When Wizards are Needed
I’m one of those guys that think that characters shouldn’t be an army, they should be supporting an army. This is probably why I have both an Empire army and a Dogs of War army (I also have Lizards and Wood Elves but that’s beside the point). So picking the correct character choices to compliment my army is very important whether it’s filling in a weakness in my army such as punch or leadership, or providing the magical defense necessary to keep my troops from harm.
With the latest version of TVI’s (The Village Idiot) Tactica at Warhammer-Empire.com and the ensuing discussion of what other armies can his principles be applied to I came to some conclusions about the inclusion of magic users in Warhammer Armies.
I’ve categorized the armies out there as 4 different types:
- Defensive armies
- Offensive Powerhouse armies
- Dispel Dice Generation lists
- Dwarfs
I won’t go much into Dwarves because they are pretty self explanatory. They can’t go offensive in the magic phase and always generate a decent amount of dispel dice. It is the other three I’m more concerned with.
Defensive Armies
These are the armies out there that generally include a low level wizard or two either loaded up on dispel scrolls or ‘magic die switching’ items like the Black Pariapt, Diadem of Power or Rod of Power – which allow you to store magic dice for later magic phases. In these armies, the wizards are only present to protect the rest of the army from enemy wizards. The downside being that this protection is costly since wizards are so expensive points wise.
Offensive Powerhouse Armies
These are armies that put a large emphasis on magic to win them the game. Slann lead Lizardmen armies and High Elf Book of Hoeth lists are good examples. The plus side is that magic can be devastating to an enemy army. The bad side of course being that magic is fickle and a badly timed miscast can cost you the game not to mention the price of putting those wizards on the field.
Dispel Dice Generation Lists
There aren’t many of these types of lists out there but they do have a purpose in this article. Dwarfs are the extreme example but other examples are a Khorne Chaos Army and a Tepok Lizardmen army. These armies generally generate enough magic dice by themselves without having to use an expensive wizard. Although the dice generation ability is often costly, it saves from having vulnerable wizards running around the board.
When Wizards are Needed
This article focuses on the first and to a lesser extent the third of the three types of armies. Offensive powerhouse armies will be using wizards for both offense and defense so wizards will be on the battlefield anyway. This article focuses on the “Defense Against the Dark Arts”.
In TVI says in his “Refined Idiocy” that the standard defensive setup of two low level wizards is pricey and next to useless against heavy magic armies and that those points are better spent on more troops. “Let them blast your troops into oblivion, you have more”. Now this philosophy works if you have lots and lots of cheap troops that are expendable – which is the whole idea of the TVI Philosophy – but what about those other armies out there!!
I think the need for Defensive Wizards is completely dependant on troop choices. The more cheap troops you have on the board, the less you need a wizard to defend them because you can afford to lose that 100 point unit of goblins. I once saw an army of 600+ Night Goblins lead by a single Warboss. No wizards. What’s the point of having a wizard to protect your units when you have so many of them!!
Now this is totally different if you’re playing a Chaos Warrior heavy list for example – two to three main units and if you’re lucky (or smart) several smaller support units that are very vulnerable to magic. So some dispel dice and some scrolls are needed to protect your units since each one is important to you. Not much is worse then seeing all of your Chaos Knights all go down on turn one to a Plague (I recently saw this happen to a Bretonnian list, it wasn’t pretty). That same plague spell against a unit of Orcs wouldn’t be close to as bad since you can have 8 orcs for every chosen knight!
I’ll use the armies I’ve played with recently as examples.
My Empire army I’ve recently changed to not include any wizards. It has 150 models and still has enough points to include the Steam Tank! My units are very big and I have plenty of them so allowing a fireball or even a Conflagration to kill one of the units isn’t that big of a deal to me.
My DoW Kislev list is another matter. It is all cavalry, so they are very small units, so I have 2 wizards loaded with dispel scrolls to counter enemy magic that will take out any of my important units. Playing an army that doesn’t have heavy magic makes those dispel scrolls practically useless, but in a tournament I think that it’s worth the risk.
In the middle is my Lizardmen army. I have quiet a few units which means I don’t need too much magic protection, but I have some very important units that are vital to my plan, and are very susceptible to magic attacks (Terradons, Salamanders). So I have one priest with scrolls and another with the Diadem of Power, a ‘magic die switching’ item. This gives me the option to go defensive if I need to or on the offensive if my opponent isn’t heavy in the magic department.
Of course with the Lizard list I could always put the mark of Tepok on my Saurus units and characters giving me more dispel dice but I think that in my list it is better to just have the priests to possibly give me a little punch back.
Think about it and decide what kind of magic defense you would include in:
- An all knight Bretonnian army
- A balanced Bretonnian list
- A Bretonnian Peasent Horde
Would you want the same magic defense for your troops in each case?
There are other things to consider. Your army’s ability to hunt down enemy wizards being a big one. If you think you can kill their wizards quickly then you don’t need a strong magic defense. Your opponent is another big consideration. At a tournament you don’t know who/what you’re going to face but in a ‘friendly’ game you can tailor your defense on whether it’s Ogres or Undead on the other side of the field.
As a warning, there are those armies/spells out there that if you don’t have the magic defense for, they will get you the ‘subtle’ way. These ‘subtle’ spells are movement spells like VanHal’s Danse Macabre which can really put a thorn in your side (I’ve had a few irresistible VanHal’s – from the same opponent) put the pickle in the crap sandwich that is the game. Be prepared for these spells using other means such as maneuvering and shooting to your advantage.
So be careful with your character choices, your wizard might just turn you into a newt like mine did!! I got better….