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I just statted it out, and it looks like you could conceivably get a full 26 Wizard levels in a 3000 point TK army list.

Arkhan the Black- lvl 5
Liche High Priest- lvl 4
Liche High Priest- lvl 3
7x Liche Priests- lvl 2

And that's even with a few points left over to give one of them a Skeletal Steed, or some scrolls or something.

Would that be at all useful? I mean, is there a limit to what you can use in an army, Magic-wise? And with TK you could even add a Casket of Souls and a Heirotitan or two for more Magic bonus.

Really, is there anything preventing this sort of list from absolutely owning Magic? Heck, that's enough lvl 2 Liche Priests you could practically use them as a unit of their own! Or if you could cast multiple of the same spells, restore a unit to full from a single model, or give them upwards of 10 Attacks each!

I'm new to the game, and so I may have missed some blatantly obvious rule that prevents this sort of thing. But wow! Are other armies able to do that sort of overwhelming magic?

At the end of the day you're limited to the winds of magic.

The maximum power dice you'd get is 12, and a natural roll of 1 or 2 to cast is a fail, so 1 dice casting is risky. You're limiting yourself to essentially 6 spells per turn at best for an astronomical investment in points.

Being very blunt, winning with a list like this would be a challenge.

D

Drop Arkan and add a second Lvl 4 with light, drop the lvl 2s down to lvl1s and just supernova things with Banishment

Johnny-Crass wrote:Drop Arkan and add a second Lvl 4 with light, drop the lvl 2s down to lvl1s and just supernova things with Banishment

That doesn't really work with Tomb Kings as without access to Loremaster you can only get Banishment once and you don't have any reliable way to generate additional dice. You also have to take a Hierophant with the base lore as well. You could get the same kind of effect with a single Level 4 with Light, and then a bunch of Level 1's (realistically 2-3 would be plenty) but its highly likely it gets dispelled/Scrolled unless you IF it (and its still a random number of hits) and you are very much at the mercy of your Winds roll with only channels to help out. High Elves and Daemons are the two main armies who can do Banishment lists since they can pick spells or get Loremaster, and can reliably get more dice with inbuilt abilities. Vampires also used to be able to do a very scary version of this but I don't think it works with the new book, they could generate extra dice, get Loremaster everywhere to either spam Transformation or Banishment (while still maintaining Invocation which was cool) and combine this with 1-2 guys with Death magic who could fire Purple Suns through their own Zombie blocks to get more power dice if needed.

@OP. Wizard levels by themselves mean nothing as you still only get a max of 12 dice per phase (Death Magic shenanigans aside) and on average you get 7. That's enough to cast maybe 3 spells max (all low level ones), which really only requires a single high Level wizard to use effectively and then you bring a backup lower level Wizard to hold a Scroll etc. Its also important to remember that even if spread out the Lores as much as you could you are still going to end up with 3 or more guys with just the signature spell from each lore, you can't get duplicate spells unless you can get Loremaster or an item that lets you pick your spells.

In short nothing prevents you doing it, but its an incredibly terrible army which has sunk about 800pts into things it can't use or has no use for (essentially it would be 2000pts vs 3000pts if you a playing a decent army). There are plenty of armies which can produce overwhelming magic, but not like this. 3000pts gives you heaps of room to work with, you could easily see two tooled out Slann which would easily outperform all those Wizards (for a fraction of the cost as well), a High Elf army with Teclis and the Banner of Sorcery would blast you off the board (and could probably completely neutralise your magic in return with +6 to dispel from a second Archmage), as would a Dark Elf magic heavy build or Fateweaver Daemons with backup. Dwarf and even some Empire armies would completely shut down your magic as well. Magic is very powerful and very unreliable, basically the good magic heavy armies are good because through things like Loremaster and additional dice generation they mitigate the unreliable aspect of Magic.

Arlkan the black is a 5 of death, which is good as he can be a battery during the magic phase but has a very short range for casting.

Casket would help make more dice, and a hierotitan would help, at 2k points I can only justify a lvl 4, and 2 level 2's(bsb kinda lame anyways) and a Casket.

You get banishment twice as you have a total of 14 wizarding levels in lore of Light

Can't duplicate spells Johnny.

Gah my mind is still elsewhere and it is always odd as I make this argument every time it comes up as I forget about sig-spells. I retract my statement and swap it for.

You should not have this many wizards due to hellheart being so popular right now

Alright, so there's the fact they'd all be stuck with signature spells, and you'd be limited in your PD pool, period.

But what about Channeling? Don't you get a channel for each Wizard, and you could easily get a few more Lvl 1's if you traded out the Lvl 2's- not to mention that you'd be certain to have access to all the spells of all three lores (granted, maybe going so spammy wouldn't be ideal).

So the Channeling would probably net you an average of 1 more PD per turn, and probably help with Dispelling as well.

And could you increase PD beyond 12 using magic items and spells? Things like the Kanopi or Purple Sun (I'm guessing)?

Also, with a Heirotitan or two, two-dicing would never get you a Power of 1 or 2, would it?


I do see how spamming wizard levels wouldn't be great, but could it be used in this manner?

Paying 420 points to get on average 1 extra dice per phase is taking stupidly inefficient to a whole new level. It's far too random to rely on as a strategy. Just as an example Slann get +1 dice per SPELL for 50 points, High Elves get +D3 dice per phase on a banner for similar. One maybe two Lord level casters does all the things you are suggesting just as effectively and would leave you points to actually buy a decent army (including Support stuff like a Heirotitan). Since you always want to maximize your chances of casting you always want to use your Level 4s to cast anyway.

You can never have more than 12 dice in the pool at one time, but Tomb Kings don't have any way to reliable generate more dice, afaik they get 1 one use only item. Purple Sun is not effective as a source for them as you can't get effective cheap mobile casters like Dark Elves for example and unlike Vampires you don't have dirt cheap troops which you cans happily sacrifice to get more power dice.

Loss of concentration (rolling under 3) only cares about your unmodified roll, so having +2 doesn't really help.

H-uh. Would it be worth it, in you'ze oppinions, to have Arkhan, a Lvl 4 Nehekhara and a Lvl 3 Light, with 7 Lvl 1's, 4 Light and 3 Nehekhara? Simply so you'd have definite access to every spell if you need it? And LPs can get fairly cheap speed, with a Skeletal Horse. Or give one of them the Cloak of the Dunes and use him as a singular attacker?