Why do I think magic has "increasing returns"

I often refer to the increasing rate of return for points spent on magic which seems to baffle some people. [RANT] As some people seem utterly incapable of using the search function on various forums and demand to be spoon fed information I thought I’d put it up here.[/RANT]

It is a bastardisation of a business/micro-economic term and technically isn’t 100% correct as at the 13+ mark you start to get less effective spells off (except tzeentch which can get access cheaper to PD).

Essentially the hypothesis is that up to a point, every dice you have in excess of your opponents dispel dice is more valuable than the last (i.e. 2 dice does more than double the damage of 1 dice).

Now when doing the analysis I varied the assumptions for the cost of each dice (points paid) and the return (expected average effect for each spell) just to test if it was the numbers I was using and obviously while increasing the cost of each dice and decreasing the spell effect I got a lower % return the basic principle that you get a higher expected return than your points spent when you escalate past the 10+ dice held firm. I used a dispel pool of 5 as the “standard” pool obviously as it is highly reliant on the gap between dispel and casting pools the variation of this varies the results.

But many would ask why does this happen? Well it is relatively simple. If you think of spells as being in tiers of 1 (minor effect, an attrition style spell), 2 (reasonable effect and on average will dent a elite unit) and 3 (major effect and capable of wiping out unit/s through either). How each spell achieves this is different, maybe by adding/restricting movement, or a lowering a stat line or by out and out damage etc.

Then think when your opponent only has say one or two more dice than you, more than likely you are going to be shutting down his tier 2 and (if he has them) tier 3 spells and allowing him to get off the tier 1 spell which ahs a reduced effect. But as the gap between your DD and his PD increases not only does his “free” dice increase but his options on what to use those free dice on increases as his selection of spells increases. Meaning that at say 3 dice he is getting off a tier 2 routinely and move further away to 4 dice two tier 2 spells every second turn. Get to five dice and you are probably seeing a game changing spell raining down on you every turn.

So in a nutshell as the disparity grows your opponents ability to get off spells off spells which change the game also grows which in turn increases the % return you get for your points invested.

Off course this doesn’t take into account game play (tactics, rational selection of targets, rational order of casting spells etc) but one thing to remember is that as the gap between points invested and expected return grow the more units (points) that player can sacrifice or hold in reserve to keep his mages alive and/or the spells at maximum effect.