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Its a good story in the varied army books as it is the novel Nagash / Neferata / Sigmar etc.

Skaven only stopped Nagash because he was going to kill every living thing on the planet including them. The spell failed resulting in the Tomb Kings....

Skaven are weird in my eyes. When it comes to killing dwarfs, lizardmen and possibly O&G they are really good at it. However when it comes to actually fighting battles against empire they only take down half of nuln with a huge army and then route from the battlefield. It's weird because after plaguing the crap out of the empire and most of the empire died they couldn't finish them off partly because of a stupid VC army that flanked them and partly because of emperor mandred skaven-slayer.

Anyway back to the story with nagash i think that the pre-tomb kings died before nagash left and then he took their leader as hostage. Later the skaven freed him. Still gotta find it weird they'd give the other guy the sword. Maybe it's because they knew the wielder would die using it. I say it's weird because nagash would still know it was probably the skaven that gave the guy the sword considering its make and the temporary alliance of both factions. Still though nice job skaven. Way to come out ahead.

Remembering all the old lore of the skaven kind of saddens me though. The skaven used to do so much more. I suppose they assassinated sigmar reborn or sigmar's descendant but the skaven seem to have done so much more in their history. Nearly destroyed the empire, taking 'the city of pillars' from the dwarfs, killing nagash and almost wiping out the lizardmen. A skaven/lizardmen starter set would actually be pretty cool btw. Now though we can't even beat high elves but give them a run for their money and we can only take down half of the empire city of nuln. Yawn. Some orc warbosses have lore that trumps that easily and they didn't have that much power backing a combined assault like that.

----------------------

Back on topic of wizard levels and power where would you guys rank 'the council of thirteen' (the 13 most powerful skaven clan leaders). Currently if i remember they have lived for an insanely long time and they are now each imbued with an aura of ruin and power from the horned rat himself. Not to mention some of the council are demi-gods in power.

Then there's the matter of the power of the vermin lords. Vermin lords don't seem to be very great from what i've seen and/or heard though they do seem to basically be a daemon prince. I suppose they could use a little tweaking before they show the utter horror and terror of the horned rat. It also mentions that a vermin lord is more cunning and possibly evil than any skaven. Imagine some super skaven except instead of cowardice they probably are more ferocious and rabid and probably use the lives of their skaven minions as below worthless only to die for them though not until they've proven their usefulness.

I'm also unsure if the exalted vermin lord from forge world/warhammer forge is even canon (i guess a stronger version of the vermin lord) but it's supposed to be pretty potent from its rules. I think it knows all 13 spells of the skaven and has like initiative 10 with ASF. It seems like everything the regular vermin lord failed to be.

Ahhh my friend you need to read Nagash

The reason the Skaven give the Hero the sword is that:

1) its a dangerous task and they would rather another did it - this is at the heart of the Skaven personality
2) The Sword kills the one who uses it.

Skaven are the best (IMO) GW creation - awesome and tricksy.

 thedarkavenger wrote:

 Sigvatr wrote:

 AngelofBlood wrote:
I don't get why people use him. I just use a standard arch mage so I can still field a prince with my Dragon Princes. IMO he dies too easly too quickly anyone with half a brain puts all of their war machines on his bunker unit for the first turn or two. The one time I've used him he was dead by turn 3 (even with his awesomeness hes isn't immortal) IMO hes a waste of points to begun with.

Competitive players disagree

Competitive players can't take him as he is banned in most comp packs I believe.

Only in places that ban SCs, which is far from universal.

 Grey Templar wrote:

Only in places that ban SCs, which is far from universal.

Fine, most of the bigger tournaments.

Again, not universally true.

I can only speak for Europe, but the only "bigger" tournament that allows SC is the Throne of Skulls tournament. Most other tournaments use the ETC restriction rules (fortunately!) even smaller ones between gaming clubs.

This being said, I don't think SC are much of a problem. Teclis is a really bad example. Most other SC are, imo, pretty overcosted (Skarsnik is 285 points! Jesus! How am I supposed to pay for that? :`( ).

Just because something isn't universally true doesn't negate it's validity. Not sure why you're arguing that.

There are many Many tournaments that specifically disallow Teclis or otherwise restrict his abilities. So for people who spend a whole lot of time thinking about this stuff and have the most vested interest in creating a balanced game (more competitors, more money, more entertainment) they have made this decision.

There might be some tournament somewhere that gives every army 2 Teclises. The Really Short Tournament of Nosebend, Nova Scotia or whatever. But it's very widely accepted that it is not a competition-ready model. And a number of others aren't as well.

Teclis isn't that bad. I played against a list with one last week with my tomb kings. Got a Warkitty into his unit and used the thundercrush to hit im with s9 D6 wounds in the 2nd rank.

What Teclis is great at: making your pile of dispell dice useless.

What Teclis is horrible at: everything else.

He really is a one trick pony, and while it's a great trick, he costs a ton, is T2, and has no natural saving throw of any kind.

HE magic is supposed to be strong, if not one of the strongest. That's not from a fluff point of view, but a gameplay point of a view. Take away the whole "power overwhelming" mentality of the HE's, and what are you left with? A ton of super expensive T3 elves that fall to a stiff breeze.

AngelofBlood wrote:I'd rather have 2 spell casters and a Character who can kill dreadlords. I prefer the versatility of having a prince in the pocket. I don't use lore of life (shame on me no?) I prefer aggressive magic Heavens, Shadow, Death, or fire. He was killed by a hell cannon tuff 7 doesn't help much against that. I just don't like the idea of sinking 475 points on a single model that's a 30 man unit of Phoenix Guard or 50 spears

YMMV I guess. But seriously, kudos for wanting to be different

thedarkavenger wrote:

 Sigvatr wrote:
Well naturally, as 8th needs restrictions for balanced matches. In unrestricted games, however, I cannot imagine any HE player going out w/o him and still scoring high.

I can. The unkillable archmage, or the book/shadow mage.

Darkavenger has a good point, the Book Mage is still pretty nasty.

Aipoch wrote:What Teclis is great at: making your pile of dispell dice useless.

What Teclis is horrible at: everything else.

He really is a one trick pony, and while it's a great trick, he costs a ton, is T2, and has no natural saving throw of any kind.

HE magic is supposed to be strong, if not one of the strongest. That's not from a fluff point of view, but a gameplay point of a view. Take away the whole "power overwhelming" mentality of the HE's, and what are you left with? A ton of super expensive T3 elves that fall to a stiff breeze.

In a way, that's like saying Malaria isn't bad because, although it's great at killing people, it's horrible at making a cup of tea.

Making your dispel dice useless, i.e. being able to get almost every spell off, is certainly nothing to be sniffed at.

Teclis may be able to be killed by your average unit champion, but he will be bunkered and hard to get to. By the time he is taken down, you'll have had units of Toughness 7/Okkam-ified/Enchanted Blades/whatever Elves rampaging throughout your battleline and have had whole units fall to Dwellers/Purple Sun/Final Transmustion/etc, all of which you're practically powerless to stop. Someone mentioned putting a pie-plate over Teclis' head as being a good way to squish him, again, not good, since you have the Look Out Sir Rule to get past first.

I agree that Teclis needs to be fixed, but if we are talking about nerfing magic casters, I expect/want/demand the slanns get a hit as well. There is a decent number of Lizardmen players at my store and one of the reasons I stopped playing Fantasy is the fact that they are quite overpowered as well. Fix them, Teclis and make magic not so powerful as it is in this edition and then I will return to the game of fantasy.

 The Shadow wrote:

In a way, that's like saying Malaria isn't bad because, although it's great at killing people, it's horrible at making a cup of tea.

Lol! Yeah, that's like going, pfft, all Ethereal does is make you immune to non-magic attacks. So why can't all my ogres have it?

 gmaleron wrote:
I agree that Teclis needs to be fixed, but if we are talking about nerfing magic casters, I expect/want/demand the slanns get a hit as well. There is a decent number of Lizardmen players at my store and one of the reasons I stopped playing Fantasy is the fact that they are quite overpowered as well. Fix them, Teclis and make magic not so powerful as it is in this edition and then I will return to the game of fantasy.

It's not really magic that's overpowered, it's only those than can abuse it, most namely Teclis. Say there was a unit with a good ranged weapon, and they were allowed to fire, I dunno, three times in a phase or something, we wouldn't consider shooting OP, just that unit.

There's a lizardmen special character named Tetto-eko who does the same "any doubles are Irresistable Force" thing, but only for the lore of Heavens, and with a 1/36 chance of backfiring and giving the enemy the bonus instead, on *any* lore.

He's a 255pts Hero choice.

At the end of the day, you can hate on Teclis all you want, but that isn't really what's happening.

What IS happening is that people don't like playing a magic phase where their opponent is better than them. The majority of players would prefer magic be a sort of "chance wheel", whereby each player stands on level ground for the odds of spells going off or not, with maybe a slight advantage to who evers magic phase it currently is (i.e, the current caster having more power dice than his opponent has dispel dice).

Players tend to be much happier when they have their lvl 4 mage vs an enemy level 4 mage, they each get an appropriate number of dice based on the luck of the roll, perhaps a single bonus power or dispel dice from a magic item, and then you cast and dispell as normal, where the higher value wins, double 6's are irresistable and cause a miscast, and anything else can be foiled by a simple dispel scroll or its equivalent.

So, what's really at hand here is a debate over those skills and abilities which circumvent the aforementioned "normal" course of magic casting. Players don't like it when their opponent has a significantly increased chance of getting irresistible force. They don't like miscasts to be ignored. They don't like being outside their comfort zone. The finality, then, is that they don't like that they don't have a caster or items with those kinds of abilities.

Teclis is a hard counter. He is completely offensive, and has beyond sub-par defenses as a result. If you're going to fight something like that, then fight it appropriately. Accept that your magic phase is going to be difficult at best, and your enemies magic phase is going to hurt you, a lot.

If you're going to "nerf Teclis", what you really want is the ability to ignore a miscast removed or made one time only, irresistible double's removed or altered, and (in general) for casters to be either universally powerful or universally average.

Which, if I'm honest, sounds to be about the most boring thing ever. A fantasy world where overpowered casters don't exist? I mean honestly, where is the entertainment in that? I happen to love the satisfaction that comes from watching my opponent break into feigned tears when I kill Teclis, super bunker or not. Sure, my units took a beating in the process, but who cares? I'm not playing Warfeather here.

Ranting complete. Teclis doesn't need a nerf, his flare and potency is well known and, if not enjoyed, properly feared. The world needs casters like that. He should, though, be much more expensive, on the order of 550-700 for him.

Magic is an entire game phase. An important phase.

If there was a character that could make all the enemy movement -3 and all your movement +3, no one would like it. You could use your logic of, hey, you give up the movement phase. Accept that. But unless you know you're fighting that unit when you go in, and if you have infinite money to purchase new models and paint them specifically to counter one guy, then you're kind of hosed.

40K does that all the time. You can simply look at lists and see who will win. If I look at two lists and I see 800 pts in hero/lord casters in one army vs. Teclis, the first army lost. I can say that with enough mathematical certainty that if I bet on it 1000 times I'd certainly make money. WHFB has taken great pains in 8th to move away from kind of deterministic stuff like that.

Something like the Hellheart is about a big a bomb as they got and it's single use.

 Mr Morden wrote:
Ahhh my friend you need to read Nagash

The reason the Skaven give the Hero the sword is that:

1) its a dangerous task and they would rather another did it - this is at the heart of the Skaven personality
2) The Sword kills the one who uses it.

Skaven are the best (IMO) GW creation - awesome and tricksy.

You're talking to a skaven player here that loves them to death. The one greater clan i'm not terribly fond of right now is clan moulder though that might change depending on upcoming war beasts in later years. That said the hellpit abomination is absolutely fantastic even if people think it's way under-costed in points.

What i love about the skaven is they're a fantasy race you see little to nothing of in other fantasy settings. Orcs & goblins have been done to death so many times as have elves and dwarfs. Lizardmen are also pretty clever i think as are beastmen. Then again a lot of these fantasy races are just animals in a humanoid form. Seeing some monsters which are evil in ethereal form would be nice. I suppose we have wraiths from VC but meh. I suppose you could say demons but i mean like some entity of massive undefined evil from another realm with no real physical form as quite a few other fantasy lores have them like possibly LotR and DnD (possibly because the person drawing them wasn't that creative and lacked artistic skill ;P).

All this said we're going off topic so if you'd like to continue we should probably do so via PM's so as not to p*ss off the mods.

Stuff that's done to death is popular.

I can't stand knights in shining armor. It's the most overdone thing in fantasy ever. Yet every single fantasy game has it. All of them. And they are usually very popular.

 Aipoch wrote:
Which, if I'm honest, sounds to be about the most boring thing ever. A fantasy world where overpowered casters don't exist? I mean honestly, where is the entertainment in that?

Right, because no one likes a Game of Thrones or anything.

 Aipoch wrote:

So, what's really at hand here is a debate over those skills and abilities which circumvent the aforementioned "normal" course of magic casting. Players don't like it when their opponent has a significantly increased chance of getting irresistible force. They don't like miscasts to be ignored. They don't like being outside their comfort zone. The finality, then, is that they don't like that they don't have a caster or items with those kinds of abilities.

Players want balance. Major casting powers need a major drawback and if one character is able to frequently cast without taking any risk, he is not balanced. That's why most people hate Teclis. He is overpowered. As hell.

Which, if I'm honest, sounds to be about the most boring thing ever. A fantasy world where overpowered casters don't exist? I mean honestly, where is the entertainment in that? I happen to love the satisfaction that comes from watching my opponent break into feigned tears when I kill Teclis, super bunker or not. Sure, my units took a beating in the process, but who cares? I'm not playing Warfeather here.

He can be super-strong and overpowered as feth in the fluff. Everyone's fine with that. Ridiculously overpowered rules, however, are a no-go. We are playing a game, not a history. Imagine chess playing with no queen while your enemy got one. Fun to some? Sure. Balanced? Hell no.

Ranting complete. Teclis doesn't need a nerf,

With all due respect, but you're either a Teclis player or trolling.

 Micky wrote:
There's a lizardmen special character named Tetto-eko who does the same "any doubles are Irresistable Force" thing, but only for the lore of Heavens, and with a 1/36 chance of backfiring and giving the enemy the bonus instead, on *any* lore.

He's a 255pts Hero choice.

Ohh and he's Level 2

 captain collius wrote:

 Micky wrote:
There's a lizardmen special character named Tetto-eko who does the same "any doubles are Irresistable Force" thing, but only for the lore of Heavens, and with a 1/36 chance of backfiring and giving the enemy the bonus instead, on *any* lore.

He's a 255pts Hero choice.

Ohh and he's Level 2

Is he also Lore Master? And can he also choose what lore he's going to use at the start of the game?

 Sigvatr wrote:

 captain collius wrote:

 Micky wrote:
There's a lizardmen special character named Tetto-eko who does the same "any doubles are Irresistable Force" thing, but only for the lore of Heavens, and with a 1/36 chance of backfiring and giving the enemy the bonus instead, on *any* lore.

He's a 255pts Hero choice.

Ohh and he's Level 2

Is he also Lore Master? And can he also choose what lore he's going to use at the start of the game?

Loremaster of Heavens, only works on a 3+ on a 2D6.

Can reroll comet casts.

Redeploy D3 units, 5++, 2nd rank in skins.

 Sigvatr wrote:
Players want balance. Major casting powers need a major drawback and if one character is able to frequently cast without taking any risk, he is not balanced. That's why most people hate Teclis. He is overpowered. As hell.

There are definite drawbacks to taking Teclis, just not in the form you expect. He is a one man magic show, true enough. He can safely get off any single spell the caster would like without fear of just about anything, aside from the occasional feedback scroll or other rare anti-magic item. The drawback is that all that power means taking a second caster for utility is impossible; they will always be dispelled from your enemies overflowing dispel pool. He does have a fairly high point cost, and he is physically weak as hell. These are all drawbacks to taking Teclis, but I'm betting it's not enough.

 Sigvatr wrote:
He can be super-strong and overpowered as feth in the fluff. Everyone's fine with that. Ridiculously overpowered rules, however, are a no-go. We are playing a game, not a history. Imagine chess playing with no queen while your enemy got one. Fun to some? Sure. Balanced? Hell no.

Chess is not what I'd call a fair comparison for our game. It's an easy one, sure, and some links can be made of course, but in the end chess is a game of nearly perfect balance; each player is presented with an identical army in terms of both composition and play style. Warhammer is not this simple, not even when you talk about it in terms of hammers and anvils. As for the queen analogy, it's a fair one. A game of chess wouldn't be too much fun if one side started with a queen and the other did not. Again, though, to assume there is only one "queen" in all of Warhammer is a bit harsh. There may be only one Teclis, but there are plenty of other casters which have been mentioned that can be equally as powerful, just in a different way.

 Sigvatr wrote:
With all due respect, but you're either a Teclis player or trolling.

Nope, no trolling, and though I do both love and play my HE's, I rarely bring out Teclis, and if I do it's because TFG is at the shop and needs to be smacked down a peg or two. I enjoy getting to field, arguably, the most powerful caster in the game. In so doing, I don't feel as bad that my core choices are overpriced and utterly pathetic, my special choices are limited to about 3 viable options, I have no war machines worth their merit, and my dragons have been turned into completely overcosted cannon fodder that are utterly useless in a competitive environment. That being said, I still stand that Teclis should cost much, much more for what he does. I think he belongs in nothing short of a 2500 point game, so a price in the list of 600-700 for him seems much more appropriate than his current one; that he can be taken in a game under 2000 points is definitely wrong.

 Aipoch wrote:


There are definite drawbacks to taking Teclis, just not in the form you expect. He is a one man magic show, true enough. He can safely get off any single spell the caster would like without fear of just about anything, aside from the occasional feedback scroll or other rare anti-magic item. The drawback is that all that power means taking a second caster for utility is impossible; they will always be dispelled from your enemies overflowing dispel pool. He does have a fairly high point cost, and he is physically weak as hell. These are all drawbacks to taking Teclis, but I'm betting it's not enough.

His weak physical stats are a distractor. Imagine a baseball player being really bad at football. Does that influence his baseball abilities? Teclis' weak stats do not matter as he will never get into a situation where he needs to fight in melee (we're talking about good players here). The problem is that all those "drawbacks" do not balance his offensive power. The 8th BRB lores are very strong for the most part and are balanced out (well, GW tried...) by the major spells forcing you to take the risk of a miscast. Anything that bypasses that flaw needs to be compensated. The Cupping Hands of the Old Ones are still very strong, but at least have a one-time use and then disappear. Teclis can pull of a 6th without any risk every turn. That's one thing. The other thing is that he IF's a lot of spells due to his doubles rule, mostly negating the enemy's chance to dispel critical spells. LoL on Teclis gets really ridiculous. Another reason for Teclis' massive overpoweredness is his ability to pick his lore at the start of the game. And don't forget about his synergy with the rest of the army - d3 casting dice banner e.g..

Chess is not what I'd call a fair comparison for our game.

I did not use the chess comparison to compare Teclis to other casters. I used it to explain balance, mostly in Warhammer's magic phase. Teclis absolutely dominates the magic phase and breaks the "balanced" state thast's accomplished by the normal magic rules; i.e. the balance of IF coming with consequences and IF being a rare occurence unless you force it. The other thing is that magic is the most important phase in the game - or let's rather say that it's the most influential one as the melee phase can hardly be influenced anymore. If you absolutely dominate the magic phase, you're a lot closer to victory.

 Sigvatr wrote:
With all due respect, but you're either a Teclis player or trolling.

I do both love and play my HE's

I think he belongs in nothing short of a 2500 point game, so a price in the list of 600-700 for him seems much more appropriate than his current one; that he can be taken in a game under 2000 points is definitely wrong.

Agree. Make him 550-600 points and make his "avoid miscast" ability a one-time use. There we go.

Yep teclis is Hella broken, I can easily deal with him ( much the same way I deal with most super casters) fairly simply, but god.damn being able to choose what law you have after setup is the thing I.hate most about him, it's a crutch, it takes no skill to look at what your facing and choose the most effective law to beat it, I hate that about him haha, on the flip side though, I do use thorek ironballs alot... So I'm just as bad

Actually he'd probably be pretty manageable if it wasn't for the Immune to Magic Banner on top of it.

It's pretty much the combination of

1: High Ward Save units (For proper Bunkering against even warmachines)

2: Magic Immunity (For avoiding magic, and what it could do to him)

3: His power

So players want a balanced game with drastically different armies opposing each other.

In that spirit, what do HE's have going for them? Teclis, amazing HE only magic items, white lions, sword masters, phoenix guard, and ASF. If the magic power is taken away to the point that an Empire caster is on a level playing field with a HE one, then all we're left with are those very awesome, very expensive, and very fragile special infantry.

So which way would people most like it to go? Make his "ignore the first miscast suffered every round" a one-time only ability? Make him suffer a miscast on every IF he rolls from the doubles (not just double 6's)? Limit his ability on when he can choose a lore? Something else? All of the above?

And with those changes made, should he now cost a different amount? More or less?

I'd argue that if Teclis is in such a need of a nerf, and he's that overpowered, and that unbalanced, then don't even bother nerfing him, just remove him. His abilities have been well known and feared for over a decade. It boarders on insulting to think of him as something less than his former self. Let him retire as the bad-ass of the HE's of old, and give us our bad-ass dragons back in return !

Teclis is fine. His rules suit his fluff. He only really shows up in competitive games in casual games you've got the slann which is waaay worse. If your opponent takes teclis save your points that you would of spent on magic defence take more troops and leg it at the guy and smash him in combat