Curu Olannon wrote:
A thought I've had recently is running a 3-mage setup as follows:
Archmage
BSB w/Radiant Gem + luckstone
Mage
Now - it's been discussed whether to go for the bsb or the mage in your case - I don't see why you can't do both! Adding in the BoS you have a pretty serious magic phase! It also allows you to cover a lot of areas. BSB takes High, Mage takes Metal and Archmage takes Life. You get 3 Channel rolls as well and the BSB won't increase price-wise.
The Radiant Gem and the Helm HammerIn this list, I'm not likely to ever take the Radiant Gem on the BSB: he'd just be too squishy to be able to hack it in the kind of combats I like to throw the Helm Hammer into. One of its unique strengths (as a cavalry unit), is its ability to grind away (where it has to) with its 7 high-strength ASF attacks. A Radiant Gem BSB is a one-round fighter- if you get stuck in combat (and it happens), he's in trouble and he doesn't kill much (assuming you've gone for the 2+ AS and taken a lance). Such a fragile BSB is no good for an army with relatively few standards but which still wants to compete in the
Blood and Glory scenario.
The exception to this, of course, is when he uses his spellcasting abilities to make the unit (and therefore himself) more hardcore. The problem there is that you're having to expend power dice (in significant quantities if you're looking to cast anything more glamorous than Shield of Saphery), to keep this guy alive. As things stand, the unit can often get by without magic helping out (sometimes not!), giving me more options when it comes to choosing targets for my Life buffs. Take the Radiant Gem, however, and the unit needs magic fairly constantly in order to keep its flag-carrier alive in combat. In magical terms I'd be swimming just to stand still.
The Banner of Sorcery vs the ChariotAdding in the Banner of Sorcery is, in part, a solution to the radiant BSB problem: I have more power so can do more stuff, including, ideally, buffing the silver helms whenever I need to. The problem comes in the form of the units I'd lose to get it, like the chariot. A good way to look at this trade-off is as follows:
Firstly, more units cannot be dispelled and more magic can. At least one spell per turn is likely to be dispelled by your opponent and it could be the one you really want- like the necessary combat buff for the squishy radiant BSB. We'll all use neat little timing tricks (and hopefully good spell selection) to persuade our opponent to pick the wrong spell to dispel but, ultimately, he gets to choose.
Secondly, units and magic achieve different things. Units can, when appropriate, operate independently and achieve goals by themselves. For example: a fast cavalry unit makes it into my backline; my chariot charges the cav; the cav break and cease to be a problem (I possibly pick up the points for running them down).
Magic, however (with the exception of magic missiles and some direct damage spells against such small targets), largely operates to improve your chances of success with a pre-existing unit. Hexes, Dwellers, buffs- they all get you that win but they won't ever do it by themselves. Without a unit to back them up, they just don't work. In the above example, then, all my extra power dice from the Banner of Sorcery can do nothing to stop those cavalry from having the run of my backline unless I have a unit there to benefit from them. In the best case I'm able to use archers (but I'll have to drag them away from whatever else they were doing) but, otherwise, I'll have to dedicate a more expensive unit or just try and ignore the fast cav. Neither is an ideal solution.
Ultimately, in taking the Jewel of the Dusk metal mage, I've sacrificed some ability against harassment units (a repeater) to make my magic phase more powerful. To sacrifice more such ability would make the magic phase better again, via the Banner, but leave me critically exposed to enemy units looking to obstruct a co-ordinated advance. I've spent 286 points on a fighting prince- I can't have everything!
Beregond wrote:
I know that you are pretty sold on the chariot; but in my opinion, you'd be better off dropping the chariot than dropping elites to come up with extra points. Have yuou gone through the exercise of looking at a complete list with the metal mage and no chariot? Chariot and bolt thrower for metal mage + eagle seems like it could be intriguing. you'd have 35 points available for kit, or making a change somewhere else in the army. You could add the Jewel of Dusk and upgrade the dispel scroll to the sigil of asuryan, for instance.
Don't get me wrong, I could do a lot with 85 points (and your suggestions are good ones), but, further to the above, I just can't lose the chariot. For me the 'complete list' is just so much more complete with the chariot in it. I've probably done this to death but it's worth mentioning again that, really, there are few units that can contribute to so many parts of your game. Fast attack, counter-attack, harassment (as a last-ditch eagle as has been mentioned above), anti-light troops exclusion zone, back-line defence, aggressive target saturation, adaptable deployment drop... it will find an important use in every battle for very few points. It is the ultimate utility unit.
Beregond wrote:
+1 PD would be useful. Since I've added the Banner of Sorcery, the versatility of the magic phase has increased significantly without changing the functionality of the units in the army.
The functionality of each other unit in the army would not have changed, then, but the functionality of the army as a whole will have suffered. In particular, the loss of a unit like the chariot means that another unit will typically have to take over at least one of its many possible roles (so far we've focussed on back-line defence). I've already lost a repeater bolt thrower, so my ability to take out the kind of units that can get behind me and cause problems (such as fiends), has already been reduced. To lose the chariot too is to remove yet another layer of defence against such units, leaving only my more expensive attacking units to pick up the slack to defend themselves- and they'd much rather be concentrating on building a combined-strike. Having supplementary units like the chariot therefore gives me the freedom to focus my strongest forces much better. An eagle could fill the gap somewhat, but it's not likely to drive off enemy strong enough to be causing me problems in the first place. At best, it'll delay them by a turn. By turns the chariot won't be as good at harassing but, with free manoeuvering, 9" movement will usually be enough where you've planned in advance.
Asharoth wrote:
The D6-2D6 hits were awesome when the spell was successfully cast. I think that's the greatest problem with the metal mage. Sure, it's great when you have lots of power dice, but when you've got a light breeze of magic instead of a wind, well... I did find that threatening to cast the unboosted version of the spell did invite a lot of dispel dice from my opponent. However I also found that if I really needed that unit of chaos knights dead, there wasn't enough dice to cast other useful spells to boost the rest of my army. If you can find points for a banner of sorcery, that might help, but it doesn't make it as reliable as essentially being able to shoot a bolt thrower every single turn.
Anyway, I placed 3rd in the tournament (missed 2nd by 1 point...arrg!).
Great to hear!
You outline the pros and cons of the Metal Mage well, I think. If you don't get much power, you're pretty much looking at an either/or situation in respect of the spells you actually get to cast (to I regrow those white lions or do I degrow those knights?). With this caster set-up you will, at least, almost always have something useful to cast, even if you won't often get it all off.
akielzather wrote:
Metal thou, i found my oponents saving scrolls and dispell dice for these, allowing life buff to slip through as the hold there dice back against the searing doom....
Yep! A point just as important to remember as our being able to get the spell itself off at all. Jewel of the Dusk helps here, too. The reliability of the extra repeater is something I'm likely to miss against some opponents, though. Especially elves.
ether_drake wrote:
Just wondering, Seredain, or anyone else who is Archmage-reliant, has an opponent ever thrown a Feedback Scroll at you when you've spent 6 dice on a spell? (It forces 1 wound per dice used on a 5+).
Yeah a couple of times! It hasn't yet killed my archmage though- even without any save it'll only do two wounds on average when used against a six-dice cast and the odds get worse once ward saves are involved. It's scary to face but, as has been said already, there are usually more important/ popular arcane choices for enemy mages to take, so you're only likely to face it when playing against armies with lots of cheap casters (like greenskins). Lore of Life archmages make especially demoralising targets for the scroll: if they do survive, as they're likely to, they'll just put those lost wounds back on after a couple of casts.
In other news... I played my latest campaign game a few days ago and it was... tense. A
Blood & Glory game full of manoeuvres, death and falling banners. I'll do the report for this game before setting out the one for the 12K game, since otherwise I'll forget all the little details (and this should allow me to get hold of some more photos for the big battle too). For the moment, here's a teaser:
High Elves vs Daemons of Chaos