For me the worst part about 6/7 magic was all the 'magic movement' type spells. Really could kill all the careful maneuvering that this game should be about. In my recollection it wasn't just undead either. There was a shadow magic spells and, the orcs had something similar. Ah, the bad old days.
Correct. There was a shadow magic spell (#5 I believe). And yes, hand of gork i believe it was called. Shadow magic wasn’t great though other than the movement spell snd pit of shades from memory. All orc and goblin magic was decent I think.
Movement spells were string because of the things I listed earlier. It relates to 6th / 7th meta overall to load a combat for CR, deny kills, autobreak and pursue.
The other part was magic didn't scale that well. It got out of control in bigger games so this required some gentlemen's agreement.
8th hardly scales better. 2D6 is still 2D6. A disincentive for playing larger games IMO.