8th Edition musings with reference to The Old World

I haven't played TOW yet. But, I am intrigued by them reigning in silly looking battle bus formations and the whole fall back stuff (which as far as I understand makes what happens after losing combat less all-or-nothing pass the test and you are fine or fail the test and all is lost). Also like that Strength 4 isn't armor piercing. makes light armor a bit more useful.

I think that the change to the magic phase (being integrated into the other phases now and doing away with the random number of power and dispel dice) is an interesting change. It always feels bad to know that you have 4-6 levels worth of magic in a battle but you roll 2-4 power dice and so can only really get 1-2 spells off at best. It does mean that the spells themselves had to change so that they were functional though so I'm not sure how well it will integrate into the pre-existing set up.

Specifically for High Elves - I love the fact that Spearmen can now have Detachments of Archers. I feel like this fits well with the overall theme of High Elf citizen levies and discipline. That is something that is easy to shoe horn right into 8th game play.

So far, granted it has only been 2 games, the games of TOW I played had very smooth spell usage. It is surprisingly easy to remember that you want to use the Wizard you paid for. Also the type of spells and when they are used is pretty easy to coordinate. They just make sense.

Command Phase - do have any buffs or debuffs I can throw?

Movement phase - do I have any magic I can move things with?

Shooting Phase - do I have and Magic I can shoot out at things?

Combat Phase - do I have any magic that will kill this thing before it kills me in melee?

They flowed nicely in the gameplay and not having to rely on random amounts of Power/Dispel dice (especially not being knee-capped by rolling snake eyes) made it so that every spell was both attemptable and dispellable. That felt nice.

I found it just as easy as thinking about what I wanted to do with every other unit during every other phase.

I don't know about you but every phase of the game I just go from unit to unit and think about if there is anything I want that unit to do in that phase.

So it was just a natural progression to do so with the Wizards.

I understand liking what you are used to and have trained yourself to do well. I too am very happy with the 8th edition ruleset. But I must admit that some of the new ideas from Old World are intriguing and might be better for game balance and flow. Only through playtesting will this be able to lend itself to a good decision.

Contemplating playing tow with 8th edition magic.
Just throw in a magic phase.