The Lore of Light
This lore is ideal when fighting Undead and Daemonic opponents as well as providing powerful bonuses in combat and protection from shooting phase attacks, many of which have the potential to influence most of your army at the same time.
This is a strong primary/secondary lore and you can equally benefit from a Lord or multiple hero-level wizards. Wizards of Light also improve the power of a War Altar’s bound spell.
I do not recommend putting your Wizard Lord on a Luminark of Hysh.
Exorcism (Lore Attribute)
Added punch against daemons and undead
Shem’s Burning Gaze (Signature Spell)
Flaming direct damage spell with a long range good for hitting vanguard/scouts as well as ethereal units.
Pha’s Protection
A spell that has the potential to protect a unit or most of your army by providing penalties to close combat and shooting as well as reducing the effectiveness of shooting attacks that do not use ballistic skill.
The Speed of Light
A significant improvement to weapon skill and initiative allowing you to strike first/simultaneously against everyone but enemies with the ‘Always Strike First’ special rule. However you will likely remove the ability of ASF enemies to reroll their misses! Considering the upgraded casting cost can affect most of your army, this is a very powerful spell.
Light of Battle
This spell grants the ability to pass leadership tests, limited usefulness and a good candidate to sacrifice for the signature spell.
Net of Amyntok
A spell that forces strength tests to perform actions it is primarily beneficial at targeting low strength units, it can hold up armies and ethereal units.
Banishment
A strong direct damage spell that forces ward saves to be rerolled and becomes more powerful as you add multiple wizards with the Lore of Light
Birona’s Timewarp
A spell that doubles movement, increases attacks, and grants ASF. It is a very solid combat augment when the higher level version can augment all units within 12”
The Lore of Life
This lore adds to the survivability of your army as well as allows you to recover the fallen and get them into battle. It is a lore ideally suited to support steam tanks.
Lore of Life also has spells that can remove enemy characters and address large blocks of troops.
I strongly recommend a Level 4 Wizard Lore for this lore. It is a strong primary lore and fair-to-weak secondary lore.
Lifebloom (Lore Attribute)
A means to heal your characters and your steam tank with every successful cast of a Lore of Life spell this is a very powerful lore attribute.
Earth Blood (Signature Spell)
A 5+ Regen save to a unit for a decent casting cost to mitigate wounds regardless of strength provided they are not flaming attacks.
Awakening of the Wood
A cheap direct damage spell that is best sacrificed for the signature spell if you aren’t forced to deal with ethereal units.
Flesh to Stone
A significant toughness augment that makes any unit extremely durable.
Throne of Vines
A spell that lets you avoid the fairly reliably avoid the effects of miscasting a spell and augmenting other spells from the Lore of Life. As this is a remains in play it is also a way to eat up some power dice on your opponent’s turn if they want to get rid of it.
Shield of Thorns
A way to cause wounds to units locked in combat and another remains in play spell to eat up enemy power dice
Regrowth
This is a means to bring back your losses of rank-and-file. This is ideal for bringing back expensive cavalry or Greatswords
The Dweller’s Below
A strength-based characteristic assault that can also target characters and allows no saves of any kind. This is a way for a Lore of Life wizard to potentially kill enemy characters and reduce the combat effectiveness of nearly any enemy unit.
The Lore of Heavens
This lore has high strength direct damage spells and augments/hex that can swing combat favorably and protect you from shooting. It also has the ability to physically move units on the table.
I do not recommend putting a Wizard Lord on the Celestial Hurricanum.
This is a fair primary and secondary lore and can be enjoyed by both Lord and Hero-level wizards.
Roiling Skies (Lore Attribute)
Additional damage to flying units
Iceshard Blizzard (Signature Spell)
A hex that negatively affects ‘To Hit’ rolls in shooting and close combat as well as affecting non-ballistic skill shooting.
Harmonic Convergence
An augment that enables a unit to reroll all ‘1s’ of ‘To Hit’, ‘To Wound’, and Armor Saves. This is an ideal augment for your expensive cavalry and your steam tank.
Wind Blast
A means to knock back enemy units which could put them out of charge range, into dangerous terrain, or smash them against impassible terrain or another unit.
Curse of the Midnight Wind
A hex that forces a reroll of a ‘6’ on all ‘To Hit’, ‘To Wound’ and Armor Saves. This can swing combat effectively and mitigate wounds.
Urannon’s Thunderbolt
A high strength direct damage spell with a good range.
Comet of Casandora
A mean spell bringing devastation from the Heavens. This spell is fantastic for area denial, hitting war machine bunkers, and wrecking small units.
Chain Lightning
A direct damage spell with high strength and the ability to jump between enemy units for more damage. Another spell which is ideal in putting the hurt on multiple units.
The Lore of Shadow
This lore lacks meaningful direct damage spells but instead provides some of the most powerful augments/hexes in the game. It also has the means to force initiative-based tests to surivive.
I strongly recommend a Lord-level wizard, perhaps two level three wizards.
Smoke and Mirrors (Lore Attribute)
This is a nice way to get a wizard out of trouble or a combat orientated character into the fight. I think this has a lot of opportunities to see the potential of our Witch Hunters.
Melkoth’s Mystifying Miasma
An immensely powerful hex that can allow you to win combat against even the most elite enemy units as well as improving the effectiveness of Pit of Shades.
Steed of Shadows
A spell that allows a character to move as though they had the fly ability it has some usefulness but generally sacrificed for the signature spell.
The Enfeebling Foe
A powerful hex that reduces strength and can heavily limit the damage potential of an enemy unit as it reduces their probability to wound as well as reduces how much their attacks modify your armor save.
The Withering
A hex that significantly reduces toughness which allows us to wreck our enemies in close combat and shooting. This is a great spell to use in conjunction with your war machines if you focus fire on a unit that needs to be destroyed or diminished.
The Penumbral Pendulum
An initiative based cannonball shot, another good candidate for sacrificing for the signature spell.
Pit of Shades
An initiative test based spell that scatters but removes models with no saves of any kind allowed. This destroys Lizardman, Undead, Dwarves, and removes big threats such as those introduced by Tomb Kings (Necrospinx, Necrolith, etc) as well as war machines.
Okkam’s Mindrazor
An augment that allows your unit to fight as a strength based on their leadership value. Combined with our easy access to hatred we can dish out a lot of high strength wounds. This makes our Spearmen and Free Company devastating.
The Lore of Death
This lore has multiple spells to remove characters from units based on different characteristics and can provide wide-spread hexes across the battlefield. It also provides one of the most feared remains-in-play spells in the game.
I strongly recommend a Level 4 wizard and this is a strong primary lore and a fair-to-weak secondary lore.
Life Leeching (Lore Attribute)
The ability to recover power dice to extend your magic phase; this is one of the most powerful lore attributes in the game.
Spirit Leech (Signature Spell)
A Leadership-based attack to kill characters in a unit or any individual model, best utilized by a Lord level caster due to their higher leadership value.
Aspect of the Dreadknight
Allowing a unit to cause Fear or Terror is nice, but this is a spell that is generally dropped for the signature spell. It is important to remember you can use this spell to counter the effects of fear as well.
The Caress of Laniph
A direct damage spell exploiting the lack of physical strength of an enemy model which can include characters in a unit.
Soulblight
A hex that reduces the strength and toughness of your enemy. This spell can also be cast at a higher cost to affect all units within 24”. This makes our shooting and our combat devastating and has the ability to affect multiple phases and multiple combats nearly army-wide. This compliments our army amazingly well.
Doom and Darkness
A significant penalty to leadership. This spell is ideal for forcing the enemy to fail fear/terror checks, panic from our shooting/magic, and flee combats. As this can affect multiple units (if you target the general) it can make for a quick and sweeping victory for the Empire.
The Fate of Bjuna
A direct damage spell exploiting the toughness of the enemy and can target enemy characters in units.
The Purple Sun of Xereus
A dangerous and volatile template-based spell that remains in play. This could potentially kill your own wizard but is one of the most feared spells by many armies in the game. A common tactic is to take a flying wizard and send this across the flank of your enemy’s army early in the game or to charge into combat and launch it point-blank into the enemy’s face. Armies with low initiative and war machine crew tremble at the thought of what this spell can do. It works well as a threat of force as well as often times your opponent will hold their dispel dice in anticipation of this spell; allowing other spells to get through.