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I'm sick of seeing people lose to this sort of thing. The player in question gets easy wins with this trick, over and over, and it annoys me to no end.

He's got a WoC blaster list. It's got the Black Tongue and the Infernal Puppet. This isn't appallingly surprising stuff. They are right there in the book.

This is what they do. The Black Tongue is a one use item. It makes a failed cast into a miscast.

The puppet is always in use. It allows the WoC player to manipulate the miscast table by 1d3, up or down. This means that he can make your ordinary miscast into letting him cast Gate, or make it into you forgetting Invocation, or make it into your mage just blows up.

Be aware of these abilities when facing any WoC list in a non-open list format. They should affect how/if you use your magic phase.

Walter, whats his tournament success been using this tactic? I've obviously heard of it, but I haven't heard of him racking up the tournament wins so far. I haven't seen him in that many fantasy tournaments though, so that could be it.

Thanks for the info though, I shall be on the look out.


Clay

He won the most recent Dicehead tourney, I believe (detonated a Lord in turn 1 in 1 of the games). He was second in the Giga bytes tourney.

The Black Tongue is a one use only item and does a wound to the barer. Its the best magic defense that WoC can muster. The army is self is very expensive and difficult to balance. Its more effective against magic heavy armies (ie. VC, Daemons, Lizards) as well as having a Hellcannon or 2 to cause potential Miscasts on enemy wizards.

This really shouldn't be to surprising to most tournament players as this combo was one of the first things that most tournament players picked up on.

Personally, I don't find the Black Tongue worth it...Doing a wound to a hero and the price of it isn't really worth it in most cases.

Yup great combo.

Plenty of armies have odd things they can do in the magic phase and if you invest heavily in this phase then you will have to deal with them.

For instance, the lizards have a 40 pt item which negates this combo until it is used.
You cunningly cause the slan to miscast
you modify the roll to a 2 (dead slan)
he happily throws it onto your lvl 4 mage killing him outright and costing you the game.

Makes for an interesting game of chicken when both of those exist at the same time.

skyth wrote:Personally, I don't find the Black Tongue worth it...Doing a wound to a hero and the price of it isn't really worth it in most cases.

My thoughts on taking it as well. Assuming your casters are carrying important things, the tongue instantly gives away a minimum of 80 points (half points naked exalted + tongue), no matter what happens to the enemy caster. Also eats up all that exalted's gear allowance, while nerfing his survivability for combat to come.

- Salvage

And also, while there is the chance of making the enemy wizard go away, it is a relatively small chance (a little less than 1 in 6 if I did my calculations right.)

The big thing is that it uses up all the gear allowance. If the Black tongue was 25 points...It would be seen in almost every list.

Boss_Salvage wrote:My thoughts on taking it as well. Assuming your casters are carrying important things, the tongue instantly gives away a minimum of 80 points (half points naked exalted + tongue), no matter what happens to the enemy caster. Also eats up all that exalted's gear allowance, while nerfing his survivability for combat to come.

This. Imho the tongue needs to be paired with your own level 4 caster who presumably should have some good spell to take most out of miscast 5-6s, and even then it's very on/off.

The Black Tongue, I would only really use for larger games on a Lord level character. It's so expensive, giving it to a Hero level means you give away the points on the wound and he can't do much else; a Lord level only takes 1/3 and has more magic item allowance to play with.

The Puppet is much more useful for general use, to protect you from your own miscasts more than anything (thanks to having to throw 5 dice for certain spells...)

Is that seriously the consensus? You guys think the Black Tongue isn't worth taking in a WoC blaster list?

I take it. But the combination has a significant point cost (50 + half points on a hero, or a wound off a lord) and opportunity cost (no other items on a hero, half your allowance on a lord). It also only works against armies which are relying on magic; which admittedly is quite a number, but there are also a substantial number which don’t give a damn. Like medium-low magic DE, Khornate-focused DoC, and a fair number of other builds. I take it on a L4 with the Puppet.

In the three WH GTs I’ve played using the combo in the past year, it’s given me Game 5 Massacres against VC twice, when they were ignorant of it and went ahead with their usual 1-die Raise spam. If either had known what he was doing he could have just switched to casting on two dice, and it would have been a challenging game for both sides. It’s also scared a couple of DE players into moderating their casting, but even against heavy magic DE, the Dagger often allows them to laugh at the Tongue. In those three GTs it’s only killed those two vampire lords. It’s a nice threat, but far from reliable. At the last GT I played it did the following: R1: No effect against Skaven (never failed a casting roll). R2: No use against Khornate Warriors w/dragon. R3: Minimal use against combat/scroll caddy + ring Dark Elves. R4: Caused a non-critical miscast against Empire. R5: Scared my DE opponent into slowing down his casting, only throwing critical spells.

Puppet is mandatory if you cast. Black Tongue is a nice protection against VC Raise spam, and can slow down some others, but not a reliable killer combat, since it's a one-use.

Hahahhaha, sorry couldn't help but laughing at all the "the black tongue isn't that good".

Combined with the infernal puppet, there's quite a few ridiculoud things you can do short of vaporising the enemy caster outright. You can end his magic phase early (every vamp and tzeentch daemon army loves that), make his lord forget a critical spell (A vampire lord without invocation, hysterical) or just cast your own uber spell (everyone loves getting gated right?). Even when you don't have a caster lord the free gate is a motivation alone to not even try to cast anything, that spell can be atrocious. It's the combo that dropped Kairos at the top of turn 1 along with countless other "what the hell is the black tongue?" lord and hero choices.

EDIT: Also it basically says Ogres can't cast spells. Modifying that brutal D6 miscast chart is just game friggin over.

What size of game are we talking about?

It's just that WoC characters are so expensive, and there are other items they often need to get it going.

Maybe something like this: (not including mounts or mundane items)

L4 Tzeentch Sorc Lord, Tongue, Spell Familiar, Goldeneye
L2 Nurgle/Tz/Unmarked Sorcerer, Puppet

This gives some defence to the Lord, who still has some casting ability and the next character slot(s) can be someone with the book, or an Exalted BSB or other utility characters.

The question is, whether you want other builds or more things to do with your sorcerer (or save points for more guys as well)

1. You don’t really need extra help against Ogres.

2. As far as the "other really nasty" stuff you can do to a magic heavy army, most isn't much nastier than just having two scrolls and shutting him down that much longer.

3. The other risk with the Tongue is that in a blaster list you don’t want to take it on a hero-level wizard at all, because it puts him at significant risk of killing himself with one odd miscast during the game.

Something to consider...It's very much a rock/paper/scissors combination. That, plus the high cost makes it not really worth it in a take-all-comers list.

hahaha come on enthusiast really? really?! it isn't enough that you yell tips to my opponents against my army from the other table? *sigh*


Automatically Appended Next Post:
jealousy is not becoming my friend

Mannahnin wrote:1. You don’t really need extra help against Ogres.

2. As far as the "other really nasty" stuff you can do to a magic heavy army, most isn't much nastier than just having two scrolls and shutting him down that much longer.

3. The other risk with the Tongue is that in a blaster list you don’t want to take it on a hero-level wizard at all, because it puts him at significant risk of killing himself with one odd miscast during the game.

1. True. Ha ha. Also, modifying the O&G miscast table is pretty nasty, iirc.

2. Absolutely have to disagree here. In a super-heavy magic army (particularly when fighting another magic army) the difference between having your lord's spells stuffed for an extra turn or two (barring IF) is nowhere close to having him explode to his miscast being modified to 2, or even losing one of his spells and a wizard level, or having the magic phase end. That can be game breaking when fighting against another magic army. Kairos, Mannfred, Slann, WoC Sorcerer Lord...those are the cornerstones of their armies. Losing them in an untimely manner usually means losing the game.

3. Kind of agree here. Except that with the Puppet in play, the odds of him killing himself is pretty low. Throwing 3 dice at most, he won't even miscast that often, and they can be modified to things that don't do wounds (or worse case, have a lower chance of wounding...modifying the roll to a 7 gives a S2 hit that's not too terribly scary). Mostly, I think the Tongue belongs on a Lord due to the distribution of Enchanted Items for an army like that. An all magic blaster army is going to want the Puppet, the Skull of Katam, the Spell Familiar (on the guy trying to get Gate), and the thing that adds an extra die to the pool. Taking the Tongue on a Hero at less than 3k means you can't take one of those items, and if you're going all-out magic, might as well get them all. There's not a ton else a caster lord wants out of the rest of the magic items.

@ sirisaacnuton- Was it turn 1 or 2 when Kairos ate it against the combo . Not like Kairos had alot of options, if he isn't casting he can...go fight the sorcerer bunker or harass some marauder cav, but it's always funny to see him get dropped.

Oh it was turn 1. Very ugly. I played around the stupid thing the entire phase until I dropped the stupid MR guy, and then forgot all about the Tongue for about 2 seconds. Lame.

I find that the first time I used the tongue it was amazing, after that my opponent is very careful what he casts. When playing Vampire counts it is nice to at least make them think that you have it, saves you from 1-Dice invocations.

I guess what I am trying to say is that it is 50pts for a longshot. Both you and your opponent have to decide whether that shot is worth it.

Play dwarfs.

Laugh at his magic defence combo...

Play dwarfs.

Laugh at his magic defence combo...

...as you lose the game..and probably a few more