WarpPhoenix wrote:
The point of the flames is to direct your attention away from something else. If you're raising that unit of zombies then go ahead, raise it, i dont care if it dies because my archers can take basic zombies in combat. But you're one dicing invocations to get them back to full strength, it might even take you 3-4 casts depending on how your luck is, or you could spend 3-4 dice and try to dispell it. Either way thats 3-4 dice that isnt going into raising the grave guard, its 3-4 dice that isnt going to be a van hels this turn.
So basically the "tactic" is used to distract the VC player from raising his key troops or casting the game-winning spells by making him focus on protecting his weak, rubbish troops... the ones that he doesn't really care about.
That really isn't going to work against any VC player with more brains than his zombies. I mean sure, go ahead, blow all those dice on doing a fair bit of damage to a basic infantry unit- but please don't expect your opponent to play ball and panic over it. Last time my Vamps took on High Elves an impressive Flames killed 3/4 of my Zombies turn 1... did I care? Nope. I just moved them right in front of a Dragon Prince unit to slow it down for a turn. And so they died to the flames in the next magic phase. Who cares? Certainly not me, and by then they'd redirected the Dragon Princes quite nicely. No banner, either

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Its all about the pressure you put out, its not about physical results.
Au contraire, it's ALL about the physical results. If you're not wiping out stuff that matters from the first turn, then you're going to be ground into dust. Pressure is good, but it only goes so far.
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You may think that i have something better to cast, but if ive tried to cast arrow attraction twice and either failed or gotten it off then flames of the phoenix from both mages going out and ticking on two units is really going to pressure your dice.
How many lists have the magic power to do that? You're talking two attempts on 2 dice, then another two attempts on 3-4 dice. Against an army with 6-8 dispel dice. It's not bad, but it's not a worry for a good VC player. You've already said you haven't played against (m)any, try it sometime.
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You can either forget about the unit, then hey im going to mop it up with melee and steal its banner, or you can try to keep them up, in which case I'll stick back and wait for your epic struggle against those flames of the phoenix and arrows raining down. You can outlast the magic, but can all of your untis survive all the shooting AND magic?
No, of course not. But we're talking about an army with cheap troops that can get back up. The core troops, the big blocks? They're the chaff in the VC army. If you're expending your entire arsenal into wiping them out while ignoring the real threats, you're playing right into the VC player's hands.
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And about the bunkering, if you bunker a vampire in the unit then even more reason to cast it! Its gonig to hit everyone including your vampire, and if you let it tick for more than a couple turns it might just kill them, or even nastier if its a necro becuase those guys drop like flies. Either way THIS is the reason I will always cast flames of the phoenix against a vampire counts player over and over and over. (Right before a drain magic of course!)
To get the characters in the unit? Sure, I already said that's the best reason to cast the spell. I don't know why it took you two posts and several paragraphs to get to the key reason to cast it, but I'm glad we got there in the end
