Caster Generic Lords

WaaaghCheif

Something has always made me scratch my head in these titles, why CA is sooo reluctant to add generic Caster/Wizard Lords for for some races, while gladly giving it to others?

Those who made it

• Dark Elves Supreme Sorceresses
  
• Chaos Sorcerer Lord
  
• Goblin Great Shaman
  
• Bretonnian Prophetesses
  
• Every Vampire Lord is a Wizard (even VCoast)
  

The Wizards Missing

Spellweaver - Wood Elves (Mounts: Elven Steed, Great Eagle and Unicorn)

Great Bray Shaman - Beastmen (Mounts; Tuskgor Chariot, Razorgor Chariot)

The Empire - Battle Wizard Lord (Mounts: Warhorse, Barded Warhorse, Pegasus (Amber only: Griffon) (Heavens only: Celestial Hurricanum) (Light Only: Luminark of Hysh)

No Miniatures here, as they have no unique miniatures, but as with WE/DE/HE this is where CA can add both Female and Male Battle Wizard Lords.

Liche High Priest - Tomb Kings (Mounts: Skeletal Steed) - No unique miniature here.

Archmages - High Elves (Mounts: Elven Steed, Barbed Elven Steed, Great Eagle, Tiranoc Chariot, Sun,Moon and Star Dragon)

Orc Great Shaman - Greenskins (Mounts: War Boar, Wyvern, Orc Boar Chariot)

Savage Orc Shaman - Greenskins (Mounts: War Boar, Wyvern)

Goblin Great Shaman - Greenskins (Mounts: Giant Wolf, Wolf Chariot, Arachnarok Spider) NOTE: He's actually in the game, but has no mounts beyond Giant Wolf, thought the missing mounts deserved mentions, giving him a Arachnarok would made him more viable option.)

Night Goblin Shaman - Greenskins

Reasons (Speculative)

• It's for balance
  
• It's for making factions more unique
  
• It's for distinguishing races
  
• It's for thematics
  
• It's to make the factions Caster LLs to feel more unique
  

Counter Arguements

• It's for balance - The main selling point for the game is singleplayer and sandbox. Wizard Lords are weak, easy to catch. Also Wizard Lords always gets chosen over a LL or a good melee Lord.
  
• It's for making factions more unique. - I think the different mechanics, playstyle and aesthetics alone does this job, caster lords exclusivity is not really that good way for making different experiences.
  
• It's for distinguishing races - It dosent quite make sense that HE gets heroes caster while DE gets both Lords and Heroes casters, while DE's hierarchy places Supreme Sorceresses high, both factions are know for their magical superiority.
  
• It's for thematics. - As said above, DE getting Caster Lords while HE and WE does not is really anti-thematic for the Elven race.
  
• It's to make the factions Caster LLs to feel more unique. - LLs is unique on their own, they are mostly more powerful casters, have better skill upgrades, and has faction/lord traits and effects.
  

Discuss

Nitros14

It'd be hard to not add Vampire Lords to Vampire Counts.

Every Vampire except a few unique individuals has some natural magic ability, just by virtue of being a Vampire.

Tayvar

Looks like you miss the most likely reason for not having those lords, a lack of Charlemagnes.

NemoTheElf101

Certain factions like the Elven ones should have caster lords on principle; they're magically focused races.

WaaaghCheif

Tayvar said:

Looks like you miss the most likely reason for not having those lords, a lack of Charlemagnes.

DingDong. The Bloodlines Vampire Lords is calling. Rip Necarchs

Tayvar

WaaaghCheif said:

Tayvar said:

Looks like you miss the most likely reason for not having those lords, a lack of Charlemagnes.

DingDong. The Bloodlines Vampire Lords is calling. Rip Necarchs

You mean the ones who don't even have a proper model? ya those are sure a great example.

WaaaghCheif

Tayvar said:

You mean the ones who don't even have a proper model? ya those are sure a great example.

You are missing my point which is that some of the generic wizard lord could be made by CA with no Charlemagnes as the Bloodlines Lords. I'd rather they add them properly though, not to the quality of a mod.

Tayvar

WaaaghCheif said:

Tayvar said:

You mean the ones who don't even have a proper model? ya those are sure a great example.

You are missing my point which is that some of the generic wizard lord could be made by CA with no Charlemagnes as the Bloodlines Lords. I'd rather they add them properly though, not to the quality of a mod.

Also keep in mind that the Bloodlines was one of the main additions in the Vampire Counts update.

Sir_Godspeed

It does strike me as quite bizarre, and I'd love to see an official statement from CA why it is so.

DEM0N_LLAMA

Be great to have these.

Boombastek91

You compare this all caster lords from TT, mage in TT was a real power. In tww magic is not bad, some faction even can pass away magic, very value only heal.

Ol_Nessie

Boombastek91 said:

You compare this all caster lords from TT, mage in TT was a real power. In tww magic is not bad, some faction even can pass away magic, very value only heal.

Is that even a sentence?

Draxynnic

It's worth noting that Empire Wizards have mount options that were only available to Wizard Lords on the tabletop. So, in a sense, it seems to be that the Empire Wizards cover both hero Wizards and Wizard Lords, with any Wizard over a certain level sliding into the latter category. Similar to how High Elf Loremasters are agents in-game despite being Lords on the tabletop.

This wasn't done for the elves, with the current state of having Sorceresses but not Archmages being particularly incongruous, especially since dragon-riding spellcasters was always more of a HE thing than a DE thing on the tabletop.

SternguardShootyface

Caster lords kind of suck, when you put all the those skill points into magic it leaves less for your army enhancement line.

I prefer caster heroes who can go all in with their skill points.

Szemis

I think in general Generic Caster Lords are harder to add because CA tend to add a unique model for each type of Lore the Caster has. So for example, if they wanted to add the Liche High Priest for Tomb Kings they would need to add 3 new models; one for Death, Light and Nehekhara Lores. Just look at the Dark Elf Supreme Sorceresses, they added 5 unique models for each type available.

I for one would love to see more of these Caster Lords added,(with the High Elf Archmages being at the top of my list), but I wouldn't want to see them added if they don't put the same amount of work into making them all different as they have until now.

WaaaghCheif

Szemis said:

I think in general Generic Caster Lords are harder to add because CA tend to add a unique model for each type of Lore the Caster has.

They dont though, its not a new complete model, its cosmetic variations of the base model. Only faction that changes model based lore is Empire. All other casters variations models are at random, as there is no set model for a lore.

And the standard is min 3 variations.

innerp

having varied lords is an important factor in army recognition for me, since having multiple lords of the same type leading my armies makes me feel less attached to them. i would sooner have one lord of every type + magic school leading an army than just choosing the lord that can ride a dragon.

Steph_F_David

Casters from different Lore have different graphics

Exemple with WE:

Life


Beast


Shadow


And here with the 5 variants you can get in campaign for each Lore as Talsyn




And HE

Heaven



High Magic



Life



Light



Shadow



It doesn't cost that much Charlemagnes..

And if you look at DE with the supreme sorceresse, they are actually very close to the hero sorceresse

Tayvar

SternguardShootyface said:

Caster lords kind of suck, when you put all the those skill points into magic it leaves less for your army enhancement line.

I prefer caster heroes who can go all in with their skill points.

Well you have a point, most players could feel the Shadow Warrior Hero absence much more.

Draxynnic

steph74 said:

Casters from different Lore have different graphics

Exemple with WE:

Life


Beast


Shadow


And here with the 5 variants you can get in campaign for each Lore as Talsyn




And HE

Heaven



High Magic



Life



Light



Shadow



It doesn't cost that much Charlemagnes..

And if you look at DE with the supreme sorceresse, they are actually very close to the hero sorceresse

The High Elves, in fact, look like it's simply a matter of changing a few colour channels, which may involve no more than a few clicks, depending on what tools CA has.

RiccardoCorradini

addition of Caster Lord would be super good...right now the stronger faction have all the options to recruit Caster lord(Chaos,DE,VC...) so imo it's probably due to this feature. in order to improve playstile and gameplay and balance it would be good to add this kind of unit to all the faction that can use it on TT.

of course this is for Multiplayer mostly since in campaign the lack of this kind of unit is less problematic (but hey in campaign you can do basically what you want ahah)

Steph_F_David

Draxynnic said:

The High Elves, in fact, look like it's simply a matter of changing a few colour channels, which may involve no more than a few clicks, depending on what tools CA has.

This is "easy" to do in mods I mu screenshots show. It's just time consuming to duplicate the variants and textures.

Ol_Nessie

Szemis said:

I for one would love to see more of these Caster Lords added,(with the High Elf Archmages being at the top of my list), but I wouldn't want to see them added if they don't put the same amount of work into making them all different as they have until now.

Really? That's what would dissuade you from having them in? The value that caster lords add is not in how different they look, it's in how they enable you to play the game differently. Model variation is ultimately inconsequential as far as I'm concerned. Besides, as others have pointed out here the only real differences we've seen so far among caster heroes is in the Empire Wizards. Every other generic character class is assembled from a common pool of art assets. That should hardly be a disqualifier for them.

uriak

Seems since the first DLC in TWW1 they have aknowledged that caster lords are not that valuable unless they rework their skills a lot, and especially caster lords with exact heroes equivalent.

So in TWW2 they only added the two casters that were so important and unfique to their faction they couldnt skip them : slaans and grey seers. Then came the Q&C DLC : they wanted to add the handmaiden but that was a hero, not a lord. On the other side maybe they didn't see a fit hero for DE and went for the sorceress, the only caster lord made in TWW1 design and clearly an outlier design wise. Probably they considered that HE choices of mages and the other caster hybrid (sorry forgot the name) had the HE covered.

Honestly for what little resources they need they could add Archmages and High Liche priests but I feel they don't think they need to.

SternguardShootyface

steph74 said:

Casters from different Lore have different graphics

Exemple with WE:

Life


Beast


Shadow


And here with the 5 variants you can get in campaign for each Lore as Talsyn




And HE

Heaven



High Magic



Life



Light



Shadow



It doesn't cost that much Charlemagnes..

And if you look at DE with the supreme sorceresse, they are actually very close to the hero sorceresse

Wood Elf Caster variant:

Arthas_Menethil

I don't think the Empire will get their Battle Wizard Lords due to CA given the Amber Wizard hero the lord mount though I do think that Wood Elf Spellweavers were held back for High and Dark magic to be added since they could use them in the 8th edition.

Even if it's about balance the source was always that the generic Wizard lords were better mages then the generic Wizard heroes as TT had them at a higher level as for example the Archmage is a level 3 wizard compared to the Mage who is a level 1 wizard. And with some races the Wizard Lord had better access to lores of magic like Spellweavers with High and Dark magic.

Sedlina

As long as the magic system remains in its current state it is pretty much irrelevant for a caster lord to be missing

You don't get more magic resources or a faster power recharge rate for bringing a lord over a hero
while a fighter lord still outperforms a fighter hero

Not to mention that stacking casters is still going with the 1 resource to fuel multiple cannons - just that the cannons don't bring their own gunpowder - syndrom


Don't get me wrong it cripples certain armies who have to rely on spellcasters to counter specific factions.
It is also a given that this will cause even more severe issues with game 3 (chaos dawi, chaos demons - Can you imagine tzeentch, slaanesh or nurgle demons with only one spellcaster ... especially tzeentch?)