Changes to the Magic Phase???

So now apparently all wizards automatically know all spells from their lore of choice, and the roll for Winds of Magic is now 4d6. The only benefit of a higher wizard level is the additive bonus to your casting and dispel rolls.

Are these rule changes for regular games?

If so, this will drastically increase the potency of low level wizards and kind of takes away value from taking expensive level 4 wizards and upgrading wizard levels in general.

A level 1 butcher being able to have Trollguts guaranteed, and plenty of power dice to 6-dice it

Also a huge boost to Firebellies with gauranteed Flame Cage etc...

Discuss!

This will most likely only apply to the campaign games. Some aspects such as new Lord levels will probably stay, this however seems  like an element purely designed for the EoT. This week's White Dwarve explicitly mentions that in the End of Times, the magic phase plays a big role. I don't think people have to get there hopes or fears up.

It would certainly break the lord level caster. Why pay more for a lvl 4 Slaughtermaster, when less points gets you two lvl 1 butchers with ALL the spells from LoGM and then either death, beasts or heavens.

4d6! Is this FAQ'd yet? Or just predominantly for end of times missions? I hope they bring out the new edition rule book soon! Haven't bought any end times stuff yet as there not the armies I play with but is making me think more about the lists we can take so we can stand a chance.....

I heard it only applied to level 3 or higher wizards, so don't worry about spamming baby wizards.

It's the super spells I'm worried about. Each lore gets one, including armybook lores (example given if I recall was Lore of Plague for Skaven) so we're definitely getting a Maw one, however apparently they cannot be dispelled. Not sure how keen I am on that....

Ogres still have fairly solid counter magic, and if the field becomes L1 heavy that's more reason to take a L4, considering that's less dice you have to put out to get a spell off.  I mean, a level 1 with Trollguts needs what, a 19 on the dice (20 total?) to get the bubble off?  So you'd need to be 6 dicing the spell to even have a hope (thus chewing through your Butchers pretty quick).

And the End Times spells spells only being available on a 3+ would also make a difference.  Keen to see what they do with the Maw for our big bad spell.

I'm not in any great hurry to see 9th Edition.  It'd be nice, but I'm really hoping the End Times builds towards the releases of the final 3 books and a completed 8th edition, rather than falling 3 books short and continuing their codex debt between editions.

Here's a more complete rule picture (plagiarising a friend).

Winds of Magic are 4D6, with the highest two results being the dispel dice.

After declaring what spell you are attempting to cast, you roll a D6. The result is the maximum number of dice you can use to cast the spell. Once you're at this point, you must allocate at least one die to the casting attempt regardless. The dispelling player likewise rolls to see the maximum number of dice they can use to dispel. They, however, do not have to commit a die to the attempt by the way I'm reading it.

Each lore has an End Times spell associated with it. A Level 3 or higher wizard automatically knows the End Times spell of his/her chosen lores(s). End Times spells can not be dispelled if successfully cast. They are all very powerful spells, but all are expensive to cast and therefore limited by the random number of dice allowed to be used.

Spells can be used any number of times in the magic phase so long as all previous attempts to cast the spell have been successful. The exception to this are End Times spells and spells that have a casting value of 15 or more, in which they can only be cast once as usual.

Wizards no longer break concentration, so they can keep on casting as long as there are dice left.

All wizards know all spells for their chosen lore(s). Any model with the loremaster rule may re-roll casting rolls. If a model knows more than one lore, then they get all the spells from those lores. They explicitly say that the Loremaster of Hoeth (and therefore the Wandering Deliberations Slann) knows all 56 spells from the basic rulebook lores.

The d6 dice limitations is a big deal.  It adds a very random element and takes a lot of the strategy out IMHO, as you really are trying to be lucky on the roll. The dispell also gets the D6 random roll so you just never know who will succeed in casting or dispelling.

Armies that have cheap wizards will rule this stage. In fact, i don't see why you would ever try casting anything big when you can spam 2-dice fireball over and over and the dispeller may not even get enough dice to try to dispell you.

So does this mean there isnt much point to me throwing a Ruby Ring of Ruin on my Firebelly anymore?

So does this mean there isnt much point to me throwing a Ruby Ring of Ruin on my Firebelly anymore?

I would say probably not.  The ruby ring is weakened due to not having wizard levels to power it through, and because the opposing caster no longer loses concentration if he fails to dispel.  Just a regular firebelly will be able to power through a billion fireballs anyway. 

I've done a couple of dry run magic phases (just rolling everything and seeing what I can get off).  There doesn't seem to be much of a reason to do anything but spam low cost spells.  You have a good chance of getting the spell off, regardless of what your max power dice per spell is, and the constant fireballs really add up.

If you really want disgusting, I tried a few runs with a loremaster high slann with the book of ashur.  On average I had 5-7 more dice than my opponent, and could just spam soul quench.  I could throw 2 dice at it each time, reroll on the rare failure, and power out a lot of damage.  On one phase, I got out 11 soul quenches for 72 str 4 hits.

This new magic phase is stupid

I recently played my first End Times game, we played it as if you declare you are going to cast a spell, you have to cast it (and the same with dispel). This resulted in us discarding one 🎲 when there was no possibility of meeting the casting value. As a result there were several magic phases that were shut down because of wastage, not casting and sensible dispelling (all with an element of luck obviously). It made for a really fun game but I acknowledge it is only one game I had this experience with.

I dunno why people are so surprised by the 4D6 thing. That has been how Storm of Magic has been played for years, it's basically a rip off of the SoM magic system but now everybody knows all the spells in ther Lore.

It's this "everybody is a Loremaster" thing that really takes Slaughtermasters and kicks them where it hurts for End Times games. You can take 3 Butchers w. minimal gear for the cost of a fully kitted out Slaughtermaster and know all the spells from 3 Lores. It's pretty dumb if you ask me but thankfully this is only the End Times Campaign and isn't applying to the normal games at the moment.

Thankfully I don't really care about End Times so this isn't affecting me at all at the moment. I'm waiting for all the hype to die down before I come back to Warhammer.

Careful with that interpretation.

One of the things being debated is that once "spell A" fails from ANY wizard, it may not be cast again that phase (don't have my copy of ETK with me, so I can't provide exact wording to 'yea' or 'nay' this).  So, bringing multiple casters with the same lore is pointless.

From more personal experience, with the random power dice caster level is now VASTLY more important.  You can't count on being able to throw more dice at a spell, so having a reliable +4 (or +6 for us; Grut's sickle is amazing with the new rules) makes getting lower value spells (like those in Maw) MUCH easier.

Three points that I've also seen come up that weren't mentioned here.
1.) Bound spells DO NOT have to roll to determine max casting dice.  So, Ruby Ring can throw 6 dice at a cast, making it much harder to dispel.  This also makes the casket of souls much scarier.
2.) You can opt to dispel via the army and not the caster, thus forgoing the max dispel dice roll.  Sure, you're not getting a bonus from the caster level, but you can safely throw 6 dice at something.  Which leads to...
2.) Dwarfs don't have to roll to determine max dispel dice.  Their bonus is inherent to their army.  This change has suddenly made dwarfs much more resilient to ETK-style magic.