Strategic Arms Limitation Talks?? No mega Nuclear spells

[The Low King]

If it's any conciliation, the two other posters I get confused are The Low King and The Bearded One. Aside from both having the same first name and similar posting styles, once you get past the beard, helmet and battleaxe, dwarfs still all look pretty much the same to me.

"The"...the word "The" confuses you?.....lol

I will have you know that i am 2" taller than TBO, by Grungni's beard you humans are blind.

[Duke Ramulots]

If you changed Dwellers (and Final Transmutation, although that should probably be lowered to 5+) to allow LoS, people would be a lot happier about them.

There seems to be a disconnect here, look out sir is supposed to be when a rank and file trooper that is not the target of the attack pushes the character out of the way of danger, if everyone is turning to gold or being dragged to their death, who is availible to sacrifice himself for the officer in danger?

Then they would actually be anti-massive-unit spells, not killing characters into the bargain. Ever seen what happens when a Slann dwellers the enemy's Lv4 and proceeds to run rampage over the magic phase? Ain't pretty.

I have seen this as often as i have seen the slaan himself dwellered

If you changed it from autokill upon failing the test into D3 wounds, even with no saves, that'd be a lot less stupid too. Autokill really shouldn't be in the game - contrast (Heroic) Killing Blow, which only works 1/6 of the time and still allows ward saves AND certain items ignore it.

This make absolutely no sense, how does one get dragged only partly to hell?

If I'm honest, I dislike nuke (mindrazor counts!) spells just as much as I dislike deathstars. Both of them seriously reduce tactical elements in the game. Given a choice between a couple of magic missiles or deleting 1/2 of an enemy unit, it's just too easy for people to plump for the 'bomb them' option. Similarly deathstars reduce tactical options - I don't mind large units, but any unit which has more than 1/3 (or certainly 1/2) of your points in it will start to make the army dull. Having 2 of those kinds of units makes it very dull.

As tactics go, deathstars and uberspell add to the availible tactics you have at your disposal, taking them away removes tactics and thus makes the game less tactical.

In all, if you want to play Warhammer lite, go ahead, just dont sit there and make stuff up and flat out say things that are not true to improve the look of your opinion.

[Lord Inquisitor]

NO NO NO, every turn of every game you get 12 power dice and throw 6 at each of two uber spells getting IF 100% of the time deleting every important unit/character by turn 2. At least thats how some people make it sound.

You have only a 10/36 chance of rolling less than 6 dice on winds, not including channels. On top of that, most armies have access to methods of generating additional dice. Generate even 1 dice automatically and the odds of less than 6 dice drop to 1 in 6.

Yes, you can't always cast with 6-dice. Roughly once a game depending on the army. Six dicing boosted trollguts every turn is neither interesting nor tactically deep but it works.

[The Low King]

I feel that adding 'Look out sir' would be silly for a spell like dwellers, it doesnt really make sense.

That said, maybe some kind of bonus to characteristic tests for a character?

The best solution to these spells is simply to have Double 1s Miscast and Double 6 IF, with Miscast cancelling an IF. That means that there is much less of an incentive to just throw 6 dice at a spell, you gain a lot more from getting 4 dice or 5 dice castings through.

[Lord Inquisitor]

I'm not sure why it's particularly less realistic for a look out sir against dwellers than against pit of shades or whatever...

Anyway, my favourite solution is very similar and would be double-ones count as "not enough power" and override an IF. You could do away with the stupid and arbitrary 6-dice limit too.

[IcedCrow]

We houserule double ones are a miscast and override double 6 (the spell is not cast with IF). Double 6 is just IF. This is how it was in past editions and puts at least a smidge more danger into just blindly throwing six dice hoping for the #6 spell to go off on IF. (one of the things about 8th I cannot stand)

[DaemonReign]

So no Miscast-roll for double-6's IcedCrow? I didn't get that before when reviewing your group's houserules.. Interesting.
Still, and you know this from before I guess, if there's anything I wouldn't want returning to the game its wizards blowing up without casting anything.

[jtrowell]

As long as you give a Look Out, Sir! to characters against the auto-kill spells to bring them in line with spells like Pit and Purple Sun then they're fine (although of course this doesn't really help against Mindrazor, but that's a harder problem to solve). Otherwise, being able to snipe characters with ease is too much reward for too little tactical investment- it doesn't render the spell useless, and there is still a good chance of an additional pay off, but it stops bad players winning games they don't deserve just because they can spam a 6th spell. Killing a third or more of a unit is more than enough reward for the skill used in rolling 6 dice at Dwellers.

Totally agree with you, I like having spells able to do serious damage on big units, but not when for not additionnal effort the same spells snipe characters so easily.

For mindrazor, last game that I played with shadow I proposed to my group to houserule it to only affect damage rolls (so armor saves use the original attack Strength). This still make the spell very powerful, allowing to kill monsters with ease and to wound almost anything on 2s, but it make heavy armored troops an acceptable counter, and reduce the current abuse of the spell with low strength multi-attacks units.

[Urgat]

If miscasts w/o IF happened on any double 1, overriding double 6s, I'm certain that the magic phases would suddenly be way more sensible for those who suffer from "6 dicing", w/o the need to change anything else at all.

[Havock]

Yeah, every time people complain about the miscast table, I want to shove the 7th ed Waaagh miscast table in their face. Hard . They have no idea what a harsh miscast table is, obviously.

As for deathstars, I'm fine with ogres running a runemaw banner, that means they can pretty much forget about buffing the unit so heh. As for Chosens and the likes, they're 7th ed books so it's not relevant. Is there any 8th ed AB that can make a deathstar basically immune to spells? I don't think so.

The 7th ed miscast table would make people a lot more honest. Seriously, nevermind the waagh mishaps, the vanilla 7th ed one was a lot better/worse than what we have now.
Especially the 'opponent may cast a spell now'-result.

[The Low King]

I'm not sure why it's particularly less realistic for a look out sir against dwellers than against pit of shades or whatever...

Anyway, my favourite solution is very similar and would be double-ones count as "not enough power" and override an IF. You could do away with the stupid and arbitrary 6-dice limit too.

Ok, on second thoughts you are probably right.

[Mercules]

Especially the 'opponent may cast a spell now'-result.

Ah yes, one of my favorite results as in 7th. Much chaos was wrought from this particular Miscast. Having someone burn a scroll on their own turn because they miscast one of their spells and don't have enough dice to dispel your newly cast spell was pure glee.

[IcedCrow]

So no Miscast-roll for double-6's IcedCrow? I didn't get that before when reviewing your group's houserules.. Interesting.
Still, and you know this from before I guess, if there's anything I wouldn't want returning to the game its wizards blowing up without casting anything.

It makes the braindead "tactic" of chucking 6 dice hoping for IF suddenly a little bit more risky.

Didn't want to make miscasts happen on both double 1 AND double 6. That would be a bit too harsh I think. Double 1s also satisfy my OCD since that's like rolling a "1" for auto fail. But that's my own personal quibble.

[cptcosmic]

uber spells being the counter to deathstars is a myth as most deathstars are very resilent or properly geared against those spells. the real problem is unless you are immune or sport a dwarf like magic defense there is little you can do against those spells. even when I dont have everything in one basket, the opposing player can still kill my squishy mage hidden in a unit with such a spell and 350 points of my army is gone and I could not really do anything against it, except not field such a lord at all -.-

I don't really see s3 infantry much and when I do it's usually dirt cheap like slaves or night goblins.

I would say the majority of rank and file units have s3.

[IcedCrow]

Yes but the same can be said about his unit and squishy mage. We can't lament the possibility of it happening. And in my experience it doesn't happen nearly as often as intranetz wizdomz says it does. A scroll (feedback scrolls are fun) and targeting the mage in other ways (ranged attacks ala cannonballs and mage hunter characters on fast mounts) are ways I often deal with this.

There's nothing more fun than setting up and seeing the look of gloating glee on your opponent's face because you showed up with things that intranetz wizdomz says he should stomp on, and then you feedback scroll his mage or swoop in and killing blow his wizard lord with a sacrificial mage hunter and end his ability to magic you off the table and watching that look of glee turn into abject horror and disbelief (and well... sometimes rage)

[Haravikk]

Hmm, I kind of agree in theory; while the mega-spells deter stupidly big hordes, so too could partial victory points.
My main gripe with them is that some spells can be hideously abused; for example, Purple Sun of Xereus cannot be reliable stopped, especially if an enemy tries to force it through with Irresistible force. Against Dwarfs it doesn't really matter if you have overly large hordes as it can tear through multiple units killing two in three of all models, with no form of defence allowed against it.


So yeah, the mega spells are very broken; the idea behind them is sound, as deathstar units would otherwise also be very broken, but it's not really a very good solution to the problem. Especially when you consider that low Strength is not necessarily a characteristic of a death star unit, yet that is what Dweller's Below relies upon, meaning it's just as good at wiping out half of a smaller, elite unit as it is at wiping out half of a large, inexpensive unit.

[The Low King]

I find spells like Curse of Anraheir or the Chaos spell that makes the unit attack itself much better against large units/deathstars than things like Pit.....

[Lord Inquisitor]

"The"...the word "The" confuses you?.....lol

I'm... easily confused, what can I say?

[Malorian]

Hmm, I kind of agree in theory; while the mega-spells deter stupidly big hordes, so too could partial victory points.
My main gripe with them is that some spells can be hideously abused; for example, Purple Sun of Xereus cannot be reliable stopped, especially if an enemy tries to force it through with Irresistible force. Against Dwarfs it doesn't really matter if you have overly large hordes as it can tear through multiple units killing two in three of all models, with no form of defence allowed against it.


So yeah, the mega spells are very broken; the idea behind them is sound, as deathstar units would otherwise also be very broken, but it's not really a very good solution to the problem. Especially when you consider that low Strength is not necessarily a characteristic of a death star unit, yet that is what Dweller's Below relies upon, meaning it's just as good at wiping out half of a smaller, elite unit as it is at wiping out half of a large, inexpensive unit.

The real solution to hordes should be flank disruption taking away steadfast and not being able to reform in combat. Without that mega spells is all the system has.

Really I find it's not the spells like dwellers or purple sun that win games, but rather the augments and hexs that win key combats that swing the game.

[DaemonReign]

It makes the braindead "tactic" of chucking 6 dice hoping for IF suddenly a little bit more risky.

And people just do this, then? In game-after-game? Every Magic Phase that generates more than 5 dice? It's always *ugh-ugh* *scratch-head/nose* 'Purple Sun!! six dice, in-ya-face! (?????)
I ask (and I guess I'm asking the wrong person because your group hasn't been playing it 'by the book' for two years) because in our group it got pretty old rather quickly...
I mean sure, I'll admit, we all dabbled a little bit in the beginning with throwing chuckling fistfulls of dice on those über-spells.. but it only took a handfull of games to realize what I've already stated in this thread:
1 - The risk/return ratio just isn't what it's made out to be. The miscast table of 8th Ed is a deterrant.
2 - There are other ways of managing one's Magic Phase that, in the long run, are simply better.

Add to this what others have already been touching on: I certainly think Birona's, Occam's, Flame Cage, and probably a few more of those spells are at the very least on par with the 'Big 3'.

Anyway, it does give a nuance: the fact that Irresistable doesn't mean miscast with your houserules. I get the direction you're going, at least - despite, well, not exactly being sold on it. Cheers!