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1) Presumably you feel you need to use both Arcane slots on defence? Are aggressive options not worth it or is it simply that your army must have the extra protection?
2) Is Halberd an option for BSB? Obviously he usually wants to avoid combat but in extremis, striking at I7 with S5 could be helpful.
3) In general Poison is something you always add if you can in 8th. Not so hot in 9th? I can see the merits in keeping the bunker basic because their main job is to keep the BSB alive.
4) With the 8th army book, many players dropped Eagles in favour of Core redirectors. What is the rationale for them in this list?
5) I like the look of Wilderness for the +1S.
1. As a rule, I never leave home without a scroll, and therefore if it is not present on my 'main' caster (whatever that would be) I tend to take a secondary caster as a caddy. In this list I could stick the scroll on the DM - the points/slot are available if I didn't take the crystal - but as well as a scroll I also try to take at least one level of alchemy as a hard counter to those things against which otherwise I might struggle (the only other truly high S attacks I have in this list are my KoR, which can't be everywhere and aren't *that* manouverable)...so if I'm taking an alchemy caddy I might as well make my secondary caster the scroll bearer. In this case it is quite points efficient because I get a BSB on the same character (no savings yet), as well as a second lore of magic (this extra lore/spell is effectively 'free' - if I only wanted the alchemy I could get a mage instead and drop the BSB down to a handmaiden).
Also, specifically for this build, I noticed I had all the defensive kit on the mage I wanted for under 55 points, and there's little value in giving him a magic weapon, so I had the points available for the crystal. You need an AM or MoCT lord to carry it and I haven't yet used an AM in 9th (nor a MoCT since he became expensive, and then subseuently dropped a little), so given this list had one and I had poitns available to try the crystal, I went for it. I was doing the stats on paper and it really does look like a game changer for magical defense, IMO looks well worth the points, it's just difficult to find a caddy for it, but this list does that fine.
Also, when you look at the offensive items, what is there? +3/+3 to cast looks solid and would probably be my preferred build with a 'normal' AM, but IMO fire is not a 'must-stop' lore so it is less critical for me to have those high casting values (rather, it has a redundancy of useful spells, especially on the dragon mage who can cast into combat). There's also the book of meladys, but I think that is more points efficient on a hero level character (specifically one with a sig spell at specific casting values where one dicing is likely to work unless rolling 1-2, and/or where the (effective) +2 to cast but with less variance via the re-roll is going to cross you over the threshold for using one less die to cast. Other than those two, what offensive items would you go for?
2. Halberd is an option, but you still lose the shield with it. So you're looking either at spear with shield (for AP, lethal strike), or two hand weapons (+1A, +1I) or halberd (+1S) or GW (+2S, but no +1 to hit, just hit in I order). Of these, for me, it's always a decision between spear for some offensive capabilities while maintaining the shield, or GW where you get the critical S6 at I order but lose the +1 to hit (so likely just hitting on 3's not 2's).
3. I'm not sold on shadow warriors/grey watchers, they've always struggled to earn their spot for me - too many rules packaged onto tehm (scout, skirmish, now poison and weapon upgrades), not all of which you might want for their role, but you still pay for them. I've kitted them out with longbows and paired weapons so that they can hold their own, given I'm spending so many points anyway, but in this case I don't really need scout. I'd also like to have thbe option to buy poison rather than have to pay such a high price for skirmishing bunker, but in principle I do like it on htem, both fluff and rules wise. FYI, certainly in this iteration of 9th, it comes as base with Grey Watchers.
4. I no longer view core as a core tax. As such, I'd rather spend 625 points of useful core (as opposed to chaff core) and 100pts of rare chaff than 180 points of core chaff and have 100pts extra (which I don't need in this list) available to me in rare.
5. Yeah, I'm torn on that last lore - wilderness, miasma and movement (and a cool nagarythe theme), or nature...
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P), but also to thin out the deamonettes, tackle the casting horrors, plink wounds off the flaming chariots...basically all stuff I'd expect my massed arrows to do. Maybe this is a match up where I'd prefer sea guard to spears (still want the weapon 'spears' in my list), but it would have detracted from the big block effect. But mostly for this match up I still think list was fine and I screwed myself in deployment, and then followed through with a braindead plan...but that was just me getting back into the game.
