The intention of this article is to talk, in brief-ish, about how tilting Scales of Fate can be. Then I’ll begin talking about playing against Morvahna2. However, before we begin, you need to be in the right mindset.

A long time ago, I wrote an article about Scales of Fate and how it effects dice rolls and probability. The charts are helpful when calculating, but months and months of playing Morvahna2 have thought me a few things.



For the most part, with CRA, Mat 8, and boosting I go for attacks and gambles that most people would take happily. If you’ll look at the numbers, and the associated charts you’ll see that this takes my low end of 50% up to an eventual 80%+. I rarely miss, or fail to kill what I’ve put myself to killing. And this is what frustrates people the most, in my opinion. You have played a careful turn, and are safe from a pair of boosted pow 12s, one of which would likely miss. You aren’t safe from two boosted pow 12s that probably don’t miss and never roll poorly for damage. You need to change how your mind rates the likely hood of Morvahna succeeding at something.

Looking at the probability charts misses out on the psychological effect of re-rolls. Everytime you see me roll a 4 to hit, a veteran is trained, by experience, to starting making plans on the assumption that ‘those two models have survived’, etc. Until the re-roll also fails however, that just isn’t true. You get in an emotional rollercoaster, where the woldwrath would kill your heavy on average dice and rolls poorly on the charge attack, which is a tenuous situation normally, but rarely fails with Morvahna, in fact he often has a good time of it because the good rolls stay where they lie.

Before we ever talk about fighting against Morvahna2, we need to create acceptance of her dice alteration into your head. When dealing with reasonable attack values, like 2 man cras needing 7s, you are only expecting 2-3 dead models. Don’t! The two or three she’ll miss will get another go, she might miss 1 or none. Think of it as if they needed 5s to hit (Scales is effectively a +2 at reasonable to hit numbers). Then her maybe missing 1 seems about right. Imagine she has an upkeep that gives most of her army +2 to hit. Which is really, really good, obviously. It’s supposed to be balanced by her health, but that isn’t entirely true. It is a detriment but, arguably, Morvahna was too many ways to circumvent and lessen it.

Tis but a flesh wound!

Though you will remember bad damage rolls turning into spikes in damage (Bias yay!), scales is less potent for damage I find. When killing infantry, most of the attacks are high enough pow, so just assume they will die. When facing against multiwound models, it’s only worth re-rolling poor damage rolls, and you are still most likely to roll between 5-9. 1 to 9 is a giant leap, but most people think about damage on averages, which Morvahna will exceed. Just imagine that +2 bonus spilling over, in fact the effect is usually less. Still, Eye of Orboros is a pretty potent effect!

Morvahna2 tilts some of the better players in the game. She has many options and answers, she is almost certainly in the very top bracket of warnouns in the game. She is however not Lich2. Nor indeed many of the old wave of power casters. I’ve heard it said that Vengeance warcasters are designed to be powerful, but with genuine Achilles heels and weaknesses. I think the design team may have been a bit short on Morvahna’s weaknesses, but she can be beaten with many armies, you are never out of the game from deployment against her.

People will argue, but it’s the truth (subjectively… >_>). Lich2 requires you to have a specific build so you can go play a disadvantaged game. Against Morvahna2 you may often end up losing through some manner or the other unless you play the perfect game, but you can often adjust to her in game. Being distinctly advantaged against her however is, well it’s difficult. These are important semantics.

Yes, I think Lich is the boogeyman!

Lich2 will beat you 90% of the time if you aren’t prepared, but with good preparation you can make that 60% or 40% (in the right faction). Morvahna2, like Haley2, Vayl2, and of course Lich also excels at assassination, attrition, and scenario. What that boils down to is that she always has a chance, often not a bad one, to win. You can’t ever let your guard down against an avenue of defeat. Especially assassination. Scales is incredible when it comes to assassination. In numberspeak I feel like this makes it so that you can often be at 60% to lose against her, and its hard to be better than 50% in many factions.

This week is all about trying to break the spell of Scales of Fate. If you get tilted, you’ll make the kind of mistake a good Morvahna2 player can capitalise on. You can’t get emotionally invested in dice, that is indeed something I’m not perfect (or even passable) on myself, maintaining dice related calm will stand by you in all of your games.

Next week we look at her options and advantages, and how you can use list building to focus on negating one of her three ways of winning. This allows you to play a narrower, less stressful game.

Stay Classy,

-VagrantPoet

P.S. Where’s my Butcher article you may be asking? Still in the pipes. I will do a bumper two article Wednesday in the future, with a largely self-contained article on the subject. I want to do more research though, potentially play Butcher3 myself, certainly gather more info from his players.

P.P.S. Hope everyone had a Merry Happy over the holidays! And yes, Stu will be back soon with the articles you really want!