Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

WorldSlayer · Aug 21, 2023

DeadmanwalkingXI said:
No it doesn't? It kicks in whenever you're attacked. That includes at range, at which point it would charge whoever attacked you and try and murder them. And if you think nobody is taking pot-shots at the enemy Wizards, I think you may be engaging in a bit too much optimism.

Sorry looks like I didn't quite make my intention clear. I meant that if you're trying to use it as a battlemagic spell to attack then it requires being in the front-lines.

However, if you use it defensively then you have to compare it to existing options that can be utilized. In this case that's the just have normal soldiers (or better yet soldiers specifically trained to the purpose). You can mix them up and use both but that adds an element of risk.

DeadmanwalkingXI said:
In a major battle a wizard is probably gonna have some troops with them and/or between them and the enemy, but that's a bit different than dedicated bodyguards. And as noted, a Red Rider is a lot more hardcore than most bodyguards so this is kind of like saying 'Well, you have light armor, why would you bother getting heavy armor and a shield?' or 'You have a knife, why bother getting a sword?'...sure, you already have something that does something in that area, but this version is a lot more potent.

DeadmanwalkingXI said:
I think you're vastly overestimating the degree to which wizards are safe from enemy action in a normal battle.

Rather I'm comparing the potential danger the Rider can cause to your own forces and if it's worth the risk of using when instead you could be using a complement of normal soldiers who have human intelligence and initiative.

While having the option of the Rider is nice it just seems to me that in a major battle the preference for the average wizard would be to have soldiers working to guard. Mixing in the Rider seems like it would be quite potentially dangerous for reasons like I've previously mentioned (pushing the wizard our of the way, drawing weapons, acting in anyway that might provoke the apparition). Also the Rider doesn't seem like it's great in teamwork and may overrun or get in the way if you tried to mix it with soldiers.

Basically I compare the Rider to having soldiers for protection and judge it as the lesser option. If you lack soldiers for protection or are jumping into the front-lines then that evaluation changes.

Wiggy · Aug 21, 2023

Sinsystems said:
You know Mathilde is a pretty non-standard Grey Wizard in a lot of ways, wonder how a Mathilde in the other colleges would have been like?

For example would she have been a healer wizard are a Bright Wizard?

Maybe she would have gone for the more mystical emotional stuff instead of just throwing fire at things. Fog of war is more the metaphorical side of ulgu than the physical after all.

DeadmanwalkingXI said:
No it doesn't? It kicks in whenever you're attacked. That includes at range, at which point it would charge whoever attacked you and try and murder them. And if you think nobody is taking pot-shots at the enemy Wizards, I think you may be engaging in a bit too much optimism.

Huh. Would that trigger if some wizard threw a spell at us and got blocked by the belt I wonder? That would just turn a bad day even worse for them if our personal murderblender decided to hunt them down while they were reeling from having a spell burnt out of their mind.

DeadmanwalkingXI · Aug 21, 2023

Tobtorp said:
And we have a martial of 25 and are a wizard.
We got no clue what the Standart empire way of using battlewizards is.

I'm pretty sure Mathilde does know that, actually. What we the thread know and what she knows are not always perfectly in synch.

WorldSlayer said:
While having the option of the Rider is nice it just seems to me that in a major battle the preference for the average wizard would be to have soldiers working to guard. Mixing in the Rider seems like it would be quite potentially dangerous for reasons like I've previously mentioned (pushing the wizard our of the way, drawing weapons, acting in anyway that might provoke the apparition). Also the Rider doesn't seem like it's great in teamwork and may overrun or get in the way if you tried to mix it with soldiers.

I think the key difference of opinion here is that I feel like you're weighing this risk way higher than is rational. For one thing, the description of Bodyguard says 'are attacked' not 'are jostled' and is almost certainly based on the Wizard's own understanding of what being attacked means, since it's bolted to their soul and connected empathically. Like, there is literally zero evidence this has a hair trigger and treats people touching you as an attack and it feels like a weird and entirely unwarranted assumption that it would.

Wiggy said:
Huh. Would that trigger if some wizard threw a spell at us and got blocked by the belt I wonder? That would just turn a bad day even worse for them if our personal murderblender decided to hunt them down while they were reeling from having a spell burnt out of their mind.

It should trigger under those circumstances by what information we have, yeah.

BurnNote · Aug 21, 2023

Tobtorp said:
Kislev wasn't a major battle, it was a thrown together skirmish party hoping for the best.
Sylvania was a bit more of a major battle but was also lead by an somewhat inexperienced general.
Van Hal was a great vampire hunter but I doubt he did much learning on empire battle tactics...

Kislev definitly was a major battle. It had the forces of multiple local lords, the Tsar's forces, the guard lead by the Tsar's heir, Two Magister Lords (or equivalent), and three more wizards.

Sylvania was a major campaign (arguably two major campaigns against the same target that didn't coordinate all that well), and both Drakenhofs were major battles. The first had an elector count, a magister patriarch, more wizards, the forces of Stirland, a dragon, some from the moot, the throng of Zhufbar, and some knights, all laying siege to probably the biggest city of Sylvania. The biggest was a multi-day bombardment of a castle, the largest show of cannon ever seen, ultimately completly destroying that castle.
Abelhelm also wasn't a newbie general anymore at that point. Drakenhof was preceeded by the campaign in the then Haunted Hills, including another major battle against the Strigoi. He wasn't a veteran of multiple wars, but he wasn't inexperienced.

I think you have a wrong idea where army size is concerned. Something like 20k would be a huge force you'd need a whole country to pay for (and even then might have trouble), and even 5k would be considered a major army in it's own right. Mass armies in the multiple hundredthousands really only starts back up during the napoleonic times (though ancient civilizations could create armies of around 100k too. IIRC, the romans, and people and india and africa all managed that. And of course the chinese). But medieval renaissance europe (which is what the empire is based off) really never managed anywhere close to that.

Tobtorp · Aug 21, 2023

BurnNote said:
Kislev definitly was a major battle. It had the forces of multiple local lords, the Tsar's forces, the guard lead by the Tsar's heir, Two Magister Lords (or equivalent), and three more wizards.

If you only go by who was present we had many "major battles" but Kislev was a slap dash action to curb whatever the dryad's were doing. We pulled together what forces we could in about a week. That's not a major battle...

And we definitely didn't even have 5k forces in the field in Kislev...

Also the empire has way more people then you think it does.
(Keep in mind this is fantasy not real live, the empire has surprising amounts of people)
I will give you that Sylvania was a major battle... But I never denied that. My point in Sylvania was that Abelhelm had no clue how to use wizards because he was never classically schooled in empire army tactics. If I had to guess he just said "do what you think you can do to help." To the wizards

Parabola · Aug 21, 2023

Looks over at character sheet

On this general note, I hope we eventually get our Wizards Strategy/Tactics skills up to Basic at some point.

DeadmanwalkingXI · Aug 21, 2023

Tobtorp said:
My point in Sylvania was that Abelhelm had no clue how to use wizards because he was never classically schooled in empire army tactics. If I had to guess he just said "do what you think you can do to help." To the wizards

And this remains a deeply weird assumption that all the evidence we have seems to be entirely against.

Tobtorp · Aug 21, 2023

DeadmanwalkingXI said:
And this remains a deeply weird assumption that all the evidence we have seems to be entirely against.

Ok then tell me where he would have pulled said training or experience in leading mixed armies of mundane and magical troops from?
Because that's where I'm coming from, the man might not have hated wizards but at the beginning he definitely distrusted them.
And until the campaign the only wizard he had access to was us... A journeywoman who was also his spy mistress...

DeadmanwalkingXI · Aug 21, 2023

Tobtorp said:
Ok then tell me where he would have pulled said training or experience in leading mixed armies of mundane and magical troops from?
Because that's where I'm coming from, the man might not have hated wizards but at the beginning he definitely distrusted them.
And until the campaign the only wizard he had access to was us... A journeywoman who was also his spy mistress...

His character sheet in the Dramatis Personae explicitly notes he employed Battle Wizards regularly in his Witch Hunter days.

To quote:

Boney said:
He even regularly hired battle wizards to assist him in his campaigns, and barely ever burned any of them at the stake.

BurnNote · Aug 21, 2023

Tobtorp said:
If you only go by who was present we had many "major battles" but Kislev was a slap dash action to curb whatever the dryad's were doing. We pulled together what forces we could in about a week. That's not a major battle...

Kislev is notably good at pulling together forces quickly. It's the force of multiple local lords, plus the forces of kiselv city. That's pretty serious shit. I honestly don't know what would qualify as major for you if that didn't. Nothing short of an Everchosen?

Tobtorp · Aug 21, 2023

BurnNote said:
Kislev is notably good at pulling together forces quickly. It's the force of multiple local lords, plus the forces of kiselv city. That's pretty serious shit. I honestly don't know what would qualify as major for you if that didn't. Nothing short of an Everchosen?

The only things we got from Kislev city is horse mobile troops and we helped pulling the kreml guard.

The pulks are ok but they were pulled from 4 villages and as such are probably not that large.
This was not a large military operation, this was "let's see what we can get together in a week because the tzar will attack when he gets here."

DeadmanwalkingXI said:
His character sheet in the Dramatis Personae explicitly notes he employed Battle Wizards regularly in his Witch Hunter days.

To quote:

Point to you then, did not remember that ever coming up in our time with him.

King Arthur · Aug 21, 2023

DeadmanwalkingXI said:
And this remains a deeply weird assumption that all the evidence we have seems to be entirely against.

Keep in mind that I'm on team "bodyguard is super useful and I don't think most wizards have bodyguards." I'm also on team "in literally every engagement we've seen wizards didn't have bodyguards and that definitely means something, even if I can't prove definitly that that's the case for more standard armies."

He was definitely skilled and I'm sure he was trained and educated in leading an army, but prior to becoming an Elector Count he was just a Witch Hunter, right?

Do Witch Hunters lead armies, like, ever? Genuine question.

If not, he's only really had his time as a Count as far as "experience leading armies" goes, and we know how many wizards he's had command of during that time period.

DeadmanwalkingXI said:
His character sheet in the Dramatis Personae explicitly notes he employed Battle Wizards regularly in his Witch Hunter days.

To quote:

Cool.

Was he leading an army at the time, or was he just doing special forces/adventure party type stuff?

Cause, like, if Teclis isn't too big and important to do non-army Adventurer type stuff I'm sure random Battle Wizards aren't either, and as far as I'm aware Witch hunters don't lead armies (seriously, I could be wrong on this, not super knowledgeable about Witch hunters.)

Leading Wizards in special forces/Adventure Party style encounters is presumably pretty different from commanding wizards in an army, although experience is still a great thing to have.

Codex · Aug 21, 2023

King Arthur said:
(seriously, I could be wrong on this, not super knowledgeable about Witch hunters.)

A random Witch Hunter wouldn't have the authority, a Witch Hunter Captain may be able to rally forces, the Supreme Council, of which there are 12, are of such authority that they could possibly lead an army, and the Lord Protector is a Grandmaster. The official Witch Hunters are analogous to a Knightly Order, and the Lord Protector may as well be considered a General.

DeadmanwalkingXI · Aug 21, 2023

King Arthur said:
Do Witch Hunters lead armies, like, ever? Genuine question.

Per the tabletop wargame, not generally no, but they often accompany armies as part of them the same way Battle Wizards (or various other specialist) do. Which would definitely give one experience in how Battle Wizards are usually used and outfitted. How true that is for Van Hal specifically is another question entirely, but it seems pretty likely from context that he'd likely been part of more than one army as well as various more 'adventuring party' kinda situations.

Well, depending upon what one means by an army, I suppose.

Wiggy · Aug 21, 2023

BurnNote said:
I think you have a wrong idea where army size is concerned. Something like 20k would be a huge force you'd need a whole country to pay for (and even then might have trouble), and even 5k would be considered a major army in it's own right. Mass armies in the multiple hundredthousands really only starts back up during the napoleonic times (though ancient civilizations could create armies of around 100k too. IIRC, the romans, and people and india and africa all managed that. And of course the chinese). But medieval renaissance europe (which is what the empire is based off) really never managed anywhere close to that.

I mean, warhammer is bad with numbers. They throw around a lot of massive numbers for army sizes without doing a lot of thinking about what sort of resources or society would be required to support them, because at the end of the day the setting is an excuse to have big setpiece battles without needing to wait decades to replace those 100k soldiers.

deathofrats0808 · Aug 21, 2023

BurnNote said:
I think you have a wrong idea where army size is concerned. Something like 20k would be a huge force you'd need a whole country to pay for (and even then might have trouble), and even 5k would be considered a major army in it's own right. Mass armies in the multiple hundredthousands really only starts back up during the napoleonic times (though ancient civilizations could create armies of around 100k too. IIRC, the romans, and people and india and africa all managed that. And of course the chinese). But medieval renaissance europe (which is what the empire is based off) really never managed anywhere close to that.

Wiggy said:
I mean, warhammer is bad with numbers. They throw around a lot of massive numbers for army sizes without doing a lot of thinking about what sort of resources or society would be required to support them, because at the end of the day the setting is an excuse to have big setpiece battles without needing to wait decades to replace those 100k soldiers.

Uh, the Empire is effectively from the 1600s. It absolutely should be able to field hundreds of thousands. Hell, Stirland had a strength of 25,000 alone. And Stirland was dirt poor, and on paper it was supposed to have 40,000.

Tobtorp · Aug 21, 2023

deathofrats0808 said:
Uh, the Empire is effectively from the 1600s. It absolutely should be able to field hundreds of thousands. Hell, Stirland had a strength of 25,000 alone. And Stirland was dirt poor, and on paper it was supposed to have 40,000.

And it's stirland so 40 000 is probably the very bottom of imperial strength to be expected.

deathofrats0808 · Aug 21, 2023

Tobtorp said:
And it's stirland so 40 000 is probably the very bottom of imperial strength to be expected.

I mean, you're forgetting Hochland

But yeah. At best you could figure that Stirland is more militarised due to having Sylvania on the border, but even so, that would probably even out and the Empire ends up with something like 350-400,000 soldiers.

Glau · Aug 21, 2023

Regardless of whether Abel had training about standard doctrine, his Marshall surely did and would be in a place to convey that knowledge.

Tobtorp · Aug 21, 2023

Glau said:
Regardless of whether Abel had training about standard doctrine, his Marshall surely did and would be in a place to convey that knowledge.

... Wasn't the marshall mister outrider mchorse enthusiast? Like don't get me wrong he probably had some idea on how to organize an army, the army did get organized.
But he feels Uber specialised.

Sa'kage · Aug 21, 2023

Tobtorp said:
... Wasn't the marshall mister outrider mchorse enthusiast? Like don't get me wrong he probably had some idea on how to organize an army, the army did get organized.
But he feels Uber specialised.

"...Can you put wizards on a horse?"
"Some of them can summon magical horses sir"
"Brilliant, we have another horse riding corp ready then"

Copperscale · Aug 21, 2023

deathofrats0808 said:
I mean, you're forgetting Hochland

What's that?

ReImagined · Aug 21, 2023

Tobtorp said:
Point to you then, did not remember that ever coming up in our time with him.

In story, that blurb comes from all the way back in turn 1:

Boney said:
The information from the College itself is nowhere near as earthshattering. It is simply an accounting of Van Hal's career, culminating in the extermination of a small army of Strigoi vampires under Talabheim. Interestingly, the minutiae of his career reveals that he's hired wizards on dozens of occasions to assist with his endless war against the Undead, and that he's never really lived up to the name of 'Witch Hunter' - though he definitely showed no hesitation to put the torch to the necromancers he encountered. The letter also reveals that Van Hal was the first choice of the three Cult of Sigmar votes, the Emperor, Wissenland, the Moot, and Averland, and the vote was finished when Talabecland was won over.

Wizard numbers are small enough that I'd imagine that it's fairly uncommon to actually be familiar with doctrine that wouldn't be handled by the wizards themselves. On the flip side, the one guy who's hired them dozens of times and killed a small army of vampires, an impressive enough feat to warrant being given Stirland, is probably familiar enough in working with them.

Copperscale · Aug 21, 2023

On a sidenote, Roswita is probably also pretty good at applying wizard tactics.

If only by osmosis from that time when the Emperor's decree flooded Stirland with ~~cats~~ Battle Wizards

Derpmind · Aug 21, 2023

Parabola said:
Looks over at character sheet

On this general note, I hope we eventually get our Wizards Strategy/Tactics skills up to Basic at some point.

Mathilde, musing to herself while training her Apparition: Do Battle Wizards normally get bodyguards? Isn't that something I ought to know? *checks character sheet* No, I suppose I don't. *sighs*

Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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