Magic Items
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Black Hammer of Hashut: Boosts your Castellan’s Strength to 6 to give you all the benefits of taking a great weapon with none of the downsides (and it’s cheaper than the Ogre Blade while being way better too). On top of this it allows for a rather nasty combo, since any unsaved wound on any flammable model counts as an instant kill on that model, first make sure to hit your target with Ash Storm and then close in for the kill. Make sure to carry around a Potion of Speed though, because that I3 is really going to hurt if your target can kill you before you one-shot them. Also since it doesn’t grant you flaming attacks, you can give the finger to all the 2+ Wards against flaming weapons everyone else has to deal with.
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Dagger of Malice: Hooray… hatred. It might be nice if you could combo it with any damned magic weapon at all, but because it’s a weapon itself it locks you out of taking far more useful items, and this includes great weapons and additional hand weapons! It should also be noted that it’s one of the few that can also be given to Hobgoblins and Bull Centaurs, but even then other magic weapons are much better. Skip.
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Dark Mace: An infamous weapon made of opponents tears, now sadly neutered. Why? Well that’s simple: anyone who can take it won’t be in a good spot to use it. For example, Castellans with it are trash and are likely to die right after activating it, which will happen before they can earn their points back, especially since they’ll need to be on their own (otherwise you’ll cause more damage to yourself than the enemy). The most obvious use for it is putting it on a Sorcerer-prophet, giving them a flying mount to maximize their base size and flying into the enemy, but doing that takes up the majority of your points, causes a wound to your own mount, and is only going to inflict a few casualties onto an enemy who’ll either stand steadfast, or finish off your wounded mount and run down your exposed General.
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Armour of Bazherak the Cruel: This devilish smith was being mentioned in many previous editions and had some nice items that time, sadly his most useful one isn’t here. In this case you get the same effect as the Armour of Silvered Steel, a nice 2+ save, but for 5 points more you get some nice Magic Resistance. Alternatively you can just pay the same cost and get the Armour of Destiny which is likely to be more effective. If you’re really worried about direct damage spells though, this is the better option of the three, as it’ll allow the Castellan wearing it to help protect his unit. You could also give it to a Bull Centaur, but you won’t because the Armour of Destiny is way better for him anyway.
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Mask of the Furnace: Mask of the welder. Don’t think - take it, it’s costly, but good and having the effects of a great Ward save rolled on top of a helmet’s boost should not be underestimated. Make sure to pick up a great weapon to go with it, since your Castellan’s not able to afford any good magic weapon after this buy.
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Stone Mantle: +1T with -1I. Legion of Azgorh Dwarf characters have I2 or I3 anyway, so it won’t make any difference having 1 point less. Unfortunately it’s limited to Chaos Dwarfs, and so there aren’t many good targets for it. The Sorcerer-prophet gains no real benefit as it won’t help him if he miscasts, and he shouldn’t be in combat so that reserves it for the Castellan. At that point, you might as well combo it with the Fencer’s Blades. By using Ash Storm you can effectively make everyone WS4 and lower only hit him on a 6, and then wounding only on a 5 or 6 depending on what you’re up against. On the other hand you can also use it to try and guarantee he lives long enough to smite fools with the Ash Storm + Black Hammer combo, since he’s now S6 T6.
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Banner of Slavery: A bad item. Why? Because it means the Hobgoblins you have can no longer choose to flee from charges. Why’s that a bad thing? Easy, if the opponent declares a charge against your Hobgoblins you can normally elect to flee, and can flee through friendly troops without much penalty, Hobgoblins cost very little and don’t cause your Chaos Dwarfs to panic. Your opponent can attempt to redirect the charge, but even if they pass so long as you have Hobgoblins closer than your Chaos Dwarfs they will likely need to declare a charge against those ones, who you will also make flee. Now since your opponent can only attempt to redirect a charge once, and since you’re fleeing through a friendly unit, it’s impossible for the opponent to catch them. They automatically fail their charge and stumble forwards, wasting their entire Movement phase and moving out of position, exposing them for all sorts of nasty shit you should have prepared (anything from Flank charges with Cutthroats to missile fire, or even just a counter-charge). Now getting back to the Banner of Slavery, removing the ability to flee hurts you as it undoes all of the Hobgoblin trickery that should be one of the main reasons you’re taking them. Hobgoblins do not make good stand-up fighters, not even when they’re horded up and that’s even if they don’t have to worry about Psych tests, so give this one a pass.
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Chalice of Blood and Darkness: Also known as the good shit. There’s next to no reason not to take this, even in smaller points games (put it on a Daemonsmith then) since it’ll almost always strengthen your magic and weaken your opponent.
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Daemon Flask of Ashak: This takes up your entire Prophet’s allowance, and in return you get to cause an earthquake. On the one hand this is incredibly good against anyone relying on war machines, as it’s more likely to kill them than not, but on the other hand there’s a lot of ways for units to get high Leadership and so shrug off the Panic test you’re going to cause. In addition to that, 18" range really hurts it. Either you’ll be footslogging it and only using it after the enemy’s war machines have taken a toll on your forces (and even then they won’t all be in range) or you’ll be trying to fly it up to them and will likely be shot out of the sky, making it a wasted investment. If you still want to take it, pray it’s on a Prophet with Dark Subjugation or Doom and Darkness so that you can help guarantee those units who get panicked by it are going to run.