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AoS 2 - Sylvaneth Discussion


Chris Tomlin

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So the Arch-Revenant is going on pre-order next week. I'm curious how this will shake up peoples lists now that there's no scarcity issue. Is anyone thinking of running 2? I like the idea of sticking one next to Kurnoths, and another next to a big block of dryads. They are just so damn cost-effective with those buffs and decent melee. 

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Just now, Sputnik said:

So the Arch-Revenant is going on pre-order next week. I'm curious how this will shake up peoples lists now that there's no scarcity issue. Is anyone thinking of running 2? I like the idea of sticking one next to Kurnoths, and another next to a big block of dryads. They are just so damn cost-effective with those buffs and decent melee. 

I also just saw that. Honestly i have struggled to bring her in my recent games. But having said that having a second one to buff a large dyrad unit does seem appealing. 

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I participated to Belgium's largest event last weekend.

I placed 21st (100 players there). Really happy with the result!
But it was most importantly a great experience thanks to the players I had a game with and the TO's from the Hammer and Bolter Tournament. Big shout out to all of them (players and TO's)! You made my weekend :D

 

I also wanted to post a debrief here. Warning, lengthy post!

List

Spoiler

Allegiance: Sylvaneth
- Glade: Gnarlroot


LEADERS
Drycha Hamadreth (320)
- Deepwood Spell : Regrowth
Arch-Revenant (100)
Branchwraith (80)
- General
- Command Trait : Nurtured by Magic
- Artefact : Chalice of Nectar
- Deepwood Spell : Verdurous Harmony
Branchwraith (80)
- Deepwood Spell : Throne of Vines


UNITS
30 x Dryads (270)
5 x Tree-Revenants (80)
5 x Tree-Revenants (80)
5 x Tree-Revenants (80)
6 x Kurnoth Hunters (400)
- Scythes
6 x Kurnoth Hunters (400)
- Greatswords


ENDLESS SPELLS / TERRAIN / COMMAND POINTS
Suffocating Gravetide (20)
Spiteswarm Hive (50)
Vengeful Skullroot (40)

Game 1

Spoiler

Game One: Gift from the Heavens versus a FEC (Blisterskin)

I make my fortress in a corner praying my objective lands in it. I just put a Tree-Revenant unit in the opposite corner at the beginning of my deployment to make it look like I was going to spread my forces. He takes the bait and he deploys in the middle of the table. I deploy the rest of my units in my fortress corner.
He takes the first turn and kills my five Tree-Revenants with a summoned unit. He positions himself to pick come to my corner turn 2.
He leaves me beautiful openings, including enough room to kill a Terrorgheist. I manage to charge it with 6 Hunters and deal more than 30 damages and he tanks them with a 5+ feel no pain and another 6+ feel no pain. THAT WAS CRAZY 😛 He kills the Hunters when he fights back.
I take the second turn and my objective lands... in the middle of my fortress 😛
I finish the Terrorgheist who previosuly resisted me and kill a couple more little units. The others are too far away. I'm getting ready for my turn 3. At his turn 2 his objective lands in the corner opposite to where I am. He sends everything he has on my fortress and leaves only his Archregent on his objective. I don't remember who takes turn 3, but basically I hold my defense until turn 5 and I try to take his objective with my tree-revenues: I make my two charges, his Arch-Regent kills 4 guys in one unit of Tree-Revs and 3 in the other unit. So I still have 3 left to take the objective. But I fail my battleshock on the unit of 2 (rerollable 😕 ). I only have one model on the objective and him too. He eventually kills it. So, we stay tied until the end of the game, but he gets more Kill points. It's a minor victory for him.
I still tried a last move: he was too confident and left his objective unguarded once he got rid of the Tree-Revenants. From T4 to T5, I tried to send a Branchwraith there jumping from forest to forest. She was halfway there, and in order to succeed, I had to:
- get the initiative on T5
- summon a forest
- have him not dispell my spell
Hard but doable.

...

I didn't get the initiative 😂

Excellent game, and I don't think I made a technical error. Just my dice rolls, and his (the terror that survives 30 damage: incredible)
Very happy with this game.

I'll write about the other ones later, when I have time :)

Game 2

Spoiler

Game two: Places of Arcane Power against Shootcast.
I could choose sides before deployment, and that is pretty much when I win the game... There was a lot of scenery blocking lines of sigth, and my woods completed that.
I take turn one and add one more forest. I take 2 objectives, and wait. He can't shoot me and he doesn't have enough man power to take me out. Major win.

Game 3

Spoiler

Game 3: Knife to the Heart against a Fyreslayer.
First time against them. Boy are they tough!
I'm deploying defensively and preparing for his assault.

To cut a long story short, I take the first wave and take out a pack of 20 hearthguards.
I still have about 15 more of them to go. I think I can manage them with 6 Kurnoths and I decide to put pressure on his objective with my 15 tree-revenants and 6 other kurnoths. Unfortunately, he gets me a double turn from Turn 2 to turn 3 and pushes enough to take my objective. I lose the game there.
I made a mistake: I should have focused on the minor victory and cleaned everything he had sent to take my objective. I sould have totally ignored his pack of 20 Hearthguard + magmadroth on his objective.
The guy had approximate moves, was super slow, explained his army badly... and I was exhausted. It was also my first time against a Fyreslayer.
But I learned and I can see clearly how I could have won. So that is good! :)

Game 4

Spoiler

Game 4: Shifting Objectivees against BoC
Easy match up. I get the first turn, and I take all the objectives. Then I just hold on. Not so much luck with the random objective, but I'm making up for it. I'm leading the game until turn 5, but he's putting a lot of pressure on me. I had to focus all the way to the end 🙂
No mistakes on my part, just a little bad luck on the shifting objective.

Great game! :)

Game 5

Spoiler

Game five: Scorched Earth versus Idoneth Deepkin
I'm freaking out 😛 At first.
He leaves me the first turn. I settle down. He thought I'd come and go for it - that I would play offensively. I just wait for him. I make a little mistake that almost cost
me the game: I don't get close enough to cover one of my objectives, and then, at his turn one, he teleports and takes that objective. He scores 5 points on turn one and I am on my backfoot. If he takes the double turn, I'm dead. But he doesn't get it and it costs him the game. I take his first two objectives and burn them and score 5 points on top of the 4 in my deployment zone. From there, I lead the game. At the beginning of T4, the game is over: no more objectives on the table, and I am too far ahead.

Overall feeling

excellent, and I think technically I only made 2 big mistakes:
- against the Fyreslayer : I should have played for the minor victory (so obvious, it makes me feel stupid)
- against Idoneth, my bad placement that almost cost me the game...


Great tournament, can't wait for the second edition!

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On 2/10/2020 at 2:48 PM, Sputnik said:

So the Arch-Revenant is going on pre-order next week. I'm curious how this will shake up peoples lists now that there's no scarcity issue. Is anyone thinking of running 2? I like the idea of sticking one next to Kurnoths, and another next to a big block of dryads. They are just so damn cost-effective with those buffs and decent melee. 

I’ve already got two, but never felt the need to run the pair. A second Archie certainly would help the Dryads - I’ve used the command ability on them a couple of time and would do so again - but I never seem to have the points to spare. 

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     Hey all, could someone tell me how tall Alarielle is so I can get a size comparison? I’m looking for the goddess herself without the beetle from head to toe both with and without the wings. If anyone has Nagash I’d be interested in his measurements as well; I believe they are the only two gods currently available as models (please correct me if I’m wrong).

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On 2/13/2020 at 9:59 AM, Lior'Lec said:

     Hey all, could someone tell me how tall Alarielle is so I can get a size comparison? I’m looking for the goddess herself without the beetle from head to toe both with and without the wings. If anyone has Nagash I’d be interested in his measurements as well; I believe they are the only two gods currently available as models (please correct me if I’m wrong).

I have exactly the same aim, as I want to make an Alarialle conversion without the beetle.

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Alarielle herself is Around 2.75 inches from foot (her right foot) to the top of her headdress. 

From foot to the top of her left wing (on the right as you face her) is about 3.5 inches. Her wings are about 4.5 inches at the widest point. 

The Spear of Kurnoth is a fraction under 4 inches long. 

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1 hour ago, Bozly said:

I’m not a sylvaneth player, how do yo mu guys feel they are in the current meta. Where do you think they fall between a bone reapers/ tzeench list or a dispossesed list? What tier are they right now and whats the main lists

I think based on facts Sylvaneth are in a rough spot right now. If you look at the December & January figures of the Honest Wargamer, Sylvaneth are one of the worst factions with an updated 2.0 Battletome.

I have not yet played against the biggest bogeymen in the meta (OBR & Changehost), but from my gut feeling I would guess that we have quite some tools against DoT in that we have LoS blocking terrain, where we can hide our valuable pieces from Alpha Strikes, we can deploy stuff in the realmroots to protect even more stuff and our strongest choice of a unit (Kurnoth Hunters) should be able to chew nicely through Horror screens.

So overall my feeling would be that Sylvaneth are not positioned as badly as the latest numbers would imply, but perhaps someone with more experience could give some more insights. :)

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1 hour ago, Bozly said:

I’m not a sylvaneth player, how do yo mu guys feel they are in the current meta. Where do you think they fall between a bone reapers/ tzeench list or a dispossesed list? What tier are they right now and whats the main lists

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.

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45 minutes ago, Craze said:

Would you say a block of 9 Scythes is mandatory against heavy Mortek Guard List?

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.

Edited by IndigoGirls
Ruin was perhaps a strong word.
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I agree with the above assessments. We’re certainly not the strongest, but I don’t think recent tournament results do us justice. 

To put it into context, in a world where most factions with a 2.0 book immediately see minor errata to nerf the unintended excesses, the only errata we’ve seen reduced the point costs of several of our units - we are unique in having a 2.0 book that needed further buffs to be viable!

I think we have a more flexible faction than most. There are a lot of ways to play Sylvaneth, and several Glades are competitive (a few clearly are not). Winterleaf is still over represented which I think is possibly a mistake. Winterleaf hits hard, and combined with a slab of Hunters it can really put the hurt on most other factions, but it isnt subtle and there are some fairly trivial counters available. I suspect that we need to see a few more creative lists to really capitalise on the current meta. We need to rediscover what is unique about Sylvaneth rather than reaching for the big stick each time. 

I suspect that, with hindsight, the cumulative changes to Wyldwoods and teleporting were a bit too extreme. Many other factions now have easier access to greater mobility than us and something in our overall speed and placement seems slightly off. We need to put a lot more effort in and still end up being fractionally less mobile than many other factions these days.

Edited by Trevelyan
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There are biases that play into the stats too. We are hugely scenery dependant making us an expensive army to collect and transport. Having to bring so many awkward trees to tournaments is certainly a factor that makes me eye my other armies. We are also, as mentioned above, a tricky army to play well with a lot of strategies and tactics and a smaller margin for error. I would argue that there is a decent amount of variance in our playstyles and they are not overall reliable enough to bring to a tournament. Many of the top tier players would rather something more consistent. In the right hands - and certainly for causal, club gaming - Sylvaneth are fine, but at tournaments there are fundamental problems with representation that can skew the numbers.

This isn't to say that we've a flawless book, more to say that there are factors beyond our control that compound book issues.

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I still think the army is a blast to play even if it's more fair than others.  I'm going to a unique event called Holy Wars this weekend with custom terrain rules and scenarios and a 1000pt sideboard to swap stuff in between games.  Here's what I plan on taking, just haven't decided on everything yet.  I'm looking at Harvestboon because having a Durthu as the general with a Thermalrider Cloak is a lot of fun for combat moving shenanigans.  I used it in a practice game against Ogors and the free movement out of combat (and over terrain thanks to the TRC) won me the game.  I'm open to suggestions though.  If I get cold feet, I'll run Gnarlroot since it's what I'm most comfortable with.

Thoughts or other suggestions?

Harvestboon Glade 

Spirit of Durthu (general, Seek New Fruit, Thermalrider Cloak)
Treelord Ancient
Arch-Revenant
Branchwych
Branchwraith

30 Dryads
5 Spite-Revs
5 Tree-Revs

Treelord
6 Kurnoth with Scythes
Household Battalion
Spiteswarm Hive

1990pts

Sideboard
Drycha Hamadreth
5 Spite-Rev
5 Spite-Rev
Outcast Battalion (to combine with the 5 SR in main list)
3 Kurnoth with Swords
Geminids of Uhl-Gysh
Soulsnare Shackles
Vengeful Skullroot
Aethervoid Pendulum
Command Point

980pts
 

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5 minutes ago, Pennydude said:

Spirit of Durthu (general, Seek New Fruit, Thermalrider Cloak)

Treelord Ancient
Arch-Revenant
Branchwych
Branchwraith

30 Dryads
5 Spite-Revs
5 Tree-Revs

Treelord
6 Kurnoth with Scythes
Household Battalion
Spiteswarm Hive

1990pts
 

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.

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4 minutes ago, IndigoGirls said:

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.

Yea I've been going back and forth on the Arch-Rev (had it in the sidebar at one point) but I think the command ability to use on the Scythes can be useful or fly up when they get dug into combat.   Dryad count is another thing too, I like having more models on the objective since they are pretty durable.  They certainly aren't there to kill a lot but they are a big tarpit.  Balewind is a nice suggestion though and I do have one painted.  

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I've been a bit out of the loop with this forum recently so apologies if this has come up before (I have tried searching for it and couldn't find anything).

If I summon 10 dryads in a wood using my branchwraith's Roused to Wrath ability, am I able to teleport to another wood using Navigate Realmroots that turn? Roused to Wrath says the dryads cannot move in the following movement phase and this is how I've been playing it - they sit in those trees. However, I had a thought that Navigate Realmroots is a set-up, right? Does this mean they could teleport?

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4 hours ago, Nick in York said:

I've been a bit out of the loop with this forum recently so apologies if this has come up before (I have tried searching for it and couldn't find anything).

If I summon 10 dryads in a wood using my branchwraith's Roused to Wrath ability, am I able to teleport to another wood using Navigate Realmroots that turn? Roused to Wrath says the dryads cannot move in the following movement phase and this is how I've been playing it - they sit in those trees. However, I had a thought that Navigate Realmroots is a set-up, right? Does this mean they could teleport?

If I may, it is a setup that count's as a movement. So you can't move afterwards. So i remember it anyways. 

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On 2/18/2020 at 1:35 AM, plavski said:

There are biases that play into the stats too. We are hugely scenery dependant making us an expensive army to collect and transport. Having to bring so many awkward trees to tournaments is certainly a factor that makes me eye my other armies. We are also, as mentioned above, a tricky army to play well with a lot of strategies and tactics and a smaller margin for error. I would argue that there is a decent amount of variance in our playstyles and they are not overall reliable enough to bring to a tournament. Many of the top tier players would rather something more consistent. In the right hands - and certainly for causal, club gaming - Sylvaneth are fine, but at tournaments there are fundamental problems with representation that can skew the numbers.

This isn't to say that we've a flawless book, more to say that there are factors beyond our control that compound book issues.

I agree with this.  
We're a mid tier army on average. But that's because as plavski stated, it's an expensive army, terrain and sometimes battleplan dependent with a huge amount of variety in list building, strategy and tactics. Because of that, at a tournament you can hit a bad match up and be in serious trouble.  
Sylvaneth can do well... there have been quite a few successful players in the some of the largest tournaments in the last few months. Some of them are even on this forum. There's been some success with "non standard" lists too like triple Durthu. 
A guy came 6th at Tempest (out of 46 players) with triple Durth + Alarielle.... that's over 1500pts in heroes. Crazy!   

But also because of the high cost and pain of transporting this army, we simply don't see it used much in the tournament scene. It's much easier to bring 6 Stonehorns to an event. They'll take up less space than just our Wyldwoods.   

We have some of the best elite units in the game, we have great mobility, we have quite decent spell casting and I think one of the only 2-3 triple spell casting Order heroes. If you build for it we have a decent gun line too. Drycha is criminally under used IMO. The tools are there, Sylvaneth players just seem a bit slow to find all the good combos for some reason. 
I think that may also be partially due to how previous sylvaneth players initially disliked the new book because it was so different and they lost their big alpha striking army builds.  

I think there are some weakness and we don't have any outright broken stuff like Mortek Guard or 6 Stonehorns or stuff like that. I think our battalions are probably the biggest weakness... We don't have any easy way to compete with 1-3 drop armies and we can be a bit susceptible to alpha strikes unless you can hide in some woods and the battalions we do have are generally pretty weak and are mostly only taken for the extra CP and artefact. At least they're somewhat cheap. 
Other than that, Wyldwoods are  expensive and underwhelming but ultimately necessary. 

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1 hour ago, Inquisitorsz said:

I think that may also be partially due to how previous sylvaneth players initially disliked the new book because it was so different and they lost their big alpha striking army builds.  

I didn’t enjoy being strong-armed into the preset subfaction builds with pre-determined artefacts and traits. People are saying it is “flexible”, but I feel like there’s surprisingly very few valid ways to customize the army. However this could be an AoS-wide problem these days.   Old Gnarlroot players seemed disheartened because it was hard to bolster magic like before within the constrictions of the new gnarlroot. Also we could no longer bring unique order units / order wizards with cool buffs in our allegiance. Instead we are left just with order allies that - if we’re being honest- are relatively useless for us, as abilities simply do not synergize with sylvaneth 9 times out of 10. There are a couple exceptions but not many.

Edited by Zanzou
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19 minutes ago, Zanzou said:

I didn’t enjoy being strong-armed into the preset subfaction builds with pre-determined artefacts and traits. People are saying it is “flexible”, but I feel like there’s surprisingly very few valid ways to customize the army. However this could be an AoS-wide problem these days.   Old Gnarlroot players seemed disheartened because it was hard to bolster magic like before within the constrictions of the new gnarlroot. Also we could no longer bring unique order units / order wizards with cool buffs in our allegiance. Instead we are left just with order allies that - if we’re being honest- are relatively useless for us, as abilities simply do not synergize with sylvaneth 9 times out of 10. There are a couple exceptions but not many.

Yeah I agree with that, but the sub factions are similar in design to every other AOS book now so I'm not sure that's a valid compliant anymore. It's the lack of flexibility in battalions that bothers me more. 

If you look at all the chaos ones for example, you get huge flexibility and can easily do 1 drop armies, even with unique characters.

That being said, the various chaos books cover a much bigger range of units (especially slaves to darkness) compared to our... What? 5? Non-hero warscrolls.  

I can't really comment more than that though, I never played sylvaneth before this book. 

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And there we see Inquisitorsz point - a subset of established Sylvaneth players looked at 2.0 for what it didn’t do any more rather than what it could do now.

Gnarlroot is an interesting example. I played a lot of Gnarlroot in 1.0 and it is entirely fair to say that it plays differently in 2.0. Total number of casts is half what it was for a start. But if you look beyond the inability to squeeze in non-faction casters, the remaining Glade is actually pretty solid - it has access to an excellent casting artefact in the Chalice, and can pick up a second in the Gem. Since the old glade specific spell is now freely available (Verdurous Harmony), you’ve got a nGnarlroot which has the same theme as oGnarlroot, the same potent spell, trade quantity for quality of casting and layers on a lot of additional durability and accuracy that oGnarlroot never had. All for the price of being a Sylvaneth Glade and not Sylvaneth & the Super Friend. I’ve won many games with nGnarlroot - it’s good even if it is different. 

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