CoC Pestilence spell

Hello guys!
I was Finally able to play Mordheim for the first time.
I loved it, best game I've played!
We played 4-5 games or so.
I started with Carnival of chaos, I started with just 6 guys and was a chicken the first few games, So my beefy characters just turned into stronger monstrosities.
Anyhow I was able to roll the spell pestilence when My carnival master lvled.
And in our last scenario I was able to get it off at the right time. So I was able to hit all but one of the opponents warband, with two guys going out of action.
It felt like they thought the spell was abit to strong, What are your opinion about the spell, and has it been Faq:ed?

Sidenote:
I didn't take any Nurgles rot since I didn't want to be 'that guy'

Some groups choose to halve the range of the spell. In my group we discussed that option but are now planning to use the priests in the 'Miracle Workers'. The 'Purify' prayer is a nice counter to the followers of Nurgle.

Thank you for the very fast response lemming!
Miracle Workers seems as a fun supplement.
But doesn't that overpower the mercenary warbands, and underpower the witchhunters?
Giving everyone acess to a priest? -just curious.

It's a difficulty 10 spell, so that seems like an already hard to cast spell. This is also a spell that your enemy should know how to deal with after they got rocked. Now if they don't focus fire/stay away from your caster they deserve to eat the spell again, especially at a 10 difficulty. Just be wary of any nerfs to a spell that only casts 8% of the time.

Slapdash wrote:

It's a difficulty 10 spell, so that seems like an already hard to cast spell. This is also a spell that your enemy should know how to deal with after they got rocked. Now if they don't focus fire/stay away from your caster they deserve to eat the spell again, especially at a 10 difficulty. Just be wary of any nerfs to a spell that only casts 8% of the time.

It's only 8% until the caster invests in the Sorcery skill (bringing it up to 11%) and/or the additional ones found in Town Cryer. I'd really like to recommend against using the additional ones, I believe it's Mind Focus in particular, since you'll find that casting these high-level spells become a bit too reliable.

A 24'' bubble is massively large and feels like something taken straight out of Warhammer fantasy battles. The only nerf I've been in contact with is reducing the range to 6'', along with the difficulty going down to 9. I'd still leave out Mind Focus, though.

I've never played against CoC so is this spell really that "easy" to get off with devastating results as is? The leader of your warband with a T3 has to get within charging distance of the faster models and within range of all missile weapons in your opponents turn after you cast it. I could see this being pretty powerful if it affected enemies in CC as the caster could just roll up and start blasting it once his people are in CC with relative impunity.

To the OP, what were the circumstances to your last use where it was perceived over powered? What was your first spell, since it took a leveling to get Pestilence? If you get another skill/spell were you thinking of getting Sorcery?

It does affect enemies in close combat, which is probably the most dangerous side to it. Engage the enemy in CC, pop off the pestilence and reap the benefits in the combat phase. Going by rules as written it doesn't require line of sight either, so the carnie master can be camping cozily in a nearby building to avoid shooters.

Having it at difficulty 10 with nothing else to aid in casting makes it fine, since that doesn't happen often at all. It's when you start stacking bonuses that it becomes iffy.

Edit: The worst I've seen was someone casting it on 8+ with one of the casting dice re-rollable (spellx2, sorcery and mind focus). The spell went off much more often than not. Rolling the spell twice can be counted as quite lucky so perhaps not something to really consider, but it resulted in every T3 enemy being weeded out pretty efficiently by a casting or two. The remaining could be pummeled by the rest of the carnival warband.

In that case I could see how that might warrant a nerf. You could do a few things like make it savable, or move the S to 2 (or 1?), or like MasterSpark suggested and make it 6" which I think is pretty reasonable. Good luck!

Thank you all for the input/feedback, Many valid points. Yeah it felt very OP when I finally got it off, but that could also be because of the timing, last turn on the secure houses scenario, and the houses might've been abit to close to each other.
Since we played CoC vs Beastmen vs Undead. I was the one with the most shooting, two bows x)
But the dynamics might change with the new players joining us.
I've heard that facing dwarfs teaches you to duck... haha.
Yeah the mind focus-spell seems abit to powerful, kinda takes away the gambling-fun of it, eh?

@Slapdash: The first spell gave nurglings and plaguebearers +1 AS, Not bad, but..
Both my opponents had offensive spells, which really caused some pain over the battlefield.
And I wanted to give some back, and got lucky!
I guess I'll take sorcery next time I get a skill. (If he survives that long)
Since I'll have bodyguards around him, but after that I'll just make him more survivable if I get more skills.

I'd definitely recommend Miracle Workers as well (with some tweaks, at least last time I checked it out); Purify is a great counter, but we did nerf Pestilence as it simply was too strong. I think we changed it to half range and made it affect people without the Mark of Nurgle or something like that.