8th Ed. Lore of Heavens Review - Party Slann 2012 chain

Excellent review. I stuck it in the Tactica index as usual. I normally like to add my two cents to your posts, but you covered the bases so well, I only have about one cent worth of stuff to add. I was especially impressed with the depth of possibilities you put forth for Wind Blast. Before reading your blog, I wrote it off as the worst spell.

I was going to write that a Slann doesn't need to take Lore Mastery if they have a Skink Priest because they can cover all the spells, but now I'm thinking it might be worth it to take lore mastery and a skink or two to double up on Iceshard Blizzard (or Comet if you roll lucky).

I think with most things a double Slann would be good with Light, Life, or Death, but I don't think I'd endorse a double Slann team with Heavens. Why? Tetto'eko, aka the mini-Slann. I think a Tet/Slann team would be more efficient than a Heavens Slann/non-Heavens Slann team.

Tet can do almost everything a Heavens Slann can do just about anything a Slann can do except channel through a skink priest and has an augmented Comet to boot. Most of the Tactica your wrote also applies to the mini-Slann.

Storm of Magic wise, the Heavens Equilibrium spell is probably the most powerful Cataclysm spell (considering it's low casting cost and RIP) of all the lores. In Storm of Magic it's probably more efficent to use a handful of skink priests to bring Heavens to the table and give your Slann something else though.

 

Storm of Magic Addendum

Since all wizards have all the cataclysm spells available to them, it may be worth using a skink priest for your Heavens Cataclysm spells instead of the Slann though the +4 is nice. Heavens spell are nice in Storm of Magic because with all the monsters around, there are likely to be more flyers than usual giving you opportunities to use your Lore attribute to knock your enemies down to earth.

Let the Four Winds Blow: Heavens’ Presence spell is pretty handy. Like Wind Blast but with enough range that you don’t need to rely on careful positioning and luck near as much to line up good collisions and able to hit multiple targets. It can also affect Vortexes which could theoretically save one or more of your units from something really nasty or push the Storm or Renewal someplace more to your liking.

Fantastic Foresight: Heavens’ Equilibrium spell is so good one would argue it’s overpowered. Re-roll all failed casting, dispel, and channeling attempts and Remains in Play! Yes, please. It’s especially good if you have lots of weak wizards as opposed to a few strong wizards (for extra channels). It’s even better if your playing style is like mine and you favor lots of small spells over a few big ones. That normally means you main risk is failing an early casting roll and not rolling a miscast, and Fantastic Foresight makes it far less likely.

Thorsen’s Thunderstrom: I need to play more SOM games to see an opportunity when I’d want to play this. I think with how dispersed and intermingled the two armies get you’d risk the vortex hitting your own men if you aren’t careful. That and my luck in magic phases tends to be very good, except with Vortexes so I tend to avoid them as a rule. Still nice to both damage enemy units and move them out of position at the same time.