9 replies to this topic

[David L]

8th Edition Dwarf Spellbreaker Guide - Lore of Shadows
5 beers means big big trouble, use your spellbreakers here!

Shadow is one of the most popular lores because it is very powerful, especially in close combat. Its disadvantages are high costs, lack of simple direct damage, and variability. The first two really are not a disadvantage against most Dwarf armies, so in a tailored game, you are even more likely to face shadow magic. The variability comes from the three main hex spells modifying an attribute by D3. Rolling a 1 has minimal impact, while rolling a 3 is huge. Most players seem to agree that making those spells apply a fixed -2 would make them better.

Lore Attribute - Smoke and Mirrors
This is an odd one. It allows the caster to swap places with any friendly character of the same unit type. Many players find it so rarely relevant they don't even remember it exists, but it has one obviously useful situation - saving a squishy wizard from combat. When you get in combat with a squishy wizard (High Elf Teclis would be the extreme example), it is important to dispel all shadow spells, but mostly a Dwarf can ignore Smoke and Mirrors.

Miasma (Default Spell) - 2 Beers
A highly flexible spell with huge range, and thus always useful, but the impact is usually not gigantic. It can modify Weaponskill, Ballistic Skill, Movement, or Initiative by -D3 until the casters next magic phase. Or for double the casting cost it can modify ALL of them.
When combat is not happening, and you can stop Pit of Shades, you will want to dispel this fairly aggressively with dice. In combat, other Shadow spells are much more dangerous, and this is spell you choose to let go if you have to let something through.
I would never use a spellbreaker on Miasma.

Steed of Shadows - 1 Beer
This lets a character make an immediate Fly move. In previous editions it let the character charge, but not in 8th. It is by far the least cast spell in the lore because it rarely has value. The best use is probably positioning the character for another spell or a later charge, but we should be stopping the other spell or artillery blasting the moved character, so it has even less use against us.

Enfeebling Foe - 3 beers
Minus D3 to Strength. Remains in Play.
In combat, this can reduce your hitting power to basically nothing (-3 strength), which is terrible on great weapon hordes. Or it can have a slight negative affect (-1 strength). Out of combat, it being remains in play means we can dispel it happily in our magic phase and it will have no net affect.
Pretty much you look at the targetted unit and the current situation. If you need that unit to deal serious damage in close combat that round, you need to dispel Enfeebling Foe. If you can handle one round dealing little damage, you may want to let it go in order to dispel stronger spells. I would very rarely use a spellbreaker on it - basically only if Pit and Mindrazor are not present.

Withering - 4 beers
Minus D3 to Toughness. Remains in Play
Basically the counterpart to Enfeebling Foe, but modifying Toughness means it has a lot more value outside of combat when the enemy wants to shoot at you. If the enemy has little or no shooting, you ignore it outside of combat and dispel it in your own magic phase. In combat, you have to evaluate based upon the strength of the enemy units in combat with the target. If fighting a bunch of high strength guys (Bloodletters, Bestigors, Chaos Warriors with halberds), Enfeebling will have little impact because most hits will be wounding anyway. But if fighting wimpy humans from the Empire, lowering your Toughness greatly increases your casualties.
Generally Withering is a high priority to stop with dice - if the enemy is casting the spell, you won't like the results. I might use a spellbreaker on it, particularly if facing a lot of enemy shooting, but generally I would save spellbreakers for the biggest spells.

Penumbral Pendulum - 1-2 beers
The problem with this spell is the net damage simply is not that high - Strength 10 sounds huge, but D3 wounds is not. And that only happens AFTER the target fails an initiative test, and that only happens after you are hit by the spell, which is a line from the caster. Certainly our initiative is low, so we are likely to fail, but even against a war machine that auto-fails, the spell is very unlikely to destroy the machine. If an enemy wizard gets in your flank (Steed of Shadows) and fires it down the line of your army it can kill a bunch of Dwarf troops, but that requires a set of events that is rare. This spell is very rarely cast because it is very rarely effective.
Note that it is a direct damage spell, so it cannot be cast to hit a target that is in combat. Wizards that get close enough to make good use of this spell are usually in combat where they cannot cast it!
If an enemy is in an ideal position to cast this, you probably need to stop it with dice. But again, that is really rare.

Pit of Shades - 4 beers
Small template, pass initiative test or DIE. No saves of any kind. Boostable to big template. The one weakness of the spell is it is subject to scatter, so it will only stay exactly on target 1/3 of the time (rolling a HIT). But the small template scatter is only D6 inches, so it will sometimes still get the target.
When this spell HITs, it will CRUSHa Dwarf unit or take out at least one war machine. When it scatters it will often still hurt.
Pretty much you always save dice to stop this spell, or reserve a spellbreaker for it. Certainly it is worth spellbreaking on early turns if you don't have the dice.
However, understand that opponents will often 6-dice this spell. That puts the odds of IF at around 25%, so you defensive plans may be useless. The scatter aspect makes going for IF on this spell not the greatest plan, but when you leave your enemy with no better options, they may do it anyway. There is no question that IF Pit can beat you, no matter what you do.

Mindrazor - 5 beers
The best combat turning spell in the game. The unit uses its leadership as strength in combat, which basically raises everything to "wound on 2+, ignore armour". Save your dice and spellbreakers to stop this in major fights.

[Tegnus Vagnarsson]

This is a nicely written guide. Thanks David
Would you consider doing more for the other Lores?

[Grimwald the Surly]

Very informative. Thanks for taking the time to write it. There is a lot of nasty stuff in there, so its nice to have an indication or rather a priority for which spells to remove.

[Zidane_blade]

I would just like to add, that direct damage has been removed from the Penumbral Pendulum, meaning it can be cast such, that it hits models in close combat.
Also, instant D3 wounds on war machines isn't too shabby..

[Dron Zharr]

Mindrazor - 5 beers
The best combat turning spell in the game. The unit uses its leadership as strength in combat, which basically raises everything to "wound on 2+, ignore armour". Save your dice and spellbreakers to stop this in major fights.

 

Sorry, but doens't mindrazor only affect your "to wound" roll, same as the "slayer rule" in slayers? It doen't change the armour save of a target whatsoever. At lest that is what I read from the BRB, please corretn me if I'm wrong.

[Zidane_blade]

You change your strength stat with your LD stat, mostly giving you S 8 or 9. Which under those circumstances, cancels out your armour save.

[Dron Zharr]

You change your strength stat with your LD stat, mostly giving you S 8 or 9. Which under those circumstances, cancels out your armour save.

 

Sorry, but where is this coming from? The rule for this spell says that:

 

"Models in the target unit use their Leadership instead of Strength when rolling to wound with all close combat attacks whilst the spell remains in effect (any strength bonuses from weapons are ignored)"

 

So it doen't state that you exchange your Strenght with Leadership (which would be rather poor trade off in some circumstances, lowering elgi Ld to mere 3) but rather you USE your Strength when rolling "to wound", and that's all. Says nothing about actually boosting the Strength in question (if it simply boosted Strength, then it would also allow to pass characteristic tests easily, wouldn't it?).

Edited by Dron Zharr, 03 March 2015 - 04:43 PM.

[Zidane_blade]

The to wound roll is connected to the armour save. They write such, so it's clear that you don't get S 8/9, from the moment the spell is cast.

[Salgar]

Sorry, but where is this coming from? The rule for this spell says that:

"Models in the target unit use their Leadership instead of Strength when rolling to wound with all close combat attacks whilst the spell remains in effect (any strength bonuses from weapons are ignored)"

FAQ'd.

Now it says:

"Models in the target unit use their Leadership instead of Strength for all close combat attacks whilst the spell remains in effect (any strength bonuses from weapons are ignored)"

[Dron Zharr]

My bad, here's what using BRB without FAQ leads to

 

Sorry, you were right in there Zidane_blade, cheers!