So I'm curious how many of the people who voted actually own and have played at least 3 games with the full end times rules?
As it stands I'm the only one who plays with all the end times rules in this thread, possibly this forum, and I have a lot of experience playing from all angles and in very competative games. I grew up on Lizardmen over 15 years ago, and have recently finished collecting every fantasy army other than brets and dwarves. Now at first glance I thought that every end times book was completely broken, but after playing with all the rules over and over I have found that it only adds a very fun dimension and actually balances out quite a bit.
In pure 8th edition I almost always regretted taking a Slann in my lizardmen list, heck I regretted almost every caster in every army I played, my most competitive army builds generally had one lvl2 with scroll that just played defense. Why? Because the point cost, effort, strategy involved in making magic work far outweighed the actual game result it could give, it is my belief that simple strategies beat complex 9 out of 10 times, I have actually made completely core lists before and every time I do I have won, seriously I have never lost with a 100% core army list. No one can even come close to the sheer numbers and manueverability that I can field, and I don't care that you have a 30x grave guard unit with blender vampire, you can put out 20 wounds every round, but my front unit of 30 skinks with poison, flanking unit of 30x saurus, and rear unit of 30x saurus (all for the same points as your unit) will still cause 16 wounds and win combat by 2 points, and the next round that happens there won't be any grave guard to respond to my 14 wounds so the vampire loses by 10 even after causing 10 wounds himself (real world example). But I digress.
My point is that playing with all the end times rules is a blast and so far I have yet to experience anything stupidly overpowered. What you want to purple sun my poor I1 lizzies to death? Good luck getting the casting value after rolling to use 3 power dice. What Nagash can summon TRIPLE the points of monstrous infantry??? Good luck on getting that spell out with variable power dice and then if you do I can throw a scroll or cube it. Of course loremasters are much more dangerous and can effectively lower level buff or magic missile some key areas of the battle, now the fun spells are incredibly useful
Using 2D6 winds of magic a good magic phase would see me get off two spells, one of which is useful and the other was a throw away that my opponent knew wasn't worth dispelling, magic was more of a nuclear deterent in 8th, we both take as much as possible to try and nuke the other or just ward it away until we get into the actual fun parts of the game. Now there is less than a 50% chance to get anything with a casting value over 16+ off to begin with, then add dispelling to it. I highly suggest using all the rules first for a few games and writing up some battle reports over it.
FYI last time I faced Nagash he died turn 3 after losing combat to my Skrox, all it took was an average roll on his to hit and a good roll on my parry, Krox did 2 wounds and CR did the rest lol. By the way, that equals a 300pt core unit taking out 3 times its worth in lord points.
Also an equal points unit of Skink Cohorts with poison will kill KFA before he kills them based on average dice rolls.
