8th Ed. Empire mages

[Trociu]

Hello,
recently my fiances nephew started building his own army - The Empire. Army is being build slowly because he only plays with me and my friend and paints with his aunt. Now he has 20 handgunners, 10 swordsman, 20 halberdiers, 8 knights, captaing with banner and general/captain on horse and cannon. He chooses what to build basing on what he likes, not what is good in game (proxying is not a problem if it goes with only statistics, cause he is too young to get all the rules). But magic is totally different thing.
He doesn't like unnatural things and therefore mage would be only to counter my skink priests so I don't want to make him choose lore out of nothing. It will be probably next buy and since GW gives two mages my question is:

What could be a good combo of priests for his army?

What is usually good for empire if its about mages and lores (I only played once with Empire with two fire priests but it obviously was tottaly different thing)?

 

[Scalenex]

I'd go Light. With this little army he can plant the wizard safely in the handgunners and then boost his advancing melee units and/or shoot magic missles from the handgunners unit.

Light is also very straight forward lore which is good for beginners.

There is no rule that your wizard's lore has to match the model, so you can always change this. If your nephew finds he likes blasting things Fire is a good choice. If you find he likes the battlefield control aspect of magic Shadow would be worth trying.

I would avoid Beasts, Metal, and Heavens for their reliance on situational spells, not the best starter lores for newbies. Life is a bit weak on a L1 or L2 caster. Death doesn't mesh well with his melee centered army. Empire really needs a Pegasus wizard to get much out of Death unless they are just hoping for Purple Sun.