After reading too much and not playing enough, I've seen many comments that say how survivable temple guard are. Somewhere someone has a comment like "a Guard stayed up against a Magmadroth for 3 turns" or similar. But when I read their warscroll, I can't see where on earth they are so much more survivable, true they go to 3+ if close to a hero which is fantastic compared with warriors at 5+, but its hardly impervious and they must still fall over to mortal wounds. Is there something implicit (like, always assume a priest will cast Celestial Rites on them) that people do? Thanks!
You can get them to a +2 save by taking the Eternal battalion, using summon starlight, Celestrial Rites on them, yes they fall over to MW but against normal wounds they just bounce of them. If they had 2 wounds they would be fantastic, but if you know your opponent does not have a lot of MW your good to go.
To explain in more depth, the Guard get the +1 save from their warscroll in range of a hero, the battalion buff gives them another +1 save (at a different range for some unknown reason), the summon starlight makes them -1 to be hit, and the celestial rights allows them to re roll their saves.... so they are 2+ save re-rollable at -1 to hit, potentially doing 3 attacks each at 1D3 damage.
I've run 15 guards with starlight and priest buff. So next to a hero they were a 3+ rerollable -1 to hit. I happen to go against 3 list that lacked mortals. They tanked like bosses. Thank the Old Ones I didn't face any competitive list that day xD
Wait some people here say that the guard get an additional save roll for being next to a hero, but the warscroll clearly states that the hero gets the save and not the guard. Am I just dumb and understanding it completely wrong?