STORM OF MAGIC OR STORM IN A TEACUP?

 

The Winds of Magic are blowing a gale out there in the Warhammer universe. Not toppling trees but mutating forests into bloodthirsty glades of death, and sprouting unholy arcane fulcrums like so many High Elf erections. My first thoughts upon hearing of this new expansion to the Warhammer experience was ‘Great…………for wizards.’ The magic phase was never a favourite of my Beastmen horde, so a game that expanded on it didn’t seem like a hoof in the right direction from my point of view. However having spent a spell out of the country (get it…spell!), and returning to find my brother had spent the last month buying rule books, fulcrums, manticores, cockatrice (cockatrices?), magic books and a dragon, it turns out that I was giving this expansion a go like it or not.

Now I may be renowned throughout the Warhammer and Realspace universes for being quite an open minded ole champ, but every now and again one can form some understandable biases and preconceptions before buying into such major changes to a game they have loved from day dot.

So what were my biases before I sat down for my first game of Storm of Magic?

1. ‘What a rubbishly transparent marketing ploy for the Workshop to sell up all those crumby monsters that no one ever buys.’ In 12 odd years of gaming I’ve never even seen a cockatrice on the field, let alone wanted one in my army. Suddenly every army can have one. Along with a Storm of Magic book full to brim of all the obscure monsters and creatures of the Old (and New) World. So I was wondering rather pessimistically if anyone had actually come up with any game enhancing rules to go with this marketing ploy.
2. The next big issue I saw was that this whole scheme must have been hatched by High Elf and Vampire loving wizard buffs, tired of watching real armies doing an honest days butchering. You know the ones, your army has smashed his Orc Boyz to pieces and your general has just added a Wyvern head to his trophy rack….. Then some gitty greenskin Shaman manages to get off ‘Foot of Gork’ and 3 ‘Ead butts’ in the one magic phase. Suddenly its game over for you; did I say git yet?
3. Magic already slows down a lot of the games I play, not just the magic phase when someone’s decided every character in his army needs a deck of spells each, but before the game. Waiting in agony while they ponder which lore of magic to give who, and carefully read and re-read each spell card as they get them… Kidney stones would be less painful.
4. The Pacts/Seven Sigils of Summoning spell. Ok so not only are we hocking ridiculous monsters half of us players have never heard of, but now your Dwarf army can field an Undead detachment or Deamons? Not only that but Seven Sigils can summon any unit, from any book to fight for your army. You hear that kids? That’s that clamour of cash registers, as new armies and rulebooks go flying out the Gamesworkshop doors.

 

Swallowing my preconceptions and regular hatred of the magic phase the Beastmen Horde of Freagor the Black took once more to the field against some High Elves giddy with magic dust. My opponent and i decided to play each one of the scenarios that come with the rulebook, three in total and managed to nut out 5 games over the weekend.

THE GAMES

 

Scenarios

-       3 x Storm of magic games. Basically a pitched battle with each side getting a number of Fulcrums to make their magic extra tasty. Player with the most fulcrums at the end wins.

-       1 x The Mad Mage of Drakwald Downs. Both players get only one Fulcrum in their deployment zone. In the centre of the board a third Fulcrum is placed along with a Mad Wizard on it. this wizard attacks anyone who gets close with automatically cast spells, and has a 2+ ward save. Only the army who gains control of the Mad Wizards Fulcrum wins. P.S the mad wizards Fulcrum……………..it moves!

-       1 x Reign of Magic. Three Fulcrums are placed along the centre of the board and it’s a mad rush to gain control of them. Seems simple but in this game the whole battlefield is alive with magic. Every turn dead characters could be resurrected, or the landscape could come alive and massacre your army before your very eyes.

So what were the results?

2 x wins for the Beastmen,

2 x wins for the High Elves,

1 x win for the terrain.

Yep the Terrain won a game. Ok so technically this game was conceded by the Beastmen and therefore a High Elf win but that would give the readers the wrong idea of what really went on. During the Reign of magic game we rolled ‘The landscape is alive’ result during the magic phase twice. Meaning EVERY unit withing 6” of ANY terrain feature suffers 2d6 strength 4 hits! No armour save! Suffice to say we were a little liberal with our terrain that game and more than two thirds of the High Elf and Beastmen hordes were destroyed not by each other but the battlefield itself. The game was conceded with only three badly battered units on the board.

Other highlights.

During one of the standard games my Level 2 Beastmen Shaman killed the same High Elf Arch Mage (level 4) three times! She kept getting resurrected/summoned using the seven sigils etc, and despite having better leadership and magic level than my Shaman kept botching her rolls for ‘magic dual’.

 

Another game saw one Magical Vortex spell kill more than 20 Gors in a single magic phase, and then swing back for the rest of them in the next turn. I added this because reading the magical vortex spells for myself I didn’t think they were that flash and opted not to use any for myself during the 5 games. DON’T MAKE THE SAME MISTAKE! .

But the main highlight of many of the games was watching on as ALL the mages on the battlefield were turned instantly into FROGS because of a bad miscast roll. Throughout the weekend mages were either dealing death all over the battlefield or being squished underfoot. One particularly funny death occurred when a High Mage taking cover in a mist shrouded swap was turned into a frog, and subsequently rolled a 1 for being in the swamp, and was eaten by some mist shrouded figure. (I like to think an opportunistic Frenchman)

Blame for all these frog related deaths rested largely with the mages themselves. Drunk with power most mages succumbed to their own eagerness. Falling prey to savage miscast results long before they could be struck down by their foes.

 

 

So how does the Latest expansion to Warhammer hold up after the first weekend of Beta tests?

Pretty damn well actually, the rules are simple enough but really do give you a whole different game.

On the downside playing a storm of magic game does tend to take a bit longer than your average game, and likewise the setup for the game drags out too. Each player will have units or monsters in their army that they are not used to fielding, and magic’s that they are not sure about either. So it does take a bit of patience, and I would not recommend a whole tournament of this style of game. It would be more of an interesting addition to a campaign or a final match to a tournament. (Failing that, substitute a Storm of Magic game for a regular Warhammer scenario you wont miss, and roll off just like you would to decide a standard game)

The upside is you really can get out of your own army list and have some fun here. Ok I still don’t like Manticores or Cockatrice (Cockatrees?), but there’s loads of other ways to use the game to spice up your force. Dark emissaries in your High Elf warhost, Greater Deamons next to your Goblins, Stegadons charging before your Undead legions, or how about a legion of your own Undead shambling along beside your Dark Elves.

They say a change is as good as a holiday. And the Changer or Ways had done just that with this whimsically fickle installation to Warhammer.

 

Come on outside cowards, the weather is frightful!