Channel Power in Green has:

[Chaos Star]: After resolving this action, lose all power in excess of twice your WP and suffer 1 stress per power lost this way

Channel Power in Red has:

[Chaos Star]: At the end of your turn, lose all power in excess of your WP and suffer 1 stress per power lost this way

So... in green you could gain too much power and be forced to let some spill, because it happens BEFORE the optional quick cast spell.

In red it will never happen since it will happen AFTER the optional quick cast spell.

Shouldn't the Red be something like:

[Chaos Star]: After resolving this action, lose all power in excess of your WP and suffer 1 stress per power lost this way

edit : you are probably right.

The short answer is "No'.

The long answer is: Conservative stance (Green) is about delays, and being cautious. There are 3 things to keep in mind.

1. Channel Power cannot be used if you have double your willpower in power. Therefore you're only channeling (and thus getting a chaos star) starting at 1 below double. Thus at maximum with 3 successes you'd be picking up 3 stress (4 power starting at 1 below double to be able to meet the requriements to channel, I suppose 5 with 2 boons, if you're feeling very silly for some reason)

2. You do not have to take a maximum success line. Meaning you can choose to take 1 success for 2 power and thus 1 stress, and convert boons to nothing/universal 1 stress lost. So you can choose to take 1 stress maximum in conservative. 'Well that seems a wasted turn!' you say. Well yes. But conservative is all about losing a turn in order to be sure you have control. This is similar to getting hourglasses. So you chaos out this turn, and you can keep going next turn. For a full fledged chaos star, your net loss is minimal.

3. As a point of note in Conservative, you're also not generating stress as fast as a hamster on speed. As Reckless, you are full up on stress, and you're risking more stress. Yes you can cast, but unless you're a Bright Order mage, you have no simple way to vent excess power. Finding the exact spell not on recharge to nail the number you need can be tricksy. Especially if you picked up 6 power. Reckless is about risks and rewards. Go big or go home. So if you channel in reckless, you get a big boom or you pass out. The card mechanic doesn't penalize channeling horribly, but now you're reckless quick-casting into a 12.5% chance on each die of miscasts, which you pretty much must do or risk insanity and passing out. Sometimes you get lucky (go big!) and sometimes this first chaos star forces you to change strategies, cast early, and quick cast when you're brimming with power and risking a biiiiig backfire (go home).

Overall I say this represents the conservative/reckless strategies rather accurately.

Also - using the 2nd rule, casters become sort of silly. Red is about big numbers quickly, at a risk. But having a 12.5% chance (Over 1/10 channel powers) backlash and put you under makes reckless casting so unlikely to be meaningful overall it gets silly. Needless to say front-line bright order mages in armies wouldn't happen.

So if you get a Comet in green, you will simply reduce the number of successes to get less power (and thus ignore the effect).

If you get a Come in red, you will simply use th extra power (this can also be higher than your 2 x Willpower and you won't get any side effect) with a Quick Spell. If the spell fails, well no problem since the power will still be gone.

Sorry, but strictly speaking about the Comet effect I think the Red one is much safer that the Green one.

With the Green you max out the power at 2 x Willpower, with the Red you don't have this limit.

LukeZZ said:

You're not making any sense. Neither side has a Comet effect. And what you think doesn't necessarily hold up in play. Lets take a look at a concrete example:

You are playing a celestial mage with: First Portent of Aman Thul, Omen, And Lightning.

Combat begins. You are Equilibrium (WP) at 4 power.

Round 1: You channel/quickcast lightning right away. You gain 6 power and spend 7. You're at 3 power. LB has 5 recharge left.

Round 2: You channel/quickast First Portent. You gain 6 power and spend 3. You are at 6 power.

Round 3: You channel/quickcast Omen. You chaos star out. LB has 3 recharge left.

Well you have only 3 or less power remaining spells? Now what? You can take the minimum success line (2 power) and quick cast for 3. But then you're still 2 over your will. You gain 2 stress. This isn't counting any stress you picked up from red dice. If you were green, you'd gain 2 power min, and no stress. I hope that delineates the difference.

shinma said:

Remember the equilibrium in round two: he gets one power for free putting him at 7 total at the end of the round.

-L

LukeZZ said:

In our group the Quick Cast is announced before rolling channeling dice. Since a Quick Casting card was included in the Winds of Magic I view it as an action to be announced like any other. So the Wizard won't know if he/she should Quick Cast or not on beforhand.

k7e9 said:

I agree 200% with that approach. If i had a Mage in the group, i would enforce it : action(s) declaration before rolling means you declare if you just Channel or if you Channel AND Spellcraft, making your 1 Action for that round a Quickcasting action. Then you roll to resolve the action, the 1st and the 2nd checks using whatever lines you want.

On a side note, i've seen an effect, i think it was a Chaos Star, that forced the use of the "best" lines somewhere, a Miscast card maybe.

shinma said:

Sorry, I meant Chaos Star, not Sigmar's Comet (but I think it was obvious from the description of the effect...)

LukeZZ said:

That makes sense in context. Sorry I was in a rush running out, I still hope my example helps. Also Lucas thanks for the correction. It means our theoretical mage would take 1 extra stress at the very least, bringing him (with no red dice) almost to 3/4 will in stress (and very likely with having taken a stress or two previously, to distressed willpower and thus potential insanity land).

And yes, in our game we play with the pre-announced action sequence with the caveat that if you end up not channeling and don't have enough power, you clearly don't get to cast the spell. I do not know if its spelled out explicitly that way, but I believe it should be (as you declare your full action before attempting it).