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I have a tourney coming up in Oct/Nov and one of the HE players is going chariot heavy + an arch mage.

Whats the best way to deal with 4-5 chariots and some Silver helms? Thinking of having a cannon and a 20 man gunline with a 30block of swordsmen with max halberd attachments for each. Also about 8 Knights.

Also when we hit 2k points he'll end up bringing teclis and 2-3 lv2 mages for alot of magic spam. Im guessing a couyple of Arch lectors for the extra dispel dice? What would give me the biggest bang for the buck against such magic heavy armies?

Thanks!

Don't bother pushing for those extra dispell dice IMHO. The points you need to invest into them will not be worth it.

What makes the HE magic (either from BoH or Teclis) so effective is the ability to cast with irrestible force on any roll of a double (provided the spell worked of course). A smart HE player will bring the banner of sorcery and Teclis giving 2d3 extra power dice per turn, granting an average of 11 power dice a turn.

Taking this into account, the HE player will be casting between 2-3 spells a turn depending on what he wants to get across. 4 dice on a cast with BoH/Teclis gives a %72.22 of being cast with IF, and unable to be dispelled. It can get even more ugly with Lore of Death, as a well cast purple sun with 6 dice will generate enough deaths to give the HE player enough power dice for another spell.

By carefully picking what spells he wants to cast, your opponent will prevent you from stopping him in the magic phase, even with 12 dispell dice. Sure, you can stop those spells that are not cast with IF. You might as well as use all your dispell dice on them, as your likely to just get 1 shot a turn.

You can see the chances of casting success here
http://www.simhammer.com/node/1

labmouse42 wrote:http://www.simhammer.com/node/1

This is awesome, too bad it dosent go to 7 dice i would have been curious to see the chances a rumination slaan could get.

Rumination doesnt let you exceed the maximum 6 dice per spell.

Also, it doesn't make much sense for him to take Teclis and 2-3 lvl 2 mages as well. Due to the power dice limit and Teclis' IF rule, it's gonna be Teclis who is casting all the spells and those other mages wouldn't be worth it.

In terms of using the mages to add to the power dice pool, as labmouse said, Teclis gets +D3 from an ability and there's also a banner HEs can take that adds another +D3 to the power dice pool, so the mages would be wasted there (the banner is only 50pts and a lot of HE special units can be given a 50 point banner, so it's not like there's much of an opportunity cost of taking it). At most, I would expect one other mage if he takes Teclis, that'll only be so that if Teclis does die all those points sunk into magic aren't completely wasted. While Teclis is still gonna be horrible to face, remember that for a 2000 point army he takes up a quarter of that by himself and any additional lvl2 mage is 135 points before equipment, so it's a big hit to focus on magic in this way for HEs even if they're very good at it.

My advice is don't try and outmagic them if they're going all out magic, even on the defensive, Teclis' scroll of hoeth (dispell scroll and on a higher D6 roll than his opponent the spell cannot be cast again by you), his level 4 and +1 on any dispell roll rule intrinsic to HEs means Teclis will be dispelling with a +5 to his roll; also if a HE needs to take out the big guns there's a High Magic spell which increases the casting value of all spells by 3 and is cumulative for the number of times it is cast. On top of which HEs have very good anti-magic magic items.

Instead, use the massive points cost that the HE guy has sunk into magic to get other units. If you want to talk tactics of handling other stuff of this HE dude just shout and I'll try help you out, but yeah, I wouldn't invest much (if anything) into taking on Teclis magic wise, you're just not gonna beat him and any points you spend trying to will be wasted, there are other ways to stop any magic use and Teclis is designed so that his weakness is not trying to stop him with other wizards.

Stoopyface wrote:My advice is don't try and outmagic them if they're going all out magic, even on the defensive

QFT.

You dont try and wrestle the with a lion. You get a gun and shoot it.
Use cannons, mortars, etc..

It'll be Teclis and at the most one Lvl.2.

Half of the boon of Teclis is that he can cast spells which are impossible to dispel.

Say he gets 10-12 dice. Uses half on each of 2 spells.
91-98% chance first one succeeds and is impossible to dispel (making extra dispel dice useless.)
91-98% chance second one succeeds and is impossible to dispel (making extra dispel dice useless.)

Now, if he were to spam weaker spells, some would be dispellable, but if I saw you having a good number of dispel dice, I'd make them useless and just cast uber spells like Purple Sun and another super spell. He ignores his first miscast per turn and the chance of miscast is 19.6% with 5 and 26.32% with 6.

I think that's a 7% chance per turn he'll actually suffer a miscast (and both spells still go off.) Safe odds to me.

The super HE magic will cost a lot of points, so you can afford a whole lot of artillery, guns, and combat troops to counter.

Cannons will obliterate chariots.
Silver helms just plain suck (1 S3 attack in 2nd round of combat, any large infantry unit could likely grind them down.)
I think you should be able to afford much more than 1 cannon, 1 squad of knights, and 2 or 3 squads of infantry at 2000 points.

ShivanAngel wrote:Rumination doesnt let you exceed the maximum 6 dice per spell.

Actually the rumination says it allows to roll one dice more than he would normally be allowed, and since nothing in the FAQ says anything to forbid it the army book rule still works that way.

Edit: I can actually explain where you'r confusion stems from.
Lizardmen FAQ:
Q: Does the "free" power dice gained from Focused Rumination count against the power limit?
A: Yes.

But when you krack open the BRB (page 30) you find out that "power limit" is in fact the rule that states you can never have more than 12 dice in the power pool. So basically rumination cannot be used to get you more than 12 PD.
For example: you have 12 PD at the start of the phase, this means you are at maximum and cannot add a rumination die to your firs spell because that would mean you have 13 PD (illegal) once the firs spell is cast however and the PD pool is emptier, you are free to add rumination dice as much as you wish.

How hard is Teclis to kill? I know he's T2 but does he have much in the way of ward saves? Could Hochland Long Rifles in a bunch of handgunner units sort him out fairly quickly?

He is T2 3 wounds with no saves of any kind.

Pretty squishy little guy.

Yup killing him fast, is key though due to great damage potential. And if the long rifles ignore look out sir they can totally own him, since its the best protection he has, otherwise its 1 wound every 6 hits.

Edit: just saw the rifles get sniper USR, poor Teclis