Magic In A Big Game

[Metacarpi]

First off - I apologise if this is in the wrong place, I wasn't quite sure where it should go!

So, me and my gaming group are looking to get together and have a huge game. We're looking at 9,000 points a side, split between 3 generals - a 3v3 game, with 3k each.

One thing we're struggling with is what to do about the magic phase. Scaling up the standard winds of magic to 6d6 and taking the highest 3d6 as dispel seems to make things too one sided.

So my question is this - what experience/suggestions do you guys have for how we can make it work?

Much appreciated!

[Duke Ramulots]

If you're doing this game on multiple tables, roll a seperate 2d6 winds per table and devide it like each table is a different battle. The power dice can only be used on the tables they belong to, while the dispell pool is for the whole battleground. My gaming group did this and it made for a fun megabattle.

[Askari]

We did 4d6 power and 2d6 highest dispel for our 10,000pt game. It was four 2,500pt armies a side and the power dice and dispel dice were split however each team wanted it.

Infact the 2d6 highest dispel made it very one sided, as the 'good' teams had an Arch Lector, 2 Warrior Priests, a Runelord with Master Rune of Balance, Teclis and some Bretonnian ability to gain dice of some sort. Always ended up having more dispel dice than the 'evil' side had Power Dice - having to blow up their Dark Elf Sorceresses just to get any spell off.

Was quite fun.. for us 'goodies'.

[DaemonReign]

Scaling up the Magic is fine.
I'm just gonna point out that in games this size having been played in our group we actually didn't scale up the Magic at all, and that worked just fine too.
Just to let you know it's not actually necessary when playing games ~10k size.
It's more a case of preference. I personally find Magic to be suitably wacky either way you play it.

[covenant]

My group has played a few big games ( 9,000 a side with multiple players and armies ) and we have found that it works well when each army generates its own power dice as normal ( 2d6 ) which can only be used by that army, but the dispel pool was shared by the defending armies. This makes for some interesting tactical choices by the caster on which order to cast spells and on the dispeller as to which spells they let through. This hasn't really felt over powered or un balanced yet.

[Jind_Singh]

One player rolls the 2D6 - and everyone gets same power die and dispel die as each other.

We played a multiplayer game last month with normal dice numbers and it blew - no fun - when everyone has their own pool it's much better - but you can't give your die to others in your group. You can attempt to dispel spells on behalf of a team mate using your own dispel die.

This method allows everyone to use their own casters as per normal, but not allow someone access to a massive amount of dice.

Any dice channeled must be kept with their own army pool

[Bodysnatcher]

We played a huge storm of magic with the following rules:
As normal, roll 4D6 - that gives you the core power and dispel (4D6 power, highest 2D6 dispel)
Then we rolled an additional D6 for every 2000 points over 3/4K (tweak to suit).
Add that many dice to the power pool, and then counting the dice as D3s, add that many dice to the dispel pool.
Power/Dispel limit was removed.

[RanaldLoec]

Just be aware that it is possible to abuse magic even in big games.

I played a 20,000 point game thursday Empire and Bretonnia our opponents used Vampire counts and Dwarfs.

We used the storm of magic 4d6 pool capped at 24 with the highest 2d6 as dispel dice.

The vampire player had nearly 40 wizards with lots and lots of level one necromancers. Add in the dwarf 12 dwarf dispel dice a turn and we might as well not bothered with our magic phase.

Take into account what armies your fielding as well because competition style armies can really suck the fun out of large games.

500 plus zombies in one unit with a load of ethereal characters in the front rank and a fair few vampire lords kitted out for a fight just isn't fun at all in any way to face.

[shakedown47]

How to scale magic up for larger games has been the big debate ever since 8th debuted, and every has an opinion on how to modify the rules in the BRB to fit gigantic games. As DaemonReign stated earlier, how about just leave the magic phase as-is? When the ratio of power die to units in play drops by such a considerable amount, players become much more conscious of trying to get their spells off as opposed to just chucking six dice at whatever super-douche spell they fancy that round. Or, if that won't work and your group needs the magic phase to feel considerably "larger," how about just allowing each side to auto-generate a near-perfect magic phase each turn, with 10 power dice and 6 dispel dice, and then allow each side to channel for dice (ignoring the 12-dice cap.)

Really, though, my recommendation would be to just use the rules as written in the BRB and leave the magic phase unaltered.