For the purposes of this poll, assume Tehenhauin and Tetto'eko are not involved, vanilla Skink Priests.
Beast is you're running saurus core, and Heavens for skinks/cohorts. S5 saurus is rad. -1 to hit Kroxigor in the 2nd rank is really good too. T3 skinks, or saurus hit on 4+ isn't as good. -Matt
This is another of those "for what purpose are we speaking?" questions. For buffing your saurus? For messing up things behind enemy lines? Supporting combat in general? In general im inclined to say "both". People tend to undermine heavens as a potent lore, were it in my opinion has things that work very well for us. Harmonic Convergence for example is gold to re-roll for poison shots, re-roll for extra predatory fighter attacks (which since they arent a re-roll gets to re-roll 1's too) and the others buffs/debuffs are equally strong. ...and....Beast and Heavens play pretty well together. Wyssans + Harmonic: Dont waste those S5/S6 attacks and re-roll for even more Wyssans + Curse of midnight wind/Iceshard: pretty defensive to narrow the amount of dice-sides that can actually wound you. Curse of Anhraheir + Wind Blast: hah, you moved..dangerous terrain all over your expensive unit. Curse of Anhraheir + Iceshard Blizzard + Curse of midnight: thats -2 to hit and re-roll 6's. You lost combat....with -1 to LD...and has to take dangerous terrain WHEN you flee. Comet of Casandora + Curse of Anhraheir: You wanna stand still, but you dont wanna stand still. This combo can effectively mess up your opponents battleline. Normaly people stand back a turn to wait for the cursed unit so it wont be picked of alone, but now that means that they will get hit by a comet. Amberspear, comet (not so much due to uncertainty) and iceshard blizzard is potent warmachine spells. -- Lately ive had the thought that maybe the answer isnt "which" but to spam "both". Im trying something like this next: Skink priest lvl 2 Heavens Skink priest lvl 2 Heavens Skink priest lvl 2 Beast Skink priest lvl 2 Beast with no slann, and then go combat heavy. What I would really love to would be to put in a Light slann for extra "haha you cant hit me" and "how you like me now" buffs, but that will be next next time. tl;dr: im on the fence with legs down both sides.
Depends on whether or not you are running a Slann. With a Slann, I say heavens, because the sig has a lower casting value (meaning it uses less dice that should go to the slann should you decide to cast it) and you will likely have or be able to get wyssan's on the Slann.
Ouch! Sound painful I'm with you on the whole "both is usefull"-train but IF I'm only allowed to choose one I feel Heaven have more utility for LM with as you say reroll for more PF, poison. Sure Wyssans is nice and it really makes saurus beef cakes! But it's harder to cast both being +10 and what I feel being more stigmatized by other players (100% self perceived)
I think the poll so far has pretty definitively shown that both are equally viable at this point haha.
Heavens - It's just underestimated grossly in my mind. Wyssans wildform is cast on a 10+ That's the difference of a dice already there. as to 1+1 or -1 to hit not being of equal strength on the sauri, i agree, but i do not agree the difference is as great as implied. Sauris will always be hit on a 3+, making it a 4+ removes 16.66% of hits, giving them toughness 5 instead of 4 removes 16.66 of wounds - defensively there's no difference (well there probably is, since to hit %'s will remove more hits, than to wound %'s since to hit comes before to wound, but i'm not a math genius so that's just my assumption) wyssan's then provide an offensive boost, +1 str is 16.66 more wounds on your opponent. Both the toughness and the strength increase gives the exact same number advantages to Skinks as it does saurus, they just die more easily already, however there's also more of them. Iceshard gives a completely neglected (in most cases) Leadership debuff, also an offensive bonus, and not at all as useless as one would think it to be when we see how much it's mentioned. swing the odds of that important unit breaking in your favor, or it failing fear, or it failing terror, or it failing panic tests. It might not be as potent as +1 str, but it's potent enough to make the difference between winning or not winning. then comes the other factors - Wyssan's is expensive if you want it as shooting protection, it only confers +t against shooting. -1 to hit is superior here due to the way shooting penalties are calculated and the ability to lock down a warmachine 50/50, is also presented by heavens. If we look at the lores in general i also think heaven wins out, beasts require a specific build (character heavy) for the other spells to really work, and it requires an extra caster if you want transformation and want to keep casting in case your opponent does not or cannot dispel. Heaven dictates movement, comes with a cheap and good unit buff, 2 hexes, where 1 does seem a bit expensive but negates some of the advantages of poison, killing blow, HKB, having to reroll does not guarantee another 6. TBH the greatest victory of Heavens is that all of the spells could be used in a given matchup, whilst Beast could use the flock of doom, and maybe make a single wound, but it won't do as much as wind blast would to fuck up the psychology on whether an opponent should charge or not. I like beasts, i really do, but i feel heavens win out by a toe and a leg. Were i to use both i'd use something resembling phatmotha-phucka's build further up, but decrease the beast priests unless i went very character heavy (which i feel i'm more restricted to do with that many priests). My setup's would be : Heavens 2 Beasts 2 Heavens 1 Beasts 2 Beasts 2 (for character heavy lists (i'm thinking so many the bubble is the strategy to go by) or if i were to go heavy magic and wanted wyssans for magic heavy phases and felt i had 2-3 characters i wanted to buff. Heavens 2 Heavens 2 Beasts 2 - note that i don't want to depend on savage beast and thus don't want to use too much energy on guaranteeing it, i'd also pick cure over it. . I'd still want a Beast mage if i brought 2, since i really like the curse, and the amber spear, but still a greater fan of heavens, i feel the spells in general have more mileage and there's less chance of landing in a dud.
In my skink armies, I like heavens with bastiladons. Good hexes, good ranged damage, and more from the bastiladons. In a saurus heavy army, I like beasts. Saurus are durable enough, and throw out fist fulls of attacks. I want those to kill more, and beast magic helps with that. -Matt
I feel like I need to dillude this a bit (tiny bit). Wyssan's is ofcourse an awesome spell, and so is Iceshard. However, in a multi-unit combat where more than 1 unit are able to hit the Saurus. Iceshard falls short here, only debuffing 1 unit. Sure, you'll take the most dangerous one but in a 2 vs 1 or an even bigger multi-unit combat: Wyssans is better. The same goes for shooting; more than 1 shooting unit (be it a war machine or a horde of archers) cannot both be stopped by Iceshard. While the Toughness boost would help in either case. This is not a big downside, but something worth noting IMHO. For the record, I also prefer heavens. It is awesome with a Slann, if you can switch a spell to Wyssans. Some solid damage spells, decent hexes, solid buff and ofcourse; anyones favorite spell ever: the comet! Beasts, apart from Wyssans, I find mostly "Meh". Transformation is cool, Curse if very good, Amber spear is our pseudo-cannon..and that's it for me. The character buffs don't do it for me, I prefer units over characters. Anyways, just adding my 0.02 The Hunted
Again: Depends on perspective Viewers discretion: semi nudity and violence http://www.break.com/video/ugc/shaolin-monks-balls-conditioning-484710 _____________________________________________________________________________ If I HAD to choose, i'd go with Heavens too...happily I dont anymore (big hi-five for you Vetock) and...the more I think of it I really want to combine it with light.. not aiming to make that WS10 S5 T5 I10 A3 ASF Horde of saurus with re-rolls of 1s...(would be fun though) but to have access to a lot different variants of the same spell effect, making sure I got them through.
I did consider that, but whilst ranting i forgot some details TBH though, the 2nd combatant, unless also a core / special infantry unit, won't take the same punishment from Iceshard as a larger core unit anyways. But i largely agree with your statement, i have also prepared a solution! more skink priests!
Interesting thread, as I'll be having three Level 2 skink priests in my army for my friendly little tourney in feb. But I might pick up another off ebay... 4 is a good round number, isn't it?!
I have 4 and is about to try exactly this. Please share your experience with it and ill do the same have a test game on sunday.
at the end of the day wyssans on a 10+ ends up being fairly expensive for a level 1 (or 2) to cast with any kind of regularity. you're almost always better taking a slann with the signature discipline, or swapping a spell from high magic into wyssans. i never have much luck getting wyssans off with my priests. /shrug.
I was in the Beasts camp but moved to the fence after playing a few games with Beast Caste Skink Priests. The 12 inch casting range spells are kind of difficult to use for me since I like keeping my Skink Priests WAY back from danger.
Heavens all the way. Comet is a bonus if you can get it, but otherwise iceshard is better on a priest than Wildform. It's easier to cast, there's an average chance of getting off on 2 dice, and a decent chance at 3. It's more versatile - can stop cannons (very important), BS shooting, reduce number of hits, damage flyers, and reduces leadership (which is not to be underestimated at all) Though my priests are usually lvl1, and the spell they have is often a bonus in addition to the scroll and vassal. Wildform is better on a Slann due to high casting cost. This obviously depends on the list. If I have a load of mid strength stuff and the Slann isn't wandering or contemplating, I guess I'd like the lvl 2 beasts. But this situation is a rarity for me.