The School of the Arcane

[Ragian Cain]

This is an amazing font of collected knowledge. Top work Dalamar!

I'm finding it really useful when deliberating over the Lore for my Fast Cav of Doom army.

[kaloomte]

Thank you Dalamar for these write-ups--they are REALLY helpful.

[Dalamar]

More coming I'm glad someone finds my incoherent drivel helpful.

[Zenith]

Very nice, Thanks for the effort.

I'm leaning towards a warlock unit of 7 and use only one lvl 1 scroll caddy, using the lore of beast or perhaps, lore of heavens. The default spells are very usefull!
Heavens protect our precious executioners against templates.

[Dalamar]

I ran out of character limit in the original post! (which I also found out is 60,000!)
Two new lores available for viewing, Heavens and Shadow.

Enjoy!

[Datalink7]

Just would quickly note, a bit off topic as it isn't Dark Elf, but the Shadow Lore Attribute can be fun if you play Beastmen.

Have a Level 4 Beast Shamen with Shadow, Skin of Man (for scouting) on a chariot. Charge something, then use the lore attribute to swap places with your Beastlord on Chariot.

But yeah, not as useful for us.

[Thraundil]

Great writeups as usual. You pretty much hit the nail on the head with those two lores. Heavens is "the answer" to one of the DE problems, a heavy shooting reliant list. Against most others foes, I honestly believe there are other lores that do a better job. In regards to the MSU-destroyer lvl 6 spell, I honestly kinda think DE excels at facing MSU. ASF begs for a lot of small units to turn into mincemeat before they can strike back.

With regards to lore of shadows, you take the lore to get pit of shades and miasma, imo. While the pit scatters, the fear of it alone can make opponents think twice before putting their precious MC/monsters, yes even their steam tank, in the line of fire. Miasma the unit once, then pit it. Theres a 50% chance that the most targets just vanish. Shadow offers great battlefield control, and that is why you should take this lore. Hex his combat block with withering, you can be sure he wont be charging you next round. He must think of where to place his typical big threats to our army. Mindrazor can sure be nice, but like Dalamar points out it is predictable. Sure, if you can somehow hold up his MC for a round, then mindrazor a unit and take them out. Which again forces him to think very carefully about his position. Shadow is hard to use to its full potential, but one of the very strong lores. Some might argue that our own hex, word of pain, beats out lore of shadow though

[Kargan daemonclaw]

The problem with shadow is that the casting values are so high it is tight to get many spells off. It also struggles early game to force out the dispel scroll. Pitis useful against some foes but elva and chaos warriors will launch it off unless you cast miasma first which tips your hand.
Pendulum is not a cannonball it's big drawback is that it only does d3 wounds most monster can shrug that off.

It would be great to get a summary of which loves are good for a lvl4 and which ar good for a lvl2

[Haagrum]

Excellent write up, Dalamar, as always. :-)

In relation to Harmonic Convergence - correct me if I'm wrong (don't have the BRB to hand), but it is not limited to close combat attacks. Rerolls of 1s to hit and to wound could be very handy for the bubble version of the spell if the caster is hanging back near a battery of Reapers and/or Darkshards, or even near a Scourgerunner Chariot. Furthermore, our cavalry mounts and chariots' impact hits should benefit from this spell too (they don't benefit from Murderous Prowess), and our Executioners will get some protection against fluffed to hit rolls.

None of these break the game, but they make Harmonic Convergence more appealing and not a "wasted" spell.

[Dalamar]

If you swap a chariot you're missing out on impact hits as the new chariot didn't complete a charge.

Yeah, harmonic convergence works for shooting but it's not a huge boost. Still something is better than nothing.

As for lore for level 4 or level 2 I try to slip in the summary at the end which level I would with for the lore, if I don't then it means the lore is equally good for the main wizard as it is for a support one.

I still believe that Dark is the best lore we have access to (because we don't have access to slaanesh magic <. <)

[Kir]

Furthermore, our cavalry mounts ... should benefit from this spell too (they don't benefit from Murderous Prowess), and our Executioners will get some protection against fluffed to hit rolls.

I'm sorry, did they FAQ murderous prowess? I haven't kept up with the FAQ at all. But book-wise only, about every single mount we have posesses murderous prowess, as demonstrated by the cold one knights and warlocks entry, which specify ASF and hatred as being riders only and murderous prowess for the entire unit. Same with most of our monsters.
More on topic, i found a lv4 life to be really great in a bigger group of warlocks with the sacdagger, to regain their numbers, and pulling of some great buffs exactly where needed, or to cannonball things at fancy angles (frost phoenix and dragon with the same "cannonball", eat that!).

[Dragon9]

No, mounts do not have Muderous Prowess. It says so right in the rule. No need for a FAQ for that.

[Gerner]

Kir - Read the Description of the Muderous Prowess rule.

I would personally never ever take a Level 4 Life SS and put her with Warlocks and never with the Sac Dagger!
How can you "cannonball" something with Life SS? What do you mean with cannonball?

[xFallenx]

This is by far one of the most useful topic's in a long time. I'm always excited to see an e-mail for a new update. Thanks for De-mystifying the lore’s for us Dalamar.

Are you planning on hitting up the army specific lore's once you made it through the BRB entries? I know that they aren't available to us, but seeing your take on the synergies within them would be a great help for players taking on Daemons, Lizards, HE's ect...

[Dalamar]

I know I'm still not done and it's been slipping my mind. I'll try to finish the writeup this week.

As for the other lores, I only have the high elf and skaven books so I would be limited to plague, ruin, and high magics.

[xFallenx]

I could probably help you out with those, drop me a PM & I'll see what I can do.

[T.D.]

Excellent thread.

Also just noticed this one:

5: Regrowth
It is also the ultimate evil to sacrifice someone for spell fuel and then bring them back to do it again.

ROFL

[Dalamar]

One of these days I want to field a large-ish unit of Bleakswords, maybe with the Shrine, and a level 4 life sorceress with the dagger. See how that goes

[T.D.]

One of these days I want to field a large-ish unit of Bleakswords, maybe with the Shrine, and a level 4 life sorceress with the dagger. See how that goes

Truly Evil.

Bonus points for finding a use for Bleakswords

[Dalamar]

I don't expec it will work at all though I find lore of life very underwhelming and gimmicky (dwellers ftw!)

[marcopollo]

I would be interested in your opinions on the arcane items as part of this thread. It is so hard to fit some of them into an "all-comers" list.

[Dalamar]

If we're talking Dark Elven ones... Tome of Furion opens and closes the list, I don't think Sacrificial Dagger is worth it unless you take Lore of Life... and I don't think Lore of Life is worth it given the other choices we have.

If we're talking generic ones, dispel scroll if you don't take tome of furion or if you have non-dark lore/second sorceress to carry it. Then Channeling staff is pretty handy. The rest I consider gimmicky and not good enough for an all-comers (but next time you are playing against High Elves and you know they will bring the Loremaster, bring the Hex Scroll and laugh your ass off at the level 2 lord wizard)

[Setomidor]

Thanks for a great writeup Dalamar, very useful!

The problem with shadow is that the casting values are so high it is tight to get many spells off. It also struggles early game to force out the dispel scroll. [snip]

Completely agree, but I found Warlocks to complement Shadow very nicely. With the low damage suffered as part of miscast, you can just chuck plenty of dice at Doombolts in the early turns of the game. If you double six -- Great! 2D6 S5 will hopefully inflict a lot of pain. If you don't, the enemy may be forced to use his dispel scroll early on and your Shadow magic will be harder to stop in the coming turns.

I agree that the Shadow Lore attribute is situational, and as Dalamar said before we used to mostly field characters with different troop types (Sorc on Foot, Pegs, possibly Cauldron). However, with the new Fast Cav rule for Dark Steeds I think that we will se a lot more Sorceresses and Masters on Steeds, and this makes the Lore attribute more easily applicable. As an example, I prefer to run my mounted Sorceress in the Warlock unit to benefit from the Wardsave, but this means they are less prone to making a charge into CC. In both of my recent games, I used Smoke and Mirrors after making a supporting charge to switch her with my nearby BSB (who was among Dark Riders with the Ring of Hotek in the Backfield of the army), benefitting both from the extra combat prowess and from the bonus CR from the BSB.

[Ilderoth]

Here are my two cents…

I actually think that the Sacrificial Dagger is still very good. The combination of the fact that the item will ‘consume’ more models and that the points for our models have gone up simply means that you have to change the way in which you use the Sacrifical Dagger. You should use it as a fairly cheap insurance policy for (1) those situations in which you fail to meet the casting value of a spell (which would end your magic phase), and (2) those instances in which you really have to dominate a magic phase because it will make or break your game (how many times have we experienced those situations in which we needed a really good magic phase but rolled poorly for the winds of magic?).

Another point concerns your statement regarding the usefulness of Lore of Light. I think that this lore is not a support lore at all – at least not for us Dark Elves. In fact, I would say it is the ultimate toolbox for Dark Elves (well this may be a bit exaggerating, but it comes close in my experience). Currently I am playing a list with a level 4 (with sacrificial dagger), a level 2 (with dispel scroll) and a level 1, each with lore of light. I place them in the second rank of a unit of 27 or 32 bleakswords with a bloodwrack shrine. I can tell you, it is insanely good. To begin with, this setup gives me all the spells of the lore, making it a toolbox that can be used against every single (type of) army I might face. In addition, I have a S6 Banishment. Although I do not only choose the lore of light for this spell, I think the spell is far better than you give credit for, Dalamar. It is not just a bunch of D6 hits it offers; these 2/3 D6 hits enable me to deal with things I otherwise cannot deal with (easily) - Daemon Princes and Frost Phoenixes come to mind (and the list goes on and on…really, it does).

[Dalamar]

That's what a support lore is actually. Not because you use it on a level 2 supporting sorceress, but because most of its spells focus on making your units better and quite a few of them having the option to bubble.

As for the banishment again... you're looking af 2d6 S5 hits if you spend the points for a second sorceress and keep them close by... do you really think a frost phoenix (T6 5++) or a demon prince (T5 re-rollable 2+ and 5++) are really worried by a couple of S5 hits before they fly behind you and force you to make a hard decision of facing the rest of their army or turning around?