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Fantasy has struggled with the magic phase far longer then 40k, and it has been a far more intrinsic part of the square baser's game. That being said they have alternated between magic heavy and magic light versions just as 40k has struggled. However, I think currently the magic phase rules are better then the new psycher rules.

First, you can't mage spam and expect a huge impact in fantasy. The limit to 2d6 dice, plus an additional die on 6+ for every mage level really cuts into your spamming. My experience is that you can get off one or two big spells, or a few smaller ones, but going mage light is an acceptable option. Fantasy also has a good set of items to mess with your opponent's phase independent of dice.

It wouldn't take much to change the Warp charge usage to a target difficulty, and translate the rule book magic and arcane items into 40k equivalents. Say warp charge 1 = 4+, 2= 8+, 3 = 12+?
Some pro/anti war gear that can be taken by any army would really help smooth the transition to 7th for books that are now 2 editions or more out of date.

The big problems with this suggestion:
Magic doesn't scale with the game in WHFB. You may suggest the cap of 2d6 dice is a good thing because it makes magic less spammable, but it means a 1,500pt army with one level one Wizard has about as many power dice as a 3,000pt army with ten wizard levels spread across four casters, which is irrational and punishing for no good reason. (I wouldn't be at all surprised if the Psychic phase in 7e was a testbed for rewriting power dice allocation in WHFB 8e to scale)
There are no magic-less factions in WHFB. Necrons, Tau, and whatever "we don't like psykers" Space Marine factions you have to deal with in 40k are all well and good when the psychic phase isn't particularly important, when it becomes a core part of the game in WHFB every single army needs to be able to do things in the Magic phase. The only magic-less faction is the Dwarves, who nevertheless have magic-like stuff and do things with dispel dice. Leaving mages out of your list both prevents you from actually using any of the items that mess with the Magic phase, by the way, and magic can seriously ruin your day in a way that psychic powers can't; I suggest you go back and read through WHFB more carefully. Pay special attention to Dwellers and remember that 8e favours infantry hordes.

The suggestion of items that mess with the psychic phase isn't a bad one (see http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/597715.page for more discussion on the subject) but up and replacing the psychic phase wholesale with the Magic phase as you suggest would...let's see...make the psychic phase more or less valuable depending on the size of the game and make casting and dispelling more reliable. Not sure that's quite what you were aiming for.

While pro/anti psyker wargear would be a huge benefit, I actually think some forces should be able to take heavily psychic based armies. It's flavorful and adds an interesting variation to the game. The problem is that right now it's "required" due to the buff to psychic powers without any corresponding way to counter them. I don't think psychic powers should be universally made less useful, there just need to be more non-psychic defenses for them.

 fallinq wrote:
While pro/anti psyker wargear would be a huge benefit, I actually think some forces should be able to take heavily psychic based armies. It's flavorful and adds an interesting variation to the game. The problem is that right now it's "required" due to the buff to psychic powers without any corresponding way to counter them. I don't think psychic powers should be universally made less useful, there just need to be more non-psychic defenses for them.

On this subject my observation from the games of 7e I've played is that depending on the army the "requiredness" of psykers is a game of prisoner's dillemma more than anything else; psykers aren't very useful if both sides have a lot of them, but they're very useful if one side has significantly more than the other. Most of the complaints can easily be solved by constraining the number of Mastery Levels that can be on the table for a given size of game.