Strategic Arms Limitation Talks?? No mega Nuclear spells

[TsukeFox]

So had a warhammer weekend, our gaming group is 2 vets & 3 new players. One of the new players used a life toad-dwellered off generals & lord casters turn 1 in two different games. Victory Lizardman. Normally the Lizardman player used Light.

We vets have silently agreed to S.A.L.T.- I do not take 13th & he does not take MindRazer with dark elves.

We found that the games are more involved/tactical now that magic phase does not completely win games on its own with 1 spell.

Aside from tournies- is any other gaming communities not really using dwellers, MindRazer, 13th, chosen/knight bus star, and whatever other war crime spells ?

[IcedCrow]

I find if my army is more than a mega bus unit that even when the 13th goes off on me (which is about once every two or three games against skaven) that it at most takes out one of my key units, but that I have other units on the table and the game is not lost.

I find that those people that have their armies composed of a massive unit where their characters are hiding are highlighting a giant weakness... that being if that unit runs off the table or is 13th spelled, they will often lose the game as they have nothing else to go by.

In that regard, we have not had to comp out any of the magic phase.

[Maoriboy007]

The problem I have with that argument is say that If both you and your opponant have two key units each , and he can remove one of your key units with a single spell, then he has two key units to your one and gained a more than significant advantage. The limited resource you have can really work against you with this kind of math, especially if your opponant tends to be more resistant to these spells or better able to take advantage of them, it creates the same kind of army imbalances that people hated in 7th.

[Urgat]

The problem I have with that argument is say that If both you and your opponant have two key units each , and he can remove one of your key units with a single spell, then he has two key units to your one and gained a more than significant advantage. The limited resource you have can really work against you with this kind of math, especially if your opponant tends to be more resistant to these spells or better able to take advantage of them, it creates the same kind of army imbalances that people hated in 7th.

That's why you take half a dozen key units, not two
Well of course that doesn't mesh well with the current mindset of going with deathstars... but that's the whole point of those spells, limiting them... ah well

Well our group does not use blocks like that.
I am not saying we have issues with character assassination from spells-just saying the fantasy game is better without having to resort to the OP BRB Lores. The 8th edition book Lores are balanced-no thanks to that slag Matt ward.

God knows I've done my own share of Ward-bashing during 7th ed, but he's done a great job with the 8th ed BRB, and those spells, they have a reason to exist (see just before that quote). Unless something goes horribly wrong (that would be all my units squabbling in a nice line when a wizard come at my flank on his flying carpet while his hands glow purple), I see no spell that could make me lose just by being cast successfully.

[ColShaw]

That's why you take half a dozen key units, not two
Well of course that doesn't mesh well with the current mindset of going with deathstars... but that's the whole point of those spells, limiting them... ah well

I'd be interested in how people can take half a dozen generals, or Battle Standard bearers, whose loss is often catastrophic to an army and can't really be prevented from uber-spells.

[Urgat]

I'd be interested in how people can take half a dozen generals, or Battle Standard bearers, whose loss is often catastrophic to an army and can't really be prevented from uber-spells.

I can't help the BSB, but I play goblins, I take almost no magic items, so I can afford to put big bosses wherever I want or need. Apart from ogres and chaos, everybody should be able to put two or three heroes (in my case four or five) in key positions in case the general goes down. Try it some day, save a couple hundred points on your magic gear, maybe you'll see things in a different light. If the loss of the BSB or the general was catastrophic to me, I wouldn't win a game, as they die to the first marauder glaring at them...

[Mercules]

I'd be interested in how people can take half a dozen generals, or Battle Standard bearers, whose loss is often catastrophic to an army and can't really be prevented from uber-spells.

Against stat testing spells, they have better stats than normal so often are not going missing. Against template spells they get Look Out Sir! rolls and so often are not going missing. If loosing your general causing an instant game loss (as opposed to the whiny, "I forfeit because things didn't go my way." instant loss) then your army needs some rethinking. It makes it more difficult, but not "catastrophic".

[Maoriboy007]

That's why you take half a dozen key units, not two .

The math still applies , he removes one and you are still a vital unit down compared to your opponant, and the limitation of points and unit types tends to keep those units to a small but vital number. Generally our group mainly tries to keep away from such spells they tend to arbitrarily end the game.

[Urgat]

The math still applies , he removes one and you are still a vital unit down compared to your opponant, and the limitation of points and unit types tends to keep those units to a small but vital number. Generally our group mainly tries to keep away from such spells they tend to arbitrarily end the game.

Well true... but unless you play exactly the same lists, what do you expect? And I didn't say vital units My opinion is you should have no vital units at all. Everything in my army can be sacrificed (well on its own. If I lose my two shamans, or all my heavy hitters and am left with just the rabble, sure, it's gonna stink worse than the squig pen ).

[IcedCrow]

The math still applies , he removes one and you are still a vital unit down compared to your opponant, and the limitation of points and unit types tends to keep those units to a small but vital number. Generally our group mainly tries to keep away from such spells they tend to arbitrarily end the game.

There is a lot of hyperbole when it comes to this subject. How the game is "arbitrarily ended" after one spell. I have yet to see a game ended after one spell where there was not just one massive unit involved. Never once.

The game is not played in a vaccum. If he removes a key unit then I am indeed one component to my opponent, who is also facing off against my ranged and magic attacks as well. Ranged attacks and magic are part of the game as much as hand to hand combat. There is little difference to having a key unit taken out with a spell compared with all of my cannons and guns taking out one of your units either, other than it was the shooting phase that did it instead of the 13th spell, or when my unit of warriors slams into your key unit and I win combat and break and run them down, except that now it's the combat phase instead of the magic phase.

My chaos army has two *key* units and a good half dozen support units. It has never been spelled off the table. I have lost most of a key unit to 13th spell and I have also lost most of a key unit to the spell that turns your guys to gold. Those things happen. I also have dozens of games where magic did very little due to spells not going off or being scrolled, or even fedback and killing the wizard. I'd also like to note my chaos army is slaanesh, and does not contain a level 4 wizard in it. It typically features a chaos lord mounted on a flying gribbly who is a support unit not designed to destroy main units by himself, and I rarely use chosen, so I'm not running "chosen star" builds.

My tomb kings army also has two *key* units and again a good half dozen support units. Both of these armies will often draw guffaws of laughter from those in the internet know (to be fair, my chaos warrior army in 7th edition also drew hysterical shrieking guffaws of laughter because I wasn't running all cavalry, which of course YOU HAD TO DO per internetz wizdomz), because they typically defy what internetz wizdomz says to do, and while I can't say I'm going to be the world warhammer emperor anytime soon and win thousands of glittering prizes and the prestigious warhammer championship of the world, I will say I win more than I lose, and not only that but am often told by opponents that the army is a lot more fun to play against.

Now I am definitely not arguing against houseruling. If you feel the spells are too powerful, by all means houserule them. That's the point of houseruling is to make the game more palpatable to you and your gaming group's tastes, I just strongly disagree with the notion that one spell will end the game with one casting if your army is not composed of mega bus that just got run off the table.

If you put all your eggs into one basket, then yes you are asking for the panic check off the table / end game or the magic spell to end your game.

Otherwise, losing one key unit does not end your game unless you are going by the mindset that once you fall behind your opponent by a unit, it's game over... which is not how I view things.

[Urgat]

I'm like IcedCrow to be honest. People can't really argue that there's overly killy spells in the little Waaaagh so hopefully I won't look like I'm defending my turf, but imho the best defense against the dread 6th spells () is in the list-making.

[Mercules]

I third that notion. I play MMU for a reason and that is because people like dropping templates on my head. Loosing 1 out of 3 units instead of half my Horde I was counting on doesn't hurt me as much.

[TsukeFox]

I find if my army is more than a mega bus unit that even when the 13th goes off on me (which is about once every two or three games against skaven) that it at most takes out one of my key units, but that I have other units on the table and the game is not lost.

I find that those people that have their armies composed of a massive unit where their characters are hiding are highlighting a giant weakness... that being if that unit runs off the table or is 13th spelled, they will often lose the game as they have nothing else to go by.

In that regard, we have not had to comp out any of the magic phase.

Well our group does not use blocks like that.
I am not saying we have issues with character assassination from spells-just saying the fantasy game is better without having to resort to the OP BRB Lores. The 8th edition book Lores are balanced-no thanks to that slag Matt ward.

[Morkash]

The comp in Austria (and Germany as well, I think) usually either allows "Look Out, Sir!" rolls for Dwellers, 13th et al., or restrict casting to 4 dice, or both. Restricting IF on spells with a casting value of 14+ is also used sometimes.

Personally I like the 4 dice solution the most, as it generates a totally different attitude towards magic. Even played against a Daemon player without any magic at all!

Then again, units are also limited to 40-50 models and/or 400-450 points maximum as well ... which again changes the attitude towards magic and units. Ogre Magic suddenly becomes very efficient, while Life isn't used all that often without massive Deathstars running around.

Necessary edit: I don't want to start another topic about comp and its (dis)advantages, but I personally prefer playing comped over playing without limits. 3000 points and Grand Armies just allows many harsh setups. And yes, it hurts my Ogre soul that my units are restricted to 400 points.

[Wesser]

Only Mindrazor has ever ruined a game for me. Its the only spell that destroy whole units after all.

Around my turf its buff spells not damage spells that wins games. Dwellers I usually let slide....so what if 25 skeletons die. Ill raise up some more. So what if 25 state troops die. I dont expect them to do anything. Maybe its cuz I never take units which if lost will cost me the game... at least not unless I got a plan for protecting them. Like Blood Knights wil Flag and MR2....

[Phazael]

Kill spells are there to counter deathstars. If you want to watch to giant deathstars slap together for 4 turns like a pair of sumo wrestlers (or as my wife and I call it, Friday night marital relations....), have at it. I personally like being able to snipe a slaan out of a TG deathstar that is otherwise buffed to unassailable levels or other similar brokeness that uber spells counter. Being MSU and deploying intelligently pretty much counters uber death spells and there is no excuse for not being able to MSU in an Orc and Goblin army, because the basic guys are so inexpensive.

[Maoriboy007]

Kill spells are there to counter deathstars.

I'd accept this a bit more if they didn't seem to kill everything else just as well if not better. True deathstars tend to be fairly resistant to these spells anyway.

If you want to watch to giant deathstars slap together for 4 turns like a pair of sumo wrestlers (or as my wife and I call it, Friday night marital relations....),.

[Urgat]

I'd accept this a bit more if they didn't seem to kill everything else just as well if not better.

If an opponent uses all his dice to destroy, dunno, 10 hoppers or 5 wolves, well, all power to him? :/

It was just to see how how people are playing these days. If the gaming community was tired of Nuking each other.
If there are no Deathstars (warriors are soon to lose theirs, elves on the way ) why does one need nuke spells?

How do you figure that? I'm not aware that savagestars, gutstars, grave guardstars and the likes have disappeared with their new books. Oh, certainly (hopefully), the EotG chosen nonsense is going to go, but even w/o that, a chosen horde is till going to maw down most stuff. And if the chosen prove too expensive now, it's going to be the regular warriors. But the unit itself isn't going anywhere.

The problem with "über-spells" is that the internet constantly overstates the impact they have.
[...]
it's also never mentioned that the effective range of PSX is only 15" which is well within the charge range of any unit with the swift stride rule.

Of course not d'huh ! The Internet (it's going to become some kind of entity soon I think. A 5th chaos god?) has decided that cavalry, and especially light cavalry, is now all colors of useless, that running large steadfast hordes makes them unbreakable (yes sir, according to internet, they're pretty much unbreakable) so there's no need to cover their flanks because nobody is never going to bother flanking, flanking is now completely and absolutely useless. Flying casters on a flank should not belong to that kind of metagame! I'm surprised there hasn't been a thread yet asking if anybody has banned the flying carpet. The loss of the BSB and the general equals game over? Did people really forgot the previous editions already? With regular BSB, no steadfast, devastating panic and psychology, terror bombs? Can people really become so spoiled so fast? If you need them both so bad, it's because you're losing too much in combat. If you're losing too much in combat, they're not going to make you win anyway...

[Slashattack]

I don't really see any problems with the mega-spells currently. Yes they are good, but not game breaking in most cases. In the cases where a mega-spell has won a game, normally mindrazor is the culprit or Dreaded Thirteenth.

From my experience most of the spells don't live up to their reputation. Dwellers Below is good but against strength four and above it loses its impact; Purple Sun is too random to be reliable enough to use, it has sucked up one of my Supreme Sorceress last time I tried it; Final Transmutation is nice like Dwellers but still only removes on average one third of a unit; Infernal Gateway is just a slightly bigger than normal magic missile most of time.

Augments, hexes and normal damage spells change the game more than the mega-spells normally in my local meta-game. Spells like Miasma, Withering, Enfeebling Foe, Wildform, Enchanted Blades, Flaming Swords, Flesh to Stone, Earthsblood, Timewarp, Speed of Light, Flame Cage, Comet of Cassandora and Foot of Gork are what people use over the mega-spells normally.

Flame Cage is my particular favourite because it forces the opponent to lose a movement phase normally when placed on the right target, unless they want to take enough hits that could kill half their unit just for moving. Foot of Gork just hurts like hell, and with a bit of luck is absolutely deadly.

Slash

[bluemage]

I agree with Icecrow, your "veterans" need to stop putting all their eggs in one basket and feelin cheated when something happens to that basket of eggs.