Mastering Magic: Debuff Spells

Good morning gamers,

Today we're covering four spells that will knock down your opponent's stats or heroic resources. Like our post on Restoration spells, the value of these spells is based on denying your opponent the ability to use heroic resources effectively (or reduce important stats - like Strength or Courage). Most of the characters we'll be viewing today are spooky and wraith-like, but you get some weird other characters showing up too. Today's post features such nasty spells as Curse (blows away Fate), Sap Will (blows away Will), Wither (reduces Strength), and one of my favorite spells in the game (and an often underrated spell), Drain Courage (reduces Courage).

What Do These Spells Do?

Two of the spells we're covering today (Sap Will and Drain Courage) are present on every single Ringwraith, as well as Sauron, the Necromancer of Dol Guldur and (for Drain Courage, at least) the Mouth of Sauron. Since these are spell-casters available to most of the armies of evil, chances are you'll have one of these spells available to you (if not both).

Drain Courage is a straight-forward spell: if not resisted, the target's Courage value is reduced by 1 (to a minimum of 0). Since most of the models with this spell also have Harbinger of Evil/Ancient Evil, you probably don't need to ACTUALLY reduce your target's Courage to 0, but still. . . . When channelled, this reduction is changed to D3 Courage (which, as I've said in a previous post on magic, means you're not guaranteed to actually get anything from the channel).

Sap Will is similar, but targets your opponent's Will store. When cast normally, the target's Will is reduced by D3 and when channelled, the target's Will is reduced by D6. While this sounds great, most models in the game (unless they're spell-casters or a select few other models) have 1-3 Will points and they'll probably use at least 1 Will point to resist this spell. This means this spell is likely to be cast against models with lots of Will only (which will make you have to decide whether channelling is worth it against your target).

The other two spells are MUCH more niche, belonging to only one model in the range each. Curse is a nasty piece of work, removing 1 Fate when cast normally or ALL Fate when channelled. Most heroes have 1-2 Fate points, so channelling this spell is really only necessary against the select few models that have 3 Fate (especially if they're rerollable). Since this spell is only found on the Necromancer of Dol Guldur (who has Drain Soul to insta-kill any model that is out of Fate AND who can be accompanied by Mirkwood Spiders who can Paralyze people if they don't spend a Fate point to protect themselves), it's quite likely that this spell will prompt a resistance attempt from your opponent.

Wither is only available to the Angmar Orc Shaman and reduces the target's Strength by 1 if cast normally (and reduces the target's Strength by D3 if channelled). A Strength penalty of 1 doesn't seem like much, but when cast against a S4 hero, suddenly D6 troops are MUCH harder for the hero to crack through. In an Angmar list where most of your units are D5, that may not seem like much - but your Cave Trolls, Ringwraiths, and Gulavhar suddenly become much harder to deal with, since your opponent can't rely on a big hero to take them out. When channelled, this could do nothing extra than a normal cast, but it will (again) probably prompt a resist roll (because you do NOT want to lose 2-3 pips of Strength).

Who's Got These Spells?

As has already been covered, these spells are available to several different kinds of units. If we group all ten of the Ringwraith profiles together, we have the following break-down:

• The Mouth of Sauron (Mordor) has access to Drain Courage on a 2+;
• All Ringwraiths (all are available to Mordor, some are available to Barad-Dur, the Easterlings, the Corsairs of Umbar, the Serpent Horde, and Angmar) have access to Drain Courage and Sap Will, most of whom cast Drain Courage on a 2+ (sometimes a 3+) and all of them cast Sap Will on a 5+.
• The Dark Lord Sauron (Barad-Dur) has access to Drain Courage on a 2+ and Sap Will on a 4+ and BOTH of these have an 18" range, which is just gross;
• The Angmar Orc Shaman (Angmar) only has access to Wither on a 3+;
• The Necromancer of Dol Guldur (Dark Powers of Dol Guldur) has access to Drain Courage (2+), Sap Will (5+), and Curse (4+).

How Do You Use These Spells Most Effectively?

These spells are debuffs - and while making enemy models weaker is good, this is going to compete for resources against our other spells (like Transfix for most of these models). So here are some guidelines for using these spells:

• Cast the spell with at least a 70% chance of success;
• Target the "best" model(s); and
• Only channel this spell to force your opponent to spend resources resisting this spell.

1) The 70% Success Guideline

You know how this goes - we want to pass three-out-of-four casts against enemy models, so 70% is a good standard. These spells vary from very easy to cast (2+) to very hard to cast (5+), so you'll see a wide variety of dice quantities below, but the principle is simple: we are reducing our heroic resources to have a chance at reducing enemy resources or stats - make sure this works!

When trying to cast with a 70% chance of success, you can cast each spell as follows:

• The Dark Lord Sauron - Drain Courage (2+): free Will point = 83%
• The Witch-King of Angmar - Drain Courage (2+): 1 Will (Crown of Morgul gives an unnecessary-but-welcome reroll) = 97%
• Almost Everyone Else - Drain Courage (2+): 1 Will = 83%
• The Betrayer/The Knight of Umbar/Khamul the Eastering - Drain Courage (3+): 2 Will = 89%
• The Dark Lord Sauron - Sap Will (4+): free Will point + 1 Will = 75%
• The Necromancer of Dol Guldur - Sap Will (5+): 3 Will (or 2 Will with free dice if you keep your army bonus) = 70%
• The Witch-King of Angmar - Sap Will (5+): 3 Will (or 2 Will with a reroll if you have the Crown of Morgul) = 70%
• Everyone Else - Sap Will (5+): 3 Will = 70%
• The Necromancer of Dol Guldur - Curse  (4+): 2 Will (or 1 Will with free dice if you keep your army bonus) = 75%
• Angmar Orc Shaman - Wither (3+): 2 Will = 89%

As you can tell, there's a pretty steep difference between the ease/resource cost of casting spells like Drain Courage vs. Sap Will (1 Will vs. 3 Will for most people). Even a small increase in the casting difficulty of Drain Courage makes a difference if you're shooting for a 70% success probability (though admittedly, 67% isn't far off from 70%).

What should also be clear is that the free Will points or rerolls (no matter how you get them) prove to be useful. Spending less Will on a model that needs Will to stay alive (which is true of most of the models in today's list) is huge. While this isn't always felt (the Witch-King doesn't really need the reroll for Drain Courage, just like the Necromancer doesn't need the free die for Drain Courage), the increased reliability of casting makes it FAR less likely that you need to spend any Might to make the spell work.

2) Who's the "Best" Model?

Stat debuffs are either useful or not useful based on the target: a Courage 7 model (that becomes C6 when within range of Harbinger of Evil/Ancient Evil) might not mind losing 1 Courage to a Drain Courage spell (especially if they have limited Will points). Models that are Courage 3-4 will care very much if a Drain Courage is thrown at them and they know they need to make Courage tests. Similarly, models with 1-2 Will don't really care about Sap Will, while models with 4+ Will are going to care very much. Knowing your target is key - so here are a few guidelines:

• A channelled Drain Courage should target models with Courage 5 or higher - anyone else should be targeted by a normal Drain Courage (especially if they are Courage 3 or below);
• Since Drain Courage can reduce a model's Courage value by 1-3 points, targeting someone who begins at Courage 5 (reduced to C4 with Harbinger) has the potential to reduce that target to Courage 1 (but more likely, reduced to Courage 2).
• Models with Courage 6/7 will not likely hit C2, but they will be reduced to "average" Courage, which means they are vulnerable to the same kind of failures to charge as the other grunts in your opponent's army.
• A channelled Sap Will should be used exclusively against valid models with the Will of Evil special rule, while a normal Sap Will should target models with 4+ Will in their store;
• Truth: if you target a model with 4+ Will with a spell that can remove 1-3 Will points, they're going to try to resist the spell with probably 1-2 Will points. Ultimately, if they resist the spell, it kind of worked already, didn't it (unless your opponent sees natural 6s)?
• The reason you only target Will of Evil models with a channelled spell of this variety is because you only need to remove 1-6 Will points from models that have a lot AND use them for all kinds of things (like staying alive and fighting). Yes, you could target someone with 6 Will with a D6 threat, but if they spend 2-3 Will to resist the spell AND fail, you could have just cast it normally and saved yourself the Might point. In most cases, models with less than 10 Will will see losing D3 Will as enough of a threat to attempt a resist.
• A channelled Curse should be used against models with 3 Fate points (especially if they're rerollable) - all other models should be targeted by Curse cast normally;
• Removing ALL Fate points is a nice channelled version of this spell (better than D3) and makes it so that you really only need to do it if you want to save yourself some time. I'm not of the opinion that spending a Might point to save yourself a Will point next turn to wipe out 2 Fate points is worth it, but for 3 Fate points, you should do it (especially if those Fate points can be rerolled)!
• Of course, most of the models in the game have 0-1 Fate, so channelling this shouldn't happen too much in any game.
• Final note: since the Necromancer is the only model with this spell, and because he also gets access to Chill Soul, I highly recommend casting Chill Soul against models with a 1-2 Fate points. By dealing a Wound upon a success, you can clear out the Fate point with Chill Soul - and have the potential to also clear out a second or third Fate point or a Wound if the first Fate point isn't successful. On a lucky roll, you may also clear out some Might too. Curse is good, but it doesn't do that, now does it?
• A channelled Wither should target models that are S5 or S6, but otherwise target S3 or S4 models with a normal Wither.
• Models that are S7 or higher are still going to be powerful models if you reduce them by the maximum 3 Strength - and you can only channel this spell once. Removing 1-3 Strength from a model that's S7 or higher is just not going to have that much of an impact.
• Similarly, dropping a S3/S4 model's Strength to S1/S2 will also have very little impact - though it will peeve the target hero, for sure.
• Being S5 or S6 makes a huge difference - especially against Angmar (and being able to bring that down to a more reasonable S3 or S4 will be more useful).

3) Channel to Force Resist Checks

We'd all like to see these spells work when we cast them - who doesn't want to see an Elven Lord go from Courage 7 (effective Courage 6 within Harbinger range) to Courage 4 (effective Courage 3 within Harbinger range)? Who doesn't want to see Gandalf or Galadriel or Elrond lose all those beautiful Fate points? Isn't it great when Dwalin or Dain is reduced to S2 (making them wound your D5 Orcs on 5s with their burly two-handed weapons)? I love seeing Castellans of Dol Guldur disappear in a puff of smoke, don't you?

But the real reason we cast these spells is because we want to force our opponent to make a Resist roll on THIS spell instead of a different one (like a Transfix or a Chill Soul). Channelling any of these spells isn't really necessary - I mean, it's great if it works, but we don't NEED it most of the time. As such, we can choose to channel a spell NOT so we can see it go off, but to force our opponent's hand and spend Will resisting because he CANNOT afford to let these spells go off successfully.

Some of these spells (like a normal Drain Courage) are innocuous when you first view them, since you "only lose 1 Courage" - what does that hurt? For some lowly Captain models, that might matter quite a bit, but for other heroes, they'll shrug and say "eh, whatever" and take it, knowing they need to save their Will to try to resist the inevitable Transfix once they're in combat. For more on this, check out my post on Multi-Purpose Will casters for two Drain Courage examples against a Captain of Minas Tirith (one good example, one bad example).

Channelled Drain Courage: really good for bringing powerful heroes down a peg!

One of the great things about the casters in this section is that a) most of them have similar spell suites, and b) you can bring more than one of them! Want to take Aragorn - King Elessar's Courage down a peg? Call a Heroic Channelling with both the Witch-King of Angmar and a generic Ringwraith (or a named one if you have one) and cast Drain Courage twice against him - if one of them goes through, you're in REALLY good shape to keep him from slapping your Ringwraiths down (which, given that he has Anduril, is kind of what he wants to do). Be sure to cast with the Ringwraith who isn't the Witch-King so that if it goes through and you find you don't need to cast Drain Courage channelled after all, you can change up your plan and do something else (like a channelled Compel)!

When Do You Use It?

Using these spells is tricky, as you're spending your own resources to try to take away an opponent's resources (or stats). There's a lot of situational concerns, which we'll highlight in the following examples.

Use Case Study: The Necromancer of Dol Guldur and Curse

Curse is, in my estimation, the worst of the debuffs in this post - most heroes will try to resist this spell because a) the Necromancer is the one casting it (and if he Wounds you just once in melee when you don't have Fate, you die - thanks a lot Drain Soul), and b) because the Mirkwood Spiders in this list can Paralyze models with their throwing-weapon-like webs if the target doesn't spend a Fate point. Either of these scenarios is bad for the target though - and they can be all-too-common if your opponent isn't careful with his deployment of models each round.

Curse is cast on a 4+ and if you have your army bonus (by now you should know that you SHOULD keep your army bonus if you're running the Necromancer), you can easily cast this by only spending 1 Will point. That's HUGE and can easily make it difficult for your opponent's lesser heroes (usually with 1 Will and 1 Fate point) to survive for long against your horde. Most of the time, you don't need to channel this spell - just cast it normally. As we discussed earlier, there are models (like those with 3 Fate points) that you can target with a channelled Curse, but this will be rare.

What's great about this spell is that if you succeed in removing your opponent's Fate and they work hard to avoid being charged by either Mirkwood Spiders or the Necromancer, you can STILL cast Chill Soul against those heroes (so long as they're within 12" of you) until they die - perfect!

Use Case Study: The Witch-King of Angmar and Sap Will

Sap Will is a tricky spell for most models to cast - only the Dark Lord Sauron casts it "easily" on a 4+ (the rest cast it on a 5+ - including the Necromancer . . . oddly enough). The Witch-King is a unique player when it comes to casting Sap Will, however, since the reroll he gets from the Crown of Morgul - which you should always take - allows him to get the spell off reliably on just two dice. As we've already mentioned, picking the right person to target with this spell is pretty limited (4+ Will if not channelled, only against models with the Will of Evil rule if you channel it), but if you run into a caster like Gandalf (either version), Saruman (either version), Radagast, or Galadriel (either version), you'll want to employ Sap Will to force these casters to spend resources fighting you.

When Sap Will really matters: taking down Fortify Spirit!

If you've followed this series on the blog (or played at competitive tournaments at/above 800 points), you know that two of the casters in this list (Gandalf the White and Galadriel, Lady of Light) have access to Fortify Spirit. As we've already discussed, this spell grants a free 2 dice to resist spells targeting the hero, which makes Gandalf the White and Galadriel, Lady of Light very difficult to hammer with magic. Sap Will, however, is cast on a 5+, which means the lowest high-value you'll have is a 5 (though I'd recommend boosting the roll to a 6). The two free dice from Fortify Spirit are good, but not when they need a 5 (only a 55% chance of stopping the spell without spending additional heroic resources) and especially not if they need a 6 (only a 30% chance of stopping the spell "for free"). Even if the spell is shut down, you will likely be forcing the target wizard to spend resources blocking it (which is kind of like succeeding in casting the spell). If they fail to resist, life gets even worse (as Sap Will might very well cause their beloved Fortify Spirit to disappear).

Use Case Study: Generic Ringwraith and Drain Courage

Classic Drain Courage case: taunt a hero with lots of Will to spend some just to keep his Courage up! In this scenario, the King of the Dead (C6) wounds the Ringwraith he's approaching on 5s (thanks to Blades of the Dead), but with a few Drain Courage spells hurled at him, he'll be hard pressed to charge the Ringwraith if he doesn't resist the spells . . . which leaves him open later to a Transfix!

I must admit, Drain Courage is my favorite spell from this list - it look so innocuous and its impacts are the longest-lasting. With nasty spells like Transfix and Compel on a generic Ringwraith's profile, you've got a serious threat for anyone who tries to block this spell. While I don't recommend channeling it (you probably want your 2 Might for something else), you can have one of these heroes focus on an enemy captain to keep that hero from doing anything to your Terror-causing models (and die faster against models that have Blades of the Dead). Alternatively, if you have several models who can cast Drain Courage, you can choose to wear down one hero and keep them from doing what they need to do.

Generic Ringwraiths: great utility casters to support any army (but particularly great backing up Sauron).

My preferred build for generic Ringwraiths is a 90-point Ringwraith (on a horse, with 2M/9W/1F). This means that your Will allocation looks something like this - 3 Drain Courages will go along way:

• Combat Store: 3 Will (I may not actually fight with him, but let’s assume that I’m either charged when I don’t want to be or that I come swooping in to help some of my grunts get an edge over someone else);
• Casting Store: 5 Will (we can reliably cast Drain Courage three times and Transfix once with each of these casters in a game - though we can also trade the three Drain Courage casts for one reliable Black Dart/Sap Will);
• Special Rule Store: 0 Will (because this is a generic Ringwraith, we don't have any special rules competing for our Will store);
• Resisting Store: 0 Will (it’s important to note that if I was faced with an enemy spell-caster, I’d need to stock this bin, but when the game began, I noticed I don’t actually need anything here – I’d probably re-purpose my combat store and just not fight with this guy);
• Life Store: 1 Will (because most of the time, staying alive is a good thing)

About that Legendary Legion . . .

Final note: with the new Riders in Black Legendary Legion, Drain Courage has become even more devastating, because a) you don't need to stock the Combat Store bin (all that goes into Casting/Resisting, if you give yourself extra Will at all) and b) because you can apply -2 or -3 Courage with overlapping Harbingers (depending on whether you have 4+ or 7+ Ringwraiths in range of someone). With C7 heroes going down reliably to C5 before a Drain Courage is cast, you can really undercut your opponent's power heroes by having 4 Ringwraiths in range and a few Drain Courage spells cast. I'm keen to try this out - hopefully we'll get something on the blog up soon.

Use Case Study: Angmar Orc Shaman and Wither

Wither is a weird spell - when it's channelled, it can save you a lot of time, but a channelled Wither will probably prompt a resist roll (and drain you of valuable Will in the process). While you certain can channel the spell and throw 2 dice (or even all three) at it, I'd recommend not channeling and cast the spell with a single Will point three times during the game (similar to the recommendation I made for Moria Blackshield Shamans and Shatter). Yes, your innate casting reliability is at 67% (which is just below our target goal of 70%), but we have the Might point to boost one of those casts if we need it, so we CAN have an 83% reliability if we are willing to boost (which we are).

When choosing a target, we're looking for models that will be heavily impacted with a single cast - since most Angmar troops are D5, reducing a hero's Strength from S4 to S3 isn't going to do much unless they are likely to use Piercing Strike. Casting against S5 heroes or critical S3 warriors (cavalry models in particular) would be very helpful. Alternatively, if you run a few Cave Trolls/Ringwraiths, targeting S4 heroes who are charging at these higher Defense units would be helpful too (as the Cave Troll is now wounded on 6s).

"Use" Case Study: The Dark Lord Sauron

Barad-Dur players might be noticing by now that we haven't talked a lot about Sauron in this post - and that's for good reason: I think Drain Courage and Sap Will might be beneath him. True, they're useful spells (and Sap Will is cast by him on a 4+, so you can reliably cast it with only 1 Will lost from your store). However, on a 4+ you could also cast Chill Soul, which anyone with 4+ Will is also going to try to stop - and perhaps more so, because Will is not THAT limited of a resource for them and Wounds probably are. That being said, Sap Will was a useful spell for my son to use in a recent tournament (check out the THRO 2020 Podcast for more info) against Rythbryt's three Barrow Wights, so there are definitely times when it matters.

I said in our podcast on evil spell-casters that Chill Soul, cast on a 4+ with a free Will point, might have been enough to seal the top slot for Sauron as the best evil spell-caster in the game and I stand by that assessment (even after in-depth reading into all of the spell-caster models in the game for this series). Sauron is good at casting and while he can cast Drain Courage easily and cast Sap Will less expensively than others, I think there's better stuff for him to do. If you want access to these kinds of spells and want to use them against certain heroes, bring along the Witch-King or a generic Ringwraith.

Curse, Drain Courage, Sap Will, and Wither

These spells can be downright nasty and won't always be needed in a game - but they're fun little spells to pop against an opponent just to keep them on their toes (and maybe even succeed in taking away their resources). While most of these in their unchannelled forms aren't that dangerous (Curse is an exception), over time they can be a NASTY surprise. Since almost every caster we covered today has to spend resources to drain resources, be aware of your allocations of Will for casting so you don't end up straining to hurt your opponent and hurt yourself in the process.

In our next post, we turn our attention to scattering spells - Instill Fear and Call Winds. These two spells are fun, in that they can make enemy models move in unwanted directions (and can be real game-changers if used correctly). While most models won't attempt an Instill Fear in a game, you can really turn the tables on your opponent if you know how to wield them. Curious? Check back in next week as we dive into these amazing spells - until then, happy hobbying!