IndigoGirls

I used bow hunters in my old book list and they've only gotten better so this does not surprise me. I'm also not surprised they were an MVP unit for you. However my problems with bow hunters are... 1. their consistency, aka extremely variable 2. once they're locked into combat their effectiveness is greatly reduced Of the above points, 1 is the deal breaker for me. Points of failure include 2 attacks per model (very low) hitting on 3s, mostly 4s, or 5s (based on lookout sir and leader differences). You will miss a lot of shots. Wounds on 3s is fine, -1 rend is fantastic, but d3 damage is not where I want to be. Given how few shots will actually wound, you can easily roll 1 damage. Many times you won't connect and even if you do the damage is unpredictable. Sadly bow hunters don't put out a lot of damage so they aren't great for deleting units or removing screens (unless they're gunning down a small 1 wound squad). They don't receive buffs well (other than re roll 1s, which doesn't increase max output and due to the low number of attacks doesn't re roll that many dice so it doesn't help even their damage curve much either). BUT when the stars align they feel like absolute beasts because they have high max potential. I'm happy to see people use them because they are my favorite kurnoth sculpts but Im still not sold on them outside of skewed lists in team tournaments. In friendly games, I use them. At a 5 game tournament, Id leave them on the shelf (edit: or just bring them and realize certain games they'll fail you. Honestly just have fun. Obnoxious attitude in my original post).

Two things here, I don't know if a TLA belongs in every list BUT it's one of my favorite Sylvaneth units. I think the real problem with the TLA is you expect it to do damage because it's this huge tree. I expect my TLA to do 0 damage a turn. Any damage he puts out is the cherry on top. What the TLA is to me is 1 - guaranteed woods 2 - an anvil/distraction 3 - a caster 4 - sometimes a useful CA (mystic shield on himself/Dryads/Drycha/charging kurnoths is useful usually once a game). For me where the TLA shines is throwing him at objective holding hordes before they reach an objective. For instance throwing him into 40 stabbas or 30 Dryads. Without rend those blobs will do almost no damage to him (with re-roll 1s up). He doesn't do much damage back but keeping them off objectives is the name of the game and there he shines. Even more choppy units that don't have rend (horrors) aren't super scary when you're a 3+ reroll 1s. I take him in Dreadwood so he's also -1 to wound. Maybe drop him from your list or try using him as a great anvil against certain units. Also if you give him Regrowth he becomes rather self sufficient. Also I 100% agree the tree revs would do more good for you in your list then Palisades + spites.

I think what is optimal is largely based on the situation. That said, we should analyze what kurnoth hunters are good at and what they are bad at. For this review I will not incorporate bow hunters as they differ greatly from the melee variants. Pros: durable, medium damage, consistent, self sufficient Cons: slow, low model count We can shore up their weaknesses, lean into their strengths, or a little bit of both. TLA - improves their movement (via woods), improves their durability on the charge (command ability). Costs ~1.25 hunter units. Nice way to get them to move around better and kurnoths in terrain are much stronger than kurnoths in the open. Wraith - improves movement (can cast woods or spiteswarm, etc.) OR improves the bodies issue (summon dryads). Costs ~0.5 hunter units. Flexible army addition, doesn't do a ton for kurnoths but can help with the bodies issue or their movement (or both with multiple casts). Archie - improves kurnoth consistency (re-roll 1s), improves max damage output (command ability). Costs 0.5 hunter units. Nice piece to force multiple kurnoths or other units. However, spending 1 cp to add 3 attacks to a unit is pretty underwhelming. Archie encourages larger blocks of kurnoths to make the most of the CA. Drycha - improves movement (can cast woods or spiteswarm). Costs ~1.5 hunter units. Drycha is going to be a replacement for kurnoths. She is a flexible unit (ranged damage, melee damage, caster, fast). Strictly speaking I prefer 1.5 hunter units to Drycha; unless you build around Drycha. Dryads - solves the bodies issue. Costs 0.5 - ~1.5 hunter units. Relatively durable and cost effecient. Strictly going to replace kurnoths. If you need to contest objectives you'll probably be using these (or some form of the more expensive revs). Outcast battalion - will get you more CPs, another artifact, and lower your drops. No direct impact on your hunters but CPs and artifacts can boost them in interesting ways. None of what I wrote above explains how you replace hunters and I think that's important. It's great to compare units but what matters even more is your game plan. Your game plan typically starts with the glade you choose and that immediately changes how hunters behave. Example, if you take Dreadwood your hunters movement problem is solved. If you take Gnarlroot you improve their durability. To give a meaningful answer on this theoretical exercise we need more info. 'Optimal' shifts based on your plan, the scenario, and your opponents list. What I will say is this. Kurnoth hunters are my rock. They do basically everything I want and my lists often run 9 of them (block of 9, block of 6 and 3, or 3 blocks of 3). That said I have 0 lists running running more than 12 of these guys. In my experience spending 1k points on hunters starts to reveal weaknesses in my lists and limits my ability to produce meaningful list synergies. I'm not sure if this post is helpful at all but these are my thoughts. I also think you slept on Alarielle as a replacement but maybe I'm in the minority.

Yeah so I missed the LoS clause on the spell... Probably because I haven't used it in ages... The thought process was to expand aggressively turn 1 and park the branchwraith behind a unit of 9 scythe kurnoths. You'd get a triple caster rolling 3 dice and able to bring back a kurnoth, summon 10 dryads (to secure the objective via bodies), it would be the Gnarlroot general so heal something d3 (most likely), and either mystic shield, bolt, summon woods, or deploy the lists one offensive endless spell. This variation also keeps the branchwraith off throne of vines so she doesn't butt heads with Alarielle. Cogs acts as a spiteswarm so when that plus move and charge is needed you can flip the switch. Finally, cogs slow mode and Balewind are redundancies. If cogs fails then I can still boost the branchwraith to a second cast via Balewind. I used the combo against Big Waaaagg last weekend and it felt rather nice. I had to position the branchwraith precisely but I was able to screen her with 5 spites get all the endless spells off and revive kurnoths from my block. Ultimately it probably is just a thought exercise of pushing something as far as possible but I think it might have a place? Having 7 casts per turn in my list felt very useful and flipping the cogs to speed mode on turn 4 allowed me to get to objectives I'd have missed otherwise and secure the game.

Has anyone tried the following combination in Gnarlroot? If you have, do you find it consistent at all? Gnarlroot - Allarielle + Throne of Vines - Branchwraith + Chalice of Nectar + Verdurous Harmony - Balewind Vortex - Chronomatic Cogs Turn Sequence Deploy Alarielle within range to cast cogs and have the branchwraith use slow mode. Alarielle casts Throne of Vines, Alarielle casts Cogs Branchwraith uses Cogs (Slow mode cast) to cast Balewind, Branchwraith uses Balewind to cast Dryads. At the end of this Alarielle has 1 cast and branchwraith has 1 cast. This is 800 points of investment so I'm not sure it's worth it but I find the combo interesting and potentially powerful setup with redundancies incase cogs or Balewind fails turn 1.

Personally, I'd drop the Arch-Rev since you get re roll 1s on the charge and his CA is the same as Harvestboons. Just sort of a redundant model for you and you don't have that many hunters. You could take a balewind to make the branchwraith a bit more of a threat? Or just beef up some spites? Minor changes. I find 30 Dryads hard to work with so I'd probably drop them to 20. The list seems fine though, my Harvestboon experience is equally light.

You can run a block of 6 with arch rev support, pop the CA, and ruin a block of mortek (and by ruin I think I killed ~14 of 20, which was good enough). Using +1 attack on a block of 6 that are all in combat essentially pushes them to an unbuffed 8 man (24 attacks). Also worth noting, 3 sword hunters and a TLA took on 20 pretty well. The opponent threw all of the attacks into the TLA and at -1 to wound (Dreadwood artifact) + re roll 1s to save he took 14 wounds total on the double turn. If I'd gotten a turn to try for regrowth he may have seen 3 rounds. In that time, the sword hunters did a fair bit of work through mortal wounds and that flat 2 damage leaving the guard very depleted. Worth noting, the crawler character shot is very scary for the arch rev since he has the fly keyword to start. If you can get him to take a wound to stop flying it's probably worth it against the crawlers. Branchwraith was in the woods so no worries there. Also, the normal crawler shot can devastate kurnoths if you miss your saves. I lost 5 kurnoths to 2 crawlers in one turn because I failed 5/6 4+s... We were also playing a 3 objective scenario which I think favors OBR because they're not that fast and do not spread out on objectives well. Even so I felt fine.

I generally agree with Craze's post above. Overall Sylvaneth are not doing very well on the table top at tournaments. I think this boils down to us having a fair book while being a very difficult army to pilot correctly. On top of that, the current book gives you the space to play the army in many different and viable ways. Want more damage? Winterleaf. Want restoration and magic? Gnarlroot. Want teleportation and surprise? Dreadwood. Want to charge all day? Harvestboon. Having so many options only makes list building more challenging but I think it gives the book a huge amount of flexibility. To that end, I think Sylvaneth have pretty solid matchups against DoT and OBR. I played DoT (not change host) and felt well equipped to answer their problems. Same with OBR, I haven't seen Nagash OBR (which does concern me) but artillary and mortek heavy was easy to manage. You'll probably see most people playing Winterleaf. I'd expect minimum 9 kurnoth hunters in a list. You'll probably see Outcast battalion and some spite revenants. Treelord ancient is becoming more popular. Then most lists tend to have a pet unit in Durthu or Drycha or Allarielle. Other glades that are floating around in larger numbers seem to be Gnarlroot and Dreadwood. A lot of folks are pretty down on the trees and for fair reasons. In most YouTube tier list videos they're sitting near the bottom (stats shows like the Honest Wargamers show similar trends). I'm a bit more optimistic and I feel they are right in the middle of the pack (and better off then some other tomes). It's a flexible book and an army that is exceptional at playing the objectives. When I play my list I usually feel like I have a line of play that can win me the game. Sometimes the line is slim and sometimes it's wide but I love that Sylvaneth always make me feel like I'm in it. For these reasons I think a top list under a top player can go 4-1 at a big event and even 3-0 something local. Stats show a much worse trend but I think that comes back to this being a hard army to master, it's certainly not an army I'd recommend as someone's first.

How'd the trees do at the LVO???

Thanks for the quick thoughts! I think I agree. I do have some concerns with the list and all of the points I'm putting into support pieces (TLA, Branchwraith, 20 Dryads, extra CP, and the hive). The hive also concerns me because it casts on a 7 and with the brooch over stave I'm not running any multi casters who can same turn spit out throne of vines into spiteswarm.

Last 100pts list question for the group. Which do you like more? Dreadwood TLA - General + Jewel of withering + Regrowth Arch-Rev Branchwraith - Aetherquartz brooch + Throne of Vines Drycha - Regrowth 20 x Dryads 10 x Spite Revs 10 x Spite Revs 5 x Spite Revs 6 x Scythe Hunters 3 x Sword Hunters Outcast battalion Vengeful Skullroot Or, swap out the bold items for... 5 x Spite Revs (down from 10) Spiteswarm Hive Extra CP Thought with the swap... Cons: Fewer bodies and less damage via Skullroot Pros: More consistent charges and extra CPs to feed the aetherquartz brooch

I'm pretty sure you declare at the start of each battle round whether or not Drycha is deployed in the table. That's how I've always played it. The rule doesn't specify if this model is on the table or currently deployed so I assume it's constant.

Yeah spites are interesting. 15 is also the number I never take and my problem with 20 is if I want to use outcasts a 20 and two 5s is 320 pts while two 10s and a 5 is 300 pts. Yeah I'm down 5 bodies and only saving 20 pts but I've found those points to really matter. If all you want spites to do is chaff and get you a battalion I'd take 3 x 5. Ive personally been doing 1 x 5 and 2 x 10. I'm not convinced it's optimal but the 10 man's can kill things, are better screens, and count as 10 bodies on an objective so I feel they're useful. Spiteswarm is interesting... I've been playing Dreadwood without it but want to fit it in now that the TLA single handedly almosy freed up enough points. Having played without it, charges off the TP are sketchy so generally my TPs are more of the alpha bunker variety or Drycha moving to shoot. This works super well on high objective count scenarios and not so hot on low objective count scenarios. I also run the aetherquartz broach so I have CPs up to attempt the charge reroll any turn where I need it.

So happy to see someone else feel this way. In my games 10 spites getting into combat and getting the chance to swing have done huge damage. They also absorb the arch rev command ability very nicely. Only problem is the fall to a stiff breeze and are battle shock prone. That said, I really liked how 10 man units played on the table top. Been saying this for a while now but the guaranteed 2nd wood in from the TLA in Dreadwood is so powerful. Getting the CA teleport and realm root teleport online turn 1 is huge. I've also found the Dreadwood artifact to be rather useful on the TLA.

Has anyone found success running the vengeful skullroot? It seems unwieldy but potentially powerful. Its casting value is reasonable, I like that it can't hurt Sylvaneth, and I like the potential near Wyldwoods. It's reasonably pointed, I'm just concerned about moving it around.