8th Ed. Cloak of Feathers?

[ForgottenKnight2001]

I believe the Skink Priest can only be a Vassal for Magic Missle type spells.
(I believe the lore of death has quit a few of those)
I am prety sure any spell that uses a template is Not a magic missle.

Gew. I've never actually noticed that. I had used terrain to hide my Slann and poked priests out to use them to cast augments on units. But that doesn't work either.

A Magic Missile is a spell in the BRB that starts with the phrase "<spell name> is a magic missile"

Just for reference: that gives
2 spells in fire
2 spells in beasts
1 spell in metal (though it's the signature spell, but your slann probably has Loremaster anyway )
2 spells in light
0 spells in life (so I guess the priests in a life slann's army are just dice batteries)
2 in heavens (though one doesn't do damage unless the unit hits something)
0 in shadow
0 in death

 

[n810]

ohhh my bad I thought some of Deaths Sniper type spells where magic missles.

 

[ZeeDeveel]

Aww piss lol. I think most the Death spells are Hexes and Direct Damage. Fudge.

 

[Scalenex]

Flying Skink Priests would be very powerful if you could get CHain Lightning and/or Wind Blast. Thanks to Mathhammer you can almost guarantee this but it costs you some flexibility with your choices for other casters:

If you give a Slann Heaven and not lore mastery and one Skink priest with cloak of feathers. You can roll out the first four spells and if you get Chain Lightning, swap Chain Lightning for Blizzard. If you don't roll Chain Lightning for the Slann, swap Wind Blast for Blizzard. If you roll the Skink's spell second a level 2 priest with the plaque of Tepoc (or if you gave the Slann the plaque of Tepoc) the Skink has a 100% chance of getting Chain Lightning and a very good chance of getting Wind Blast too. If you leave him at level 1 or skip the Plaque of Tepoc you still have a very good chance of getting those spells.

People generally like to give Slann lores other than Heavens, but to a player looking to experiment with new lores, I think it'll work. As a bonus not taking Lore Mastery will save you 50 points from your Slann which will absorb a lot of the cost of the flying skink. I plan to use this combo the next time I play dwarves. My opponent likes to go fortress and stay put in a tight pack. So he'll have to make Sophie's choice with his dispels and choose either to prevent the Slann dropping a Comet token in the middle of his cluster or prevent my flying Skink ravaging chain lightning up and down his units.

The same trick will work if you take three skink priests instead of a Heavens Slann (though three priests would be a bit on the impractical side outside of a Storm of Magic scenario).

 

[pimmilicious]

Haha, I think the trick is a little worse with the three priests since you miss out on: the bonus of being lvl 4 on casting and dispelling, the free dice of rumination, survivability and the chance of being sucked into the pit or the sun.

Wind blast actually sounds fun to me on a slann, especially against dwarves. Just fly your skink priest in range and the right angle, cast wind blast and negate a turn of movement for those poor short legged ones.

What I think is the least usefull of a feathered skink priest is that he dies to shooting pretty badly. Allright, against dwarves who don't want to use their artillery on you you might get a second shot, but I think that most of the time you will be ruining those spent points to one round of shooting. Toughness 2 with no armor save and only 2 wounds (regarding its survivability, I know almost al heroes have 2 wounds) isn't that hard to kill. Also dwarves have a pretty good magic defense, so you need the chain lightning to go off. But ofcourse you can try to fly the skink priest turn 2 into his lines, try casting a chain lightning on 6 dice, get a miscast, convert your priest to a atom bomb and take some dwarves with you to the grave. But the chance this occurs is actually pretty low (less than 5%).

Good luck!