8th Ed. Running multiple (3-5) skink priests in a large army

[Pepticsalve]

I've been thinking where I'd like to take my lizardman army in the future - as some of you know I'm in an escalation league where we are building up to 2400 point tournament ready armies by the middle of next year... Forgetting for a second the new rulebook FAQ and its 50% rule (which may be disallowed in some tournaments) I'm wondering if running multiple level 1 skink priests might actually be the way to go, instead of a Slann... And then that way I can have a saurus old-blood on a carnosaur as my lord choice.

My rationale for this is that level 1 skink priests are cheap - and both lore of beasts and lore of heavens are awesome lores that any army would be pleased to run IMO. With having a single very large magic user (the Slann) on the table they are going to get a LOT of hate from the enemy, even protected as they are from temple guard, but having lots of cheap skink priests (maybe one in each infantry block) is potentially going to cause more of a headache for an enemy.

Also, you could hope to get lucky and roll for the comet on one of the skinks. If you do you can move him to a safe place away from the rest of your army (incase of IF) and then use one magic phase to spam all of your magic dice on the boosted 24+ comet spell - even if skink gets IF (and frankly lets hope so) 65 points is an absolute bargain for a boosted comet casting, especially when playing against slower, more static armies like dwarves......

Or, having a lore of beasts skink in every infantry block, each with Wysans, should prove rather effective as well... Who doesn't like strength 5 toughness 5 infantry???

I know this is all situational - and I'll probably still get a Slann as I do love the model - but is there a viable tactic here - lots of level 1 skink priests rather than 1 very powerful floating frog?...

 

[Caprasauridae]

I haven't tried with more than two Skink Priests, but I definitely love the idea. I had one lvl 2 Beast and one lvl 1 Heaven. I rolled the Transformation of Kadon for the Beast Priest, which can be great fun. Probably not competitive choice, but just fun. Also, if you predict that the Priest and it's unit are about to die, you can have some fun and cause mayhem, that of course if the dice allow. What I'm trying to say, is that both lores have lots of great spells and with cheap priests, more risks and fun tactics can be used. A suicide Priestplosion is also a fun/desperate choice. Get close to a valuable enemy unit, six dice a spell and hope for a big explosion from the miscast table. However, I can't say what is the point where you start getting diminishing returns...

 

[ASSASSIN_NR_1]

Well you won´t ever have the problem that you need to pursue if you do not want to, with all the skink characters.

You will have a lot of mages with relatively few power dice each, but you will of course have a lot of channeling attempts. I think it could work, but you will probably need to find the balance, so you do not have too many skink priests.

maybe a single lv 2 might work, as it gives a little boost to magic resistance.

 

[Pepticsalve]

The other advantage I've just thought of is that each priest can be given one of the more useful arcane items, cube of darkness, dispel scroll, channeling staff, power stone... I imagine this could make for rather an interesting game - and no doubt will annoy the hell out of an opponent...

Losing one or two priests isn't going to hurt too much as they were cheap to begin with - and it could just make all the difference... I think I'm going to build another 3 or 4 priests and try this in a few games just to see if it does infact work...

The only big draw back I can think of is taking points away from heroes which I know a lot of people like spending on tooled up scar vets on cold ones... Maybe thats a better use of the points?

 

[ASSASSIN_NR_1]

scar vets are not neccesarily needed, and not nececesarily on cold ones. If you cast wildform on a unit with a scar vet, he will benefit from it, if he was on a cold on, well you would have to cast wildform again to give him the boost.

you could still make a cowboy, as skink priests does not take from the lord points.

Magic items could help, as you said, they are cheap, so you could consider the the forbidden rod or the power scroll.