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There is one thing i never understand about warhammer Fantasy , its the magic! I mean ,
- They are expensive
- They are fragile
- And most frustratingly , they are randomly generated!

I havnt played for a loooooong time , so i probably have something confused but when we put together an army list
we know exactly why we pick the certain gear , so we can better formulate a plan on how the WHOLE army syncs.

But the wizards ! they are expensive and we generate RANDOM spells? how does that work? Wouldnt that be like me picking
a unit and randomly generating their weapons prior before a game starts?

What am i missing o_o?

The best magical armies can reliably get and cast their good spells every game. And some armies magic is so overpowering it doesn't matter what spells you get.

You can always pick the first spell, which for some armies is vital. For others, the spells are the backbone- example Vampire summoning and movement spells. You need the magic for the list to even work. For others, bring enough mages and you'll be sure to get the spell you want, and lots of magic missiles to spam auto hits with. Some lists can do all of these things well (Lizardmen, Daemons, Elves I suppose and of course Undead) others kinda suck but need the odd mage for defense (orcs, some chaos, Empire, Brets) and then you have Ogres, who seem to need butchers to get anywhere these days. (don't know much about them though, I've only ever fought them once.)

I don't use a mage at the moment in my O&G list I rely on dispel dice from Mork's Spirit Totem, and for my old Beastman list I was able to pick an item that locked one of spells as Steed of Shadows and I was happy enough to take the basic Bear's Anger and not roll, so it wasn't random. With Lizardmen, back when I used to play them, the first lore of heavens spell was great so I always took it, and the second was sort of a happy bonus.

I thought every unit should be covering each other's weakness . Im just having a hard time picturing how something as random as generated spell can be worth their point ( unless you are lucky and roll spell that benefit your army composition )

Any good general should learn to work with whatever spells he randomly rolls. Besides, with a high-level caster, you can expect to have a very good chance of rolling a great spell and making it work. Since you haven't played for so long, I don't think you'd understand it, but most winning lists have a fair bit of magic in them. Just look at Dark Elves or Warriors of Chaos.

Cheese Elemental wrote:Any good general should learn to work with whatever spells he randomly rolls. Besides, with a high-level caster, you can expect to have a very good chance of rolling a great spell and making it work. Since you haven't played for so long, I don't think you'd understand it, but most winning lists have a fair bit of magic in them. Just look at Dark Elves or Warriors of Chaos.

Hmm teach me the way of wood elf magic

because i dont get it either

I don't play Elf Hippies. I play smash-face Black Orcs and bang-bang magicless Dwarfs.

Wood Elf Magic is generally supportive. Hero mages only have 1 lore to choose from, and Lord ones only have 3.

You pick lores when the game begins, so while a wizard who can have the normal lores look at his opponent and go 'Heavy Cavalry with good saves, Lore of Metal would be good' or 'lots of flammable treemen, Lore of Fire would be good', Wood Elf mages don't have that option.

Wood Elf magic is supportive, the most important spell is Tree Singing which allows you to move forests D3+1 in a direction. This spell can always be defaulted to, and combined with it being bound cast by Treemen and the magic item that allows it to be cast more than once means you can do (with good rolls) a bit of tree shaping but only if you can overpower his magic defence.

The other support spells are ok (can be quite nice like regeneration), but I find I prefer combat lords, so I don't rely on spells and only take mages for magic defence. With that in mind, I don't get some of the nicer spells off very often.

Also, Wood Elf mages are expensive (more than human ones) and don't get any bonuses with their casting. Combined with limited access to Lores, I find them overpriced in general, which is why I favour combat characters and only use 1 or 2 as magic defence (scroll caddy, or sometimes Branchwraith with radiants).

Well for my 2 cents, even if your not to keen on magic its always wise to bring at least one magic user to help dispell stuff, and any 1st level can carry 2 dispell scrolls so it makes the enemy magic that much more fragile.
For me i always try and bring some offensive magic just in case its needed, againt Vamps or lizard men that is hard, but if you can get in a good spell or 3 in a game, then odds are youve hurt something important.
As youve said Luna hound, you like everything supporting everything else, and for me magic fits right into that. Try casting death frenzy on a weapons team for example (ya i know old adition and why on earth would you want to?) the team will no longer be subjected to psy tests, so even if the parent unit is destroyed, or you have panic running rampant the team will ignore it, (i do this with my slaves, poison wind globlidiers and so on if im facing a shooting army). magic can be useful if used properly, and not only to cause MM hits.

Id suggest looking thru your army books and thinking on what spells couls help you and how youd use em.

Im thinking of mounting my heroes on Giant Eagles with Hail of Doom arrow .

Will this work as a successful counter to enemy mages?
( instead of carrying dispell scrolls i go hunt them down >< )

( wow thats lots of typo in 3 sentences... )

Magic is good, true the randomly generating things a bit weird but it stops you choosing the rock hard army-killing spells without rolling a 6. Keep Magic its lethal!!!

As for the WE question, i dont play them, but id definetely go wizard-hunting rather than hiding. Scrolls are way too expensive, 25pts!!!. And they onlystop one spell, one is good for the odd mean spell but its a lot better to kill wizards, they cant cast when theyre dead, and sooner or later youll run out of scrolls.

The usefullness of magic really depends on the army as said above. My goblins have fairly useless magic compared to my dark elves. In my last battle I cast Black Horror on a group of saurus warriors. The result was 7 dead. This changed my opponents plans quite a bit and eventually my bolt throwers and cold one knights finished the group pretty easily.

If you don't like magic, you can always try to mostly ignore it and just take magic-defense type items. However, for me I feel like it's not going to be as much fun to do that... but then I really like the idea of magic in fantasy .

I am looking forward to getting my high elves back and using lots of magic... but then we have an item that lets us pick our spells for one of the mages

RiTides Nids wrote:If you don't like magic, you can always try to mostly ignore it and just take magic-defense type items. However, for me I feel like it's not going to be as much fun to do that... but then I really like the idea of magic in fantasy .

I am looking forward to getting my high elves back and using lots of magic... but then we have an item that lets us pick our spells for one of the mages

Thats the thing , i do like the idea of magic in fantasy ,
i just find the random determining spell as random as rolling d6 to choose what weapon your swordmaster uses ( a bow oh no! )

Do warriors of chaos need magic to win now?

Noisy_Marine wrote:Do warriors of chaos need magic to win now?

No but it helps. . . It seems they primarily need it for anti-magic due to the sheer number of spells that take away your awesome armor save.

As a HE player, I don't really worry about choosing magic, I am going to have a basic mage who lets me choose his spells, and if I want to go even heavier magic, I use Teclis who gets all of one lore.

Then again, I have also been forced to adjust my play style recently due to a rule at our local GS, that forces you to choose one lore at the beginning of the Tourney and not change it. This has led to me taking fewer Mages, but frankly its led to some really weird lists from me to.

(P.S. Try out 2 mages on chariots with Unseen Lurker and Teclis in one army, its a really strange game, 1st turn charges nearly guaranteed.)

Thats the thing , i do like the idea of magic in fantasy ,
i just find the random determining spell as random as rolling d6 to choose what weapon your swordmaster uses ( a bow oh no! )

Lets take the DE for an example. If your sorceress was lvl 4 it could easily cast black horror and soulstealer, which are two very harmful spells. So the d6 rune simply means you couldnt just pick those but would need to roll a 6 or 5 (respectivly) it just makes it fair. Anyway you can always swap a spell for spell number 1, which is suprisingly useful.

There is no problem that cant be solved with a good ol' fireball.

I have woodelves but not played them. But as far as mage hunting you might also want to think about getting some way-watchers they are great at popping up and kiling people at ranged.

But being my loyalties are to the Phoenix King not the burned wana be or a magic tree I would suggest returning to your proper homeland where you belong. Where with one simple item we choose our spells =P

Elthrai wrote:Where with one simple item we choose our spells =P

Which item grant us this o_o?

Elthrai wrote:I have woodelves but not played them. But as far as mage hunting you might also want to think about getting some way-watchers they are great at popping up and kiling people at ranged.

But being my loyalties are to the Phoenix King not the burned wana be or a magic tree I would suggest returning to your proper homeland where you belong. Where with one simple item we choose our spells =P

pfft. Burned wannabe. Malekith IS the Pheonix King. (Well, at least he should be)


Anywhoo, I think that if we could choose spells, we'd all choose the most powerful spells, and imbalance would raise its ugly head.

Randomness is kind of odd, but it makes for more variety in games. Note that you roll spells before deployment, as well, so this is also part of the tactics of warhammer. Depending on what spells you get, you should adjust the deployment and movement of your mages and the units they are supporting.

The Wood Elf lore is pretty solid. In 6th ed I always used to use Life and Heavens (on L2s and L4s, respectively) for direct damage, but both of them got nerfed in 7th, and the WE lore actually has some really nice spells. You just need to plan your movement and tactics to take best advantage of them.

Mannahnin wrote:Randomness is kind of odd, but it makes for more variety in games. Note that you roll spells before deployment, as well, so this is also part of the tactics of warhammer. Depending on what spells you get, you should adjust the deployment and movement of your mages and the units they are supporting.

The Wood Elf lore is pretty solid. In 6th ed I always used to use Life and Heavens (on L2s and L4s, respectively) for direct damage, but both of them got nerfed in 7th, and the WE lore actually has some really nice spells. You just need to plan your movement and tactics to take best advantage of them.

Ahh i have quite a few questions , do you recommend me starting a thread to ask them in , or
should i pm you the questions?

I don't have the army book on hand at the moment.

But I think the High Elves get an item called the Silver Wand/Staff I think that allows us to choose our spells. Now I haven't looked at the army book in a while and might be confusing it with the last ed where we had something called Channeler that let us choose spells.

Yes, I do agree the randomness of the spells can seem a bit strange. But given that some spells are similiar in thier function but more powerful the higher they get in the spell number. Like a magic missile that was 1d6 and another magic missile thats 2d6 or 1d6 at higher str further down the spell list.

LunaHound wrote:Ahh i have quite a few questions , do you recommend me starting a thread to ask them in , or should i pm you the questions?

Using the regular forums is fine. Probably WH Tactics for general play advice, and WH YMDC for rules questions.

Cryonicleech wrote:pfft. Burned wannabe. Malekith IS the Pheonix King. (Well, at least he should be)

I agree. Malekith is the heir to Anerion, after all. Those damn traitors spelled him in what should have his greatest moment of triumph!

I am even using a Phoenix banner for my Black Chariot, because Malekith is the Phoenix King. If the high elves would just acknowledge that, we could have peace again....

I honestly hate the magic part of the game, as I have to spend a good 100 points on just dispel scrolls. My magic units for my army really isnt that great so it can be kind of frustrating

I also get frustrated by having to take items just to dispel/negate magic... it's more fun if it can go both ways (but lizardmen and high elves have good magic, so it's easy to make it go both ways with my armies).