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I play Empire, and I have been thinking of some ways to make a wizard that can fight on par with other armies best and brightest. Needless to say this was tough, but while working on ideas I stumbled upon an idea that allows me to field a brutal close combat wizard. Here are the stats.
Wizard Lord
Level 4 - Lore of Beasts
Power Scroll
Charmed Shield
Seed of Rebirth

For the plan to work, Transformation of Kandon is required.

The idea is pretty simple, using Transformation of Kandon, you elect to transform your wizard into a Mountain Chimera, Fire Dragon ect. When you do this, you activate the powerscroll, greatly increasing the chance of an IC cast. I cannot stress that you need to use all of your power dice in this cast. The chance of you IC is huge, and when it happens, you will also miscast. This is what the shield and Seed are for, when (or if) you take a hit from the miscast, these should keep you safe. Assuming your luck holds you will now have a monster that will take all your enemies power dice to dispel. I ran a rolling test for a chimeras attack on a WoC squad, I dealt 18 wounds with no saves available, and they dealt no wounds back.

I know this is a very risky stratergy, but its a case of risk for reward, and thats what the Empires built on .
NO FLAMMING, NO FLAMMING FOR YOU

Cant work, a wizard cannot buy mundane armor, thus cannot get magical armor

Why do you think you dont have wizards running around in +2 armor?

An excellent point my friend, completley forgot about that, now I need to find a replacement item to protect the wizard from the miscast, any ideas?

Isn't it sorta impossible, seeing that all magical and mundane items on the wizard stop working temporarily when he turns into a huge monster. And the spell is resolved first, and only after that you get the miscast. Pretty safe from all but the first miscast result... and ofcourse you've got those level draining ones too, but it can't be helped.

You'd need to have something separate to deal with miscasts, and I can't find anything for Empire.

Didnt know that the miscast result happens second, this changes things. Now the problem is assuring I can get the Transformation spell, but thats generally impossible until an item that gives Loremaster is given to the empire...

Run a level 2 with beasts as well

Your chances of not getting Khadron on the L4 is very, very low now

wouldn't it be cheaper to just run the Speclum?

Yeah run the speculum. Generally no-one expects your wizard to beat your opponents tooled up lord.

(one time this actually routed an enemy unit and ran them down. ^.^ )

just watch out for characters with wargear.

they keep those bonuses and still might beat you down.

Put the speculum on the level 4, put the power scroll on the level 2.

Have the level 4 generate first, and if he gets transformation swap it out.
Have the level 2 generate 2nd, and the odds of him not getting transformation is very, very small. This way, you're not flinging the expensive level 4 into combat, you're sending in the cheap level 2.

-Matt

Hey, what was the verdict on how easy a boosted RiP spell is to dispel?

I mean...sure, this idea works...but I'm not sure it's a tactic. Seems to be "take this item" or "cast this spell". Like responding to "how can I make my wizard a really good caster?" with "up his level to 4".

I do think that a Vampire with Hatred and the Red Fury makes a pretty funny Mountain Chimera, though.

Also, for the record, I'm pretty sure a Mountain Chimera is going to be doing an average of 10 wounds to Chaos Warriors/turn, and take 1 wound/turn (assuming Khornate with halberds), or 7 and .5, respectively (assuming Tzeentch and shields).

Warpsolution wrote:Hey, what was the verdict on how easy a boosted RiP spell is to dispel?

Do you mean which casting value is used?
The FAQ says the lower on page 5:

Q: If I am dispelling a boosted Remains in Play spell, what value
do I need to beat to dispel it? (p36)
A: You will need to beat the basic casting value of the spell
(not the boosted casting value).

Was that what you meant?

Yea, I was going to point out what Kirsanth did: no matter what you roll against or on the dice with an RIP spell, the next turn your opponent can drop it by beating the basic number.

So for example if a spell requires a 5+ to cast, or can be boosted to 20+ to cast, and you throw 6 dice at the boosted level for a total of 24, the next turn your opponent rolls a 5+ an poof, it is gone.

And on your turn, you turn into a new fire dragon, and breathe again.

-Matt

Isnt the dispel needed equal to the casting roll (You need 20 and you roll 21 (unmodified), your opponet then needs to roll 21 to dispel) I wouldnt be suprised if I was wrong, I not new but the rulebooks is a big place and easy to get lost in.

I know about the speculum toting wizard idea, I have used it (gleefully) many times. But I usually stick that on a lower rank wizard and give him a decent weapon so that my opponet has to deal with toughness 3 rather than 4, If I take a Speculum lord, I usually give him the sword of anti heroes, speculum and some other stuff, depending on the enemies army.

I think taking another wizard would be a good idea, but am I able to give them both power scrolls, or give one 2 power scrolls, because if so Ohohohohoho . Now I am thinking the smartest thing to do would be charge an enemy unit with my Wizard, force an irresistible force cast, use the miscast to cause some damage to the opponet then hack them to death with my 2D6 str 4 breath attacks and 4D6 str 7 attacks. This could potentially wipe out one of my opponets best units in one turn, this also fixes the threat of immediate dispel by allowing me to attack before my opponets turn.

Now a name is required for this tactic, if any of you are going to have a game before sunday (Aussie time) could you try out this build and tell me how it goes. And thanks for the lack of flamming, normally when someone posts an idea as ridicoulous as this its met with a lynch mob.

I think it's a solid Idea for empire. I've seen it done with a Master of sorcery and flying horror Tzeentch herald, and he keeps his ward save and daemonic gifts iirc.

@Kirsanth: yes, exactly.

While it could wipe out an amazing unit in one turn, it almost certainly won't. I mean, 2d6+4d6, so an average of 21. Assuming they all hit, wound, and none are saved, your opponent would still only need 26 guys to be Steadfast (and those five guys will kill your non-monster wizard next turn).

Now, if you could get that guy into combat accompanied by a solid block of troops...
...and give him the Speculum, so after it's dispelled his Lord can challenge you.

Layers and layers of tricks. At least then, maybe, he wouldn't see it coming. Maybe.

I plan on Fielding this build in a 1000 point game, now that you are able to field Lords in any point value, as long as the value is 25% or less of your points (the Empire shines here, able to field a fully tooled lord for under 250 points). I play against a WoC player who fields about 15-20 Warriors, 20 Marurders and a wizard and Hero (whats the standard Chaos Heroes name...) in a 1000 point games, I use my Gunline to deal with most of his numbers, then my knights clean up the rest, either a Blade of Fate Captain or a Speculum Wizard dealing with his Heroes. The only reason I am adding this is to laugh at the face he makes when I utterly obliterate one of those squads, its sort of a personal vendetta against him for the first game we played, where he smashed my army with the help of a demon player (its all in good humor, we laugh at the ways we come up with to beat each others army silly).

This could also deal with the enemies that normally would cause me a lot of trouble (War Hydras, Vargulfs and Greater Demons, we have all of those players ).

The dispelling bit is true when you are trying to dispel the spell as it is being cast, i.e. you have to beat the casting roll. However, the next turn your opponent can attempt to dispel the RiP spell and then only needs to beat the basic cost. So in my previous example he would need to beat your roll (or get irresistible) to prevent you from being a dragon at all, but the next turn just needs the lower, non-boosted cost.

So the dragon thing can be fun, but you have a few issues:

1) Wounds carry over between forms: This is the biggie. The dragon has a bunch of wounds, but your wizard has 2-3 only. When the dragon form is dispelled any wounds lost come over, so 2 wounds on the dragon (one perhaps from the miscast) kills a hero wizard when the spell is dispelled next turn.

2) Wizard solo in melee: As Warpsolution pointed out, if you don't wipe the unit they will likely be steadfast (only need 1 rank of 5) and will stick in combat. The next turn your spell is dispelled and your wizard will likely get minced.
The other issue is that you will likely be charging into combat BEFORE you cast the spell, since it won't be likely to stay up during your opponent's turn. The danger there is that if you somehow screw up casting (6 1's or something) your caster is flapping in the wind. Until he is slaughtered that is.
Of course, the fix is to run a unit with your wizard to give him some protection, but he still will get attacks directed at him, probably enough to kill the nekked bugger.

To stop the dispel possibility on the turn he casts he was given a power scroll, that allows him to cast with irresistible force on any double, basically assuring that it wont be dispelled first turn, you also allocate all of you powerdice to this transformation. This is a risk and reward tactic as stated, I wouldnt use a Great Fire Dragon (against standard warriors of chaos, this would be geat however, they wouldnt be able to wound him at all ) I would transform the wizard into a Mountain Chimera, here are the stats.
WS 7
BS 4
S 7
T 7
W 10
I 5
A 4D6
Ld 6
Special Rules - Terror, Fly, Poisoned Attacks, Breath Attack (str 4), Fly
Say it was the standard combat against 15 Warriors. My Chimera would start of with the miscast damage, possibly inflicting 2-3 wounds on the Warriors, killing them (no saves) and probably giving me one wound. I would then proceed with my breath attack, 7 on average, half of those wounding, equating to 2 casulties. So far 4 are dead. Then my Chimera would attack with 13 (+1 due to frenzy) attacks on average, around 10 of those will hit, 3-4 auto wounding becasue of Poisoned attacks. Then the remaining hits would wound except for 1 (No armour save), giving me a total of 12-13 casulties, warriors would hit at the same time with 10 attacks (3 for the champion, 4 for the warriors and 1 for the second rank, the Chimera would be in base contact with 3 of them) 5 of these attacks hit, and 0-1 would wound. Because the opponet has not got steadfast, they have to take a leadership 4-3 roll, which they probably would fail and get chased down.

I generally have better luck than this, causing 18 unsaved wounds on my dice tests, taking none in return, but I can see what you mean. If the first turn dosent kill them, they may dispel the wizard and kill him, if the wounds dont catch up with him first. But he would easily make the points back in that combat, mortally wounding one of the most troublesome units my enemy has, then that unit would be destroyed by my gunline. This is as I said a huge risk and reward stratergy, I wouldnt take it to a tournament, but I would play the hell out of it in friendly games.

That was going to be my next point: maybe all you need to do is make sure that whatever unit he's charging into is worth more than he is. A tough call on a Lord-level caster, since he's your primary magic defense, but maybe you can just think of him as a funny-shape(shifting)d ICBM.

That said: just want t throw this out there: a 6 always wounds, so even though the Dragon's got T8, he'd take just as many wounds as the Chimera.

Against 15 warriors, you'd win. Against even more, you'd win (don't forget Thunderstomp). Forgot about Poisoned Attacks and Frenzy, though. Frenzy will probably guarantee that your wizard dies, since you'd have to pursue/

And your opponent will dispel the Transformation, unless he somehow bricks the roll. I mean, if I could spend every magic phase automatically decreasing a unit's WS, S, T, W, I, and A by 4 or more, I'd be hard-pressed to find anything more useful to do.

I suppose, with the suicide-mage in mind, you'd just want another one on back-up, so you're not left magic-less afterwards.

Yea, that works pretty well if you can smack moderately elite guys. However, at the same time, if you fluff a bit, the wizard is dead. If you get a bad miscast, the wizard is dead.

Also, for reference, you will be in base with 4 warriors, not 3. At 50mm for your base to max models in base contact you need to line up square. Doesn't make a huge difference though.

More importantly though, and no one has bought up, is whether or not your character can get challenged out by the champ. It rather looks like you can, since the newly monstrous model still retains the ability to be in a unit. I don't know the answer though... never thought about it till recently. I will post something up in YMDC about it.

I posted in YMDC and ill post it here too. The monster is still a character, just a big scare one now. So the champ just challenges out the character, waits for their magic phase, dispells it, then kills the wizard.

Yea, so long as you can steadfast through the champ getting atomized (oh my god, would he) you get to run a train on the offending wizard next turn :(

yup, the champ would get splattered, you would get your steadfast roll.

Then you dispel the transformation and collect your free points.

Interesting enough, this empire build works well with long rifles who pick off unit champs.

-Matt

I forgot about the god damned champion (seriously god damned, Sigmar hates chaos HAHAHAHAHAHAHAha its funny) Well we all know the answer to that, A big ass rifle with a scope on top (have you seen the size of that scope, its pratically half the gun?!). As for my level 4 wizard doing the scuicide charge, after some deliberation, I think it will be smarter to use my level 2 (I just have a feeling it might turn out better...

HawaiiMatt wrote:And on your turn, you turn into a new fire dragon, and breathe again.

-Matt

Chances are that an Empire wizard in combat will be dead before he can attempt that.

Lord Solar Plexus wrote:

HawaiiMatt wrote:And on your turn, you turn into a new fire dragon, and breathe again.

-Matt

Chances are that an Empire wizard in combat will be dead before he can attempt that.

That all depends on what unit he's in. If you put him in a big block and go wide, you can be on the outside and corner to corner; greatly limiting incoming attacks.
Add in an opal amulet, and you get a 4+ ward against the 1st wound.
You've got a decent shot at making it through 1 round of combat.
It's been my experience too that people decline empire challenges, for fear of speculum. That means you're only looking at 2 rank and file swinging on the wizard.

-Matt