Best arcane item.

What is our best magic trick in your opinion? The safe sensible option of a Dispel scroll. The amazing +7 to cast of gruts sickle or the amazing and amazingly inconsistent hellheart.

The Hellheart. With proper timing you can shave off most of the irregularity, make it more likely then not for it to work(within 10" of enemy wizard)

I like Hellheart too.  As Grey templar says it needs good timing though.

Although I agree the Hellheart is a wonderfull tool in my opinion no Ogre army (especially in tournament play) can leave a dispel scroll at home.

D...

Dispel Scroll.

Sometimes, I just really need a particular spell to not go off and mess up that crucial battle.

I like the Hellheart, but it's not reliable and eats a lot of points. One time I hit 4 or 5 wizards in a vamp list and managed nothing more than a single wound on one of them. Extremely bad luck on my part (he just kept rolling 7!) but it was still a reminder that reliability is always king.

Dispel Scroll.

Sometimes, I just really need a particular spell to not go off and mess up that crucial battle.

I like the Hellheart, but it's not reliable and eats a lot of points. One time I hit 4 or 5 wizards in a vamp list and managed nothing more than a single wound on one of them. Extremely bad luck on my part (he just kept rolling 7!) but it was still a reminder that reliability is always king.

And I'll bet you appreciated that one magic phase where he accomplised absolutly nothing.

The Key to success with the HH is to see that it does one thing and thats shut down 1 magic phase.

Even a single wizard caught in its radius will mean no magic phase for the opponent. D6 less power dice, you have one more dispell dice, etc...

Any actual damage done is iceing.

Annoyingly it didn't make that much of a difference overall. Vamp player really liked going for cheesy lists, it's just an overbearing horde. One turn to push it back was swiftly undone rather quickly... that, and those ethereal cavalry guys really did a number on a lot of backfield units. Hadn't fought them before, that was unfortunate...



Apologies if this is unrelated, but has anyone ever tried that staff that provides +D6 dice at the cost of D3 wounds? We're pretty much the only army that can use this and live, excepting maybe Lizardmen, and I wondered if it would be a wise investment. I do find Wildform and the Ogre Buff spells make all the difference in my matches, so more dice can't hurt (the miscast Gods have killed wizards with just 2 dice before, I'm done trying to play it safe)...

I have tried the Staff. Its a good buy.

Its best used on that one turn where you rolled really low for Winds of Magic. Like you roll a 2 and a 1 or something.

It can give you a massive advantage that one phase as your opponent will have almost no chance of dispelling your spells with dice.


Plus we can regenerate wounds with LotGM, and unlike other races the D3 wounds can't actually kill our wizards outright even in the worse case rolling. Assuming we arn't wounded already.

Of those options, I would only take a dispel scroll on my main caster.  The Hellheart would be okay too, just not as nice.  I have played a lot of games where the Hellheart did nothing even if they are in range.  As commented, the Hellheart must be played right, used at the right time, and hope that they roll bad.  Unlike a Hellheart, there is no luck or skill involved in Dispel Scroll use, very reliable - just hope they don't cast irresistible. 

The real item for an SM is the Forbidden Rod, as posted above, so long as you have a scroll caddie, probably a Firebelly.  At this stage, you're talking about a lot of points, so this is generally only useful in 2,500+. 

As boring as it is, a dispel scroll is the old faithful choice or general tournament play.  Thanks GW.

Dispell Scroll, not only is it's effect guaranteed when it's used it's extremely cheap in comparison to the other items, usable competitively on any level wizard. It cannot be stopped and it does EXACTLY what it says on the tin. There's no risks involved. With HH you risk wasting it or it not reaching the enemy and at 50 pts for a 1 use item I begrudge taking it. Grut's potentially is the 2nd best here and I've had some great success with it but the one time you roll double 1's for the end of magic phase test you probably wont use it again for a while.... speaking from experience 

In short I'd rather take an item I know is going to do what I want rather than potentially screw myself over or waste an item at the wrong time. The scroll's benefits greatly out-weigh the benefits of the other 2 choices in my opinion.

Dispell scroll for me.  The HH won't help a lot when your army is being ravaged from the opposite end of the table in turn 1.