From Clanrats to Nagash: our morning rabbit hole into AoS magic
We love it when a completely normal bit of list-building suddenly turns into a full-on rules archaeology session.
This time it started, as many Skaven stories do, with Clanrats getting absolutely mulched.
And then Michał kept reading warscrolls.
You know how it goes: one unit leads to another, one keyword leads to another, and before long we are no longer thinking about one army. We are comparing half the Mortal Realms and asking increasingly dangerous questions like: how many spells can a wizard actually cast in Age of Sigmar?
The discovery: not every wizard is built the same
The fun part was noticing that a lot of wizards and priests in AoS seem to sit at the “standard” level. Michał spotted that many casters are effectively working as Wizard (1) — one spell, nice and simple.
Then came the Skaven bias, and honestly, fair enough.
Thanquol showed up in the discussion as the beloved example of a properly juiced-up rat wizard:
A caster throwing around two spells and getting a +3 to casting is already the kind of thing that makes us stop and go, “right, okay, this guy means business.” At that point the assumption was pretty natural: maybe AoS mostly splits casters into regular wizards and elite, supercharged ones.
Then Kroak entered the chat
And then Michał stumbled onto Lord Kroak.
Wizard (3).
That was the moment the whole thing escalated from “interesting rules note” to “okay, now we need to know who wins the magical arms race.” Because once you see someone casting three spells, the next question asks itself:
Who is the biggest wizard in the game?
Of course it was Nagash
The answer, naturally, was Nagash.
At that point our reaction was basically the same as Michał’s: W T F.
Nagash being the top-end magical monster is not exactly shocking from a lore perspective, but seeing it laid out on the warscroll still hits differently. It is one thing to know he is the necromancer. It is another thing entirely to read the actual rules and realize just how absurd that ceiling gets.
And then it got even weirder.
The kind of rule that makes you lean closer to the screen
Michał also found one of those classic Nagash abilities that immediately triggers the hobbyist response of:
“I don’t fully understand this yet, but I am concerned.”
We are not going to pretend we fully unpacked every interaction from a few excited morning messages, but the overall conclusion was very clear: there are levels to AoS magic, and the top end gets gloriously silly.
Why this is fun for army-building
This was one of those tiny but satisfying list-building discoveries. Not because we suddenly solved the meta, but because it changes how we look at armies.
When you are new to a faction, it is easy to think in broad categories:
- basic troops,
- heroes,
- a wizard,
- maybe a stronger wizard.
But warscrolls keep reminding us that not all magical support pieces do the same job.
A Wizard (1) is one kind of tool. A Wizard (2) starts shaping your turn much more aggressively. A Wizard (3) or beyond is where the whole army can begin to orbit around that piece.
That matters for how we think about:
- spell support,
- reliability,
- list identity,
- and whether a centerpiece model is just cool or actually the engine of the army.
Also, yes, it matters emotionally. There is a big difference between “this hero knows a spell” and “this ancient nightmare is apparently running the entire magic phase by himself.”
Meanwhile, back in hobby land
Because no rabbit hole is complete without a sudden side quest, Michał also reported finding what might be some very cool miniatures for Teohiphop.
No grand conclusion there yet — just one more example of how our hobby brain works. Start with Clanrats dying, end with Nagash, and somehow also discover potential models for another project along the way.
Final thought
This was a very relatable Age of Sigmar moment for us: open one warscroll, accidentally discover the power scale of the entire magic system.
Today’s lesson? Never trust a “quick look” at warscrolls. It may end with existential questions about sorcery, undead god-kings, and whether your favorite faction’s wizard is actually a scholar, a menace, or a small magical inconvenience.
And if you are reading rules for fun over morning coffee, just know: we get it.