I've been thinking a lot about the magic of warhammer lately, specifically because Chaos Sorcerer's have a lot of exciting upgrades they can take, but they're also points heavy: a tag-team of Tzeentch and Nurgle, both level 2 with good upgrades takes me beyond 400 points, which in an army mostly of Marauders replaces 4 decent units...
I have noticed that magic can almost guarantee you a win, for example: when you max out on wizards and your opponent doesn't have much going for them in the way of magical defence (only dispel dice/scrolls).
I would have thought that the associated points values would mean that a high-magic army should be equal to an army with little-to-no-magic-defence, but it doesn't seem to work that way.
But on the flip side, a high magic army coming up against something with a very good magical defence (Dwarves and High Elves in general, Dark Elves with ring-of-miscasts, Daemons with the Scribes) and a high magic army is suddenly weak.
So, I'm thinking that maybe warhammer is a form of scissors-paper-stone ... Okay, except for if the dice go badly, or if one player's a lot better, assuming even opponents and average luck it looks to me like low magic (paper) get's beated (cut) by high magic (scissors), which get beaten (blunted) by a superior magic defence (stone). However, the final part, where the paper wraps the stone... I'm not sure that an army ignoring magic is at an advantage over an army specialising in magic defence, and some of those armies, e.g. the Daemons with the Scribes, are also high-magic armies, so it blows my ideas out of the water before I've even reached the end...
No matter, I'm just musing here, I'd appreciate seeing anyone else's thoughts on magic in warhammer: especially if you really do or really don't like the way it works now.
Some interesting thoughts there mate. I suspect many people are thinking similar things, though it's worth noting that WoC fill a fairly particular niche in the magic-using scale of armies.
I think it's fair to say that at 'competitive' level, i.e. tournaments and decent players practising for tournies, 'heavy' magic (I'm thinking more than 6 levels plus tricksies like bounds) doesn't come up that much. Obv discount Daemons here. The difficulty is the stone-paper-scissors point you made; however, it's not as simple as lots of magic defence > lots of magic. It's more that e.g. Lore of Nurgle is absolutely brutal against elite armies, but much less so against Hordes. Rot Glorious Rot is IMO the best spell in the book (yes better than Gateway FTW, I know, heresy...) but against an army of 20+ model infantry blocks - even with T3 - it's going to kill a couple of guys from each squad each turn. Quagmire - rude against Empire Knights, pretty useless against most other stuff. You get what I'm saying - if you have to play six armies and you don't know what they're going to be, it's risky to put 1000+ points (for WoC) into L4, 3 L2s, steeds and shinies when they may actually turn out not to do much. Also bear in mind that anyone who chooses to play a WoC army does so for the combat phase, so they've given us a book that doesn't exactly lend itself to avoidance lists...
The corollary of the above is that you sometimes don't
need much magic to do the business. A couple of Empire L2s with Metal can make a horrible mess of WoC, and even if they don't kill anything, they're providing 2 DD and at least 2 scrolls for defence. It's the military combined arms approach. A Challenger tank is big mean and nasty, and in a stand-up fight, can take on any other armoured vehicle in the world. But if the other guy has attack helicopters then the tank is in trouble. Likewise they'll both struggle to take an objective if it's an urban area held by dug-in infantry. I think it's easier to remember this if you've played 40k - what have I got for anti-tank, where's my anti-horde, how many PBIs have I got to hold ground, where are my force multipliers like Rhinos, and so on.
WFB works a little differently in list building, but I'd try to do the same thing by anticipating who you'll be playing, what they're likely to bring, and what you'll need to counter them. If your Sorcerers aren't adding to that, then drop them.
Or, do what Vaughan and I are doing tomorrow, and agree to play a no-magic game. I reckon that this way at least he will only be dominating in three phases rather than all four!
Anyway, to answer your last question, I really do like the way magic works right now, I just recognise that, as with other areas of the game, it's not completely balanced. And if you fancy a change, go Lore of Slaanesh. Go on, fly the booby-worm, you know you want to!
Magic Magic Magic. Its great and its also horrible, its like anything in this game of fantasy, if you a **** about it you can give someone a very frustrating game, its a pity theres no way to include in points a magical points system like 2250pts with xxxpts of magic, then at least you wont bring a spoon to a knife fight. Gotta say though after playing a game against a slann with my new TK and having 5 dispell dice (max for a TK army would be 7!) it certainly makes you decide what you let go and what you try and stop!
Magic is good but as in all things it is very dice dependant, some armies work more on magic, vampires and Tomb Kings some to a lesser extent and some magic negative like Dwarves. now a nurgle wizard is good against DE's with no magic defence thanks to spam buboes on the BG champion but against a DE with more magic defence it becomes a lesser issue.
magic can be neutralised by aggressive mage hunting by some armies are extreme defence.
The current metagame is either good magic defence or non, and normal in a tournament is 5DD and 2 scrolls. For example a kairois army is going to own a Gateway army as Kairois can cast GAteway on a 5+ with a re-roll but a ring of hotek will really hurt.
My advice to you is play a Dwarf army for a year and learn to cope with 4 dispel dice and either 1,2 or no dispel runes.
I currently run a daemon army with 3 dispel dice with mainly Khorne and Nurgle in it.
Magic is a double edged sword imho. Just like any thing in warhammer that has its own phase (combat, shooting and magic), if you create an army that is loaded in one or more of these phases, then you have potentially a nasty army. However you need to consider 2 things. Firstly the fickleness of the dice - I dont think I need to expand on this at all really as we have ALL experienced that! Secondly and more importantly, its about the player experience - specifically your opponent. How is that person enjoying the game - probably not. Go read the WPS code of conduct based on a J files article re the game itself and how you effectively enter in to a contract with your opponent when you play a game.
My opinion is that despite the obvious imbalances in WFB at present (and we wont know the true extent of this until ALL the bloody army books are released) the truly great players will have an army that is balanced and has some thing to counter and take part in every phase of the game.
WAB.....sorry but magic is a large bit of WHFB if you are unsure of how to deal with magic then look to ancietns. ... Yes there is inbalance between magic & xxxx but by the same token how big a gap is there between an empire gunline and a WoC Warrior hoard? The thing about having magic as its own phase is that it brings up differant tactics and planes.
Before any one complains I have 4K+ lizards, the same of both WoC and Brets plus whats shapping up to be a 2.5K ancient Early Imperial Roman army.
Edit - Sorry for the above tone - I was a wee bit drunk (:o) point I was trying to make is surley you play Fantasy for the magic phase?
Slasher i have my WAB as well so maybe a game of that sometime as well. Most the armies have ways to deal with the magic and counters in place. But most armies can handle magic, but things will always go crazy. The newer army books gives different options but the top 3 at the moment have options to deal with magic.
well still putting me Romans together but when I have would love to.
(21-06-2009 09:19 PM)Marauder Mitch Wrote: [ -> ]The newer army books gives different options but the top 3 at the moment have options to deal with magic.
Very true. IMHO the reason some of the new books (cf Dark Elves and Lizzies especially) get slagged by people (such as myself, though I'm usually kidding
) is that they can compete in all phases of the game. As nepalese ninja says, bringing a balanced list that has movement, magic, shooting and hitting power is both more effective and more fun than a Gateway FTW! list - or for that matter a Slann plus three engines, or avoidance DE, or Daemons... well any Daemon build at all, really... only kidding NN.
For eg, I play WoC, tend to have a all-cavalry force, and like to bring some magic. A mounted L4 and L2 is a nice amount. It means enough PD to get some spells off, without completely dominating. But it also leaves the points to have some fast choppy stuff. The problem with 8-10 levels of magic is you can smash an enemy that can't defend against it, and don't have much else in the army if your sorcerers can be countered by a heavy anti-magic build.
I think the problem with magic is based around points and structure.
Points wise, magic seems to be priced in an exponential way. The idea behind it is that if you upgrade 1 magic level (from 2 level 1's to 2 level 2's) vs 2 or 1 level 1's, you go from your initial investment in your wizards doing pretty much nothing, to them doing something, and dominating the opponents magic phase.
The mechanism is non linear in 2 ways - 1. whoever has the upper hand dominates and the other guy does nothing 2. when you already spent 300 points on wizards etc, spending another 150 to make them actually effective seems like a good deal, if you were afraid that 300 points of wizards would actually have done nothing.
And this non linearity continues - if you spent 500 points on magic, and it is not doing anything, spending another 200 to make it useful also seems like a good return on your 200 points, because with an extra 200 point investment you finally unlock a total of 700 points worth of magic.
The problem is that if you spent those points on regular units, the scale linearly - the first 10 unit of spearmen costs the same as the 2nd unit of spearmen. Although, 2 units together will probably do much more than twice what 1 unit of spearmen does.
Both magic and combat have exponential returns, and synergies between units but magic is priced exponentially, while units are priced linearly.
The second issue is structure. Most armies are limited by the heroes / lord choices in how much magic they can take. Then there are armies that break the structure like Demons and Vampires (and Dark Elves to some extent). A normal army which devotes 100% of its characters to magic will still be trumpted by one of these "broken" armies in the magic phase, if these build a magic heavy list.
So the conclusion of this rambling is:
1. If you are Demons or Vampires (or other exceptions perhaps) go ahead and build a magic heavy list because your list is capable of dominating everybody and it plays to your list's strength.
2. If you are not Demons or Vampires do NOT go magic heavy since:
A. you get more bang for your points in regular units (linear pricing vs non linear pricing)
B. even if you do go magic heavy, if you go against Vampires or Demons who are magic heavy you automatically lose.