light coven, how to do it?

Now i have been watching a lot of batreps where a lot of armies are fielding light covens.
Now i believe one of us here took one of these with Tomb Kings to one of the big tourneys in the US. My question is has anyone else tried it? Any success? Also how does it work? As i understand only 1 wizard can get banishment no?
Thanks

The_Count

Yes, only one banishment.
I tried two builds:
5 lvl 1 priests
Lvl 4 HLP + 3 lvl 1 priests.

Always Hierotitan.

One banishment + we can have several burning gaze on 3+
Also we have net for wizards and cannons and protection against warmachines.
Not mentioning possible ASF+1 attack, 10WS and I.

And still we have buffs from our own lore

How do you usually deploy your light liches?

Depends on the amount of bunker units.
Since I am considering 2-3 units of 20 archers I can have 3 bunker units.
Small liches can go separately or at the main bunker with both HLP.

Hmm. Might give it a try with 4 liche priests and see how it goes. Thanks!

But there is no guaranty of even getting banishment too...

You have very high chance to roll double for lvl 4.
Seven rolls total, you can get it plenty of times.

When I used 5 lvl 1 priests I had three banishment rolls, so no problem there, considering I've rolled less.

Ah yes true. I was thinking about having 4 lvl 1's for a list i want to try. Thanks.

lvl 1 makes it much harder to cast and you don't cover entire Lore as safe.

True but my list also has a hirotitan and a casket to boost, and I only want banishment, the rest is just a bonus. And it's only for a 1350-1500 point list. I usually play bigger but there is this small tourney at my local GW that will be running and I was thinking of trying out the light coven. Hence my original question about it.

From my experience with Light council - casket is obsolete in light council lists.
The reason is simple - you won't have any dice for LoD spell, since you have a lot to cast. And a number of priests can channel as casket does.
Casting only banishment strategy won't work, because it is the spell that will be dispelled.

This won't work for so low points games.

This post has been edited by DarthM on Apr 30 2013, 09:16 AM

I disagree that the casket is in any way obsolete in a light council list. The dice it generates means it pays for itself and doesn't compete with the council in any way.

Moreover, the caskets' dice can also be used to power the councils spells if those are more beneficial, so the idea that you shouldn't include the casket regardless makes no sense to me.

I agree that 1350-1500pts probably makes the council a non starter though. We're bad a low points levels to start with and a light council needs a ton of points to do it properly.

When you have light council running, they have access to a number of magic missiles, that are more stable than casket's light of death. First reason why we don't need it.
Second reason. Average number of dice we should get is 2. With 5 channeling rolls we got quite good chance to get the dice we need.
Third reason - with Titan lvl4 priest can cast on vital spells on two dice and doesn't need casket.
Fourth reason - I better spend 135 pts on a fighting unit. Casket NEVER worked for me. I don't know how people break games with that. Probably because I face Ld9-10 armies with BSB most of the time and all casket can do is killing units that are not solving the game.

This post has been edited by DarthM on Apr 30 2013, 01:32 PM

I tough the reason wasn't that you had "enough" PD (average of 8 doesn´t seems as much), but that a coven make you spend 900 points on only magic support. So, the amount of points spend on fighting units is really small, and the 135 points was proportionally too many points toto take away from more fighting units.

I think you've missed the point mate. It's not a question of casket or magic missiles -with the casket you can do both. Since the casket is very often the big thing for opponents to dispel this means you get more of your councils' spells off to start with.

Again, it's not one or the other -it's both because the casket pays for itself. In addition, on a bad roll the casket means you don't just have to rely on your councils' "quite good chance" at channeling to give you an edge on dice -the casket does it for you.

You can still do all this with a casket in the list. Light of death is in addition to any threats your level 4 can generate. Clearly, the casket adds further pressure on your opponents dispel dice however you slice it. However, we do need to overwelm those dispel dice -and light of death clearly helps here.

To be honset I really can't understand this myself -the casket is one of the few things that just about every opponent has a healthy respect for and it's out and out amazing.

Your opinion of the casket seems so bizarre it actually took me a while to figure out why you'd got this one so far off the mark -and then the penny dropped.

Clearly your opinion of the casket is clouded by the ETC comp you play under (and the magic dice cap it inflicts upon us).

ETC has nothing to do with the fact, that in my case LoD either jumped ENTIRE army without inflicting single wound or wasn't allowed to cast until it's death.
Current BSB+IP rules easily counter the average. Even losing 5 models is not death for large infantry block.
You just miss it out, that LoD is not a threat for entire game. It's the same 2-3 turns while your enemy moves forward. Once you are engaged, it's useless, because warmachines already did their job most likely or casket is dead.


This post has been edited by DarthM on Apr 30 2013, 02:56 PM

If you have been targetting infantry blocks, I can see why the casket didn't work for you. this logic would mean cannons would be useless too.

I HOPE you try to target warmachines, monsters or monstrous cav with your casket. losing 5 wounds IS bad for a terrorgheist, and it IS bad for an Ironblaster, and losing 5 wounds IS bad for a demigryph unit.

I've been targetting warmachines, monstrous cav, flyers.
Do I look so stupid to target infantry blocks?
LoD can still jump there.

The fact that IP and BSB work against this is the reason why it doesn't work.
And when I have 8+ spells at my disposal, then I don't need the one, that can fail even if cast.

(Most memorable things - Hydra with 4 regeneration rolls and abomination that passed Ld8)

I've been targetting warmachines, monstrous cav, flyers.
Do I look so stupid to target infantry blocks?
LoD can still jump there.

The fact that IP and BSB work against this is the reason why it doesn't work.
And when I have 8+ spells at my disposal, then I don't need the one, that can fail even if cast.

(Most memorable things - Hydra with 4 regeneration rolls and abomination that passed Ld8)

It's not about not targeting infantry units, it's about not targeting units within IP and BSB range.

When your enemy advances, they leave their warmachines vulnerable to the casket. If their terrorgheists / varghulfs / demigyphs / pegasus knights / etc. charge up ahead of you then they're vulnerable as well (terrorgheists have LD 4, so if they're leaving their general's IP range the casket willl KILL them on an average roll).

And more importantly, if they do NONE of those things then they've let the casket change how they play, something you can take advantage of. Same if they space all their units out 6.5" apart.

I've been targetting warmachines, monstrous cav, flyers.
Do I look so stupid to target infantry blocks?
LoD can still jump there.

The fact that IP and BSB work against this is the reason why it doesn't work.
And when I have 8+ spells at my disposal, then I don't need the one, that can fail even if cast.

(Most memorable things - Hydra with 4 regeneration rolls and abomination that passed Ld8)

You certainly don't look stupid, just checkig. The thing with the hellpit/hydra is: of course they can survive things now and the; they can survive cannons equally easy. not a reason to stop targetting them. I think I proved once before that the casket actually does more damage than any other warmachine, with the only big IF being that you need to get the spell through. Now, I allready admit that that is a BIG IF, but I will still maintain that such damage is WORTH the try to get it through.

I think I have already mentioned this.
I've used casket on last two tournaments.(ETC magic, but other stuff wasn't ETC) Each turn that it was alive in most cases it's 3-4 turns up to six. I've used five dice to cast it. Again and again. That's average 32 attempts to cast, not mentioning games where it lived until the end, that I believe would be 36 casts on five dice each.

I got IF only twice in eight games.
Also it was allowed to open a couple of times.

So the result.
DE with dreadlord on the dragon and BSB on manticore, meaning 18 inches of IP and re-rolls. Entire army has passed leadership. I am not kidding. He stood so it was with 6 inches and I was rolling 3+ perfectly.
Empire. It managed to kill hellblaster. That wouldn't fire anyway, since I never got in range there.
again with HE it again jumped across entire army on IF doing nothing.
another DE.. As I recall he lost 2 harpies and one dark rider.

Eight games, each time five dice roll. 6 wounds.

One important thing though. This was Settra's army and all magic I had was Settra, two liches, Ruby Ring and Casket.
But once you get light council with Titan, you get plenty of spells you would like to cast apart from casket. And casket will only get in your way.

This post has been edited by DarthM on May 1 2013, 12:17 AM

Ok so you seem to have bad luck with Caskets. For me they always work well. Won me plenty of games and frankly just the fact that people know what it can do, it's great!

It's psychological effects are great, the extra dice are great and pay for it just with that. Even if you just cast 1 dice at the LoD, with the titan near by, if it goes off it will suck 2, maybe 3 dice out of your opponent. For me the casket is a way of projecting power over the battlefield.

I will try it with a practice game to see how the coven works. If not, i'll take my chaos army to the tourney as i don't like playing tomb king slow points. This combo was just interesting to me.

I wish you better luck with the casket DarthM.

Wait a moment. What do you mean by Titan nearby? Titan doesn't give his bonus to casket. As well, as Titan doesn't count as light wizard for banishment.
The thing is.. Imagine you didn't roll well for magic phase and got 8 dice total.
If you are not engaged, that means that your close combat spells are not necessary.
So we got banishment, net and probably 2 or 3 burning gazes to cast.
And if we add Casket here.. I prefer trying to cast 3 burning gazes on 3+, rather than one LoD on two.

I generally understand what you are saying, Darth, though I will say that with the casket, that would have been 10 PD instead of 8. Also, you can't really equate 5 channeling mages with +d3 PD. the later has a far better chance of generating dice than the former. The casket pays for itself in terms of powerdice, with the added benifit of flexibility. imagine you roll 2&2&casket2; are you happy with those two extra dice and will they help you turn that phase into something usefull? yes!
I know, we can keep comming up with different wind-of-magic-situations that suit our story. I'm actually thinking I should compose some matrix of posisble outcomes for a better overview.

anyway, if the casket is not for you, it's not for you.

One more moment that I got in mind. Perhaps that I should stress.

When it comes to brining two wizards and casket it's one thing. But when we invest into light council, we actually have to invest much more points into wizards, than we do in classic build.
So simple count. HLP4 for example with earthing rod, then HLP4 of light with some item.
Probably little lvl1 with MR3 and one with dispel scroll.
That's huge investment.

If we also bring casket.. Well, that's two Necroknights or 10 Halbed TG we've lost.

well, that's undeniably true; we'll always be short on points in our army, I find. Let's ee though, buying 2lvl4s and 3 lvl1's, which seems to me the cheapest acceptable coven available (gotta have str 7 eh?), clocks in at 630. imagine a titan and a casket, and we're talking 940. what're our options then, if we also have to buy 600 points core? At this point, I'd say you should buy your chaf from the core points, redirectors will have to be horsearchers rather than carrion, and if you work it out like that, this all will mean that you have a budget of 860 points for your heavy units.

That ain't stellar, but it ain't completely desperate either.
- a knight block of 6 with FC costs 420, so you could fit in two of those at full strength still. Buy units of 5 snakes and you will have room left for some carrion or a stalker unit.
- a TG block would easily cost 600 points If you'd like a 40 man strong halberd unit with a nice banner, BUT I'm going to be mean, and point out that under ETC a unit can cost only 450 points tops anyway, so whatever your TG-layout, you can fit it in too, probably. Let's not forget you have to pay at least 100 for a prince too (king seems out of the question in combination with a coven) so you can't really buy TWO tomb guard blocks for these points, but how often do you see a double TG list anyway? You could still get 435 point TG unit, a prince and a unit of 5 necropolis knights.

seeing that under ETC rules, units can not surpass the 450 points level, I'd think leaving out the casket for two extra knights would not be that crucial.