Editing Warhammer/Tactics/8th Edition/Empire (section)

===Magic===
The Empire is one of the few armies to get access to all eight Lores of Magic. Almost all are of at least solid use because pretty much all buffs and hexes are valuable to army that's mostly made up of mediocre infantry and all damage spells are welcome too even if you'll never blast the opponent off the table. Still some lores are definitely play better.

Good choices are:

* '''Life:'''  Throne of Vines lets you ignore all miscasts from Life wizards on a 2+ (this includes a miscast from casting ToV itself, so go for broke) and beefs up the rest of your spells, Regrowth brings back dead models, Flesh to Stone and Shield of Thorns are welcome buffs, and The Dwellers Below makes all models in a targeted unit make a Strength test or be killed entirely, And every time you successfully cast, you heal a wound, which can be on any model within 12".

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* '''Metal:''' A good choice, but only comes into its own against enemies with high armor values (Warriors of Chaos, Bretonnians, other Empire armies, and so on). Casting Plague of Rust on Skinks or Clanrats is a waste of time, and the lore attribute means that direct damage and magic missiles are less powerful the less armor their targets have. On the other hand, all damage spells ignore armor saves, and the augments it offers are fine in their own right.


* '''Light:''' Gives you a lot of very nice buffs (Speed of Light is a godsend should your opponent get into your artillery) and debuffs (particularly Net of Amyntok). A particularly nasty combo (if you can get it off) is Speed of Light and Birona's Timewarp, which together will make your Greatswords/knights with greatweapons hit like Frenzied High Elf Swordmasters. A very good lore, especially considering the fact that it's statistically the easiest lore to cast.


* '''Death:''' Four words: Purple Sun of Xereus. Also has very good buffs and debuffs, though you've got to be pretty close to an enemy for the latter.


* '''Shadow:''' Has a lot of very good debuffs and can make one guy a flier, but you really want this Lore for Okkam's Mindrazor, which replaces a unit's Strength score with its Leadership when rolling to wound, which means that the unit you cast it on will essentially have at least 7 Strength(!) in close combat. Cast it on your Knights, Greatswords or Flagellants and swing for the bleachers. This is statistically the hardest lore to cast, so make sure to give it to a level 4 Wizard Lord.


* '''Heaven:'''One of the best lores for an all cavalry Empire Army. Harmonic let you reroll 1s for to hit, to wound and armour saves which is really useful when you will find yourself with 2+ to wound and 2+ as alot of times. Use a lvl4 and a lvl1 wizard for that double iceshard which gives -2 hit which goes along way when charging high strenght units and -2 to ld which is really useful when charging steadfast units. Thunderbolt and Chain lightning is decent for taking out MSU armies and Comet can help you against corner armies aswell as controlling the movement of MSU armies. All the spells are cast at a decent cost which allows you to attempt several spells compared to life, which gives your opponent a dilemma when he have to prioritize which spells to let through. Also, heaven spells have good range so you can keep your wizard in the back protected by f.ex. archers. This lore is highly underrated. Downside is that it requires some practice to use.  



If you take direct damage spells (especially magic missiles) with the notion of blasting your enemy to kingdom come, you're setting yourself up for disappointment. Buffs and debuffs are where it's at, and you'll notice that what all of the Lores recommended above have in common are good buffs, good debuffs and one Spell of Horde Buggery.

That being said, Empire armies do have access to... 

* '''Fire:''' Fireballs, buffs, flame storms and more can allow you to seriously hurt enemy lines and even wipe them out entirely with luck or support from a gun line