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I'm coming back off a long hiatus (about a decade actually) and didn't play much back then either.

What I am curious about is how much magic defense you really need. Is it possible to play an army that is not focused on magic defense without magic?

Obviously Dwarves and Khorne can get alot of magic defense, but what about playing say Lizardmen, Elves, Empire that sort? Is one cheap scroll caddy enough magic defense that you won't be bent over by certain spells?

i haven´t tried it but i think a skaven army could do it. they have enough troops to waste that they are fine with loosing units.

other armies will need as a minimum 1 scroll caddie if not 2 (and at LV2 they can be a bit offensive). it does depend on your opponents as well though.

I'm not worried as much about magic missiles. More worried about things like Vanhel's Dance, or the spells that make a whole unit WS 1, or do damage to a whole unit or make a unit veer off in some other direction.

Magic missiles can be neat, but the real spells to fear are the utility spells. Those are the ones that affect the whole outcome of the game.

My Throg Clog chaos warriors don't have any magic or dispel dice. Neither do my brets.

You hit the nail on the head. It's a gamble.

If they have just defensive magic (scroll caddies + items for dice) you are up a hero or two and some items.

If they have some magic missiles you are still in the game, just going to take some casualties.

If they have more intolerable magic than you can block with 2 dice (vanhels, urgency, gate, bolt, other movement spells, leadership spells, gut magic...) you are in for a painful game.

2 lvl 1s w/ 4 scrolls should shut down most useful magic pretty well. You just have to know which spells are key to kill. Magic items/banner/units with MR are also extremely useful.

DE could do it quite easily with nulltallismans and the ring of Hotek your magic defense would be stout. With three units which their champion can take magic items worth up to 25 points and heros and a lord choice you should be able to cover a large portion of your army.

Empire can do it IMO. I'm personally a player that likes going magic-lite with Empire.

The most important addition is a Caddy with the Rod of Power. Forget about casting spells and just store 2 of your power dice to use as DD each turn (or even 3 if you favour the increased risk of losing the dice) for little risk. That's 5 DD right there (2 basic, 1 from the caddy, 2 from the RoP)

You can boost the magic defense by taking Priests. Some argue that the Arch Lector is the best choice in terms of points for quality and it's hard to disagree. Especially as the guy also brings an additional 2 DD with him.

A Hero level Priest can also come in very handy, once again some more magic defense is added (1DD) and he's a good addition to a unit of knights for his Hatred re-rolls.

So a Lector, Priest, Caddy and say, a BSB or a Captasus is a good character mix, with a basic DD number of 6, easily going to 8 with the RoP.

The Captasus (Captain on Pegasus for those who don't know) can even be made a Casketus (bears Aldred's Casket of Sorcery) in order to cramp the style of enemy mages some more. (Captasi can also be great at mage assasination as long as the mage isn't flanked by a a champ)

When I've got the points left I like to make the Caddy lvl2. Now, if the magic balance swings your way (because of the opposing mages suffering from a bad case of death) he can use the RoP for extra PD, thus enabling him to throw 3 dice for each of his 2 spells. Together with the Prayer spell arsenal from the Priests and maybe bound spells from a War Altar and other magic items you can really put the pressure on your opponent.

My Brits have one damsel with two dispell scrolls. Yes she is second level just to see if she can get a spell off every now and then.

I've been playing no-magic Dark Elves for months now and as long as you have the Ring of Hotek, toss in a few Null Talismans, your fine and should do fine

Even at 3000 points I never take more than 2 dispel scrolls.

At tournament play you should be looking at a caddy with 2 dispel scrolls minimum (I normally take 2 level 2's as it lets me have a go at x2 3 casting dice spells per turn) but BAWTRM makes and excellent case for Empire.

It depends on who you are playing in friendly games and what you are using. Play ogres and Tyrant +3 butchers and 6 dispel scrolls vs VC/TKs will kill the enemy's magic phase but will also allow you to smash your opponent.

Certain armies can go without mages but you usually have to set the army around that theme...

I found I could manage against everything but overpowering magic by taking the idol of mork on a big block of orcs. +3 dispel dice was enough.

Da Boss wrote:I found I could manage against everything but overpowering magic by taking the idol of mork on a big block of orcs. +3 dispel dice was enough.

That would have been one hell of a point sink.
I usually only see that banner on the BSB leading a unit of 30 or so regular orcs....

my 2250 ogre list runs zero magic. my normal lizzie list has a caddy, and my dwarfs, well, yeah.

Well since nobody's mentioned it;

Khorne got boned this edition, if you're talking about Warriors. No magic defence whatsoever. Which makes it impossible to run a competitive pure Khorne list.