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Battery Wizards; what's the problem?
Topic Started: 28th August 2005 - 09:51 AM (1,368 Views)
Lightbringer
Chaos git
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The two worst of those imho are Titillating Delusions and Delicious Excruciation ... both of which, once cast, make the wizard no longer a wizard while he wants them to remain in play; a sacrifice your opponent has to make in order to do those really powerful spells ... which are still easily countered.


If they are remains in play does not matter. If your key unit is heading of in the wrong direction offering its flank to the enemy, you are going to loose, he does not need to cast more spells.
And as for easily countered. Tillating Delusions is 8+. If you only have your regular two dice, you have less than 50% to dispell it in your turn after its cast. A caddy gives you dispell scrolls, and a dice extra, so that you can reliable dispell remains in playes. Which means the caddy is a must to stop people from using above spells to win the game. The point is not that its possible to defend against them. The point is that spells should not force you to take caddies to defend yourself, because they should not be on a game winning level no more than a cannon should be able to win you the game on its own.



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If he isn't in close combat and casts it, try some dispel dice and if that fails, use a scroll before he gets that hero into close combat

You can only use scrolls against spells as they are cast, so this would not work.
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Antherak_173
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Evil Overlord
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because magic is rarely counterable by anything other than itself,


Exactly. Couldn't have explained it better.

But as the topic suggest, magic also should have another phase / combination that could lessen it. Totally untought example: Like, any wizard with enemies within 6" generate 1 less Pd, as he can not fully concentrate due to near threat, thus making movement a counter to magic, same way shooting can counter hth, or magic can counter shooting.

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If you're playing a game where Tzeentch has enough points to generate 14 power dice, then you're playing a fairly large sized battle


I play 2150pts games. Mark of tzeentch cost +15pts each and gives +1Pd to any units that have it, so games size is pretty much irrelevent.

And about your analysis of spell. A spell can be used in more than 1 way to win a battle. In necromancy, it is invocation and van hels that win games. And if you stop 1, the other will pass.

Yes, maybe he will only cast those 2 spells to throw dices to almost assure success, but they will demolish you. If you don't stop invocation, he raises zombies in the rear of your unit. If you don't stop vanhels, he'll move one of his unit 1 turn sooner to charge you, most of the time in your flank or rear, w/o letting you the time to react. CoY is hard, but deals damage, so can be soaked (and if you want to disepl it, it will cost most of your own magic phase dice to do) hand of dust is really bad. Dropping a vamp to 1 attack that kill is nonsense, giving that they will most likely kill anythihng includng most characters the good old way. And don't forget, with CoY, that if you fail to dispel it, he will do the hits alos on 5+, with no matter if he keep the spell or not, as the hits are at the start of magic phase, meaning he could re-cast it again for renewed 6+ hits on the same turn.

As for slaanesh, don't forget enraptured spasm. Beign unable to move, in addition to beign automatically hit by those chaos hth monsters is doom for a unit. Luxurious torment is also very strong, but not for the damage, but in the tactical way. Give your opponent unit frenzy, so it must charge your rock hard unit and die, instead of putting traps to get to the flank. With slaanesh, you have 2 spells that affetc enemy movement, 1 that render a unit powerless, and one that give 1 of his unit swarm status. As for being RIP, most opponents just need the spell 1 turn, when it counts, so have no problem at all letting it go.

And tzeentch, unit hitting itself is nothing to laught about. It destroys skirmishers and elite infantry (ever seen stormvermins with halberd hit themselves ? = :( . They have absolutely no other enemies against which their halberds can be used more effectively, letting themselves only a 6 to save ^_^ ) And the spell that let the tzeentch (also hth monsters) re-roll ALL dices for a full turn !

About caddies. 1 caddy is ok vs normal magic army, but is a very weak and temporary defense against full magic army. And putting more than one = why not make them all cast ? 2 or 3 wizards are offensively very capable. The problem is that to counteract your opponent, you must then enter his game, and put more and more wizards. Personally, i think 2 lv 2 in a game is the best combination one can have. You have decent magic support, and can have decent hth support as well.

Scrolls would be cool on any character, as long as it is maximum 1 scroll, not to encounter the opposite situation, where some chars with max scrolls would completely counter magic. As for all characters generating Dd, no way. Mage's business.

I think that maybe just cap the # of dices one can generate would be ok, as well as making all bound spells more likely to stop working to prevent loading on them.


As for SAD, yes, it is very boring, and i put it in the same basket, same as the empire gunline, but all SAD armies i saw, w/o any exeption had either a grey seer and 2 warlocks, or 3 warlocks.

I have nothing against magic, but it just need to be toned down a little for armies that have access to more than the dice generation of 1lv4 and 3 lv2, or to give us another way to counteract it in another phase. Just having wizards generating Pd and the power familiar would be correct, dropping all the items with which you can pile up excessively Pd.

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phordicus
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Battlemaster of Clan Skrikkik

Sebrent
Sep 20 2005, 08:48 AM
Try to dispel it when it is initially cast, if you fail, you take wounds on a 6+ ... then next time throw out a scroll before it gets ridiculous.

lb already got this, i just want to emphasize that you cannot use dispel scrolls against rip spells already in effect.
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if you meet a master swordsman, show him your sword; but do not show your poem to one who is not a poet.

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Sebrent
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Yes, necromancy can summon zombies on your flanks or give them that extra charge move, but being the smart player you are, you should already know that and have a dispel scroll or two saved for that critical moment when your opponent tries that.

For Tzeentch armies ... yeah, it doesn't cost much to give the regiment the mark so that they generate the extra power dice, but everything in Chaos Armies is very expensive. So exactly how many regiments are they fielding to get all those marks of tzeentch to provide all those power dice ... it's expensive as chaos is expensive.

If slaanesh making your one powerhouse unit expose its flank is what beats you then here are some ideas ... use a scroll ... don't rely solely on one unit (especially if you're skaven) ... have fallback plans.

The thing is, there are plenty of people who are more than capable even now of defeating a magic heavy opponent w/o using any magic of their own. They simply dominate the maneuvering and close combat which becomes easier with the extra points they have over their magic heavy opponent.

NOW, the whole point of this topic was battery wizards. So let's get back focused on that. GW is making it so that you can't take a big level 4 wizard with 5-6 spells and then some other low levels wizards just to feed him power dice. They are making it so that each wizard uses his own power dice only. This reduces the chances of those bigger spells being cast as wizards have less dice at their disposal to cast their choices of spells, thus making the magic phase less powerful. Anyone have a problem with that? I personally like it as it makes items like the Screaming Bell even more useful (it generates power dice)
----Skaven Mathhammer
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plague priest13
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Chieftain
Well after reading that 4 pages of writing i think that what Sebrent has to say is a very good point. And you do have to remember what this topic is about the next edition of warhammer is there becouse this one is flawed in some way and they are going to fix it, and i belive that they will fix the magic faze by macking wizards only use their persinal power dise.

As to tzeneech problem it is a fact in my eyes at least that the mark of tzeenech is to cheap and I hope that it will be fixed in the next edition.

well thats what I have to say ;)
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Lightbringer
Chaos git
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This reduces the chances of those bigger spells being cast as wizards have less dice at their disposal to cast their choices of spells, thus making the magic phase less powerful. Anyone have a problem with that? I personally like it as it makes items like the Screaming Bell even more useful (it generates power dice)

How do you know this? Its unlicly they will remove battery wizards, but leave everything else unchanged. I wouldn't jump to conclutions on how much power people will have.



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If slaanesh making your one powerhouse unit expose its flank is what beats you then here are some ideas ... use a scroll ... don't rely solely on one unit (especially if you're skaven) ... have fallback plans.

If you could have scrolls on non mage characters, this would be a viable option. Of course, if he has enough magic you will have to stop at least one vital spell each turn or you will loose, so it does not stop it all.
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Skaskrit Venomclaw
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Ex-Councilrat

sebrent
 
Yes, necromancy can summon zombies on your flanks or give them that extra charge move, but being the smart player you are, you should already know that and have a dispel scroll or two saved for that critical moment when your opponent tries that.


Sebrent... the POINT was that you SHOULDN'T have to bring scroll caddies for every battle... so saying you can defeat Vampires and Slaanesh if you brought scrolls is NOT helping.

I hope you'll agree with me that if you don't have any dispel scrolls and only 2 basic dispel dice, you'll lose the battle if you go up against some armies with powerful spells, such as Vampires or Slaanesh. The only way to defend against this is to bring wizards of your own and preferably give them dispel scrolls. To quote Phordicus:

phordicus
 
magic is rarely counterable by anything other than itself


This, according to some of us, is a problem.

GW's changes to powerdice usage do not solve this problem. They will perhaps reduce the number of wizards and scrolls you need to employ to defend against magic. But even if the enemy only has dice enough for 2-3 powerful spells a turn, he can win the game if the spells are too powerful.

In short: battery wizards aren't the problem. Too many power dice isn't the problem. Spells that can win the game by themselves are the problem.

Two solutions have been proposed so far. 1, reduce the power of spells so they can't win the game by themselves. 2, allow characters other than wizards to provide some magic defences. Either will do as far as I'm concerned, although the first risks making magic more boring. Disallowing "battery" wizards won't get us very far, though.
"I have a post-Armageddon vision. We and all other large animals are gone. Rodents emerge as the ultimate post-human scavengers. They gnaw their way through New York, London and Tokyo... within 5 million years, a whole range of new species replace the ones we know. Herds of giant grazing rats are stalked by sabre-toothed predatory rats. Given enough time, will a species of intelligent, cultivated rats emerge?"

Richard Dawkins, The Ancestor's Tale
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Sebrent
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Lightbringer, it is very likely that they will remove battery wizards as they announced that they are wanting wizards to use only their own generated power dice.

As far as Slaanesh and Necromancy go: use those points you don't want to spend on magic and pay for some extra regiments to protect your flanks (from raised zombies and when your flank is exposed to slaanesh magic) and hunt down wizards. Magic is not all-powerful. It is good enough to make it worthwile to pay twice the cost of a Warlord for a Grey Seer who has vastly inferior stats. Saying that you don't want to spend points on magic to counter magic and then looking past the tactics used w/o magic to counter magic is like a beastman player bitching about empire gun lines but refusing to use the ambush rule. You guys seem like you want to get rid of the magic phase altogether.
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Lightbringer
Chaos git
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As far as Slaanesh and Necromancy go: use those points you don't want to spend on magic and pay for some extra regiments to protect your flanks (from raised zombies and when your flank is exposed to slaanesh magic) and hunt down wizards. Magic is not all-powerful. It is good enough to make it worthwile to pay twice the cost of a Warlord for a Grey Seer who has vastly inferior stats. Saying that you don't want to spend points on magic to counter magic and then looking past the tactics used w/o magic to counter magic is like a beastman player bitching about empire gun lines but refusing to use the ambush rule. You guys seem like you want to get rid of the magic phase altogether.


I play Tzeentch, so no, I don't want to get rid of the magic phase ;)
Our point is that you should be able to do exactly what you said here, get some extra units and counter it that way. But for some lores we think thats not really an option, they can do more damage then you can hope to counter like this. Take Slaanesh for example, first of all its not that easy to hunt down the wizards since they are relativly though (for a wizard that is), expecially if its a beast one since he can then take chaos armour and braystaff to get 2+ save. So I would not count on beeing able to hunt them down at all.

And if you have a few cheap extra unit (you won't get that much for the extra points) it won't change much since Slaanesh magic can help you take out the most powerfull of the enemies units. Its going to be hard to recover from that, expecially if the enemy has several mages.


What we are saying is not that magic should not hurt people without defence, what we are saying is that some lores are overpowered and can hurt the enemy far more than they should, forcing people to take magic defence. You said it yourslef, you should take a few scrolls against enemies like that, and thats not good. Its like a warmachine, a cannon will hurt you and thats okey, but a cannon that could kill the strongest enemy unit by itself is to much.



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Lightbringer, it is very likely that they will remove battery wizards as they announced that they are wanting wizards to use only their own generated power dice.

I didn't say it was unlikely they would remove battery wixards, I just said it was unlikely they would change that and not change anything else. If they remove battery wizards, they are likly to change how power is generated, at least how much power is generated, so we can't say if it will make things weaker or stronger.
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phordicus
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Battlemaster of Clan Skrikkik

i know there's less than a 1% chance of it ever being implemented, but how about y'all digest my forthcoming spewings. to be taken separately or mixed.

give more distinction between the levels of wizards besides wounds and p/dd generated.

as it is, any wizard, whether lvl 1 or 4, can cast any spell. this sucks at both extremes.
a low level wizard with a high power spell is far less likely to be able to cast it due to his restriction on pd available to him -and- he probably won't be able threaten casting another spell to use up enemy dd. on the other extreme, every lore has at least one virtually useless spell. that an archmage could get stuck with a spell he'll never ever ever ever use is ridiculous.

i think the issue here is to keep the powerful spells with the powerful spell casters, but still provide balance and fairness for the lower level wizards.

5th edition skaven had 13 spells, but 4 of them were Grey Seer only. i think something along those lines might work for 6th+ with some tweaks.

1. every lore has X number of spells (let's say 8), each with a power cost.
2. in each lore is a basic spell that every wizard of that lore must take, so a 1st level wizard would only ever have that spell and would be one of the spells the other level wizards have.
3. of the 8* spells in the lore, 2* are 4th-lvl-wizard-only. these would be, naturally, the highest power cost spells.

let's name the spells, from weakest to strongest, Abby Betty Carrie Diane Elise Fiona Gina & Happy (:P).

every wizard of that lore will have Abby. for lvl-1 wizards, that will be their only spell.

a lvl-4 wizard will have Abby, and will roll for either Gina or Happy. he will roll to determine which two of the remaining 5 he gets.

lvls 2 & 3 will have Abby and will roll from the same 5 which doesnt include Gina or Happy.

this way only the most powerful wizards will have access to the game-winning spells, while the others are still guaranteed some usefulness by requiring the basic but effective low power spell.
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Skaveni primi, skaveni infiniti.
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if you meet a master swordsman, show him your sword; but do not show your poem to one who is not a poet.

- japanese proverb
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Skaskrit Venomclaw
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Ex-Councilrat

That would work.

Alternatively, you could just split the spell lists between mages and archmages like the Orcs and Goblins army does. Keeping the spells in the first list at maximum power 9 or so would accomplish your goals quite nicely.
"I have a post-Armageddon vision. We and all other large animals are gone. Rodents emerge as the ultimate post-human scavengers. They gnaw their way through New York, London and Tokyo... within 5 million years, a whole range of new species replace the ones we know. Herds of giant grazing rats are stalked by sabre-toothed predatory rats. Given enough time, will a species of intelligent, cultivated rats emerge?"

Richard Dawkins, The Ancestor's Tale
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