And even more infuriating for the enemy: Put mystic shield and Summon Starlight onto the Skinks. They become more resilient than the enemy expects, too!
Even the new one works on their 6+ save. WQhether it's worth casting it there might be another issue, but still. Now that reinforcements won't cost points, I can see people dropping in units of Skinks behind the enemy to harass and distract them, even if they wouldn't run them normally. I can't see them being too expensive/difficult to summon.
If you only look at that one unit then the new mystic shield is about as good as the old one for Skinks I think, or only slightly worse. I am bad at math but the difference is a few percent I think. On the other hand: It kills the synergy between Mystic Shield and Celestial Rites, since both will be rerolls. Right now those stack, in the new edition they won't.
For Skinks, I also don't see a huge difference. I'm not sure whether rerolling ones it better or worse at what levels, but I think it's also probably better to have the reroll than the +1 once you get to 3+? Agreed in that they won't stack by Celestial Rites' current ruling, but Celestial Rites might be subject to change as well. We know that the Engine of the Gods is getting an overhaul, and I'd expect the Astrolith to be getting one too given it's new niche as a summoning aide, so they might touch up a few other details. Celestial Rites is also available to Skink generals, after all, not just Skink Priests. Given the other notable options for skink generals are also spellcasters, I'm pretty sure they'd want to cancel out any redundancy. Plus, there's a *very* good chance that some of the new spells will give bonuses to saves. I think we can probably expect one from the Realm of Metal, and maybe one from the Realm of Beasts for monsters. I could see an Endless spell that boosts saves within a radius being a thing too; Prismatic Pallisade can't be the only non-predatory one!
the new shield is worse the worse your base-save is. The better your save the smaller the difference until you reach a save of 2+ without mystic shield at which point the new one is better. Save of 6+: Default succes: 1/6 Old mystic shield: 2/6 New mystic shield: 1/6 + 1/36 = 7/36, which is about half as good as with the old mystic shield.
the difference between old and new mystic shield is very simple: - the old gives you an additional 1/6 chance to roll a successful save - the new gives you a 1/6 chance to re-roll a failed save. (which may end successfully or not) unless your save is 2+, the new mystic shield is always worse than the old one.
At that point I wonder... What's better for our Starpriest to cast (on average), Summon Starlight on my own unit or Mystic Shield? I think it may actually be Starlight but that's just intuitively.
New mystic shield is worse for our units but its the best for our army. We are a no rend / low rend army in total, and the stupidity of 2+ rerollable hurt us big time. This is a correct change for the game overall as many senseless combos are put to a halt and makes our army way more sufficient. We are a fragile army no matter the mystic shield. It is just more clear for less experienced players now that they should not tank with our army but rather use mobility and kite opponents while going for the vps and the important kills
Hit reduction is more far more effective than re-rolling saves of 1. The "worst" increass would be changing a 2+ into a 3+ which makes it 1.25 times less likely to hit. The best case for re-rolls is rerolling a 2+ which makes it 1.16 times more likely to be stopped by the save. And that's ignoring hit reduction screws with special effects and isn't diminished by any rend-bonusses he might have. The only situation in which the hit reduction is worse is if even with summon starlight he's still at a 2+. But I assume that's self-explenatoiry. mwha… we shouldn't be though. Apart from our skinks nothing we have is really fit to skirmisher tactics. The others aren't particularly fast, nor do we have the ranged firepower you normall need for a skirmishing approach (or failing that, bonusses on the charge to Ensure that when we do fight we can quickly win) As for it stopping other senseless combo's. The only armies this change relly affects are those that already have re-roll effects or have bad saves without the old mystic shields. Everything else will be more or less equally sturdy. A re-rollable 3+ save still saves 28 our of 36 times, a base 2+ 30 out of 36. That's really not a whole lot squishier. A rerollable 6+ which saves only 7 out of 26 times compared to a 5+ that saves 12 out of 36 is much starker contrast though.
funnily, if you have a save 2+ it's probably better the reroll granted by the new MS, cause a 1 would be a failure and so you can actually reroll it
yea the new mystic shield is better if you already have a 2+ save anyway. But summon starlight is better still.
I blame stormcast for the change to mystic shield! 4+ rerolling 1s with shields would of been a little better since they'd be 3+ rerolling 1s. The new life spell heals and brings guys back so maybe it will be an ok swap? Random idea, but what if the Slanns spells couldn't be controlled by your opponent as a compensation for the 30" unbind? Crazy? Sure but a guy can dream!
The big change to skinks I think might be coming is a restriction that they can only be battleline in Seraphon allegiance. Just something to try stop them being used in every mixed order list, if that doesn't happen then I'm expecting a points increase.
mwha, I doubt they'l get a (significant) point increase. They're far too easy to kill and pose 0 threat when taken as allies. Even if they give decent utility there's no reason to field em everywhere..
@Stevie754 what you said is the exact perfect solution. Everyone is talking about skink point increase nowdays but they fail to realise how expensive we are as an army compared to the rest. The only believe that because they solely consider them in mixed Order lists. I 've been thinking the same and maybe we should propose this at some point if GW seems to be changing them
I blame SCE also for the 30" dispel. the only place where you had an easy game against SCE was your magic. SCE now have for the first time wizards that can unbind, and at the very same time, 30" unbind is introduced. Coincidence?
Haha while I always enjoy the SCE trolling I hope we are mostly joking right ? Because competitively - wise they do nothing many months now *and before that, the only thing that was doing well top tiers was a single batallion