Healing Prince? (Radiant Gem of Hoeth + Life)

[mikeman2990]

Does anybody think it would be viable to run a prince with the radiant gem + lore of life. He can roll on the magic table to hopefully get flesh to stone, but if not he can just take earth blood. Each turn, he can either give his unit +2 toughness or a 5+ regen. on top of that, he can remove a wound from himself every time he successfully casts a spell. I would want to put him in a combat unit to get the most out of those extra wounds. for builds i was thinking either calvary with DP's (DP's with regen? yes please) or on foot with something like White lions or swordmasters, which i'll be throwing protecting buffs at with my mage.

Calvary prince

Prince, Dragon Armor, Barded Steed, Helm of Fortune, GW, guardian phoenix, radiant gem.)
He has a 2++/5+ save w/o casting any spells. it takes a little away from the regen since he already has an equivalent ward, but his unit can still get the regen. The only problem i see with this guy is he is expensive for what he does.

Prince on Foot
Prince,( Armor of Caledor, GW, radiant gem, guardian phoenix)
A little less survivable with no re roll on armor.

[Kethnae]

I'd go for the foot prince. The Dragon Prince build means you're spending a heap of points to prevent a character from EVER being wounded, but then you're wasting some of the utility of the fact that the Gem+Life means the Prince can survive taking 1 wound per turn almost indefinitely.
For a REALLY annoying character you might combine the Gem of Hoeth with Lore of Life and then take the Armor of Stars. Result? A character which will (almost) only ever take a single wound in combat before being teleported away, only to cast a spell that heals that one wound back.

[dabber]

If improved self defense is your goal, I think High Magic is actually better. The 5+ ward save is better than Earthblood (fire doesn't skip it), is easier to cast, and can be cast on other units. Yes the +2 T is usually better than 5+ ward, but against S5 the numbers are close, and against bigger stuff its clearly the 5+ ward. With Dragon Princes, the lower strength stuff will generally bounce off their armour anyway, so I think you get a bigger practical impact from the ward save than the Toughness.
Obviously, +4 T is an entirely different story, and is way way better. But without the possibility of the Thrones of Vines boost, I'm not convinced Life is so clearly the best choice to execute this concept.

However, I generally don't think its a great idea. If you didn't take the Prince at all, you could buy an entire other unit. Or bulk the unit in question up to much larger numbers, like a horde. 250 points is more than 16 infantry models, which easily takes a 7 wide block to 10 wide with a full third rank.

[SpellArcher]

If improved self defense is your goal, I think High Magic is actually better. The 5+ ward save is better than Earthblood (fire doesn't skip it), is easier to cast, and can be cast on other units

I used to run a Radiant Gem BSB under 7th and pretty much always took High Magic. Opponents were generally keen to stop my damage spells which meant Shield got off, a lot. It was of some use against shooting but once anything got into combat that Ward was very helpful. Of course, the BSB was usually fairly central, which meant most units within the 18" range. Plus Drain was handy too.

Now I doubt that BSB is viable, except with a very specialist build. I'm looking at a Prince with High Magic, some kind of protective item and maybe a scroll. Not sure what to mount him on though.

[Duront]

I am using a similar build with a prince of a griffon and he rides along with a dragon mage. Give him the silver wand and he is able to give atleast one wound back to both beasts let alone more if he gets the actual healing spell.