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Am I the only one who thinks that higher up spells are to powerful? More importantly I don't find them very fun, when I was playing a Skaven player I used all my dice to stop the Dreaded thirteenth and he had 2 dice left. He proceeded to gobble loads of Warp Stone and cast plague into the middle of my mainly elf wood elf army straight into my Eternal Guard blob. It was terribly disheartening when it was so easy to kill of 15-ish models with such a low cast spell (13) which then jumped over 3 Archer units, killing about 4 each and causing 2 of them to flee straight off the table. I know I can be countered, but that further limits the game by shoe-horning you to take level 4's for defence simply so other peoples magic doesn't poop all over you. I have done it before also, using Dwellers onto a Night Goblin Horde, killing of 5/9 heroes in the unit as well as a LOAD of night goblins. How is that fun for anyone? Having to remove mass chuncks of models because the enemy rolled a double 6, then using earthing rod to negate most of the consequences. I bet each and everyone of you have encountered a good magic phase that won or lost you the game and simply get on with it because that's how the game is. My question is do you believe it 'should' be as powerful as it and how would you nerf it?

No.
It is not too powerful.
It is a counter to too powerful steadfast.

 kirsanth wrote:
No.
It is not too powerful.
It is a counter to too powerful steadfast.

Which in itself is also flawed.

It's like burning down a house to get rid of a spider. It is a solution, just not a great solution.

A much better solution would be to have steadfast negated by flank and rear charges if the regiment is already engaged in combat. That should also give cavalry a purpose.

Skaven magic isn't all that over powered from what I have used and seen. The dreaded thirteen is a solid spell but you need to roll a 25+ that is a lot to roll. That is why the warp tokens are good.

I think a lot of the Chaos magic is pretty powerful but I think that it's just part of the game. I think its fun when you get lucky and roll an awesome roll for a really good spell and destroy a big part of someones army.

I think it should be as good as it is now, but it should be a little riskier to use. Less variance in Winds of Magic, and more risk for actually throwing more dice at a spell would be the way I'd explore first if I were changing anything. Bringing back double 1s as miscast and double 6s as IF would be welcome, it's the one thing from 7th I miss aside from terrain being more punishing.

Certain spells & Lores are completely stupid powerful yes, but as noted it's also a nessesary evil in order to combat equally stupid powerful things like Deathstars & Steadfast buses.

What's really unbalancing however are that half the BRB 'mega spells' that instantly kill are initiative based spells, vs. 1 strength-based spell and a single set-roll spell.
Thus Nurgle Daemons, Lizardmen, Ogres, Dwarfs, Vampire Counts, Tomb Kings & Orcs get royally shafted due to their traditional average I2 or lower across most of their armies.

However, then we have High/Dark/Wood Elves & Warriors of Chaos who instead get average I5 or better, which makes half of those Deathstar counters pretty much useless vs. those armies.
Further compounding the problem, only Lizardmen get access to the Lore of Life for Dwellers, while Vampires get access to Lore of Metal alongside the Lizzies. But that leaves Ogres, Orcs & Tomb Kings out in the cold with 0 effective magical counters to those Elven & WoC Deathstars.
Nurgle Daemons at least have the option of mixing in Tzeentch who can take Metal magic, while Dwarfs simply don't have a Magic phase! (yet...) Ogres at least can probably out-fight a DE Deathstar, but a true Alarielle+BoA Lionstar will junk-shot the Orges pretty badly.


Basically, my wish would be;
1. get rid of the stupid initiative test or die spells because they're entirely unfair. Give us instead say a toughness test or die spell for Death and another set to-wound roll spell for Shadow. Now no army is unfairly picked on or unfairly near-immune to those spells, since most armies are average S/T 3-4 across the board. It also means the stat-tests aren't quite so crippling on super expensive units/models like Monstrous Cav/Beasts & Monsters in general.

2. as suggested, let Steadfast be broken by flank/rear charges when the unit being charged is already engaged on another facing.

3. make the brainless 6-dicing much deadlier to the caster. Again as mentioned above, returning to the old double 6's = IF, but double 1's = Miscast and having the Miscast trump IF would put a real crimp on just throwing a boatload of dice at a killer spell and deleting half an opposing army. (looking at you P.Sun!)

I like the magic system. Risk vs. reward seems appropriate. Yes sometimes untis are auto-deleted, but more often then that, the mage explodes before he has a chance to earn his points back.

It's a ton fun. It can be one of the most dramtic phases in the game!

Pancakey wrote:
I like the magic system. Risk vs. reward seems appropriate. Yes sometimes untis are auto-deleted, but more often then that, the mage explodes before he has a chance to earn his points back.

It's a ton fun. It can be one of the most dramtic phases in the game!

Miscasts really aren't that big of a problem, the majority of miscasts at best taking a single wound off of the caster with only one option giving the chance to kill him off at once. Especially when people take the Earthing Rod. For example Plague is cast on a 13, so can be reliably cast by a grey seer with 3 dice and a warpstone tokn and for this spell you get a toughness test or die that can then PASS ON to the rest of your army on a 5/6. I really dislike the idea of a single good magic phase ending a game. The Skaven rolled 5/5 for the winds, but then he channelled twice. I had to put ALL my dice into dispelling 13th leaving him with enough dice to plague my army and fry 2 units with Warp lightning. That won him the game on turn two and I did not enjoy the rest of the game because of that. Steadfast units are on thing which should be fixed rule wise, but these kind of spells need it to. No matter what you play, auto deleting units is not fun for that player when it's that easy to accomplish.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
It's like burning down a house to get rid of a spider.

I am game.


Even so, assuming that spells are bad but assuming it is also O.K. to ignore the setting that spawned them is just ridiculous.
Without steadfast as is, I doubt the dreaded 6's would exists as is.

They are part of the problem AND part of the solution.

Thus my statement that they are acceptable.
If the whole system is redone (next year?) I expect both to change.
Until then, one is the answer to the other - neither is perfect, but you have spiders, houses, and fire.
Use them.

Every single person I have MET that complained about the 6 spells played hordes.

Every person that complained about steadfast didn't

They complain because there was a counter to their army.
Really.

Anecdotal, but there it is.

 kirsanth wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
It's like burning down a house to get rid of a spider.

I am game.


Even so, assuming that spells are bad but assuming it is also O.K. to ignore the setting that spawned them is just ridiculous.
Without steadfast as is, I doubt the dreaded 6's would exists as is.

They are part of the problem AND part of the solution.

Thus my statement that they are acceptable.
If the whole system is redone (next year?) I expect both to change.
Until then, one is the answer to the other - neither is perfect, but you have spiders, houses, and fire.
Use them.

Every single person I have MET that complained about the 6 spells played hordes.

Every person that complained about steadfast didn't

They complain because there was a counter to their army.
Really.

Anecdotal, but there it is.

Oh, I agree that it is a valid solution. Flawed, but valid. But as someone who plays lizardmen, a non-hoard army with low I, I still find the 6th level spells ridiculous. Well, the ones that target I anyway.

Sure.
Anything that is a counter to a list you build is ridiculous.
To you.


Not to the game however.

I built an army around Khalida.
I don't ONLY play that, but when I do and people counter it, I find it ridiculous.
I do not, however, blame the game or the rules that allow it.
Generally I applaud the opponent for a well executed plan, not go online and whine that whatever beat me is "to powerful".

It isn't a counter to the list I build. It's a counter to my chosen race.

As it turns out, you can't really field hoards of 11 point models. Not if you want to have some tactical variety anyway.
There's a reason why no one likes D weapons in normal 40k. Having an attack that can curbstomp anything that it touches isn't fun. Hoard armies at least have the numbers to deal with it, but what about things like Ogres? They are a race that cannot field hoards due to their price and who have laughably low I.

List based counters are fine.

Unit based counters are fine.

Counters that affect the entire race is not fine.

I play lizards, o&g, and ogres. I have been hurt by the 6 spells , but I still think magic is fine!

I am also not specifically talking the 6 spells, but magic in general can be to powerful meaning a single phase with a good winds of magic roll can quickly take over a game. Spells like Mindrazor when cast on a high elf spearmen blob are auto wins in combat with other examples being Death Frenzy/Blessed with filth and that metal spell that lets them ignore saves. Spells I think are fairly balanced are the likes of Wissan's Wildform and Speed of light, spells that give you and advantage in combat but are not auto-wins. Plague isn't even a 6th spell but it ravaged through over 300pts with a single cast on 3 dice. At least my wood elves can, and often do, simply ignore steadfast blocks or feed them eagles, all it takes is for my opponent to have 1 power dice left after I used all mine for him to cast warp lightning and possibly fry an entire unit of defenceless wood elves or tree spirits.

In my opinion no game should be decided by a single phase of a single turn, ever. I'm sure everyone can relate to a single powerful spell/item turning games around by themselves, and I am sure they can agree it wasn't fun. The same Skaven I play so often can shut down my ENTIRE shooting phase with but a howling warp gale or that special banner they have, so yes it hard counters me and I am complaining. I an't beat him in combat, I can't beat him in shooting and I can't beat him in magic, it's an up hill battle and simply not that fun.

It's a difficult question really.

On the one hand, Magic helps to counter deathstars, large units with several characters in. You have a very powerful unit in a your 800point deathstar, and it will destroy most things it touches. However, you run the risk of losing half that unit, a risk that has exactly the same chance of occurring had you made that unit only 400 points. Take the OP's example, where the NG player lost 5 out of 9 characters in one unit. That's the NG player's fault for putting nine characters in a single unit. And let's not forget that, really, magic should be powerful because it's, well, magic. Wrecking whole armies with powerful magic is one of the real attractions of Fantasy. I do like the system currently, but it could be better.

But on the other hand, as many people have pointed out, it does get a bit out of hand, but it's a necessary evil to counter large units.

Personally, I think the fix required is to make flank/rear charges disrupt steadfast or something, then change the 6th spells to small/large blast equivalents (that don't hang around). Big units are now less susceptible to magic, but more susceptible to everything else, whilst magic remains potent, able to kill many models, but not quite on the same level. It just gets rid of the rock/paper/scissors thing a bit more. It's an ideal, but it's one of the few improvements I can see them being able to make.

And 626 has a good point about them targeting initiative all the time. I was quite happy to see that Bladewind, a Dark Magic spell in the new DE book, forces the opponent to take a WS test, or suffer a hit. That was new, and a pretty cool idea. I think more characteristics should be targeted, especially Ld, which is an obvious one really.

If Initiative is the issue that is specific and generally related.

Yes, a DS of low I models is decimated by spells that target I.

Derp. That is what it is for, dumb@@@.


I play TK. Initiative based spells rock my armies.
Can anyone find a post of me complaining they are over powered and without steadfast need to be removed? Game on.
I can find many posts were ### states that their personal army was beaten by something that is literally written to win against the netlist that was posted. Then rants about how this is overpowered and "to powerful" that something can actual win against that list.


That is just wrong.

Getting paper rocked by scissors should not be surprising, let alone considered overpowered. That is childish.

 kirsanth wrote:


Getting paper rocked by scissors should not be surprising, let alone considered overpowered. That is childish.

Some would argue that with the expense of the game and the thickness of the rulebook we should get something a bit more involved rules wise than rock paper scissors.

 kirsanth wrote:
If Initiative is the issue that is specific and generally related.

Yes, a DS of low I models is decimated by spells that target I.

Derp. That is what it is for, dumb@@@.


I play TK. Initiative based spells rock my armies.
Can anyone find a post of me complaining they are over powered and without steadfast need to be removed? Game on.
I can find many posts were ### states that their personal army was beaten by something that is literally written to win against the netlist that was posted. Then rants about how this is overpowered and "to powerful" that something can actual win against that list.


That is just wrong.

Getting paper rocked by scissors should not be surprising, let alone considered overpowered. That is childish.

No one here has whined about their Rune Maw Gutstar + double IB & Mournfang army getting turn 1 wiped by a powered-up Purple Sun...

What people don't like is the massive disparity of having half the instant kill spells in the BRB work off of Initiative, which leaves nearly half the game's armies crying while a small number get to laugh.
Most people likely wouldn't complain as much if those instant kills worked off of stats that were roughly equal across the board, as there's an element of balance AND fairness to the system at that point. It still counters those nasty Deathstars, but no longer do you feel auto-screwed just because you chose Lizardmen or Undead instead of Chaos Warriors or High Elves.

There's a huge difference to the likes of Final Transmustation being paper' to the Deathstar's 'rock', (33% of that unit on average dies), as compared to Purple Sun's 'nuke' that can easily delete an entire low initiative army yet only does 16% damage to Elves.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

 kirsanth wrote:
No.
It is not too powerful.
It is a counter to too powerful steadfast.

Which in itself is also flawed.

It's like burning down a house to get rid of a spider. It is a solution, just not a great solution.

A much better solution would be to have steadfast negated by flank and rear charges if the regiment is already engaged in combat. That should also give cavalry a purpose.

It's GW after all. "What, flier spam has broken the game? What's the next army up? Tau? Ok, here's what we do...."

"What? People have 2++ rerollable saves? Ok, let's bring D-weapons in and super-heavy tanks..."

 ALEXisAWESOME wrote:

Pancakey wrote:
I like the magic system. Risk vs. reward seems appropriate. Yes sometimes untis are auto-deleted, but more often then that, the mage explodes before he has a chance to earn his points back.

It's a ton fun. It can be one of the most dramtic phases in the game!

Miscasts really aren't that big of a problem, the majority of miscasts at best taking a single wound off of the caster with only one option giving the chance to kill him off at once. Especially when people take the Earthing Rod. For example Plague is cast on a 13, so can be reliably cast by a grey seer with 3 dice and a warpstone tokn and for this spell you get a toughness test or die that can then PASS ON to the rest of your army on a 5/6. I really dislike the idea of a single good magic phase ending a game. The Skaven rolled 5/5 for the winds, but then he channelled twice. I had to put ALL my dice into dispelling 13th leaving him with enough dice to plague my army and fry 2 units with Warp lightning. That won him the game on turn two and I did not enjoy the rest of the game because of that. Steadfast units are on thing which should be fixed rule wise, but these kind of spells need it to. No matter what you play, auto deleting units is not fun for that player when it's that easy to accomplish.

Skaven need healthy magic and shooting phases to compete. I think the spell design reflects that very well!

Experiment 626 wrote:Certain spells & Lores are completely stupid powerful yes, but as noted it's also a nessesary evil in order to combat equally stupid powerful things like Deathstars & Steadfast buses.

What's really unbalancing however are that half the BRB 'mega spells' that instantly kill are initiative based spells, vs. 1 strength-based spell and a single set-roll spell.
Thus Nurgle Daemons, Lizardmen, Ogres, Dwarfs, Vampire Counts, Tomb Kings & Orcs get royally shafted due to their traditional average I2 or lower across most of their armies.

However, then we have High/Dark/Wood Elves & Warriors of Chaos who instead get average I5 or better, which makes half of those Deathstar counters pretty much useless vs. those armies.
Further compounding the problem, only Lizardmen get access to the Lore of Life for Dwellers, while Vampires get access to Lore of Metal alongside the Lizzies. But that leaves Ogres, Orcs & Tomb Kings out in the cold with 0 effective magical counters to those Elven & WoC Deathstars.
Nurgle Daemons at least have the option of mixing in Tzeentch who can take Metal magic, while Dwarfs simply don't have a Magic phase! (yet...) Ogres at least can probably out-fight a DE Deathstar, but a true Alarielle+BoA Lionstar will junk-shot the Orges pretty badly.


Basically, my wish would be;
1. get rid of the stupid initiative test or die spells because they're entirely unfair. Give us instead say a toughness test or die spell for Death and another set to-wound roll spell for Shadow. Now no army is unfairly picked on or unfairly near-immune to those spells, since most armies are average S/T 3-4 across the board. It also means the stat-tests aren't quite so crippling on super expensive units/models like Monstrous Cav/Beasts & Monsters in general.

2. as suggested, let Steadfast be broken by flank/rear charges when the unit being charged is already engaged on another facing.

3. make the brainless 6-dicing much deadlier to the caster. Again as mentioned above, returning to the old double 6's = IF, but double 1's = Miscast and having the Miscast trump IF would put a real crimp on just throwing a boatload of dice at a killer spell and deleting half an opposing army. (looking at you P.Sun!)

+1. My thoughts exactly. When I was playing O&G, my No.1 gripe about all these BRB auto delete spells was that O&G cannot use BRB spells. Plus my opponents at the time was using 7th ed. WOC Chosen Stars.... Oh, the pain...

agnosto wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

 kirsanth wrote:
No.
It is not too powerful.
It is a counter to too powerful steadfast.

Which in itself is also flawed.

It's like burning down a house to get rid of a spider. It is a solution, just not a great solution.

A much better solution would be to have steadfast negated by flank and rear charges if the regiment is already engaged in combat. That should also give cavalry a purpose.

It's GW after all. "What, flier spam has broken the game? What's the next army up? Tau? Ok, here's what we do...."

"What? People have 2++ rerollable saves? Ok, let's bring D-weapons in and super-heavy tanks..."

LOL, so true.

aka. Please buy my latest stuff.

Experiment 626 wrote:


No one here has whined about their Rune Maw Gutstar + double IB & Mournfang army getting turn 1 wiped by a powered-up Purple Sun...

This is related.

I've played Skaven and Dreaded Thirteenth'd a big unit of Dark Elf crossbowmen into oblivion. But that was back when they could throw AS MANY DICE AS THEY WANTED at a spell and essentially ignore Miscasts with the Pendant... So I didn't feel TOO guilty.

However.

I play Ogres now, and I don't do Gutstar. I only play at 1k, and my opponent will regularly take Shadow/Death and he always seems to roll the LOLSAVEORDIE spells. When combined with the debuff spells that then turn into the "save this at a -3 modifier" nukes of doom, it isn't really fun. Now I know people will argue, "of course it's not fun to get your army nuked, it's a balance to deathstars etc. etc." I think Experiment 626 has got a good view of it. Some races get straight shafted by the Initiative test or die spells - and I have a particular issue with it because my Troops are multi-wound. I've lost my core unit of Ironguts +Firebelly to ONE good Purple Sun - about 21 Wounds worth of models (plus my general) to one spell. Is that unheard of? Of course not. I've seen big units of Elves lose 20+ models to one good spell.

But. If you are an Elf player with a unit of 20 Archers, and take, say, an IF Plague. You make one save for each model. Even if you catastrophically failed every single save, you'd lose 20 models. But you are making 20 attempts to save. As an Ogre player, I take a Purple Sun and make 7 saves and lose the same amount of Wounds. That sucks.

In my opinion, as an Ogre player, those nuke spells feel like point-and-click-and-win at times. I don't have much to complain about, because Ogres are very strong, plus I have the Hellheart, but I couldn't imagine being a Chaos player or Dwarf player and seeing my opponent's smug face as he evaporated a whole unit of expensive Hammerers/Chosen and then shrugged off a Miscast.

 TheBrandedOne wrote:

Experiment 626 wrote:


No one here has whined about their Rune Maw Gutstar + double IB & Mournfang army getting turn 1 wiped by a powered-up Purple Sun...

This is related.

I've played Skaven and Dreaded Thirteenth'd a big unit of Dark Elf crossbowmen into oblivion. But that was back when they could throw AS MANY DICE AS THEY WANTED at a spell and essentially ignore Miscasts with the Pendant... So I didn't feel TOO guilty.

However.

I play Ogres now, and I don't do Gutstar. I only play at 1k, and my opponent will regularly take Shadow/Death and he always seems to roll the LOLSAVEORDIE spells. When combined with the debuff spells that then turn into the "save this at a -3 modifier" nukes of doom, it isn't really fun. Now I know people will argue, "of course it's not fun to get your army nuked, it's a balance to deathstars etc. etc." I think Experiment 626 has got a good view of it. Some races get straight shafted by the Initiative test or die spells - and I have a particular issue with it because my Troops are multi-wound. I've lost my core unit of Ironguts +Firebelly to ONE good Purple Sun - about 21 Wounds worth of models (plus my general) to one spell. Is that unheard of? Of course not. I've seen big units of Elves lose 20+ models to one good spell.

But. If you are an Elf player with a unit of 20 Archers, and take, say, an IF Plague. You make one save for each model. Even if you catastrophically failed every single save, you'd lose 20 models. But you are making 20 attempts to save. As an Ogre player, I take a Purple Sun and make 7 saves and lose the same amount of Wounds. That sucks.

In my opinion, as an Ogre player, those nuke spells feel like point-and-click-and-win at times. I don't have much to complain about, because Ogres are very strong, plus I have the Hellheart, but I couldn't imagine being a Chaos player or Dwarf player and seeing my opponent's smug face as he evaporated a whole unit of expensive Hammerers/Chosen and then shrugged off a Miscast.

Counter the dark elf player with MSU and shooting. I did this to a WOC player who sorta was doing the same thing. After the smashing, he stopped!

I hope in 9th they keep the relative strength of the lores around but go about it in different ways.

I'd like to see each lore have a different stat applied to its save or die spells if they have them.

The 'pass test or die' spells just need to be changed to 'pass test or suffer a wound with no saves allowed'