AoS 2 - Sylvaneth Discussion

[Trevelyan]

9 minutes ago, Heksagon said:

Our new woods will be 30£ / 40€ / 50$  for a box.
Box will include 3 "bases" making one Awakened Wylwood.
That's confirmed info.

My hype is all gone. This price is ridiculous. I know, this hobby is not cheap, .but this pricing is really reaaaally hard to justify.
You will probably need 2-3 boxes for a 1k games and twice as much for 2k.
 

It’s not that bad. Granted it’s more than the current woods, but we will likely need fewer of them. 

If GW confirms that the existing woods are an allowed alternative then I suspect you’ll still be able to pick those up at a discount as people pick up the newer version. I’ll even be looking to sell off a few unopened boxes myself. 

[Druug]

Hey all, new player here. I just got into the hobby 2 months ago, and have built a decent size Sylvaneth army so far. I love the models and lore, but I've been really struggling with them against my friends on the tabletop. We're all new, so we may be getting rules  wrong, but I always feel disadvantaged compared their armies. They play Nurgle, Nighthaunt, and Stormcast. Nurgle especially hurts me, but I almost always struggle after turn 2 or so. Any advice on countering Nurgle, or building a competitive list in general? I've been using the new rules/glades, and have my my own cheapo awakened wyldwoods to use. I've got pretty much every model except for Alarielle. Any help is appreciated.

[Druug]

1 hour ago, Heksagon said:

Our new woods will be 30£ / 40€ / 50$  for a box.
Box will include 3 "bases" making one Awakened Wylwood.
That's confirmed info.

My hype is all gone. This price is ridiculous. I know, this hobby is not cheap, .but this pricing is really reaaaally hard to justify.
You will probably need 2-3 boxes for a 1k games and twice as much for 2k.
 

Where'd you get this from? The only info I've found on the new release is from community, and I haven't seen anything yet. Not that I think you're wrong; it sounds like what GW would do. Any links?

[Emissary]

https://www.belloflostsouls.net/2019/07/next-weeks-mega-40k-aos-products-pricing-confirmed.html

They get a lot of things wrong, but they usually get these prices right.  

[Emissary]

25 minutes ago, Druug said:

Hey all, new player here. I just got into the hobby 2 months ago, and have built a decent size Sylvaneth army so far. I love the models and lore, but I've been really struggling with them against my friends on the tabletop. We're all new, so we may be getting rules  wrong, but I always feel disadvantaged compared their armies. They play Nurgle, Nighthaunt, and Stormcast. Nurgle especially hurts me, but I almost always struggle after turn 2 or so. Any advice on countering Nurgle, or building a competitive list in general? I've been using the new rules/glades, and have my my own cheapo awakened wyldwoods to use. I've got pretty much every model except for Alarielle. Any help is appreciated.

First thing is we need to see the list you usually use.  There are a lot of variables to look at but that is a good starting point.

[Lord Ein]

32 minutes ago, Emissary said:

https://www.belloflostsouls.net/2019/07/next-weeks-mega-40k-aos-products-pricing-confirmed.html

They get a lot of things wrong, but they usually get these prices right.  

Seems like I’m going for 3D print

[Druug]

Thanks for the link @Emissary. Looks like my wallet is gonna take a hit again.

The main list I've tried is this:

Harvestboon Glade

Durthu - General w/ Silent Sickle (320)

TLA - Regrowth (300)

Archrev - Treesong (100)

Branchwraith - Vesperal Gem, Verduous (80)

Branchwraith - Throne of Vines (80)

3 units of 3 Kurnoth Hunters - 2 w/ bows, 1 w/ swords (600)

Unit of 5 tree-revs (80)

Unit of 5 spite-revs (60)

30 Dryads (270)

Free Spirits Battalion - for extra artifact and command point (120)

Total - 2010

I want to work in Drycha, but I'm not sure where. I tend to falter after the charge; I don't feel I have much staying power.

[Trevelyan]

I would rethink the Kurnoths and the battleline troops. 

Two units of bow hunters aren’t really going to pull their weight. Either drop one for a second unit of swords or, for preference, drop the swords and one bow unit for a 6 man unit of scythe hunters. I personally like to have a unit of bows around, but no more than one. Others might advise you to lose them all in favour of something more melee focused and reliable, say 6 scythes and 3 swords. 

I don’t know what a single unit of Spite Revenants is doing there. A second unit of tree revenants would be better for objective grabbing and general chaff purposes.

I’d also be inclined to cut back on the Dryads. If you want to stick with sword Hunters over scythes to keep your unit numbers up for Free Spirits then the Dryads are likely to get underfoot. 

In your current list, Free Spirits isn’t getting you much.

Also, you’ve given the arch revenant a spell, but she’s not a caster. 

For something more specific, can you elaborate on why you are struggling? What is your typical battle plan and what stops it from working?

[Lord Ein]

1 minute ago, Trevelyan said:

I would rethink the Kurnoths and the battleline troops. 

Two units of bow hunters aren’t really going to pull their weight. Either drop one for a second unit of swords or, for preference, drop the swords and one bow unit for a 6 man unit of scythe hunters. I personally like to have a unit of bows around, but no more than one. Others might advise you to lose them all in favour of something more melee focused and reliable, say 6 scythes and 3 swords. 

I don’t know what a single unit of Spite Revenants is doing there. A second unit of tree revenants would be better for objective grabbing and general chaff purposes.

I’d also be inclined to cut back on the Dryads. If you want to stick with sword Hunters over scythes to keep your unit numbers up for Free Spirits then the Dryads are likely to get underfoot. 

In your current list, Free Spirits isn’t getting you much.

Also, you’ve given the arch revenant a spell, but she’s not a caster. 

For something more specific, can you elaborate on why you are struggling? What is your typical battle plan and what stops it from working?

How about 2 bowhunters with rerolling 1s to hit with AR then teleport/fly to assist 6 schytes with command ability and rerolling 1s? Or is it still underwhelming?

[Druug]

5 minutes ago, Trevelyan said:

For something more specific, can you elaborate on why you are struggling? What is your typical battle plan and what stops it from working?

You're probably right with the bows. I didn't know about magnetizing until recently, so none of my kurnoth's are. However, I don't think they would mind if I played one of the bows as swords.

I feel like the swords are better than the scythes; while you get the extra range and rend, the bonus attack from the swords and the ability to deal an extra mortal wound on a 6 seems quite strong. 

As for battalions, the main reason I'm getting it is for the artifact and point. 

I have yet to see any value out of my tree-revs. I rarely am able to hold an objective with them for more than a turn before they disintegrate. I also don't have too many of those models, which is my main reason for using so many dryads.

I don't really have a complex battle plan; I put down my 3 forests down on T1 (one for free, one from TLA, one from branchwraith w/ vesperal) and start grabbing objectives. The main issue is that I struggle to chew through the wounds and disgusting resilience of the nurgle army. I start losing more units than him around turn 3 and then it's generally downhill from there. Again, I'm a new player, so any and all advice is appreciated.

[Trevelyan]

1 hour ago, Lord Ein said:

How about 2 bowhunters with rerolling 1s to hit with AR then teleport/fly to assist 6 schytes with command ability and rerolling 1s? Or is it still underwhelming?

Assuming you mean to do that over multiple turns - the AR can’t move after assisting the bow hunters, but can still use her command ability on the scythes at range - then you’ve really got two discrete things going on. 

Lets take the scythes as a given. No one is going to suggest that giving them +1 attack and reroll 1s to hit is a bad idea. 

3x bow hunters will roll 6 dice to hit and average one 6. They have slightly above a 50% hit rate as a unit (thanks to the leader’s better hit chance) so the AR buff adds an average of around one hit across the two units, which then has to wound and the target has to fail the save at -1 rend before you roll damage. 

The unit of scythes can benefit from the extra attack as well as the reroll to hit, has a better hit rate anyway plus gains twice the extra attacks once you spend a command point (ie four attacks per model rather than two gives an average of two rerolls per three hunters). Add the -2 rend and they’ll feel the benefit of the AR far more. In terms of pure efficiency, melee units are going to be much better. 

So you need a plan to get value from the ranged units, and in my experience that shouldn’t be to treat them as a primary source of damage. 

I personally like bow hunters. They are excellent at inflicting early damage on enemy behemoths and superb at clearing enemy chaff from a charge lane. But they are very much not a workhorse damage unit, and throwing buffs at them to make them better at something they don’t do well is probably a misapplication of resources. If you want the damage then you’d be better putting points into a second scythe unit. 

Edited July 9, 2019 by Trevelyan
Clarify Hunter rerolls

[a74xhx]

3 hours ago, Heksagon said:

Our new woods will be 30£ / 40€ / 50$  for a box.
Box will include 3 "bases" making one Awakened Wylwood.
That's confirmed info.

My hype is all gone. This price is ridiculous. I know, this hobby is not cheap, .but this pricing is really reaaaally hard to justify.
You will probably need 2-3 boxes for a 1k games and twice as much for 2k.
 

£18 for the old model, which was made when? 2005 or something like that? Earlier? It's probably had zero price increases since then.

Whilst £30 seems a lot for the new set, taking roughly 15 years of inflation into account, does it still seem that unreasonable? Given other political situations in the UK and the ranting around prices for other new GW releases, I'm really not surprised.  The Deepkin boat is £25 and given it's probably similar sized box, our woods were always going to be more than that.

Thankfully we should need less of the new models than the old ones and you can still use your old models too.

 

 

[Justinbot]

$50 each for the new woods? 😭 Suddenly having more limited space to place terrain is sounding like a good thing...

 

But yeah I suppose it was bound to happen, I just hope we don't need a ton to be competitive.

Edited July 9, 2019 by Justinbot

[Trevelyan]

1 hour ago, Druug said:

I feel like the swords are better than the scythes; while you get the extra range and rend, the bonus attack from the swords and the ability to deal an extra mortal wound on a 6 seems quite strong. 

. . .

I have yet to see any value out of my tree-revs. I rarely am able to hold an objective with them for more than a turn before they disintegrate.

Swords vs scythes is one of those theory verses practice issues. Swords are objectively better for the reasons you mention when considered in isolation. Scythes have three advantages in practice:

1) they are much easier to use in larger units - actually getting six swords within 1” of a target is harder than you’d think. It’s doubly hard if you’ve popped your thickets and only have a pile in range of 1”. 

2) they take AR buffs better - while swords outperform scythes, the difference isn’t huge. Giving swords an extra attack is a 25% boost (5 attacks instead of 4). Scythes get a full 33% better, which makes a huge difference. 

3) -2 rend is better than -1 rend for the targets you really must kill. Swords are superb at chewing through chaff and moderate infantry. Scythes are more reliable when you’ve got something tough with a lot of wounds and a good save. Swords are better on paper, but mortal wounds are unreliable and you’ll often see people find ways to negate -1 rend on priority targets whereas -2 rend is harder to avoid  

None of which is to say that swords aren’t good, because they are genuinely fantastic. If you are taking a unit(s) of three then make it swords. But if you want a larger unit then go for scythes every time. And whichever unit you have, it pays to understand what it does best. 

. . . 

Tree revenants exist to do two things; sacrifice themselves in the face of a charge, and threaten to take objectives. That’s “take” and not “hold”. 

Sticking a unit of tree revenants in front for whatever your opponent wants to charge either forces a delay or makes him trade poorly, allowing you to protect and retaliate with your own heavy hitters. 

Knowning that your revenants can take any undefended objective forces an opponent to keep units back. I played a game recently where a unit of tree revenants kept two much larger enemy units out of the way because my opponent couldn’t afford to lose either of those objectives so didn’t dare more away from them. The revenants just sat back in a forest all game, 80 points of chaff neutralising several hundred points of opposing chaff without a single die being rolled. 

The key is timing and patience. Only commit them when it matters, because they’ll take an objective but rarely hold it against retaliation. 

Edited July 9, 2019 by Trevelyan
More stuff

[Druug]

34 minutes ago, Trevelyan said:

The key is timing and patience. Only commit them when it matters, because they’ll take an objective but rarely hold it against retaliation. 

Thank you for the advice. I may pick up some more kurnoths and magnetize them, and maybe try a game playing my bows as scythes to try them. 

What list do you use? I'd love to see more examples that work with this new battletome. I feel like a Winterleaf list with Drycha, spite-revs and a few units of dryads could be quite deadly, or a Gnarlroot with all the wizards I have. 

[HammerOfSigmar]

Well, I remember that those fraction terrain is made in China, so if not considering the steel mould price and the cost for desgin and shippment, tax stuff, the cost for each box will be like less than 1% of the leaked price(including  every cost the factory needed to produce those trees if produced in considerable amount).

Edited July 9, 2019 by HammerOfSigmar

[Walkirriox]

2 hours ago, Druug said:

The main issue is that I struggle to chew through the wounds and disgusting resilience of the nurgle army. I start losing more units than him around turn 3 and then it's generally downhill from there. Again, I'm a new player, so any and all advice is appreciated.

Then you are playing “his” game. Nurgle are much better at attrition than us. As a Sylvaneth player you have to out play him and pick the fights, force him to play the game you want. Bait him to charge you into the wyldwoods, with two stomps on his face and a hard hitting unit ready to melt their units before they can even attack. You can also screen your units using spites (our cheapest option) or tree revs for a more flexibility due to free tp, and then answer his charge with your units behind. 

In addition, you can use cogs/new spite spell to tp your hard hitting units and make them all charge to a key enemy unit (be ready for their positioning mistakes, and take advantage to all of them, make them pay for taking risks). The more you play and gain experience, the more situations like this you will identify.

Sylvaneth may seem an inferior army compared to those stupid combos other armies have, and more if you are a new player, but we have an enviable board control that take us up to their level.

Also, try different glades, units and  strategies until you find the one that fits with your playstyle. Don’t be affraid to take risks and try new things while playing, that way you will know your army limits, learn what are good or bad moves, which units should fight against which units and under which conditions, etc.

If you go pages back, a lot of strategies have been discussed here. I recommend you to read Mirage’s posts, he is a good experienced player and has shared a lot of knowledge with us. I hope I have helped you!

[HollowHills]

2 hours ago, a74xhx said:

£18 for the old model, which was made when? 2005 or something like that? Earlier? It's probably had zero price increases since then.

Whilst £30 seems a lot for the new set, taking roughly 15 years of inflation into account, does it still seem that unreasonable?

So 2005 to 2018 would turn £18 into £26.40 using BoE calculations on inflation. If anyone can recall the actual date of release then we could have a clearer idea. 

That said old woods were presumably hand sculpted and made in the UK. New sculpts are digitally sculpted and made in China. So they should be cheaper to produce all things considered. (otherwise GW wouldn't have moved to China in the first place). 

So I do think it is an increase in real terms £25 would probably have been the sweet spot. But who can say? Inflation varies based on industry. 

I'm still pissed off. 

[kenshin620]

7 hours ago, HollowHills said:

 

That said old woods were presumably hand sculpted and made in the UK. New sculpts are digitally sculpted and made in China. So they should be cheaper to produce all things considered. (otherwise GW wouldn't have moved to China in the first place).

Lots of expensive goods are made in china/asia that you would think consumers would get for cheaper, like brand name sports shoes.

 

While it is a simplistic view of economics (sometimes I wonder how I got my masters), differentiated/brand name products provide some amount of monopolistic power of pricing. Thus gw can somewhat do as they please.
 

This chart thingy

Spoiler

 

 

 

[CaptainBerk]

15 hours ago, Druug said:

Thanks for the link @Emissary. Looks like my wallet is gonna take a hit again.

The main list I've tried is this:

Harvestboon Glade

Durthu - General w/ Silent Sickle (320)

TLA - Regrowth (300)

Archrev - Treesong (100)

Branchwraith - Vesperal Gem, Verduous (80)

Branchwraith - Throne of Vines (80)

3 units of 3 Kurnoth Hunters - 2 w/ bows, 1 w/ swords (600)

Unit of 5 tree-revs (80)

Unit of 5 spite-revs (60)

30 Dryads (270)

Free Spirits Battalion - for extra artifact and command point (120)

Total - 2010

I want to work in Drycha, but I'm not sure where. I tend to falter after the charge; I don't feel I have much staying power.

Are these points right?  Isn't Durthu 340 and the Free Spirits 140?

[vesco]

16 hours ago, Lord Ein said:

Seems like I’m going for 3D print

That would be awesome, honestly i was not able to find any stl related to either old and new woods 

Edited July 10, 2019 by vesco

[Aezeal]

19 hours ago, Heksagon said:

Our new woods will be 30£ / 40€ / 50$  for a box.
Box will include 3 "bases" making one Awakened Wylwood.
That's confirmed info.

My hype is all gone. This price is ridiculous. I know, this hobby is not cheap, .but this pricing is really reaaaally hard to justify.
You will probably need 2-3 boxes for a 1k games and twice as much for 2k.
 

I'll get 1.. and just like now I'll get some exact sized bases for the rest.

[Namelessone81]

Help me out a bit my trusty grove ,

i have 1 spirit of Durthu  , 1 treelord ancient and 1 treelord . And I have 1 more in the sprue 

given the new battle tome what do you think I should build him ? Durthu , treelord or ancient ? 

(I don’t really like magnets ) 

 

[Druug]

36 minutes ago, Namelessone81 said:

given the new battle tome what do you think I should build him ? Durthu , treelord or ancient ?

If you're not down to magnetize it, then I'd recommend another TLA. It would likely offer the most utility, as well as let you take LotC if you're running a Gnarlroot grove. The vanilla TL is worth a look though, as it's 50% cheaper and offers a decent source of damage, wounds, and distraction. The Durthu is, I think, the least helpful option, but I'm also not the most experienced player, so it's worth it to get more opinions.

Also, does anyone have a dryad-heavy or Drycha list that works? I'd like to field 70 just to be able to, and it is only 640 points, but it seems unreliable.

[Trevelyan]

2 hours ago, Namelessone81 said:

Help me out a bit my trusty grove ,

i have 1 spirit of Durthu  , 1 treelord ancient and 1 treelord . And I have 1 more in the sprue 

given the new battle tome what do you think I should build him ? Durthu , treelord or ancient ? 

(I don’t really like magnets ) 

 

I agree with Druug, the Ancient is the best option for the reason suggested. 

I’m not a fan of magnets on anything organic either. It’s a completely different story on 40k imperial knights and vehicles.