Should competitive list bring magic?

[yukishiro1]

Dispel range is a big issue that empowers magic doms for sure. Rather than going to 18" dispel range, I'd rather do something slightly more complicated - you can dispel either within 12" of the caster, or within 12" of the target of that cast. It doesn't make sense that a wizard can't try to dispel a spell that is directly targeting the wizard or a close-by unit, just like it doesn't make sense that a wizard can attempt to dispel a buff halfway across the table. This means wizards can still be useful for dispelling offensive spells against themselves and their close-by allies no matter where the cast originates from - no more ridiculous stupid stuff with spell portal - but stops wizards from being able to shut down faction-key buffs cast halfway across the table. I think this would go a long way towards making magic more attractive for non-doms and towards reigning in the doms a little. 

It goes without saying that Slaan dispelling anywhere on the table should go away, too. Whoever thought that was a great idea should not be doing faction design. 

 

Edited July 19, 2021 by yukishiro1

[Enoby]

Is there a wargame game (not necessarily Warhammer) that has done magic well in a way that could be translated to AoS? 

[Landohammer]

Agreed. In competitive play I see two types of lists:

A - A list that will absolutely dominate magic, and shut down your magic phase (LRL, Tzeentch, Seraphon)

B - A list that has no magic or incidental magic. As in, a caster that has other roles or only taken to fill a battallion or hold an item. 

 

My response to this has been to only take wizards that can be productive when deployed far away. For example a Branchwraith summoning dryads, or a Tidecaster casting corrasion. Or to take casters that do other things well, so losing their casting isn't a big deal. (Drycha and Olynder)

[mmimzie]

37 minutes ago, Landohammer said:

 

 

My response to this has been to only take wizards that can be productive when deployed far away. For example a Branchwraith summoning dryads, or a Tidecaster casting corrasion. Or to take casters that do other things well, so losing their casting isn't a big deal. (Drycha and Olynder)

Thankfully arcane tome makes these more accessible. 

 

 

[Landohammer]

1 minute ago, mmimzie said:

Thankfully arcane tome makes these more accessible. 

 

 

Absolutely true. I am finding the Arcane Tome to be my go-to item for any list that doesn't lock my first artefact. 

[Beliman]

12 hours ago, Enoby said:

Is there a wargame game (not necessarily Warhammer) that has done magic well in a way that could be translated to AoS? 

I can only compare AoS magic to other games that I play:

• Asoiaf has a card-mechanic that you spend cards to do some special abilties or spells. Some of them are generics but the whole deck is made with faction/character specific cards, that can counter enemy ones or have a devastating effect. If you play casual, they are fine, but when you play a bit more competitive, they are not fun to play (at least in 1.6). A high competitive list that counters another deck can destroy the other player in a few rounds, worst than AoS. CMON is remaking ALL cards so you get the point that how unfun can be. I hope that they fix it.  [worst than AoS]
• Conquest: Last Argument of te Kings has simple but effective magic/prayer mechanic. Not powerful enough to destroy entire armies (it's more focused on buffs debuffs, and a flanking charge can be more devastating than a meteor, so good balance overall). Before the second FAQs, the game had a powerful wizard (note: a Dwarf... muhheheheheheh, praise Hashut!) that summoned a volcano under enemy units, but it was fixed really fast without destroying the army magic phase. Spells have a cast value and some of them can be improved (can be cast with some scaling to make it harder to dispell or more powerful or both) and can be unbind by the enemy, something like AoS. But, because Conquest has an activation-mechanic (build a deck, every card is one of your units and you activate them using an AA system, so you can't be reactive, you need to plan ahead each round) the whole gameplay has some interesting tactics to play around. Most important thing is that you don't lose the whole game if if your army can't cast that encourage enchantment or some of your soldiers tried to catch that meteor with their own hands. [better than AoS]    
• Malifaux has spells as some type of "action" with some unique features. If the spell is "physical" like an iceball or a fireball, the enemy can save with just Defense (their shield, defense abilities and armor are mixed in 1 stat). But if that magic is more about psychic power, the whole actions uses Willpower (Bravery+Intelect) and enemies can even try to block it. Having three types of dmg for 99.9% of the attacks/magic (low dmg, medium dmg and heavy/crit dmg) makes spells (and attacks) a bit more fun because even if you don't block that crazy dmg spell, maybe your unit will be hit with it's low dmg profile and both players will be happy because both had at least some accomplishment in that casting action (one blocking some magic, the other not losing his full dmg because someone dispelled your whole action).[better than AoS]    

Edited July 20, 2021 by Beliman

[Falandris]

9 hours ago, Liquidsteel said:

I think unbind range should be reduced to 18".

We now have a much smaller board to play with, it's time to let people actually play and enjoy the magic side of their armies.

Which is what we had in the first iteration of AoS btw. Never was a big fan of the 30" tbh.

[Leemer]

2 hours ago, KrispyXIV said:

Disagreed - I remember the days of trying to play a magic army when Dispel Scrolls were a thing, and they're toxic as hell when your primary game plan is already dependent on having proper positioning, making a casting roll, and the not having your spell unbound.  

Generally, there's a once per game point where a big spell really needs to have an impact - and allowing EVERYONE the guaranteed ability to take that away from you is the worst feeling in the world.  

Reigning in the current top casters is a reasonable goal/request - giving everyone the ability to flat out ruin any spell they want with no RNG is not a good solution.  

If they bring back the Dispel Scroll, it needs to be significantly reigned in from their historical power.  An extra unbind attempt a turn (anti-tome) or once per game reroll on an unbind check maybe.

The problem is that doesn't really fix the issue - any solution to the mega casters just makes the less mega casters even worse. 

Maybe its NPE, but IMO if an army falls apart because it can't deal with failing a big spell once a game maybe it's just not a very good list. Any good army should be flexible and I also can't think think of any spells like that in the current meta?

It does address the issue too. The value of a dispell scroll vs mega casters is much more than vs normal wizards. Plus if it's an artefact you have to include the opportunity cost of taking it vs other items.

[Dingding123]

I'm looking at my Mork's Mighty Mushroom as borderline useless after witnessing the SoB lists people have been flinging around.  We have to be picky with spells in general when lists are willing to be 5 models and nothing else lol.

[Enoby]

Thanks @Beliman for the rundown

It did get me thinking of how Pathfinder 2 (a roleplaying game) does magic. The previous incarnation (and DnD 5e) had a similar issue to AoS in a way, wherein a spell would either succeed (the enemy failed their save/you got passed their AC) or fail (the enemy passed their save/you didn't beat their AC). In Pathfinder 1 this meant that if you didn't have a good spell DC (the saving throw needed) you may as well not cast any spells that gives a saving throw. 

Pathfinder 2 solved this by having degrees of success, wherein if an enemy passes their save (but not critically passes) then the spell goes off with a minor effect - a consolation prize. 

It would be interesting to see this concept explore in AoS, where if you cast the spell but it's unbound, you get a small effect instead. For example, if a spell gave battleshock immunity then it'd just give +1 bravery instead. 

Obviously this would take a lot of work, but it might be worth it in the long run. Some spells couldn't have a minor effect.

[yukishiro1]

I really think unbind ranges are the key. If wizards could only unbind within 12" of the target or 12" of the caster, magic doms would be much less oppressive. Right now what really hurts is the inability to get faction key buffs off with your minor wizards because Nagash or a Lord of Change are halfway across the board shutting you down - or even worse with Kroak. If the enemy wizard actually had to be relatively close to either the caster or the target, you could play around them as long as your effects were not offensive in nature. And that's the issue right now - it doesn't matter if Kroak can shut down your 1d3 mortal wounds or whatever, it matters that he shuts down your ability to summon a wyldwood, or to return models to your units, or to teleport a unit, etc. A magic dom could still control a portion of the board, but not the whole board the way they can now. 

 

Edited July 19, 2021 by yukishiro1

[grimgold]

I spent some time thinking about this, and what if unbind just increased the difficulty of the spell? Spell casting is strongly bell curved because it's on 2d6, so if you increase the difficulty of a spell by even +1 you can greatly affect the chance of it going off. Lords of magic like Nagash and teclis might even add +2 (or +3 at the outside) to the difficulty. So in this scenario, is a wizard tries to get a mystic shield off (casting value 5) teclis could bump it to a 7, taking it from a 83% chance to a a 58% chance. However if you tired to cast Dark fire daemon rift (CV of 7) teclis could take it from a 58% chance to a 27% chance.

This would have a few advantages, first would be even if your outmatched in the magic phase you can still get some value from wizards. It's also faster than the current system, since no extra roll is required. You would also have to pick if you countered a spell before it's rolled, which would stop some of the cherry picking that makes extra unbinds so powerful. 

Edited July 19, 2021 by grimgold
engrish

[Rors]

I don't think the situation is that bad. Mega casters like Teclis and Nagash cost a huge amount of points and should dominante magic. Further to that, your small wizard isn't redundant if you position correctly or kill their big model, at which point you can swing the magic phase in your favor.

At the end of the day, models like Teclis and Krosk basically cast spells and really don't add much to other phases while costing a lot. So yes your opponent will have the advantage in magic but you like have the advantage in board coverage. If you look at a model like Teclis, that's a huge amount of points for 4 spells, and he doesn't do much else. So you can kind of look at the points cost per cast, and they're generally not very efficient. For example, Teclis pays 37 points per spell if he casts 4 a turn. A chaos sorcerer lord pays 23 and also offers mark synergies and other synergies. Further to that, if they die early, the point efficiency is even further in favor of the small wizard. If Teclis dies turn 3 he's only cast 12 spells. That's 61 points per spell! The sorcerer has paid 38 points a spell.

Teclis will win the magic phase against a sorcerer but your not wasting points on the sorcerer because statistically he'll get a spell/undind off during the game and your opponent isn't only commiting more points to wizards, he's commiting more points per spell. Meanwhile, most small wizards have additional synergies that buff the army where the big casters tend to only be big casters.

Edited July 20, 2021 by Rors

[yukishiro1]

I don't think the complaint is that they're underpointed (though Kroak still is), it's the experience being on the receiving end. You can have a totally balanced game (AOS isn't, but you could) that was nevertheless a chore to play because it wasn't fun for one player. Teclis' points could go down and he'd be less of an all or nothing choice if he wasn't able to auto-unbind at 30" and therefore more or less completely shut down said chaos sorceror. Chaos player still gets to use his toys, LRL player gets to have more toys. I don't think that's a loser for either party. 

[Kadeton]

The role of minor wizards is really crippled by the restriction on attempting the same spell more than once (in Matched Play only, but that's the default game mode for almost everyone). That allows the super-casters to cancel the opponent's key spells, unless they have a super-caster of their own. If redundant casting was allowed (i.e. a spell could be attempted multiple times, but only successfully cast once per turn) then enough little wizards could break through a super-caster's magical defences to deliver an important spell just through weight of numbers.

[Rors]

But part of what they paying for is the unbind too. The point I'm making is that in my opinion, from a competitive standpoint, a lot of the big casters dominanting the magic phase isn't as powerful as it seems and it's not always as much of a loss for small casters as it seems.

Ballance isn't perfect, Kroak is undercoated for example. Morathi refusing to die also makes her spells more efficient which is a problem. However that's solved by bringing his points up not by changing how magic dominance works.

If there was a balance factor to really let small wizards play more, id change unbinding so that when someone casts, you can declare how many wizards will attemot to unbind before rolling. They still only have the however many their scroll says though.

That way, a handful of small wizards could hang up on shutting down a particular spell.

[yukishiro1]

Again, people aren't talking about balance. I made the point about Teclis' points being able to go down if they made magic doms less good at shutting down less powerful wizards precisely to illustrate that. The issue isn't that Teclis is too cheap, it's that it isn't fun to have your caster totally nullified (as a caster) by the opponent's better caster. 

Put another way, what is good competitively about having a system where the magic dom can effectively shut down the non-magic dom caster? Does this produce interactive gameplay that fosters a sense of agency? No. Does it produce interesting gameplay? Not really, at least not in any way I can see. What's the gain from a design standpoint having a system where powerful casters not only cast powerfully but also more or less totally shut down less powerful ones? Because there is a real loss of both agency and in terms of the strategies that are competitive. If magic doms couldn't shut down normal casters so effectively, all sorts of builds would open up, especially in less powerful factions. What's the loss that would occur to outweigh that gain? 

People don't generally play wargames to watch their guys not be able to do things. It's the same reason that total eclipse is so hated. Nobody enjoys taking models and then not being able to do anything with them, whether the opponent has paid the correct points for that or not. 

Edited July 20, 2021 by yukishiro1

[Rors]

That's a fair argument. Personally it doesn't bother me because it's usually a trade off where I get to do more in other phases because I have more points invested in those. I do see what you're saying though and I suspect more people fall in line with your perspective than mine looking through this thread.

I'm okay with my sorerer casting less because I generally have more units to move and more to do in other phases. I also run Be'lakor so.. it'd be hypocritical of me to complain about the feel bad of a model doing nothing.

[yukishiro1]

I think the contrast with priests, particularly in 3.0, is illustrative. Priests can't dominate each other; I mean, they can banish invocations and I guess in theory smite each other (which you never would except if you're out of range of anything else), but that's it. There's no "priest dom" issue. So when you bring a priest...it never feels useless. It can always do stuff. It's a feels-good, not a feels-bad like happens when you take a wizard, or worse, several wizards, only to find your opponent's list renders your wizards impotent.

If there's a good reason why wizards should be doms and subs while priests just get to do their thing no matter what, I haven't found anyone who can explain it. 

Edited July 20, 2021 by yukishiro1

[Kadeton]

51 minutes ago, yukishiro1 said:

If magic doms couldn't shut down normal casters so effectively, all sorts of builds would open up, especially in less powerful factions. What's the loss that would occur to outweigh that gain?

Cynically? The "loss" in that scenario would be the loss of super-casters as a viable playstyle. They're taken specifically because they can dominate both magic phases - if they didn't, the meta would shift towards cheaper wizards. Like it or not, GW has a strong incentive to keep big, expensive centrepiece models being used as much as possible.

[Beliman]

9 hours ago, Enoby said:

Pathfinder 2 solved this by having degrees of success, wherein if an enemy passes their save (but not critically passes) then the spell goes off with a minor effect - a consolation prize. 

That's an interesting take on the magic phase. I think that's one of the best mechanics to play with.

[yukishiro1]

5 minutes ago, Kadeton said:

Cynically? The "loss" in that scenario would be the loss of super-casters as a viable playstyle. They're taken specifically because they can dominate both magic phases - if they didn't, the meta would shift towards cheaper wizards. Like it or not, GW has a strong incentive to keep big, expensive centrepiece models being used as much as possible.

Not if they came down in points accordingly (and less powerful wizards probably went up a bit to reflect the inability to shut them down so easily). Then that opens up more builds with the big characters in them, which is a net win. If Teclis was only, say, 600 points instead of 740, it'd be a lot easier to fit him into your list, and the Teclis lists you could run would be quite a bit more varied and interesting. 

Not to mention their points coming down is itself a win for GW, because it means people have to pay more money to get a 2000 point army. Those big models actually aren't great for GW from a $ point of view, they're pointed much more efficiently than most other stuff from a dollars-to-points point of view.

Edited July 20, 2021 by yukishiro1

[Kadeton]

3 minutes ago, yukishiro1 said:

Not if they came down in points accordingly. Then that opens up more builds with the big characters in them, which is a net win. If Teclis was only, say, 600 points instead of 740, it'd be a lot easier to fit him into your list, and the Teclis lists you could run would be quite a bit more varied and interesting.

Great in theory, I suppose. In practice, getting the whole spectrum of capability (in this case, wizardly power) appropriately costed and represented almost never works, especially at the extremes (and especially especially for GW's balance team). I'd expect that the tipping point where minor casters become "viable" is also the exact same point at which super-casters become "trash", simply because that's generally how these things go.

[Sleboda]

13 hours ago, KrispyXIV said:

Disagreed - I remember the days of trying to play a magic army when Dispel Scrolls were a thing, and they're toxic as hell when your primary game plan is already dependent on having proper positioning, making a casting roll, and the not having your spell unbound.  

Exactly. I always used to try to my anti-dispel scroll opinion across by pointing out that there is no "negate combat" scroll, for example. Howv annoying would it be to move into position, accurately guess your charge distance (old days), make the roll, pick up your 20 attack dice, and then hear your opponent say "I use my negate combat scroll. All of your attacks miss."

No thanks.

Dispel scrolls were awful.

 

[yukishiro1]

Teclis is a dispel scroll, that works every turn. Kroak is better than one in most ways. LoC or Kairos' average unbind roll is a 10. Etc etc. 

If dispel scrolls were awful (and they were, though they were a necessary band-aid for an otherwise broken system)...the current magic dom is just as bad if you're on the receiving end of it. The problems with dispel scrolls are essentially the same problems AOS' magic system has with magic doms. 

Edited July 20, 2021 by yukishiro1