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Made in gb
Morphing Obliterator






After watching my Ogre Tyrant get one shotted by the Dwellers Below on Saturday during a 3vs 3 game, I got to thinking about if these test or die spells should be toned down a bit or got rid of altogether.

My first (and most obvious I guess) solution is to allow ward saves against this type of spell, but I think that might benefit some armies (for example daemons where everyone has a ward save or high elves with the world dragon banner) a lot more than others.

Another solution could be that the target for the spell is chosen and the final point decided with a scatter and artillery dice?

If a misfire is rolled then the spell would either not take effect or effect the casters unit instead.

Thoughts?

Chaos Space Marines - Iron Warriors & Night Lords 7900pts

 
   
Made in ie
Sniping Hexa




Dublin

Allow Ward saves against such spells, exactly like the black horror of the Dark Lore
tone down the BotWD to 4+ Ward against magical thingies or simply up its cost to 55 (which should always have been the case, 55 should be a bare minimum)

 
   
Made in gb
Morphing Obliterator






Hadn't thought of toning down the banner but it makes sense. Should be at least 60-70pts imo as the rune maw is 60 and only gives a 2+ save plus choosing another friendly target.

Chaos Space Marines - Iron Warriors & Night Lords 7900pts

 
   
Made in us
Confessor Of Sins




WA, USA

Allow ward saves and reword it to be 'test or take a wound with no armor saves'.

 Ouze wrote:

Afterward, Curran killed a guy in the parking lot with a trident.
 
   
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Agile Revenant Titan




In the Casualty section of a Blood Bowl dugout

This isn't an issue with the BotWD, this is an issue with the Core rules. I've seen enough "fix the BotWD" threads.

On topic, I think allowing a Look out Sir! is the first and most important change that should be made. If I'm honest that, with perhaps a slight increase in casting value or decrease in range, is enough to balance it out. Serves you right for taking a deathstar anyway.

If you're looking to balance further "test or wound" would be best for the Initiative spells, to stop it totally messing up Ogres and slow, multi-wound models. The strength test one is really just fine to be honest. Hardly anything is losing more than half the models, the ones that are loosing half are supposed to be fragile and the T4 guys are only losing a third, which is the same as Final Transmutation, a spell you hear relatively little whining about.

DT:90S+++G++MB++IPwhfb06#+++D+A+++/eWD309R+T(T)DM+

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Morphing Obliterator






Thats much better for multi wound models but doesn't help expensive one wound models like elves or chaos warriors.

Chaos Space Marines - Iron Warriors & Night Lords 7900pts

 
   
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Confessor Of Sins




WA, USA

Most of these spells are the highest level spell in a lore. They need to remain dangerous and fitting for their casting value and strength, not to mention their potential for self-harm as well.

One wound is fine, as it keeps it dangerous without completely neutering it. After all, if it is weakened and weakened, why would anyone bother to cast them when the more direct damage spells are safer and easier to cast?

 Ouze wrote:

Afterward, Curran killed a guy in the parking lot with a trident.
 
   
Made in us
Longtime Dakkanaut





Ward saves give too much power to units with...ward saves. Wards are just one kind of protection to make hammer units. Some armies have super armor. Some make use of cheap models. Some have regen. Etc.

Some armies can get army-wide wards. Most can't. But they would become auto-include.

   
Made in us
Killer Klaivex




Oceanside, CA

The problem with the test or die spells isn't that they just kill death stars; they also kill anything else, including that bunker for your level 4 wizard.
Having a spell that both hoses a whole unit, and also snipes characters is too multipurpose.

For a quick fix, give look out vs effects that hit every model in the unit.

Personally, I'd like to see a pretty heavy re-work of the spells in 9th edition. And remember folks, pit of shades isn't even the #6 spell.

-Matt

 thedarkavenger wrote:

So. I got a game with this list in. First game in at least 3-4 months.
 
   
Made in us
Calculating Commissar




pontiac, michigan; usa

I don't even fully mind casting the big bad spell. What I do mind is having absolutely no chance to dispel an irresistible force because your opponent decided to be enough of a pr*ck to 6 dice a high level spell and lucked out.

Depending on the miscast result, importance of the unit (how many points it costs) attached to the wizard and if the wizard is even with a unit (a wizard by itself can be sniped easier but miscasts matter little if you wait till the end of your casting and get irresistible force) the damage done back to your wizard can be very little unless you roll super bad (wizard level decrease or on a rare occasion your wizard gets sucked into the realm of chaos or whatever).

Magic resist is normally fine but on daemons it'd be really stupid strong considering all the spells that probably avoid enough armor. I suppose having wards alone isn't much but I'd rather take a save I can pretty much always get in comparison to one decent one that I can't.

 HawaiiMatt wrote:
The problem with the test or die spells isn't that they just kill death stars; they also kill anything else, including that bunker for your level 4 wizard.
Having a spell that both hoses a whole unit, and also snipes characters is too multipurpose.

For a quick fix, give look out vs effects that hit every model in the unit.

Personally, I'd like to see a pretty heavy re-work of the spells in 9th edition. And remember folks, pit of shades isn't even the #6 spell.

-Matt


What's pathetic is what I've said before. The game is less about strategy and movement and more about getting spell combos and throwing stupid death stars, monsters and monstrous (beasts, cavalry infantry) anything at the opponent. I always thought in fantasy if you made a stupid move in the movement phase you could open yourself up for losing. I've had games where the first 3-4 turns actually mostly consist of us getting into the right position and trying to bait each other (though as skaven I have less units that move quickly but more of them). However with all this monstrous everything even when you make good moves at people it might not matter. After all monstrous infantry normally hits enough and/or takes enough of a beating that flanking them is no big deal unless something strong hits their flank.

This message was edited 4 times. Last update was at 2014/02/24 22:28:00


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Made in gb
Sinister Shapeshifter




The Lair of Vengeance....Poole.

By limiting the test or die, you run the risk of limiting lore selection even further. Like Lore of Metal. It's not that great a lore, but by limiting the effectiveness of final trans, you run the risk of it being excluded altogether. And furthermore, what about spells like Dreaded 13th? That's not even a test or die. How do you plan to limit that?

And what about foot of gork? That's one of the most ridiculous spells in the game, when used correctly on the table. How do you plan to limit that?

By editing the phase, you open a whole new can of worms.


For balance's sake, and to stop the moaning about the Banner of the World Dragon, allow a model to take a single ward, not given to them by an item that they don't carry. Or limit the ward save that can be taken against the spell.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2014/02/25 14:52:49


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Courageous Silver Helm





United States

Banner of the world dragon isn't too bad. The only army it really is unfair against is demons.

Northwest Arkansas gaming



 
   
Made in gb
Morphing Obliterator






Yes bdix but it basically shuts down that army completely when the high elves can take it without having to put it on a BSB and can give it to a deathstar unit of white lions (I have seen this done at my club and it wasn't pretty).

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Sinister Shapeshifter




The Lair of Vengeance....Poole.

 rohansoldier wrote:
Yes bdix but it basically shuts down that army completely when the high elves can take it without having to put it on a BSB and can give it to a deathstar unit of white lions (I have seen this done at my club and it wasn't pretty).



Dragon princes are worse.

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Furtive Haradrim Scout




Earth

Me and one of my friends have come to the agreement to just not use them. If we roll them when determining spells we re-roll and lore masters have one less spell.
It works absolutely fine for us as we both find the spells ridiculous and we dont find any balance issues with the lores by removing them.
Thats just us two though so wether or nto that would work for you guys i couldn't say.
   
Made in us
Courageous Silver Helm





In our club we allow 'Look Out Sir!' rolls against all the big spells. It works fantastically well and is very simple.
   
Made in us
Pulsating Possessed Space Marine of Slaanesh





Florida, USA

Allow characters to roll two dice, pick the most beneficial one. Fixed.

----Warhammer 40,000----
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Made in gb
Deranged Necron Destroyer




Get rid of them entirely. There's no tactics to using them, you always want at least one and they're just no fun to play with or against. They haven't fixed the issues of Deathstar units nor hordes and I can't say I've ever played a game where I've thought that my brilliant tactical use of Purple Sun deserved to wipe so much on an enemy army. I've played quite a few games where people just refuse to roll them or use them, because they're just not fun - there's nothing particularly clever about suddenly zapping away enemy generals/units, nor is there any way to mitigate against them other than take more stuff. IMO, they're just bad game design to get around the issue of deathstar units and they've failed to do so.
Here's how they're really used in practise:
1) You cast them first and attempt to do so normally, in which case you assume it fails and removes your opponents dispell dice (or scroll) so you can cast other stuff
2) You cast them when the enemy has far fewer dispell dice to nuke something without them being able to stop it
3) You throw all your dice at it when things look bad for you, thus always getting it off and nuking something

Where's the fun? Where's the tactics? If a lore is so bad it needs to have a spell like this, the lore needs redoing anyway so that's no excuse. Look out sir likewise doesn't fix the issue of occasionally just losing to a general snipe - it just makes it less frequent. Wizards should be good, but they shouldn't just be able to pull a nuke out their pocket when someone begins to lose in an attempt to sway the game. If nothing else the fact that the actual magic resistance rule doesn't protect against them in any way whatsoever pretty much sums it up in my perspective - they just ignore all other rules of the game and kill no matter what, and that's no fun. Make the most powerful spells into something strong rather than simply "remove stuff, it's dead" - even if the Dreaded 13th became a 4D6 S10 shots, spawn if unit wiped it would be far less garbage than "lol, I kill you and get clan rats" because you can actually mitigate against it. If they absolutely must be kept around, the minimum is that magic resistance and ward saves should work against them. Maybe I'm wrong, but I've had too many games in 8e where magic has just been way too good and it's ruined both mine and my opponents enjoyment, even when we're casting these spells - saying "and then the ancient Slann turned into a chunk of gold after living through the ages, shortly before the Empire Priest casting it exploded into a mist of red, vaporising most of his unit" in a fluffy battle report is funny the first time, but it makes trying to create any kind of character continuity in a game, especially a narrative game, hilariously dumb; how can I possibly pretend that being sucked into a vortex was just a flesh wound and that really all these special characters are fine? You can't. I dunno, they just ruin the game for me when they go big.
   
Made in gb
Sinister Shapeshifter




The Lair of Vengeance....Poole.

Eyjio wrote:
Get rid of them entirely. There's no tactics to using them, you always want at least one and they're just no fun to play with or against. They haven't fixed the issues of Deathstar units nor hordes and I can't say I've ever played a game where I've thought that my brilliant tactical use of Purple Sun deserved to wipe so much on an enemy army. I've played quite a few games where people just refuse to roll them or use them, because they're just not fun - there's nothing particularly clever about suddenly zapping away enemy generals/units, nor is there any way to mitigate against them other than take more stuff. IMO, they're just bad game design to get around the issue of deathstar units and they've failed to do so.


If that's the case, lets get rid of war machines. They have the same issues, but people don't complain nearly as much.

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Pulsating Possessed Space Marine of Slaanesh





Florida, USA

 thedarkavenger wrote:
If that's the case, lets get rid of war machines. They have the same issues, but people don't complain nearly as much.


A very fair point. War machines of the cannon variety are not represented uniformly in all armies, yet pose a serious threat to their intended counterparts (monsters, lone characters, and such). Yet they never receive the same amount of flak that the big boy spells do. My HE's don't really care that you got off some big vortex of an initiative test, but you better believe I think long and hard about my sanity when I choose to field a dragon in a game I know will have cannons.

Similarly, I'm sure my ogre friend is very sore about the big purple test of death going off right on his gutstar. However, I doubt he cares nearly as much when a cannonball comes bouncing his way and fails to cause enough wounds to kill the model, stopping the shot cold.

Every army has a serious hard-counter to them as far as I can tell. That the particular army you play has a higher susceptibility to the "test or die" spells is warranted; every unit and character in the game should have something to truly fear.

As for taking no skill to throw six dice at a really nice spell, I agree. It takes no more skill to throw six dice at an excellent spell than it does to stack 15+ ironguts into a horde unit with character support.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2014/03/07 01:51:39


----Warhammer 40,000----
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Made in us
Longtime Dakkanaut





There's a limit to how much tactics are in a game with a bazillion D6 thrown.

I'll say that every time a new army comes out (such as Dwarfs) I rethink global strategies. Because the game's meta has changed.

In 7th flaming was very rare. Start of 8th they started adding flaming and regen became worse. Now there is a ton of flaming but there's also wards vs. flaming. If I got to choose whether a DoC kannon was flaming or not, I'd choose not to be safe at this point.

The BRB is going to be updated soon. I predict the big spells will become more like the individual army book spells, which aren't nearly as EVERYONE DIES ALWAYS. At least in 8th.

   
Made in us
Killer Klaivex




Oceanside, CA

 thedarkavenger wrote:
Eyjio wrote:
Get rid of them entirely. There's no tactics to using them, you always want at least one and they're just no fun to play with or against. They haven't fixed the issues of Deathstar units nor hordes and I can't say I've ever played a game where I've thought that my brilliant tactical use of Purple Sun deserved to wipe so much on an enemy army. I've played quite a few games where people just refuse to roll them or use them, because they're just not fun - there's nothing particularly clever about suddenly zapping away enemy generals/units, nor is there any way to mitigate against them other than take more stuff. IMO, they're just bad game design to get around the issue of deathstar units and they've failed to do so.


If that's the case, lets get rid of war machines. They have the same issues, but people don't complain nearly as much.

I wouldn't say that's true.
I've had warmachines wipe out a characters, or a monsters, and thin a unit. I've never had a warmachine cripple a unit while also killing off the characters inside the unit; and I have had Dwellers do that.

-Matt

 thedarkavenger wrote:

So. I got a game with this list in. First game in at least 3-4 months.
 
   
Made in gb
Sinister Shapeshifter




The Lair of Vengeance....Poole.

 HawaiiMatt wrote:
 thedarkavenger wrote:
Eyjio wrote:
Get rid of them entirely. There's no tactics to using them, you always want at least one and they're just no fun to play with or against. They haven't fixed the issues of Deathstar units nor hordes and I can't say I've ever played a game where I've thought that my brilliant tactical use of Purple Sun deserved to wipe so much on an enemy army. I've played quite a few games where people just refuse to roll them or use them, because they're just not fun - there's nothing particularly clever about suddenly zapping away enemy generals/units, nor is there any way to mitigate against them other than take more stuff. IMO, they're just bad game design to get around the issue of deathstar units and they've failed to do so.


If that's the case, lets get rid of war machines. They have the same issues, but people don't complain nearly as much.

I wouldn't say that's true.
I've had warmachines wipe out a characters, or a monsters, and thin a unit. I've never had a warmachine cripple a unit while also killing off the characters inside the unit; and I have had Dwellers do that.

-Matt



I've had my block of plaguebearers dwellers'd twice in one game. I went on to win it. I've also had war machines cripple my army. The problem with war machines is that they're too reliable, they pump out a lot of damage for minimal risk. AND they can split their fire. There is no real defense against something like a dwarf, empir' or OnG gun-line. Whereas with dwellers, you can run a list with multiple balanced blocks. Which means that, you'll be able to survive the spell with no real losses.


However , I'm not saying that the spells don't need changing, just that there is no real way to balance them beyond neutering them.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2014/03/09 08:30:56


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Killer Klaivex




Oceanside, CA

 thedarkavenger wrote:

I've had my block of plaguebearers dwellers'd twice in one game. I went on to win it. I've also had war machines cripple my army. The problem with war machines is that they're too reliable, they pump out a lot of damage for minimal risk. AND they can split their fire. There is no real defense against something like a dwarf, empir' or OnG gun-line. Whereas with dwellers, you can run a list with multiple balanced blocks. Which means that, you'll be able to survive the spell with no real losses.
However , I'm not saying that the spells don't need changing, just that there is no real way to balance them beyond neutering them.

You can run an army full of warmachine hunters and pick off the very easy to kill victory points. You can also run an army that doesn't have good targets for warmachines.
You don't really have build options for low init armies to defend against purple sun.
You can't build against dwellers. You have to take at least a general, and most likely you'll also have a BSB and a wizard. These characters have to go somewhere, and if stuck in with units, it's now ramped up the value of that unit to be a dwellers target. Even with an even spread of 200 point blocks, somewhere you've got a general, and that boosts the block to ~500 vp (counting the bonus vp for killing the general).

Spells should kill units, OR snipe characters, not both.
IMO, the game needs more spells that cause 1 hit on every rank and file in the unit. You still get the nuke effect, without sniping characters.

It's why I like lore of vampire. Wind of Undeath scales up to do more damage to bigger units, but doesn't snipe heroes.

 thedarkavenger wrote:

So. I got a game with this list in. First game in at least 3-4 months.
 
   
Made in gb
Sinister Shapeshifter




The Lair of Vengeance....Poole.

 HawaiiMatt wrote:
 thedarkavenger wrote:

I've had my block of plaguebearers dwellers'd twice in one game. I went on to win it. I've also had war machines cripple my army. The problem with war machines is that they're too reliable, they pump out a lot of damage for minimal risk. AND they can split their fire. There is no real defense against something like a dwarf, empir' or OnG gun-line. Whereas with dwellers, you can run a list with multiple balanced blocks. Which means that, you'll be able to survive the spell with no real losses.
However , I'm not saying that the spells don't need changing, just that there is no real way to balance them beyond neutering them.

You can run an army full of warmachine hunters and pick off the very easy to kill victory points. You can also run an army that doesn't have good targets for warmachines.
You don't really have build options for low init armies to defend against purple sun.
You can't build against dwellers. You have to take at least a general, and most likely you'll also have a BSB and a wizard. These characters have to go somewhere, and if stuck in with units, it's now ramped up the value of that unit to be a dwellers target. Even with an even spread of 200 point blocks, somewhere you've got a general, and that boosts the block to ~500 vp (counting the bonus vp for killing the general).

Spells should kill units, OR snipe characters, not both.
IMO, the game needs more spells that cause 1 hit on every rank and file in the unit. You still get the nuke effect, without sniping characters.

It's why I like lore of vampire. Wind of Undeath scales up to do more damage to bigger units, but doesn't snipe heroes.


Dwellers can be built around, just spread your characters. It mitigates it to a degree. Resulting in Dwellers having to target an individual character and unit. Whereas, in that same phase, any artillery army can do much more damage to that.

The point is that you can't neuter one of the two without making the other a must-have.

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Deranged Necron Destroyer




Aipoch wrote:
 thedarkavenger wrote:
If that's the case, lets get rid of war machines. They have the same issues, but people don't complain nearly as much.


A very fair point. War machines of the cannon variety are not represented uniformly in all armies, yet pose a serious threat to their intended counterparts (monsters, lone characters, and such). Yet they never receive the same amount of flak that the big boy spells do. My HE's don't really care that you got off some big vortex of an initiative test, but you better believe I think long and hard about my sanity when I choose to field a dragon in a game I know will have cannons.

Similarly, I'm sure my ogre friend is very sore about the big purple test of death going off right on his gutstar. However, I doubt he cares nearly as much when a cannonball comes bouncing his way and fails to cause enough wounds to kill the model, stopping the shot cold.

Every army has a serious hard-counter to them as far as I can tell. That the particular army you play has a higher susceptibility to the "test or die" spells is warranted; every unit and character in the game should have something to truly fear.

As for taking no skill to throw six dice at a really nice spell, I agree. It takes no more skill to throw six dice at an excellent spell than it does to stack 15+ ironguts into a horde unit with character support.

Really? Cannons aren't as complained about as the top spells? Since when? I don't even know a single person who doesn't want the cannon rules changed because their sniping bounce is absurd. Frankly, I've seen way more complaints about cannons than anything else in the game and for good reason - they're really good. That said, I'll post the maths at the end of this post and you can decide how much better the top spells are (here's the TL;DR answer - spells are literally better at everything, tougher to stop and their only balancing factor is how many you can cast in one turn). As for the Gutstar, again why is that relevant? Does one bad thing mean others must exist or something now? I would argue that the existance of the gutstar even with these spells shows a more obvious truth - they don't prevent the deathstar builds they were implemented to stop, they just make the game more random which is a bad thing.

DukeRustfield wrote:There's a limit to how much tactics are in a game with a bazillion D6 thrown.

Just a quick issue with this post - throwing more dice should make the game less random and more tactic dependent generally due to dice variation. So yeah, I don't agree here at all.

 HawaiiMatt wrote:
I wouldn't say that's true.
I've had warmachines wipe out a characters, or a monsters, and thin a unit. I've never had a warmachine cripple a unit while also killing off the characters inside the unit; and I have had Dwellers do that.

In fairness, war machines do have a major advantage - they don't have a casting check. Because of that, you can easily use 3 war machines every turn they're operational rather than realistically once per turn like the top end spells.

thedarkavenger wrote:I've had my block of plaguebearers dwellers'd twice in one game. I went on to win it. I've also had war machines cripple my army. The problem with war machines is that they're too reliable, they pump out a lot of damage for minimal risk. AND they can split their fire. There is no real defense against something like a dwarf, empir' or OnG gun-line. Whereas with dwellers, you can run a list with multiple balanced blocks. Which means that, you'll be able to survive the spell with no real losses.



However , I'm not saying that the spells don't need changing, just that there is no real way to balance them beyond neutering them.

I think that's probably fair. That said, I don't see neutering them as a bad thing at all - they either do no real damage or are game changing. Both are pretty stupid.

You can run an army full of warmachine hunters and pick off the very easy to kill victory points. You can also run an army that doesn't have good targets for warmachines.
You don't really have build options for low init armies to defend against purple sun.
You can't build against dwellers. You have to take at least a general, and most likely you'll also have a BSB and a wizard. These characters have to go somewhere, and if stuck in with units, it's now ramped up the value of that unit to be a dwellers target. Even with an even spread of 200 point blocks, somewhere you've got a general, and that boosts the block to ~500 vp (counting the bonus vp for killing the general).

Spells should kill units, OR snipe characters, not both.
IMO, the game needs more spells that cause 1 hit on every rank and file in the unit. You still get the nuke effect, without sniping characters.

It's why I like lore of vampire. Wind of Undeath scales up to do more damage to bigger units, but doesn't snipe heroes.

Yeah, this is the basis of my argument - just look at the effect on the game. Who's top? WoC, Dark Elves, High Elves. Sure, you see other armies up there but those are the ones reliably doing well in everything. What do all 3 have in common? They're the ones with access to both lore of death and lore of shadows whilst also having high initiative. We all know how good these lores are - shadows shuts down gun lines and has pit of shades+mind razor, death weakens enemies, buffs the power pool and has purple sun. These severely harm the low I armies (which are rarely seen outside of Dwarf gun lines) and allow the already fantastic units in these armies to get better. Even the other armies reliably doing well like Empire and Vampires ALSO use these lores - they're just THAT good. No artillery in the game can remotely compare and when you consider that a Lv4 wizard is getting pit of shades off on 3 dice about 62.5% of the time, that's a lot of damage even in a comparatively weak magic phase which forces dispell dice to be reserved. No other thing in the game can claim to be so dominant. How do TK mitigate these spells? They're punished for building small units and punished for building large ones. VC? Well, they're stymied into far fewer builds. Same with Dwarfs, same with almost all armies honestly. Lots of armies NEED big blocks to function, then are penalised by these spells for trying to be viable. There is no way they can combat them other than hope - that's bad design.

Dwellers can be built around, just spread your characters. It mitigates it to a degree. Resulting in Dwellers having to target an individual character and unit. Whereas, in that same phase, any artillery army can do much more damage to that.

The point is that you can't neuter one of the two without making the other a must-have.

Sure you can, easily. Heck, several dwarf lists being thrown around don't even use war machines because the risk of losing them to hunters, characteristic test spells or even just enemy artillery is huge, plus the signature of shadows just kills the effectiveness of organ guns. Most armies now are taking a cannon or 2 to kill monsters and a multi-hit weapon (organ gun, hellblaster, various stone throwers) to deal with hordes. Elves just spam their bolt throwers if they even bring artillery (why would you when frost bird and eagles are a choice should be the real question). That's it - even in uncomped events it's rare to see more than 3 pieces of artillery.


So here's some fun maths for you - let's look at some stupidly unfair comparison to show JUST how dumb these spells are. Let's consider pit of shades VS a cannon firing at a frostheart phoenix.
Cannon:
Chance to hit - 3/4
Chance to wound - 5/6
Chance to roll 6 wounds - 1/6
Chance to roll 3 wounds - 4/6
EDIT: Ward save 5+ - 2/3
Overall chance to kill with one cannon - 5/48 5/72
Overall chance to halve wounds - 5/12 5/18
Chance cannon self immolates - 1/18

Wizard:
Chance to cast (4 dice, lv 4 wizard) - ~9/10 (slightly higher in reality)
Chance to hit - ~1/2 (slightly lower in reality, can't be bothered to figure out intersections entirely but between 48% and 51%)
Chance to instantly kill - 1/2
Overall chance to kill in one spell - 9/40
Chance caster dies - ~33/250

So, for those who are unaware, that means that if you only took one cannon, you're wasting your time unless it's really cheap or your only option. In fact, you're over twice three times as likely to kill it with a top tier spell. If you can afford to fire at the thing twice (raising your death chance to about 10.9%) then it's a fair bit better (but you still expect them to live 4 cannon shots EACH). I didn't include stuff like engineers, but I also didn't include any magic buffing things like Book of Hoeth, so I'd call it a wash overall.

Here's a list of things a cannon is better at than a level 4 spell caster:
-Not exploding
-Being cheaper
Here's a list of things a level 4(+) wizard is better at than a cannon:
-Everything other than exploding and being cheaper

See, you want spell casters anyway - unit wide buffs, crippling the enemy, various missiles etc are all really powerful. Cannons have one use - killing tough things, which in fairness they do very well. However, you can't kill a spellcaster at range easily, you can rarely stop them doing what they want and the best you can hope is that they die before using their stuff. War machines are weak to any test, any enemy war machines, any hunting units and, at best, tend to have 3 opportunities to fire as they're useless once things are out of sight or in combat. They're not even comparable - every army which can take wizards must out of necessity; not every army which can take a cannon even wants to do so. It would be rare to see a Dwarf army without them but that's because they have no casters at all - I've seen many other armies using no war machines at all. So yes, I vehemently disagree that getting rid of these spells would have much, if any, impact on war machine use - people will use the same things regardless as you can't rely on rolling these spells, whereas disposing of these spells does almost nothing to the magic phase other than stop the pocket nuke.

EDIT: You know what? I forgot the darned ward save. The cannon is even less effectual - you are 3.24 times more likely to kill the phoenix with a spell than a cannon. Frankly, this has actually convinced me cannons need no nerf at all other than the sniping thing. The fact that you average 4 cannon shots to kill one of the most popular monsters in the game and 3 for most others is pretty crazy. There is no conceivable way you can tell me these spells are okay but war machines are not when you get ward saves, regeneration (if it's not a flaming cannon) and look out sir from one but not the other. Frankly, they deserve more even flak.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2014/03/10 00:24:00


 
   
Made in gg
Regular Dakkanaut




I have both a LM army and a Dwarf army.


My LM army is all ways built up around anti magic (+5 to dispel with reroll and 2 dispel scrolls) whilst my dwarf army is kinda of the same (+4 to dispel, remove remains in play on a 3+ and 2 spell eaters)

Played a 4k game against a HE army.

This is what I can report with War machines Vs Magic

My Dwarf war machines are great, kills normal models like no ones business, had one organ gun kill 18 HE archers today. Toke out any monsters with not to much of an issue (over shot more then I should of but hey not to worried they died in the end)

But I had to fight a squad of 40 Phoenix guard + Banner of the world dragon + some nice lord / heros in there. All my war machines count as magical so 2++ vs them. Bit of an issue with war machines. All I did was throw an anvil at them and kept them from really being a threat. Was a slow slow grind and my long beards finally died to the Phoenix guard but whilst that was happening I did just wipe up the rest of the army in shooting but had no way to deal with that 2++ unit.


When I went against them with my LM, all I did was Lore of Life, IF off throne of vines, ignore the miscast. IF Dwellers, killed more then average (only 10 were left?) Phoenix guard with no saves of any kind. Ignore the miscast.

If I really wanted to be horrid would also use my 2nd slann (all ways do double slann in 4k+ games) to give -D3 Str and make dwellers even more broken.


Got to say magic is more broken then war machines. War machines are reliable magic is powerful but to reliable.


IF is one thing, putting ignoring miscasts in the same lore as a you die spell is just wrong....

20k+ Nids 10k Eldar (w/Phantom) 5k Necron 5k Lizardmen
3k Dwarfs
 
   
Made in us
Longtime Dakkanaut





Eyjio wrote:

Just a quick issue with this post - throwing more dice should make the game less random and more tactic dependent generally due to dice variation. So yeah, I don't agree here at all.

If you rolled a die for which army you played, what units, what amounts, what directions you went, basically did nothing but roll dice, there would be no tactics at all. There aren't enough dice that they become bell shaped in their dispersion tables. The number of dice was a reference to all the things you have to throw for. Like charging, panic, LD tests, Dangerous Terrain. You might test each of those four times. Four has not made that a smooth roll...

   
Made in ie
Sniping Hexa




Dublin

Some people think that 8th is less random than previous editions when it comes to close combat due to the number of dice rolled
It might seem true but in fact it's not
Now keep in mind I didn't play 7th, but I did play a lot before that and a lot of Warhammer Ancients as well
Characters weren't butchering RnF by the dozens, nor were you able to attack in 3+ ranks with step-up
The result was often something like 3 castualties to 1, resulting in an increased importance of the "static res" from ranks and banners
At that time, rolling Ld checks on a double 1 was unheard of ! In fact that rule didn't even exist
So yes, the randomness in the random part of the equation is less extreme, but the random part is waaay more important than the static one

 
   
 
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