So this came to me as I was reading in another topic on Temple guard your Temple Guard Champion is the only champion in our army that allows you to take a single magical item worth up to 25 points. Now one way that you can get victory points is called the underdog challenge where a champion takes down a character in a challenge. So the question from me is what magical item would you give your temple guard champion to give it a fighting chance? Armour, weapon, enchanted item?
Well the Burning blade of Chotec is allwats a good choice... The Parana works with a little luck, sword oof striking or sword of the hornet are good too. also the potions that give strenght intitive or toughness would be good if he is using a one handed weapon that means he is using his shield again and he will be geting a better armor save and a ward save.
If you're going to give him armour or a weapon, you need to look at the bigger picture. Items get costed for their main use. A simple example would be the 50 point armour item in the beastmen book that gives regen. It was only really worth it on a minotaur character because they had more wounds and thus got more use out it and true value for points. The same item on a character with less wounds is still 50 points. The piranha blade can't be taken as it costs too much. But it serves as a good example. A saurus oldblood has 5 WS6 str5 attacks that cause double wounds. Cost: 35 points. A templeguard champion will have 3 WS4 str4 attacks that cause double wounds. Cost: 35 points. The first is far better than the second, but they cost the same. So you need to avoid items that you are effectively paying too much for. 35 points for that effect on a champion is wasting points. If you're going to pick an armour item for him, you're probably only going to get to use it in a challenge. So will that armour be enough to help him win a challenge against the characters you typically face? He only has 1 wound, so it's probably a waste of points. There are a few items that do work well. The blood statuette is a nice item to have if you don't have the points on a character. It's unlimited range, and needs no line of sight. Items that transfer it's effect to the unit too are pretty good choices. Like items that give MR, or the iron curse icon.
One that I thought about was putting Glittering Scales on mine. My slann recently has been using light, so WS/I 10 means that he's hitting on threes and being hit on 6's. Pretty good chances to put some hurt on folks.
He will only get to use that armour if you challenge and people will just assign attacks to rank and file instead. And even then, a character would need to be WS4 to hit on 6s, any more and it's hitting on 5s plus the possible fluff protection that characters have. Glittering scales is fine for a multi wound character who can afford to drop 1 wound in the challenge, a templeguard only has 1 wound though. Plus, just surviving isn't enough, you need to kill the enemy character early with your 3 attacks to avoid getting into a protracted combat again whilst only have 1 wound with a 3+ save before modifiers.
Gojira raises some good points. But, I also think we need to take into consideration the fact that the champion can be brought back to life if you take the Lore of Life.
If we want the revered guardian to be able to survive and win the challenge there are a few things we need to look at. These are: Weapon skill, Strength, Toughness, Wounds, Initiative, Number of Attacks, and Saves. He already has a decent weapon skill of 4, but with only three attacks it is not very likely that he will be able to hit enough times to actually kill a combat hero/lord. Giving him the sword of striking, +1 to hit will give more hits to convert to wounds. The Shrieking blade, could reduce his opponents WS to 1 IF they fail a Ld test (not that likely with characters) with either sword he will not have the bonus to strength from the halberd but will have an increased AS. With a strength of 4(5) he will not be able to accurately determine wounds as the toughness of combat characters varies, UNLESS we can increase his strength to a point where he will wound most things rather easily. Things that are less than 25 points that will increase his strength include: Sword of Might (lets us increase out AS by one as we can now use our shield in CC, however with a halberd we already have S5.) And the only other item available would be the potion of strength, with this item we can get S8 for one turn, that is enough to wound on 2's versus everything. Note that very few characters have a toughness greater than 5 so we can assume that wounding on 4's will occur most of the time. if you frequently come across those characters the relic sword might be an option, always wounding on a 5+ (but even then I wouldn't recommend it as with a halberd you are wounding on a 5+ anyways, the only advantage is the +1 to AS) A toughness of four is not bad, BUT we see MANY characters with a higher strength than four so our Revered Guardian will very often be wounded on a 3+ or worse on a 2+, with a single wound this means that we need to make this save, which is at least -2 to armour. Saving on 6's is no way to guarantee the survival of the champ. If we can increase the toughness we have less chance of having our champ wounded so we can give him the potion of toughness, +3 toughness means that he will be wounded with much less frequency.. I don't know of any other item to increase toughness so I will leave it at that. I am not familiar with any way to give the champ an extra wound so this point is pretty much moot. With initiative Saurus he will be hitting almost every character last, unless they have a great weapon (and not High Elf) I know of no hero, let alone lord, type characters who would be hitting last. We can augment this by giving our champ either the sword of the hornet or the sword of swift slaying. Both give him the always strike first rule which is useful against goblin big bosses and maybe skaven cheiftans, as you can actually hit enough to cause enough wounds to kill them (remember you are now at S4 with a 3+ AS). The benefits of this would be that you can at least cause a wounds on some characters (striking simultaneously against High Elves is always nice) and has great synergy with the lore of life (do a wound and die, res and repeat). The gold sword gives an initiative of ten which means only characters with ASF will hit first (they will never get re rolls though), this also reduces S to 4 but increases AS to 3+. The last item to increase initiative is the potion of speed, at +3 to I he will be striking in respective order, but is one use only and no sure way of guaranteeing striking first (it is pretty cheap though). With more attacks there is an increased chance to hit, wound, and kill. Several things can increase numbers of attacks, the Sword of battle gives an extra attack (Increases AS as well, but lowers S). There is also the potion of Foolhardiness which gives you the Devastating Charge and immune to psych for a single turn, if you think you will be getting the charge than you can consider this (not the best option I must say). Any item that gives frenzy is also worth considering, such as the Berserker sword (S4 3+AS) or the carnosaur pendant (although he must have caused a wound first) With three types of saves there are many possiblities. We could give him the Dragon Helm for a 3+ save AND a 2+ Ward against flaming. Or the gamblers armour for a 3+ save and 6+ ward all the time. Charmed shield gives a 2+ ward against the first wound suffered. The Dawnstone allows for re rolls to AS, opal Amulet gives a 4+ ward against the first wound suffered. Talisman of protection instils a 6+ ward. Seed of Rebirth gives a 6+ Regen. Luckstone allows ONE AS re roll, but is very cheap. If you expect flyers then it might be worth considering the Pidgeon Plucker Pendant, for a 5+ ward against flyers. The Other Tricksters Shard is useful if you expect your champ to survive the initial onslaught and get some attacks in, but only if the opponent has a ward save. And that covers it for magic Items. So what to do? Consider how you can get some synergy in, I have already mentioned the ASF swords and Regrowth, but there are many more. Such as Speed of Light, for I10 and WS10, and anything that increases S or number of attacks. Also Birona's Timewarp and potion of Foolhardiness, with M8 +2d6 you have a very large charge range, a champ that strikes first AND has 5! attacks (on the charge). So, long to short, the best way to get that underdog victory is through the synergy of magic and the item selection. Let's now start listing a bunch of combinations, and if anyone wants to crunch the numbers VS as Standard a combat hero/lord as possible that would be great. (sorry for the long post)
That was quite an amazing post. Now do challengers also get the bonus from the standard bearer because that would be something to think about considering that you will most likely be running a slann with a BS and then the temple guard themselves can have a magic standard so a lot of what you will need to boost your Champion can be taken through those two items. Now if that is the case then haveing strike first seems to be the best item to select especially when you plan on running lore of life to regrowth your champion. If you are looking at lore of light then armor would probably be better because you don't have the regrowth option in your spell list.
since our temple guard is most likely going to be accompanied by a slaan, and it's pretty common to have a slaan with lore of life, that means it's quite likely that the unit the slaan is with will have the Earth blood signature spell. since our TG unit will likely have a 5+ or 4+ regeneration save (since you can only cast earth blood on the wizard and the unit he's with) an offensive magic item (or items) might be more useful in a challenge.