Skink Starpriest

STARBORNE: ★★★★☆ COALESCED: ★★★★☆

The Skink Starpriest is a good unit, and it's Seraphon's cheapest wizard (though it may be a little overpriced). It gets one cast and unbind each round, and has access to excellent spells through the Starborne or Coalesced skink spell lores and the Lore of Primal Frost. It's Blazing Starlight warscroll spell gives an enemy unit -1 to hit, helping to keep your combat units in the fight. And the Serpent Staff ability lets it buff the attacks of friendly units with mortal wound damage. All this combat support means the Starpriest offense wants to keep close to the combat units, and its Move of 8 helps it keep up.

See the Skink Starpriest warscroll on Wahapedia.

BUILDS AND TACTICS

Combat Support Wizard

The Skink Starpriest is often pushed forward behind friendly melee units. It has access to good lore spells that deal mortal wounds, buff friendly melee units or increase a unit's speed and mobility. Its Serpent Staff ability can further enhance a friendly unit's damage output by adding additional mortal wounds, while its warscroll spell, Blazing Starlight, can help defend those units. And with a move characteristic of 8", it is able to keep up. As Seraphon's lowest cost wizard, its also the best one to sacrifice if necessary.

As a unit with a Wounds characteristic of 5 or more, the Starpriest counts as 2 models for contesting objectives.

Faction Distinctions

The Starseer is good in both Starborne and Coalesced. In either faction, it has access to great lore spells (though they're a bit better in Starborne) and powerful abilities. In Starborne, like all Seraphon wizards, the Starpriest is a Cosmic Node and generates about 2 CPP each round.

Serpent Staff

Serpent Staff is a decent buff that lets a friendly unit's wound rolls of 6 deal mortal wounds, in addition to any normal wounds they cause. This works on all weapon profiles, both melee and missile weapons. The ability hasn't changed between the previous battletome and the current one, but the units that can be buffed up have changed a lot. It can cause some good damage if it's affecting the right unit, but it no longer causes the crazy damage it was known for in the old battletome.

Serpent Staff does best on units with many Attacks and good To Hit characteristics. It is best on Saurus Warriors (especially with clubs), Aggradon Lancers (especially with clubs), regular Kroxigor Cohorts, and Raptadon Chargers. Ripperdactyl Riders can also be a good target if you apply some of their many buffs that synergize well with Serpent Staff. Buffs that increase Attacks or add to To Hit rolls increase the effectiveness of Serpent Staff as well.

The extra damage caused are mortal wounds, so they are not diminished by enemy save rolls.

Blazing Starlight

Blazing Starlight is a great spell for protecting you army from enemy attacks. With an excellent range of 18" (or 24" with a Saurus Astrolith Bearer, the Starpriest can give an enemy unit -1 to all hit rolls for both melee and missile weapons until your next hero phase. This can really diminish the effectiveness of enemy attacks, and can last through an enemy's double turn.

It synergizes well with wards from the Saurus Astrolith Bearer or a Starseer's Scry the Stars ward, but is somewhat redundant if the target unit is within a Skink Oracle on Troglodon's -1 To Hit aura.

Spell Lores

A Starpriest can learn any spell from the Skink Spell Lore of its faction.

A Starborne skink wizard can learn spells from the very good Lore of Celestial Manipulation, which includes some very powerful spells. Cosmic Crush deals mortal wounds to enemy units, and is particularly effective against large units and units with heavy armor. Speed of Huanchi allows a non-monster skink or kroxigor to take an immediate hero phase move, which not only increases units speed and threat ranges, but also allows synergies with teleports (normally a unit can't move after a teleport by this spell bypasses that restriction), and prevents enemy redeploys (which can only be done in the movement phase).

A Coalesced skink wizard can learn spells from the Lore of Primal Jungles, best known for the speed enhancing spell, Heavenly Frenzy. Heavenly Frenzy allows any Seraphon unit to run and charge in the same turn. Saurus Warriors, Saurus Guard, Raptadon Chargers, Raptadon Hunters, Aggradon Lancers and Hunters of Huanchi (Bolas and Dartpipes) all get +1 to both run and charge rolls if they have a musician, which means both modifiers can apply to the unit's threat range for the turn.

The Starpriest is also an Andtorian Locus (since it's a non-unique wizard hero with 9 or fewer wounds), so it can learn spells from the General's Handbooks' Lore of Primal Frost, with two great spells: Hoarfrost and Merciless Blizzard.

And like any wizard, Starpriests can learn spells from the Universal Spell Lore.

Frequently Asked Questions

Isn't Serpent Staff great on a Bastiladon with Ark of Sotek?

By itself, no. Serpent Staff is often assumed to be great in the Bastiladon with Ark of Sotek. This turns out not to be true however, as the Ark's 20 attacks only hit on a 4+, and since unmodified 6's end the attack sequence, only 4's and 5's lead to wound rolls. The result is that Serpent Staff only causes about 1½ mortal wounds when used on the Bastiladon with Ark of Sotek.

Serpent Staff on the Ark or Sotek can be a little more effective when combined with a good To Hit characteristic modifier from the Hoarfrost spell, With a 1+ or 2+ To Hit characteristic on the Ark, Serpent Staff averages just over 2½ mortal wounds. It's still not much, but it adds up with the Hoarfrost buff to produce some pretty good results.

Starpriest or Starseer?

The Skink Starpriest and Skink Starseer are both good wizards. They both have access to the same excellent spell lores, both have good warscroll spells and both have good warscroll abilities (though the Starseer's Scry the Stars is arguably more impactful than the Starpriest's Serpent Staff). But the Starseer gets two casts/unbinds to the Starpriest's one cast/unbind for only 20 points more, which makes the Starseer a much more efficient wizard. And being able to use those excellent spells twice a round packs a lot of impact from the Starseer.