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Matthew Taylor
United Kingdom
Chester
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What have I got to say for myself?
This supplement is clearly essential if you want to include wizards past rank 2 in your game or if you want the full range of colleges available. Or if Mutation is important to your vision of the Warhammer world. The Tzeentch/Mutation supplement is the high point. You might not be blown away by it even then, but it does the job competently.
(also note I have already reviewed signs of faith (which does for priests, blessings, Nurgle and disease what this does for wizards, spells, Tzeentch and mutation). The fact that these two supplements are broadly comparable in terms of quality and have very similar strengths and weaknesses as products shows that Fantasy Flight Games are working to a well defined plan (a good sign), but does mean that this review felt like a rehashing of that other one to me).
What do we get?
Two books and a decent range of components…
Action cards
These are, of course, all spells. You get an extra set of the basic spell action cards – so two wizards in a party now (or one set for the players, one for the GM), plus the rank 1 and 2 spells for the additional 5 schools of magic, rank 3 spells for all 8 schools of magic.
Importantly we also get “Dark magic” cards allowing the GM to flesh out his bad guys. And the Tzeentch spells are here as well.
My only comment on this, and I appreciate that the limitations of components / cost come into play again, is that there are only 3 rank 3 spells for each school. And we only get up to a rank 3 wizard career. Whilst I appreciate that the wizards can continue to purchase spells when in different careers there is still a cap on the number and power level of spells available that PCs will eventually overcome (it’ll be 6 months game play I guess… but there must be campaigns out there that have already reached this?)
So does this mean we are waiting on an “even more advanced magic” supplement covering the higher ranks? When can we expect that? (and here my complaint isn’t about the cost so much as the time I may have to wait…)
Careers
I like the range of careers that are included here, 9 in addition to the Wizard career, we have a number of other academic careers, some service industiries (servant) and one or two oddities (Grave robber is here, for example).
Talents
There are the career and college talents of course. A few others are included - as you might expect these are focus and reputation talents to support the careers introduced here.
Miscast, insanities
We get additional miscasts and insanties, with an arcane twist.
Punchboard ,
Plenty of character standups, and Tzeentch themed deamons, cultists and beasties.
Item cards
Just one of each discussed in the Winds of Magic book
Location cards
These are mainly for the scenario.
The totally new bits;
Corruption markers and 20 mutations (more on these later)
The Books
Winds of Magic
Chapter 1 – The roots of magic: this takes the form of an essay, one that the authorities want to suppress, on the history of magic written by an imperial scholar. this adds a nice feel to the content. It’s a competent chapter, covering all the required bases.
Chapter 2 – The great colleges; this chapter outlines the role the colleges play in imperial society and also details a number of locations of interest to wizards and scholars. Again this chapter is written “in character”
Chapter 3 – College hierarchy: tells us a little about the roles, duties and life of wizards from acolytes through to Patriarch. This is good succinct chapter covering the common activities of wizards and providing links to adventuring opportunities. This chapter is addressed more to the player and GM than the previous 2.
Chapter 4 – Exoctic magic disciplines:
This chapter is the largest in the supplement, fully a quarter of the book. It covers Elves and High Magic, Dark elf Sorceresses, Wood elf nature magic, dwarven runes, bretonian magic, kislevite ice magic. Even Tilea, Cathay and Araby get a mention! Hendge wizards, Necromancers, Chaos sorcerers, beastmen shamanism, Skaven and finally Greenskins are also covered.
Again this is in the form of an “in character” primer, and works well enough…
Whilst this is a great deal of background information and something you’d want from a magic supplement, it feels out if place because, with the exception of Dark magic (and Tzeentch), you get none of the mechanical aspects of this; no rules, no action cards, no talents. Nothing.
Chapter 5 - Expanded Magic rules. Covers spells of a higher rank “proscribed spells” – those form other colleges (or dark or chaotic sources). We get several pages on magical items, including scrolls and wands and staffs.
The chapter finishes with a short discussion of beastform cards, dark magic (and what happens if a PC wizards turns to that path). The last page is a summary of special rules for each college.
Chapter 6 – Playing a wizard. And here we find the character primers amd notes for the five new colleges of magic introduced in this book, in the same for mat as the tome of mysteries
Overall
Not as comprehensive a volume as I would have liked. Same issue as I had with the core set; you get decent rules and the shiny new components… but at the expense of setting.
Still – if we accept we are still in core territory here, this is competent enough.
Liber Mutatis
I’m a fan of Tzeentch and this volume, although slim (A digression; I use the word slim a lot to describe the books in WFRP 3 products. And they are. But this might be disingenuous of me – given that the spell cards would take up roughly 25 more pages in book form, plus all the talents, miscasts, insanities and so on Winds of Magic is the equivalent of a 130 page supplement, maybe more) provides an entirely reasonable introduction to the Changer of Ways
Chapter 1 – The Changer of ways – 8 pages here, and its all good. Myths and legends make Tzeentch seem a much more rounded god than we saw in previous supplements and the great game makes the pantheon as a whole seem more grounded in the game world, rather than the pasted on archetypes they have sometimes felt.
Chapter 2 – Corruption and mutation – a couple of pages to tell us how mutants are treated in the empire and how such things come to be.
Chapter 3 – corruption rules – the rules for corruption and mutation are found her.
The corruption rules add another component (corruption points) these are cleverly shaped and coloured like the symbol for the challenge dice… because the GM can use them at any time to add a challenge dice to the players dice pool.
This is something that you are encouraged to do, as players actually mutating can seriously shorten your campaign. Of course if that’s the way you want to go… feel free!
Chapter 4 – Minions of Change. This chapter presents us with the stats and some background for the various daemons of Tzeentch and some cultists.
Chapter 5 – Winds of Change. Our adventure. The plot hook is “a PC wizard” which might not fit all groups… but then if you’ve just picked up this supplement perhaps its OK to assume there is a wizard in your game? The adventure itself is an OK investigation. More to my tastes than some that we’ve seen so far.
Overall?
I quite like this volume, the start and finish are strong. The middle is competent.
Summary
Another solid supplement that provides plenty of core content to round out the character options (and I suppose NPC options) available in your games of Warhammer. The corruption mechanic is probably a better solution than we’ve had in previous editions. One I’d recommend you pick up
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