Combating the hordes Power of Darkness style

[Bra55monkey]

Ok - I'm not a fan of the new book. The rules are so completely differnt from the feel of what fantasy is supposed to be. The draw of fantasy to those who love the old book - in my estimation - was the ability to out manouver and out deploy your opponent. The new march block rule, the new "free 90 degree" charge pivot, and the line of sight rules make alot of the units in the book kinda bad. Fast cav are amazing at getting to your opponents warmachines - assuming they are some how able to stay out of fire. you now need 10 to deny a rank bonus from a flank charge and worse the enemy gets to attack them before resolution. So for their old uses Dark Riders got Gibbed.. But, Harpies are now pretty useless, weak in combat and not able to reliably march block or block line of sight.

So the knee jerk reaction seems to be the awesome new horde rule. I see so many lists with huge blocks of infantry. the Dark lore has 2 great spells that will demolish a big group of Eeq troops. Soul Stealer and Black Horror.
How ever... I prefer the new book's fire lore. Fulminating Cage does d6 s4 hits. the next time the unit moves every model takes a s4 hit. do that to a 30+ unit of elves and see if they want to march on you!! Also.. piercing shots does d3 s4 hits per rank of 5 or more target unit has. a 5x6 (30) unit can potentially suffer 18 s4 hits! These spells have the Flame Lore rule that successive hits on a unit in a magic phase increase the cast level of your spell by d3. With power of darkness guaranteeing (almost) that we will have many more power dice then they have dispel. Casting a ton of spells on a problem unit is very easy to force. Alot of people are afraid of the new miscast table. The sheer amount of power dice available make miscasts very likely. But remember.. spearmen are cheep. am i willing to drop a template over my guys if i can keep their super huge unit of doom from reaching my lines? i say yes.
In my very first magic phase my lvl 4 blew apart 10 warriors and put a wound on her self. In my opinion losing 70 points of rank and file is a gamble worth the risk.
Adding 4 to every spell a Lord casts is huge. My opponent failed to dispel all but 1 spell in a 6 turn game. By the time his Ogre's got into charge range i had already fried his army to a meager force. If he had been a regular army with out rank and file at 3 wounds per model i would wager to say he never would have gotten a charge onto me at all.
Magic is very very powerful in this new book. My lists will include at least a lvl 4, if only to help dispel properly. Bring on the huge units of weak troops.. i will melt their faces!

[Mr. anderson]

...And your point is? There are plenty of threads open to discuss 8th edition, and we've had plenty of people complaining about it, too. And you are merely stating some of your ideas, none of which haven't been mentioned in other threads before. What is this thread for, exactly?

[Bra55monkey]

Your right. the start of my post is kind of ramblish. The point being. The trend of peoples armies currently are going to huge blocks of troops, and that with Power Of Darkness we will out power our opponents magic dispel dice, (if we choose a magic heavy list) and thus be able to deal 12 or so wounds to a 30 strong block of troops with a single spell.
As far as this specific tactic, i haven't read about it in any thread on current pages. (i'll admit to not searching threads beyond the last 2 pages because those all have last post dates pre-June)

[Rabidnid]

Your right. the start of my post is kind of ramblish. The point being. The trend of peoples armies currently are going to huge blocks of troops, and that with Power Of Darkness we will out power our opponents magic dispel dice, (if we choose a magic heavy list) and thus be able to deal 12 or so wounds to a 30 strong block of troops with a single spell.
As far as this specific tactic, i haven't read about it in any thread on current pages. (i'll admit to not searching threads beyond the last 2 pages because those all have last post dates pre-June)

We will see on July 10 when the changes are released for the existing army books. Spells that attack entire "units" will be devastating, with the #6 metal spell looking particularly nasty. Seal soul and black horror will still be great spells whatever their new form. Though good enough to get me running Dark over Metal? we will have to wait and see.

As for armies consisting of huge blocks, so what, it looks great and so far the new rules have been great fun.

[Olderplayer]

One csn read the entire new rule book in many GW stores, so warseer forum rumors can be confirmed but (having read the entire book and taken detailed notes) there are some minor errors in both the Lores and rules on the rumour sites.

Miscasts now occur with irresistible force on two or more natural 6's rolled on an attempt to cast.

The new rules require that the lore be chosen with the mage and army ahead oftime. Unless you're sure as to what you're facing, Lore of Metal is too risky if possibly facing troops with little or no armour, like certain DoC units. Unfortunately, we can only choose 4 of the 8 lores, which leaves out some of the lore with the most improvement (heavens esp.). With larger horde blocks (seeing lots of Skaven and elves) and the +4 to cast and dispel, a Lvl 4 w FF (if able to hide behind some terrain where there will be a lot more hard terrain under the rules) with a FF, Pok and able to hide or use soul stealer to boost wounds is very dangerous and still may still allow for a cheap dreadlord in another unit at the new suggested Indy GT standard points level of 2500. Lores of Fire and Death are often the preferred alternatives to our dark magic. One Lvl 1 or 2 with the base fire spell and one lvl 4 with dark magic could be quite devastating and provide good magic defense. A fail to cast causes the wizard to be unable to cast another spell under the new rules, so one casts first high probability 2 PD spells with the caster's level boost and then uses the last remaining PD to cast the harder to cast spells with a bit lower probsability of success but also lower probability of miscasting on double 6's (a Lvl 4 never needs more than 3 PD to cast dark magic lore spells and that reduces the risk of miscasts).

A soul stealer requires only a natural roll of 6+ for a Lvl 4 and 8+ for a Lvl 2 to get off. Black horror now only requires a natural roll of 7+ for a Lvl 4 and 9+ for a Lvl 2. The power of darkness spell is virtually guaranteed (97% chance, 93% change of going off and avoiding a miscast) to go off if two PD are used to cast it, so it becomes a base first spell to cast for the wizard. Remember the special rules allow the PoD spell to be known for free, while the other spells must be chosen randomly and cannot be duplicated. Thus, one lvl 4 and one Lvl 2 will know all six spells in the Dark magic Lore, if both choose it.

With shooting in ranks and no more guess range, Chillwind becomes far more valuable for defensive reasons and much easier to cast spell. A lvl 4 gets chillwind off with 2 PD 97% of the time and a Lvl 2 gets it off more than 90% of the time. In order to ensure adequate PD, a darkstar cloak and use of the PoD spell become more necessary.

[Bra55monkey]

I merely attempt to put forward a way to combat this huge block trend. Do it if you want. I guess i was hoping the discussion would focus more upon the tactic and less about people's opinions of my style of writing or thier preference for huge blocks of troops.

That said. a major weakness would be other armies with a cheap item such as the ring of hotek that will decimate a Mage list. with so many power dice so many miscasts will be imminent.

[Timz]

One csn read the entire new rule book in many GW stores, so warseer forum rumors can be confirmed but (having read the entire book and taken detailed notes) there are some minor errors in both the Lores and rules on the rumour sites.


The power of darkness spell is virtually guaranteed (97% chance, 93% change of going off and avoiding a miscast) to go off if two PD are used to cast it, so it becomes a base first spell to cast for the wizard.

In order to ensure adequate PD, use of the PoD spell become more necessary.

Power of darkness casting value will probably be adjusted if the spell isn't removed completely because it's not designed for 8th edition.

It's pretty mediocre. It'd be way better for DE to get something like +1 to cast. +1 to cast never causes miscasts, it never ends your magic phase, and it means you can use less dice which means less percentage miscasts.

With PoD
For that "virtually guaranteed PoD", you spend 2 dice, 3% chance you lose 2 dice AND can't cast anything at all with that wizard. 32% chance you lose 1 dice, 32% chance nothing happens, 32% chance you gain 1 dice. Another 3% chance that wizard misfires with monstrously bad results, and if you used 2 dice, the Irresistible Force still doesn't matter because you get 3 power dice from spending 2 as often as you only get 1 power dice from spending 2. No gain.

So you lose a dice more often than you gain a dice, AND there are risks your mage kills itself and its entire bodyguard, while there are no benefits because an IF PoD doesn't give extra dice than a regular successful one (which destroyed 2 of your power dice already and you get d3)


With 1 power dice, it has a 33% chance to fail entirely (losing you a power dice AND no more spells that turn by that wizard.), 22% chance nothing happens, 22% chance you gain 1 dice, 22% chance you gain 2 dice.

So... multiple dice = nothing gained from using it at all. Single dice = HIGH chance that wizard can't cast for rest of turn.

Therefore the one and only common use for it seems to be using it last after all other things are cast if you have 1 power dice spare that you didn't use on a previous spell.

[Lord tsunami]

@timz
power of darkness gives(in 7th ed) 1d3+1 power dice, that means 2-4. if you use 2 dice to cast it, you never lose dice unless you fail to cast it

[Bra55monkey]

Eh Timz, PoD is great because if you use 2 dice to cast, you need to roll 1,1 to fail to cast on a level 2-4 wizard. As tsunami mentioned, you get 2-4 dice from the resolution of the spell. If they use dice to dispell, then thats pure gravy. Sure miscasting a PoD would be a rediculas misfortune that is possible, how ever on a pair of dice that seems pretty unlikely. Remember your wizards always have the ability to stack signature spells. So if you want 2 wizards with fireball go for it. successive casts give you d3 more power to the resolution of the spell. As far as my understanding you need to cast the spell independant of the extra d3, but it is still great for giving you more umph to beat out dispell dice