8th Ed. Was Cupped hands too strong?

Some good points above. Cupped hands, by itself, was not horrible without the disciplines on the slann in the old book, particularly focused rumination plus loremaster. I think what is missing is an understanding and appreciation of how cupped hands in combination with certain disciplines tended to matke games less fun and more extreme in outcomes in the old book. I like the soul of stone option of reducing the worst miscast risks in the new book. 1. As long as cupped hands wasn't burned, the offensive slann could six dice stuff and go to town with offensive magic, or pound the opponent in the magic phase with 2 and 3 dice spells , picking up an extra power dice each time a casting attempt was made and forcing the opponent to burn scrolls and dispel dice or take risks letting stuff go through. The opposing general would not realistically hope for a miscat to suddenly and prematurely end the magic phase, unless a loss of concentration occurred. It reeally made the opponent feel impotent and like the LM magic phase was tottally unfair. 2. On the other hand, if one rolled the dreaded 1 on cupped hands early or burned it early and miscast a lot after burning cjupped hands the miscasts ultimately nerfed or blew up the the slann (taking away magic levels and key spells was usually enough) and, most often, burned down the TG unit with the slann such that ithe TG unit could be reduced and killed off leaving the remaining slann breaking and getting run down. 3. If one passed cupped hand off to the opposing wizard, then there was a chance that you could almost end the game by either blowing up the enemy mage or causing it to lose most or all of its magic levels and spells. 4. If one ran a "ghost" slann outside the TG unit, there was always a risk that certain untis or spells could get through to the slann and end the game. A lucky runed cannon or warp lightning cannon shot with a failed ward save, being charged by a unit or character with magic attacks or able to get magical attacks could take out the slann or break it and chase it down.
Lose the slann and one loses the general and the BSB and the boost to the TG unit.

Granted all of the above tended to occur with weaker generals and people relying on magic as a crutch to inw. I absolutely agree that relying too heavily on the slann, cupped hands, and the offensive magic phase made the army to unstable such that LM in the old book in compettitive lightly comped or uncomped tournaments tended to win a lot but suffer the one of two big losses when the slann blew up to not win overall. Invariably, one would miscast multiple times such that cupped hands was of not use or the opposing mages would be out of line of sight or suffer minimal miscast losses. But it made the result too luck-driven.

In most tournament games I played against LM players with the prior book , they depended on the slann to cast magic. TG were more expensive and less effective (no PF) in the old book; as were saurus to some extent. Stegs and certain units were too vulnerable to certain magic and shooting against certain armies. It made a huge impact on the game, whether taking out a key characters with a death spell and bane head or a critical dwellers or final transmutation or purple sun. Some players, including my son, avoiding the big number six spells to avoid bad game dings and bad comp scores but still relied heavily on getting off key augments on their units to win the grinding combats and reduce the loss rates to shooting, magic, and combat (flesh to stone made the TG unit a rock) and hexes and direct damage spells were needed to take out key threats or reduce them. Thus, inevitably I saw even top ranked LM generals having to go offensive and risk miscasting with the slann when games got cloes or competitive and that meant often some risk of blowing up the slann, or the bigger and more common issue of blowing up too many TG or leavig the slann exposed directly to certain shooting and magic or being charged and broken and run down without the TG unit. Most players saw their only solution as either taking cupped hands, earthing rod, or throne of vines. This made it an unfun game because either you got up throne of vines/cupped hands and avoided rolling the drreaded 1 or it was stopped or you rolled the dreaded 1 and you ate too many miscasts and got run or you got very lucky and did not miscast enough early in the game to matter. Too many gsames were either win big or lose big with and against LM armies in my experience and were decided by the luck, or lack thereof, in the magic phase.

However, some others an won a lot with a "light" slann and focusing on the oldblood. They avoided or only selectively risked the big spells that had the most miscast risk. To avoid bad game votes and issues, they ran slanns without lore of life and without cupped hands and without loremaster and threw only two or three dice at spells with the slann. What I found was that even when occasionally slann blew up, one could still win (often by a slight margin) or avoid losing and got a lot more respect for it.

 

I have always bin a massive fan of the light slann because it fills our army's weaknesses pretty perfectly, and the initiative boost spell protects most of your battle line from pit of shades, purple sun, etc

Edit: though I now see u were meaning cheap slann XD