Is dark the way to go?

[Greg]

Hi all, I have been thinking again (when will I learn) hurts my head.

Magic is the area I really feel I have been struggling with for this edition.
All those lovely new lores and spells. The problem I find is that it is very easy for several armies to shut down the magic phase and miscasts are really a pain, not just for damage, but for ending a phase rather quickly.

After reading the article on the efficiency of a 4th with dark and the dagger I started using that with a 2nd with shadow. The problem I was having was the 2nd level shadow caster needed 4 or more dice to get the spells I wanted cast to assist the dark which made it very likely to miscast which took away form the efficiency of my 4th. I then thought maybe death as it has lesser casting values but the range became an issue.
Finally i came to the thought of why not a 4th dark and 2nd dark. I would have the dagger on the 4th and the tome and seal on the 2nd. It would mean I would have every dark spell and chillwind twice. All of the spells are effective, maybe not as spectacular as the new lores but they all work well with a balanced dark elf list. On an average winds of magic roll 7, I could attempt to cast every spell as i only need one die per spell.
I can hurt a shooting based army which is one of our weakness in this edition. I can impact mammoth units and in a limited manner I could ping at characters.

I am just wondering what others think about it.

My list looks like this:
ss4th with pok, sd, iron icon
s 2nd with tof and sog
hag bsb with cualdron

6x harpies
6 x dark riders with rxb and musician
10 x rxb with shields and musician
10 x rxb with shields and musician
10 x rxb with shields and musician
18 corsairs with full command and sss banner
24 spearmen with shields and full command

18 witches full command and flaming banner
15 black guard with full command and banner of murder
6 shades with xhw

hydra

[Enkiel]

casting on 1 dice give you 1/3 chance of ending your magic phase with that caster.... not really a good plan.

[Maldor]

I'd recommend giving the dagger to which ever caster you give the lore with the highest average casting value. This will allow you to roll a more conservative number of dice per spell, knowing that if you come up short you can sacrifice a model. It also gives you the luxury of not rolling that extra dice if you've already rolled a 6 and don't want to risk miscasting.

[Entreri bloodletter]

Not with the Sacrificial Dagger it doesn't. If you roll a 1 or 2 just stab a guy and voila! spell is cast.

Although I think Dark magic is great, I think that having the option for other spells shouldn't be overlooked. The lores in the book are really good and should be taken advantage of. I agree that the level 4 should have dark magic, but the level 2 I feel would be better off with Shadow, Metal, possibly even Death.

Dark magic is very good for getting out reliable, helpful spells, but I think having 3 spells in a different lore far outweighs the benefits of having all 6 from Dark magic. And yes, the other lores typically take more powerdice to cast, but don't forget that with Power of Darkness and the Sacrificial Dagger we should have many more PD than they have DD. Cast your cheap Dark magic spells first with 1 die each (stabbing people as necessary) and watch your opponent struggle to dispel them all. Additionally, you don't really need to worry about miscasts yet as you are only rolling 1, possibly 2 dice. Save your bigger spells for last so that even if you do miscast and lose dice, it doesn't affect your magic phase.

[Greg]

I guess the problem I was finding is that the 4th can easily do everything they get with one die then if necessary dagger. You want them to go first to avoid the miscast. So know I go to my level 2 bonus spell with shadow. If they get the hexes well everything that could benefit from dark has been cast. Some benefit for shooting not likely into cc. If you do it first most of the spells require 4 dice to cast effectively. If you get the bigger impact spells from shadow sure leave them to the end and let fly.

I guess the other thing is really what spells are you looking for and vs what armies.

Example:
Shadow love pendulum vs stanks, big monsters, war machines otherwise I don't care. mindrazor can be fun but really is usually just overkill. The toughness debuf is enough unless there is heavy armour. Str debuff I find highly situational, sweet with horror but really the base and the toughness debuff are what I want in most situations.

Metal I find is excellent vs very specific types of armies but otherwise I feel the other lores go better with our army.

Death makes me want to love it but I have yet to see the potential come through. Am I just not gettng this one?

Fire, only want 3 spells, base, sword and cage but the rest argh so situational.

[Ichiyo1821]

Which is exactly which Shadow for me is the best all comer lore we can have. The other lores are situational even Dark Magic but the versatility of Shadow's debuffs are amazing. Against any army and any list you may field the 3 debuff spells are useful. Pendulum, Pit of Shades and Mindrazor are more of clutch spells but can be devastating as log as you know which targets you should take out first. As for Steed of Shadows and the Shadow lore boon, well I haven't really tried pulling tricks with those but by concept and theory alone there's a lot of nastiness that await. Death would probably be the 2nd best lore as you can't go wrong with taking characters out but after testing the lore out, it seems to me that you need a Supreme Sorceress to really use the lore to it's fullest potential. Metal is good with permanent debuffs and solves most of DE's problem with armor but against lightly armored armies, I would still prefer the characteristic debuffs of Shadow or the killing power of Death. Dark falls somewhere between Shadow and Metal for me having lower casting costs with Dwellers's type spells and cool utility spells like Bladewind and Chillwind but again I still feel that there are better spells to achieve outcome I want or in my opinion compliments my army more. As for fire, the only real spells I like in that lore is Flame Cage and Sword of Ruin but aside from that, I feel the lore is too limited as I am not able to cast most of their spells while I'm in combat limiting their reliability.

[Svarthofthi]

Big fan of Doom and Darkness, had it go off on the enemy general and killed a unit flat out causing panic tests. Yum. General fled off the board with the unit that fled through them. Preeetty sweet.

Fate of Bjuna with even one wound can be useful vs other caster's cause if they live they are subject to stupidity for the rest of the game. All it takes is one failed LD check and they can't cast or dispel that round.

[Malus99]

Finally i came to the thought of why not a 4th dark and 2nd dark. I would have the dagger on the 4th and the tome and seal on the 2nd. It would mean I would have every dark spell and chillwind twice.

torture me if I am wrong but I believe you cannot have duplicates of spells of the same lore in an army unless you have a caster who gets predetermined, not random, spells (in our case Morathi) so the only time you can have two chillwinds is if you run Morathi and then another sorceress who can then roll for any dark spells. Having 7 randomly generated spells of the Dark lore is pointless because you cannot take duplicates of spells in the same army, so you cannot have 'two chillwinds' and so the Tome of Furion is wasted because you just won't get a 7th spell.

I think you can take 7 spells in the rulebook lores because they have a signature spell, and then 6 more spells, but Dark just has 6 so there is no point selecting 7 spells when you are only allowed 6.

On-topic, my opinion is that having a Lv4 dark is good, having a Lv2 with shadow, death or metal is my other choice, metal has several nice buffs and debuffs aswell as two nice unit-damaging spells. Shadow as has been previously mentioned is extremely versatile and Death is the only reliable way I've found of killing off my AoD, PoK dreadlord, and similarly annoying, 'unkillable' characters.

Metal, despite I think being inferior to shadow IMO in that it's damage potential is not as general use as shadow's, will always hold a special place in my heart in that, in 7th searing doom was the only way I could kill off Grimgor Ironhide and those annoying 1+ save heavy cavalry, and in 8th when I used final transmutation to kill an orc general, a Great shaman and 17 orcs in one go. Safe to say my opponent was really annoyed by that one. I melted the victims down and used the gold to fund my next raiding expedition the remnants of Shaman Wazkogg, Warboss Toofwacka and half his bodyguard are still circulating in Naggaroth's Monetary system to this day.

[Meteor]

Basic spells can be duplicated too, it says so in....the page just before the 8 lores of magic.

[Malus99]

ok, my bad.

[Greg]

If I am starting to get a better handle on it is it really just try and force some ok easy to cast spells out with the 4th then just let loose with the level 2 and if you get off a big one IF just go for it?

[Malus99]

to quote Dyvim Tvar in a 7th Edition magic tactica:

"The goal isn’t to avoid miscasts entirely—there isn’t
much you can do about that—but to minimize the
potential effect of a miscast. A miscast late in the
magic phase is much less harmful than a miscast
early. To minimize the possibility of an early miscast,
start with the spells that you are only rolling 1 or 2
dice on and work your way up. A corollary to this rule
is that all other things being equal, you should cast
with your low-level casters first. The simple reasoning
is that if you do suffer a disastrous miscast, it is
much better to lose a level 2 Sorceress than a level 4
High Sorceress.
Remember, there is nothing that requires you to cast
all your spells from one caster before moving on to
the next, so bounce around a bit if necessary, casting
a spell with one Sorceress, switching to a second,
and back to the first for a spell that requires more
power dice. So in planning your magic phase, you
should prioritize your spells as follows:
Low level caster—Low number of Power Dice
High level caster—Low number of Power Dice
Low level caster—High number of Power Dice
High level caster—High number of Power Dice
Again, this casting order won’t avoid miscasts
completely, but should help minimize their effects."

the entire article is in the may 2007 issue of the Druchii Herald which is archived on this site, the article was written for 7th but there are bits and pieces (like that one) which apply to 8th aswell

So yes. A miscast at the end of the phase won't shut down your magic so save the best for last, also means your opponent may have used up many DD earlier in the phase so if the spell is not cast with IF, it still can get through.

[A18no]

You're talking about 4 dices for the level 2, you should try this type of spell only if you got 8 or more dice from the winds of magic/channeling.

The lvl 4 dagger/dark lore will be the first caster each turn (providing you get 6 dices or more), she will cast with 1 dice all the spells she know (starting with the power of darkness), using the dagger only if necessary (ONLY when the spell is not cast). That way, she'll use 4-5 dices from the pool.

More often than not, your opponent will have use all his dispel dice. You can stop the dark casting at the moment your opponent has no dispel dice anymore. Maybe sometime it will be after the first/second spell (my opponents really hate black horror... don't know why :p). When your opponetn don't have dispel dice, you can start using big spells with the level 2. Mindrazor come easelly to mind. But take 2-3 games to try the boosted basic spell. Against High elf, the basic spells is WAY better than the 6th level one.

The boosted version is a 10+ casting (with a lvl 2, 3 dices will do the job). Against High elf, -1 WS make them hit on 4+ even elite against our core but you will hit on 3+ against equivalent unit (with re-roll it's 88% chance to hit), -1 ini screw them their re-roll from ASF! And we keep ours!!!

If your opponent keep all his dispel dice for the shadow caster, hey who cares, you've casted 5 spells actually!! What can you ask more?

Hope that help understand the dark/dagger casting!

Good games!

[Greg]

That is why I like the synergy of dark with shadow, I can use dark and make aunits bs/ws 1, do wounds to any member of the unit only str 2 but if i can lower their tou. I am just so excited to try it out again and again.

[Dyvim tvar]

I do like Dark Magic since, as has been previously noted, the casting values are relatively low and so you can cast a lot of spells. That being said, a number of the Dark Magic spells aren't quite as good as they used to be since there seem to be fewer small units. Too many armies can simply laugh at Chillwind, Doombolt and Bladewind. Soulstealer and Black Horror are good against many of the big blocks you see these days, but I think Shadow is probably the best lore overall.

[Greg]

Bladewind/ chillwind won't kill units but can still be very effective against war machines, something we are vulnerable to. I would also like to know how chillwind's causality clause will come into play now against war machines as you do remove a figure if it takes a wound.
Any thoughts on that?

Doombolt for me is the poor bastard child of the list.

[Meteor]

Yes, to me, the only useless spell in Dark Magic in 8th is Doombolt. It can still be useful though, against monsters that has a relatively high toughness since they'll always be running around solo. But it's a very situational spell, and there had only been a few times where I didn't drop it for our basic spell chillwind. Which is usually because there are no shooting targets to cast chillwind on.

Otherwise, everything else is still very useful. I never use chillwind with the thought of killing small units, it's always been used against a shooting block as a form of cover for my advancing units. Bladewind is useful for machines now since it can bypass the machine's toughness itself and go against the much easier to wound crew's toughness. Otherwise 3D6 attacks in general, that can be cast into combat, is just great.

The other great thing about Dark Magic is that 2/3 of its spells can be used throughout most of the game, ie at ranged AND in CC. Whereas a lore like Fire, your level 4 can be rendered fairly useless once they hit CC with you, since it shuts down more than half of the lore's spells.

Obviously your choice of lore is dependent on how your army functions. Dark and Shadow are great all rounder lores, fire and metal are more useful for a shooting based army, to maximise the use of those magic missiles and direct damage spells. Death is a strange lore for me, I imagine it'd be combat orientated since its damage spells are short ranged and its hexes have greater impact with CC.