting that wyssans from a skink priest, I don't think you will have the dice handy that would make loremaster worth it. You can also swap high magic spells for other high magic spells, so you will get the ones you really want eventually.

 

Re: Slann and the new magic, having your cake and eating it

I haven't got my book yet so I still don't know how much it costs, but I think if I was going to take high I'd want Loremaster just to have the extra spells available. You can never have enough spells.

 

Re: Slann and the new magic, having your cake and eating it

+1 to this.

Some people are thinking you only ever want to bring as many spells as you are likely to have power dice to cast. The real key is, bringing enough spells/bound effects/etc that each power die you generate every phase will be very threatening and a "must dispel" for the enemy.

High magic has a fair number of these, including the excellent arcane unforging.

 

Re: Slann and the new magic, having your cake and eating it

I think I'm going to be going high magic pretty much all the time.
Yeah, if you're going up against warriors of chaos, metal is better.
If you're fighting vampires you want light.
If you are throw down against dwarves, shadow is awesome.

But the thing is, unless you always tailor your list to your opponent, you won't have that "best" lore.
Cycling spells from high magic to the others lets you get those ideal spells.

As for loremaster, I'm not sold on it yet. It's expensive, and I'm not sure it's really needed. I think my decision on lore master is going to be based off of what other things I want my slaan to have.

-Matt

 

Re: Slann and the new magic, having your cake and eating it

I'm thinking:

Early doors, throw all the damage spells out, causing some decent hits (possibly) and then swapping them out for light/life buffs.

I mean, you can argue it's pretty unlikely (because it is), but imagine turn 3-4 your slann has access to say, hand of glory, speed of light, flesh to stone AND wildform - how on earth would enemies cope with that!

To me, loremaster of high magic seems pretty auto-include. Can't really see the all signatures one getting a look in.

 

Re: Slann and the new magic, having your cake and eating it

Yeah, loremaster is actually cheaper now (though more limited), plus with high magic you get 8 spells instead of 7, it is really a steal. Also with Drain Magic... if I only had 4 spells to start with, I probably wouldn't wind up taking Drain Magic. But Drain Magic is a nice spell to have "just in case," even though in some games you won't find a use for it. It can also save you on dispel dice, say if someone is buffing his big unit with a few spells. It's much cheaper to just cast drain magic. Then do something really threatening first, like arcan unforging on his BSB, to cause the enemy to throw dispel dice. Then just pop a cheap drain magic and wipe that units buffs all out.

High Magic just has some nice spells, the lower ones are pretty cheap to cast too (even cheaper with the EotG).

 

Re: Slann and the new magic, having your cake and eating it

My apologies if this has been answered else where, or if this doesn't fit in with this particular thread but, let's say you cast a spell from High Magic and you wish to swap it out with another spell from a BRB lore. If the opposing wizard successfully dispels it, can you still swap the spell? You did meet the casting value, and so from my interpretation it is still successfully cast, however I don't know the rulebook nearly as thoroughly as I'd like, so I'd like to know a definitive answer on this, before I use the lore attribute in a practical setting. This may also effect whether or not I take loremaster, hence the relevancy with this particular thread.

On a sidenote, in my oppinion, this cake tastes fucking badass. No more whining about Overpowered units etc, and soo many interesting options with synergy. My mind is in a flurry right now, just thinking shit up. Stoked.

 

Re: Slann and the new magic, having your cake and eating it

I do not have my book yet, probably only getting it end of next week...late order by warhammer stockist. The inhumanity....
Anyway the exciting thing for me is the way it will complement my dinos when I swop out with lore of life and I get lifebloom going same withlore of death for the extra power dice.

You can swop out many spells but as mentioned by others that would take half the game. I would go for say 2 spells. Possibly from the same lore as well to get value from the attribute. I think slann will be feared for other reasons not becalming and rumination anymore. I will reallly miss the miscast protection from cupped hands though.

Changing one up or down on table does not make me feel all that much safer lol. I regularly miscast on 2 -3 dice....

 

Re: Slann and the new magic, having your cake and eating it

I'm surprised the Sig spell discipline is getting such a bad write up.

I've played against a Loremaster of Hoeth a couple of times and the choice of spells they have means there is always a threat. The thing that lets them down is just being a Level 2. Now a lvl4 Slann with that kind of spell access amd range fom the start of t1 seems pretty nasty to me.

Lots of people seem keen on the Loremaster High mainly to swap out spells. More often than not you'll end up going for the sig spells unless you get that 1 in 6 roll for the spell you actually want. But with this strategy you need to waste PD and turns before you get the spells you want. Surely the Sig spell discipline is better should this be what you're after?

Don't get me wrong, Loremaster High seems like it could be quite decent, with some nice spells, and the lore attribute gives some decent versatility but I wouldn't be constructing my casting strategy around it.

 

Re: Slann and the new magic, having your cake and eating it

I think this is the crucial point

Looking through the lore of high magic there isn't really a dud spell in it, I suppose I wouldn't be too sad to lose tempest, and once you have cast arcane unforging once, or maybe twice (having got rid of the item you were targetting) you could probably swap it out for something else.

Being able to draft in a light spell to deal with daemons/undead or the metal sig spell to deal with heavy armour will be very useful indeed.