Just played with a slann for the first time today. He was in a group of 10 TG and i gave him the lore of shadows and Higher State of concsiosness (mostly cuz i was afraid of his trebuchet) i played brets and i will be playing them and WOC most. Just wondering what lore would be best.......and oh yea the brett damsel uses the lore of life.
Your lore should be specific to what you are trying to accomplish. Shadow is a good one to use against many opponents. However, light and life are not to be frowned upon either. Light works very well against HE and Bretts. HE because you can cancel that horrendous reroll they get every turn (ASF + higher Initiative). Bretts work best by getting the charge (+2 str on their lances plus that 2+ armos save). You can use Light to potentially get charges using Birona's Time Warp (double movement up to 10, extra attacks, and ASF). If you manage to get that off and get speed of light, you are rerolling you misses on those rounds of combat. Life is a good general lore to give your slann. You can protect the slann from miscasts without taking cupped hands of the old ones. I always take the cupped hands because I have a pretty reliable recordd of rolling 1s on the throne of vines save. Also, the lore attribute of life will help you heal your characters and multi wound models within 12 inches of the slann. Lastly, the buffs that you can cast with life are very good. You will be looking at T8 Temple Guard, saurus, and even T6 skinks. If you can get the throne of vines cast. I do not really see any good use of the lore of Fire. A couple of magic missles. Nothing else though. Lore of Death can be fun and useful. I do not usually cast the purple sun spell. It usually ends up killing my own troops. The sniping spells are very useful though. Lore of Beasts is good for buffing characters, but I think it is wasted on our army. Lore of Heavens is good, but if I am going to use it, I will just take a priest. Lore of metal is also situational as it uses your targets armor save to wound. If you use it against Bretts, it will devestate them. Use it against armies with little or no armor save and it is a waste.
Don't forget Net of Amyntok in Light, either. It gives you a good chance of stopping the charge of one unit of knights and can help shut down the castings of a Damsel. My main opponent plays WoC, and Light really helps even out the statlines of saurus vs warriors.
Net will also stop war machines. Pha's protection will make war machines have to roll a 4+ to even fire on a unit that is affected by it. I would have to say that light is my foavorite lore to take.
there should be a million threads on this already. just check the first page on the tactics forum and i am sure you can find a lot of useful info.
As many others I really like the lore of life. Since you're afriad for your slann's health, I find that the lore of life really helps out here by healing up the slann from any potential wounds. Having the ability to heal up also allows you to drop the higher state of consciousness and allow the slann to get more nasty in some other ways (or simply save some points and use them elsewhere). If you still fear that he might get targeted down by a heavy ranged line-up, I find that having a TG SB with the Sun Standard of Chotec. Having said that life is a good lore, I've also played him as death. I use this lore basically for the Doom of darkness combines with a good bunch of sallies on the side, which gives a good chance of making the enemy flee if they have low ld. Also the lore attribute is good for some extra dices, which combined with a diadem of power really helps you control your own magic phase as well as your opponents. The lore of death contains The purple sun of xereus, which is a little risky spell, so I'd deffinetly go with cupped hands of the old ones for this lore. They are not necessary for the lore of life, but I sometimes find them useful for offensive use at the start, where you can chose to roll with a few more dices then needed to get throne of vines up quickly or land a good 'the dwellers bellow' on the enemy.