House-rules, what do you use and what would you like to see?

[Killax]

Hi guys,

As Im enjoying AoS more and more I really think that AoS since the Generals Handbook has created a game for me to like in all kinds of settings. I love this! Though I also feel there are certain things to improve. Luckily the GH also covers that anyone can use any House-rules as they like and as a result we've allready seen some fantastic events using them. Such as the SCGT House-roles, Adepticon, LVO, you name it!

Now what I'd love to know is what your personal House-rules are if you use any locally. This topic isn't to judge made up rules but to simply share some of the insights, only to improve the game experience of Age of Sigmar. 

So being the one who made the topic, I'll share some of the gripe's I have with the current suggestions made by the Core Rules and Generals Handbook. While it seems easy to bash on it, my intend isn't to show where improvement is 'required' but only where I deem the game could benifit from some additional rules or some easy changes.

Starting of with the CORE RULES
1. Shooting Phase, I'd really like to test out the idea that your Missle Attack range goes to 3" per model if that model has an enemy model within 3" of it. 
- This means shooting becomes a little less of a Hero sniper deal the moment you actually are in "melee combat". Other than that I don't think there is much wrong with this Core Rule. Heroes are both very powerful in the game and certainly linchpins. While I do not dislike the idea of stopping Hero-sniping I also think that it can be a viable part of turn 1 but after that becomes more difficult to do.
Wording part could be added to the Shooting Phase:

Quote

Any model that has enemy models within 3" of them will have their Missle Attack range set to 3".

Pro: I believe the biggest pro is the narrative aspect. As using "true LoS" can be both a boon and a bless. To me this is a simple rule that doesn't care for model size (thus coversion) and doesn't feel illogical based on popculture understanding of 'point blank shooting'. 
Con: Shooting becomes slightly worse for the second and following turns if your opponent has a really fast force, you can't point and click.

X. Shared Phases. There is a whole other wonderful topic on shared turns or unit to unit activation as is done like the Combat Phase but I'd like to give Shared Phases a try aswell. Why? I feel it would add a tactical depth that puts less stress on the dice roll for the 'turn'. Which further could or should balance out things with every player having their 'shields up'.
Pro: Adds tactical depth, allows both players to do things and starting out with the Hero and Movement phase is a disadvantage where starting out in the Charge, Shooting and Combat phase becomes an advantage again. 
Con: Removes easy to play aspect, mistakes can be 'punished' much harder and the game thakes on a chess-like tactical window.

Next up things from Battletomes and Generals Handbook, largely focued on Matched Play:
1. The Three Rules of One, I get what they do, I would prefer this:

Quote

Rules of War
- Named abilities can only be applied to a Unit once. (SCGT House-rule)
- Abilities resolve using the order of mathematical operations (not like however you want to resolve them)
- A roll of 1 always fails. This applies to the roll after any re-rolls have been taken, but before modifiers are applied.
- A roll of 6 always succeeds. This applies to the roll after any re-rolls have been taken, but before modifiers are applied.
- Each spell can be attempted to be cast once per wizard per turn. However should the casting roll include two or more 1's the spell immediatly fails, no modifiers can be applied, no re-rolls can be made. In addition the wizard suffers D3 Wounds that cannot be saved by any kind of save. 
- Any extra attacks, hit rolls or wound rolls gained by the use of an ability cannot themselves generate extra attacks, hit rolls or wound rolls.

Pro: Taking back some of the good rules from older ages and other systems. Wizards can cast as they please but abilities are restricted and there is a catch to rolling double 1's. In addition a rolled 6 always does the trick. 
Con: No catchy name to remember them.

2. Battlefeld Roles: Battleline, I'd be in favour to remove Battleline. The reasons are simple:
Pro: The sub-sub-sub-factions become irrelevant, Battalions become true to the narrative, always a possible army.
Con: The last Warhammer Fantasy suggestion is removed? 
*Note that other restrictions will remain  I totally get that Age of Sigmar is supposed to be an Army game, though the issue for me is that the Battleline units we have now arn't worse or remotely compairable to WFB's old "Core Unit" system. My thake on this is that if someone for example wants to run an all Cavalry force they should be able to do it, no questions asked. 

Lastly there is offcourse some debate possible about Point Costs for things like Skyfires, Sayls or Kunnin' Ruk, though I think that some of these rules do add a specific weakness to them, more as for say your 'simple melee' units.

I'd love to see more ideas, also for Reinforcement Units. Granted I do think that Death in particular could solve this with upcomming Battle Traits.

Cheers,
 

[Greasygeek]

We use a simple shooting house rule.

units cannot draw line of sight through a scenery piece (lakes and ponds are exceptions).

So units can hide behind scenery pieces but as soon as they enter that piece they will become visible again. 

[Killax]

20 minutes ago, Greasygeek said:

We use a simple shooting house rule.

units cannot draw line of sight through a scenery piece (lakes and ponds are exceptions).

So units can hide behind scenery pieces but as soon as they enter that piece they will become visible again. 

Cool! Reminds me of the scgt rule aswell. 

How do you guys check heights and such for this? Or do players not convert or make elaborate bases?

[mdkinker]

7 minutes ago, Killax said:

Cool! Reminds me of the scgt rule aswell. 

How do you guys check heights and such for this? Or do players not convert or make elaborate bases?

One of the ways to read that is that you wouldn't check anything other than whether the line of sight would have to pass over a non-flat terrain piece to reach the potential target. So, a Treelord Ancient standing on the other side of a wall that the Treelord towers over by several inches? Not in LoS. I think I like that reading of the rule as it dramatizes the Treelord hiding behind the wall.

Not to say that that's what Greasygeek intended, but it's a way to do it that I like.

Maybe certain units wouldn't be able to "hide" in such a way (warmachines, etc.)?

[Greasygeek]

Not sure about your question but will try to answer. 

Heights: All of our scenery is based so its fairly easy to say when units are behind a scenery piece or standing inside it. Therefore the height is rarely relevant. Before a game we always agree on what scenery pieces provide cover, can hide units, is impasseable and which are not.

Example wood scenerys will provide cover and units may hide behind those too. A pond may provide cover but units cannot hide behind those.

Edited...

Yeah basically what Mdkinker said. However I can see that this rule might get complicated or illogical for some scenery pieces especially for those really competitive players out there. 

It works fine for us though as we use a bit of common sense and clear things up before games begin.

Come to think of it I guess you can say we use a few other house rules. One being about only adding 1-3 arcane, mystical, inspiring, deadly, etc. Scenery pieces. In our experience a few of those will see a lot more use than if all scenery have extra options to them. Players simply loose track of their scenery options with too many around.

last rule we use is about battlerounds. Turns switch no diceroll and therefore no chance of going first two BR in a row. Must admit I am currently having second thoughts about this one but I fear that it leaves to much up to chance if we do not stick with this house rule.

 

Btw. Despite our hide behind scenery rule, heroes still get sniped way to easy. I am all for that max 3" range when in combat.

[Killax]

6 minutes ago, Greasygeek said:

Before a game we always agree on what scenery pieces provide cover, can hide units, is impasseable and which are not.

Example wood scenerys will provide cover and units may hide behind those too. A pond may provide cover but units cannot hide behind those.

Cool! Looking forward to more. 

[Asensur]

We use all the rules of open play and all the rules of matched play. We use a simple points system (not made for balance, but like the power system of the new 40k edition).

As an example, here are our scores for stormcast eternals:

64 points (drakesworn, stardrake)

32 points (celestant-prime)

16 points (celestant on dracoth/aquilor)

8 points (dracothian guard/palladors/foot heroes)

4 points (raptors/paladins/retributors)

2 points (liberators/judicators/hunters/gryphhounds/aetherwings)

Battalions cost 0 points. All scrolls & battalions are 0-1 except when a battalion lets you field more units or battalions (battalions are used as a FoC)

Then we have a glory score and mana score. Glorys score is the total points of models with the totem keyword or a command ability. Mana score is the total points of models with the wizard or priest keywords.

After deploying armies, we count all points and get the following bonuses:

The player with higher glory points rolls the open triumph table.

The player with less points rolls the matched triumph table.

For every 24 points of difference, the player with less points gets to choose a sudden death objective (there must be a different target each time).

Mana points are expended on the following:

Summon new units, expanding existing units - pay points as mana

Summon scenery - 4 points

Enchanting a scenery piece with a misterious landscape attribute (before first turn) - 4 points. (We call these enchantments and protections before the battle).

Also, on scenery anyone can bring up to six scenery pieces (and battalions) for deploy in a 120x180 cm board

[chord]

We tend to play for shooting that you have to be able to see the majority of the model's "body" in order to target it.

[rokapoke]

3 hours ago, Auticus said:

this was also veto'd as houserule garbage

Dude, your local group sounds completely toxic. 

[Killax]

7 hours ago, chord said:

We tend to play for shooting that you have to be able to see the majority of the model's "body" in order to target it.

Interesting! But how do you decide this? Could you give visual examples?

I personally think that AoS really benifits from the Games Workshop foundation that is, play as you like, convert as you like. The downside of this for true LoS rules is that it does not mix well with this. For the moment you'd make something bigger then that size difference might lead to a disadvantage or advantage that is uncalled for.

While I did not mention it, as I assume most players do not work like it is written anymore:
1. The advantage of base to base measurement remains that the model on top on it could be anything, as opposed to not.
2. The disadvantage of model to model measurements is that you cant use model alternatives or older models even. 

Immagne we still had that rule where the blade of the model would be a check to see if he could attack another. Kharadron overlords would then always win over Moonklan.

5 hours ago, Auticus said:

The group I run campaigns for is mostly anti-house rules.  As such I have to find existing time of wars etc that accomplish what I want so that I can say they aren't houserules.

I was using alternate activation in our campaign but half of our group said they would never use that so to keep things from getting heated / conflicted during our monthly campaign days, I scrapped it.

I use azyr comp to calculate power levels and keep tournament level lists separate.  This mostly works well except we have  a competitive player that believes that there is no such thing as tournament powered lists and that they are just AOS lists, and people should git gud and make better lists.

The one house rule we are using since alt activation was rejected by the group is that you don't roll initiative every turn.  The turns stay the same throughout.  This one was acceptable as some tournaments use this rule.  

Was using forests block line of sight, but this was also veto'd as houserule garbage.  So instead the campaign is in the Realm of Fire, where there is a time of war in the first realmgates book that states all terrain blocks line of sight as its on fire.  

Essentially now forests... and everything else... block line of sight thanks to official GW rules.

Anti-house rules does sound bitter to me, I mean to me it translates to "We don't want improvements".

Especially the alternate activation rules could offer an really cool experience. The git gud mentality really doesn't apply for AoS, simply because the fact that you have to face your opponent means there is a social contact and thus contract. It's a pitty to see some players acting as if this is a PC game where both players hide behind their screens.

The last part on not alternating turns seems like an excellent rule to me! 

As I believe that the core of the missle attack issues very much comes from the core rules and that terrain is only a way to migate it's effect I'd gladly see the rules revolving around that a little. To me shooting into something that is within 3" of you is not only logical from a narrative standpoint but also truely from a gaming standpoint.

Cheers,

[Killax]

24 minutes ago, Auticus said:

I asked this very question.  Several times in fact over the many years.  Here are the answers to the question "why no house rules?".  This comes from both local players and people that are on forums (to include this very forum, #1 below came from a recent thread on this very site)

1) because the person doing the house rules is saying they are smarter than the game designers and his ego is out of control.  If I wanted to play Age of <insert event organizers' name>-Mar, I'd play that.  But I want to just play AOS.  

2.  the house rules are biased and will reflect the event organizers bias, which could ****** me over.

3.  I want to play the same game that everyone on the internet is playing.  Otehrwise I can't really talk about my games because they are just house ruled silly version of AOS and I have no point to share my stories with others, who will disregard my stories as house ruled garbage.

4.  The rules designers designed the game in such a way that I bought with my hard-earned money and painted with my very little free time to take advantage of.  House rules take away the loop holes that I exploit and its not fair.  If they didn't want m e to take advantage of those loop holes they wouldn't have included them in the game and you have no right to change the game and invalidate my army.  

Good to see the reflection, it helps understand where some come from. Somehow there is stigma on House-rules and I don't think that stigma improves anything. 

I personally think that House-rules should be anything but an ego polisher, the beauty of House rules to me are that they arn't attached to a single name but rather have a review of a community. This is the prime reason as to why I wanted this topic and hope to see more imput.

Certain House-rules can be biased, though as with any idea or suggestion I do believe that data can be obtained and used as a validation for changes.
We can currently see that at Adepticon, LVO and SCGT, all respectable large events, a returning trend occurs. A trend that indeed is very much focused on pieces like Sayl, Skyfires and Kunnin Rukk. There are more examples, certain factions have more tactical choices but I do think that overall if there is something to be said about Age of Sigmar it's how the Shooting Phase does not follow any restriction and no House-rule to date seems to adres this.
On the other side we can say that Summonning likely follows too many restrictions as we do not see it showing up high in any event.

What has become clear to me is that everybody plays this game locally in a different manner. Logical because Games Workshop at the bare minimum offers 3 options that can all easily be defined by another 3 options aswell (as mixes of each other). To me the suggestion that everybody plays AoS the same is a lie.

Lastly I believe that Games Workshop and the team that worked on the Generals Handbook and Battletomes do intend to make the game as fun as possible. The task of handing out points per units isn't that easy. Knowing how fast the AoS content has to be produced I also believe that in many cases a cost is given based on quick handful of games and by other faction comparison. What is clear to me is that GW doesn't intend to put a strict cost on synergy and this is also why Battalions sometimes can do more as their cost suggests. In many cases if something is off, it's only by a small margin honestly.

 

[Ollie Grimwood]

Measure to base is a house rule most seem comfortable with

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Killax]

1 hour ago, Ollie Grimwood said:

Measure to base is a house rule most seem comfortable with

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

I think it's the most obvious one aswell  I think the biggest advantage gained here is that it doesn't really matter whats on the base, meaning that the model on it can be anything.

To some the downside seems that larger bases have a disadvantage, which in certain cases is true and in certain cases is false, as the 'board control' a large base gives is an advantage which we don't speak of too much. However I think this advantage would be more obvious if we included a House-rule that would state that enemy models within 3" of a model has it's missle attacks reduced to 3". 

In many cases the latter would give a nice advantage to monsters and larger based models, to the disadvantage they might have in melee or due to placement in a terrain heavy board.

Speaking of which! Do you guys also use proxy bases if you are uncertain if a model would fit, or physically doesn't fit due to the pose but the base will?
I know many Warmachine and Malifaux players use this nice little widget to resolve possible placement issues.

[Killax]

While I know I'm putting myself in the light by posting this, but from my perspective here are 3 suggestions for 3 problematic Warscrolls:

Unit Warscroll:
Sayl: Up the cost to 200 points; fully knowing this is heavy handed but the Spell he has remains amazing and casting it at 3D6 without downside to me implies that he can actually carry that cost. It's quite drastic but I don't believe that there is any other way unless other abilities are affected.
Tzaangor Skyfires: Up the cost to 180 points; still amazing at this level and in line with the cost we see for Wrathmongers and Putrid Blightkings. I think that at this level they will still be amazing, unless the Shooting phase is drastically altered.

Battalion Warscroll:
Kunning Rukk: I personally see no alternative at this cost to simply state that it's effect should be a Once per Battle ability. At 60 points this effect is amazing. I understand that it keeps certain choices afloat but again unless the Shooting Phase is drastically altered I do not think that this Battalion should cost 60 points. It could perhaps be this effect if the Battalion contains the maximum ammount of units.

Would love to read some feedback or suggestions on problematic Warscrolls!

[Tidings]

I quite like the 3" combat range rule. Doesn't nerf shooting too much, and makes more sense that they would be focused on the immediate threat. 

My group quickly put these house rules in place:

• Measuring from base
• No rolling for initiative. We all hated losing (or winning) because of a coin toss. 
• Terrain blocks line of sight if you are on the other side of it (within reason, a treelord towers above small fences, rocks, etc)
• If you are more than 3" inside a terrain feature, your line of sight is blocked as if you were on the other side of the terrain.
• AoS range rule changed from "you count as in range so long as any model from the unit is within ___ distance" to "you count as in range so long as at least HALF of your unit is within ___ distance." This prevents stuff like daisy-chaining a string of skeletons to a character to keep a 30 man unit "in range" of the buff.

[Killax]

That sounds great, measuring from base to base is almost a given at this point but I do hope that we will eventually see this rule return. I do know that this might alienate the last fans of square bases but as someone who also has closets full of 2008's Chaos I personally think that AoS can grow when it owns up to being it's own game and doesn't have a foot in WFB for some reason. This is also why I do not like the Battleline rule, it restricts army builds for no obvious reason as 'because'.

I think one of the advantages we can also consider is to aplly the 3" rule for many things! Such as granting cover to models if the terrain piece is 3" or higher and or models that are indeed within 3" of a terrain feature etc.

Personally I do think that daisy chaining is an interesting concept despite the fact it can look stupid. I'd love to hear some concensus on that aswell. I personally don't care too much...

[rokapoke]

9 minutes ago, Killax said:

That sounds great, measuring from base to base is almost a given at this point but I do hope that we will eventually see this rule return. I do know that this might alienate the last fans of square bases but as someone who also has closets full of 2008's Chaos I personally think that AoS can grow when it owns up to being it's own game and doesn't have a foot in WFB for some reason. This is also why I do not like the Battleline rule, it restricts army builds for no obvious reason as 'because'.

Perhaps battleline restrictions are there "just because" it helps to restrict spamming more powerful units. If you think Skyfire/Kurnoth Hunter spam is bad now, wait until you see what happens when you open up more points to those players.

[Killax]

11 minutes ago, rokapoke said:

Perhaps battleline restrictions are there "just because" it helps to restrict spamming more powerful units. If you think Skyfire/Kurnoth Hunter spam is bad now, wait until you see what happens when you open up more points to those players.

The thing remains that it doesn't help at all. As we can see how Skyfires and other strong pieces still dominate. Skyfires and pieces like Sayl need to be either recosted or re-ruled. I do personally believe Skyfires arn't that far of what they should be. Oddly they do not cost 180 points like the other powerful Chaos units, such as Wrathmongers, who clean up every model practically or Blightkings, who deal with low armoured units like there is no tomorrow...

The point of designing costs well is to apply it correctly for a model. WFB suffered from this immensely. The Core units never influenced other costs enough. To the point where some Core units simply said never saw play  

If Skyfires need to be fixed, fix Skyfires, don't pass the problem through 'Battleline'. The only thing this results in is that less pieces become viable. 

[Tidings]

I guess I'm in the minority but I kind of like that battleline exists. Battles between fantasy armies of just a few elite units or a couple monsters don't feel like battles anymore. I like seeing armies on the table! Besides, objectives are huge in AoS and battleline troops are often the most efficient way to contest objectives. 

[wayniac]

I hate battleline when it stifles list building.  I really hate "allegianceline" where you need everything to be the same faction to be battleline, because any sort of theme that deviates loses it.  IMHO it should be tied to the general's allegiance, not the entire army.

[Killax]

5 hours ago, Tidings said:

I guess I'm in the minority but I kind of like that battleline exists. Battles between fantasy armies of just a few elite units or a couple monsters don't feel like battles anymore. I like seeing armies on the table! Besides, objectives are huge in AoS and battleline troops are often the most efficient way to contest objectives. 

The thing is that the narrative specifically mentions that sometimes fantasy armies are made up of fewer elite units (Stormcasts) and that they battle immense numbers (e.g. Skaven) or even are just a handful of tyrants (Ogors).

If anything what feels incorrect here is that Battalions cannot function the way narratives describes them because sometimes they are not composed of enough Battleline units while the narrative has confirmed that Battalions are the army or warbands. Many of Age of Sigmars battles are fought with warbands that the narrative and warscrolls clearly depict but matched play doesn't allow or. Compaired to the rest of AoS' design it's very odd that Battleline is a 'rule'. 

4 hours ago, wayniac said:

I hate battleline when it stifles list building.  I really hate "allegianceline" where you need everything to be the same faction to be battleline, because any sort of theme that deviates loses it.  IMHO it should be tied to the general's allegiance, not the entire army.

I largely agree. A potential easy fix to the current wording could be as simple as to say that (if Battleline is kept at all) a Hero General of that type makes X Battleline. Not that the model needs to be A, the general, B the whole army has to follow that sub-alliance and C the unit mentions which Hero is required for this.

If it is kept at all, I'd like to see this indeed be a relevant effect based on general, not unit basing it on the army type.

[Tiny]

Our group really dislikes the way summoning is handled in matched play. Seems daft to pay points for those models when they could just start on the table and allow your wizard to do other things (or give him the day off if he's not required).

I am currently writing some amendments to the warscroll-based summoning (e.g. Skeleton Warriors) to bring them more in line in terms of net gain with other spell options (like Arcane Bolt) to make it a real choice as to whether you cast Arcane Bolt or Raise Skeletons and less of a no-brainer.

I worked the value of an Arcane Bolt out to be around 40 points (average 2 mortal wounds on good troops which cost around 20 points/wound) for a 5+ casting value. Compare to Bolt of Tzeentch which does around 70 points of damage on average for an 8+ casting roll.

So by using these values, lowering ranges (8" standard and God's number for Daemons for fluff purposes) and adding penalties for failed casts to keep the casting value fairly reasonable, I came up with some re-written spells:

e.g. Raise Skeletons

Quote

Raise Skeletons has a casting value of 8. If successfully cast, you can set up a unit of up to 10 Skeleton Warriors within 8" of the caster and more than 9" away from the enemy. The unit is added to your army, but cannot move in the following movement phase. If the casting roll is failed, the caster suffers a mortal wound.

or Summon Great Unclean One

Quote

Summon Great Uncelan One has a casting value of 10. If successfully cast, you can set up a Great Unclean One within 7" of the caster and more than 9" from any enemy models. The unit is added to your army but cannot cast spells this turn or move in the following movement phase. If the casting roll is failed, the caster suffers D3 mortal wounds.

 

Some other examples for sensible summoning rolls:

Unit	Casting Roll	Penalty if failed
10 Zombies	7+	None
10 Skeleton Warriors	8+	1 Mortal Wound
5 Grave Guard	8+	1 Mortal Wound
5 Black Knights	9+	1 Mortal Wound
5 Hexwraiths	9+	1 Mortal Wound
10 Bloodletters	8+	1 Mortal Wound
10 Plaguebearers	8+	1 Mortal Wound
10 Pink Horrors	9+	1 Mortal Wound
3 Plague Drones of Nurgle	9+	D3 Mortal Wounds
Great Unclean One	10+	D3 Mortal Wounds
Bloodthirster of Insensate Rage	10+	D6 Mortal Wounds
Wrath of Khorne Bloodthirster	10+	D6 Mortal Wounds if passed, 2D6 if failed

 

I know the OP said "This topic isn't to judge made up rules" but as this is a WIP, I would greatly appreciate any thoughts on this from people who play more than I do (which is probably most of you)?

 

Also, we house-ruled Arkhan's Curse of Years to stop at 2+ as currently it can get quite obnoxious.

e.g. a 1/7 chance of saying: Nice Mawcrusher... boop... dead... from 18" away.

Standard "bases are a thing" house rule in full effect too.

Really liking the "must shoot at enemies within 3" if there are any" and "terrain grants cover / blocks LoS if shots pass through it" rules too. Will try to incorporate those into our games and see how they work out.

[BunkhouseBuster]

I had the epiphany last week that our group basically plays Open Play with points in our regular games, and even then we just aim to get within so many points of each other and not be evened out.

We also play without using terrain rules.  Not because we don't like them, but because we consistently forget about them and never think of them.  Heck, most of the time we forget that terrain gives a +1 to Armor Saves!  We get so caught up in the game itself that terrain gets forgotten for the most part, though that probably has a lot to do with the terrain being homemade pieces at our FLGS and not very much in the way of official GW terrain.

[mdkinker]

I love the cost, Tiny. I'll try this out as it sounds like a fun way to summon.

So the cost is the points benefit translated into mortal wounds through your evaluation of arcane bolt's benefit? And then you just keep the same ratio of cost to points as you go up in points? For example, a fail on skeletons cost 1 mortal wound or 20 points for a unit which costs 80 points. So that's 1/4 of the unit cost as mortal wounds cost. 

For Plague Drones, though, you'll average 40 points in mortal wound damage on a 220 point unit (around a fifth), and the Bloodthirster of Insensate Rage damages an average of 60 points for a 280 point unit (around a fifth). So the cost benefit skews toward benefit the bigger you go, but with increasing chance to just off yourself, which is interesting.  And I love the way a Wrath of Khorne Bloodthirster can basically replace the summoning wizard: a proper demonic summoning, that.

Maybe have different cost/benefit ratios for demons/death/Seraphon to make it fluffy in some way? Not sure what that'd look like, though.

[Tiny]

The main thing I used the points benefit of Arcane Bolt (40)/ Bolt of Tzeentch(70) to determine is the roll required to get say 80 points worth of skeletons or 100 points worth of Daemons.

It is very loosely based around the formula of: 5+ spell = 40 points, 8+spell = 70 points so an 80 point unit of Skeletons should require a 9+ but in order to reduce the casting roll to a more reasonable result, we instead do some damage (20 points worth) on a failure.

I kinda fudged the numbers as best I could from there, especially with the higher cost units, so I didn't end up with 12+ roll with 3d6 mortal wounds on failure which would make trying it completely pointless.