AoS 2 - Sylvaneth Discussion

[Arnied3]

17 hours ago, Popisdead said:

Well it's uh,. maybe hte only update past a re-write for Alarielle (don't lean into her being that much more playable,..).

Sorry in my head I was talking about the AOS 3.0 update! Not expecting too much from the BR book, but i am almost finished my Alarielle model so maybe i'll get her on the board in time for this! 

[Popisdead]

11 hours ago, Arnied3 said:

Sorry in my head I was talking about the AOS 3.0 update! Not expecting too much from the BR book, but i am almost finished my Alarielle model so maybe i'll get her on the board in time for this! 

Army can't get worse

[martinwolf]

On 5/13/2021 at 11:01 PM, Popisdead said:

Army can't get worse

That's sad, but unfortunately probably true haha

[Abstract_duck]

When reading about the distance of forests from other terrain features, what is the notion that forests summoned during the game follow the sylvaneth book rules when playing a matched game? (so, just 1 inch away) my opponent referred to:

Sometimes the allegiance abilities
for an army will allow it to include
1 or more terrain features, or a
warscroll will allow you to set up
1 or more terrain features once
the battle has begun. These are
set up in addition to the terrain
features that have been set up as
previously described.
In a Pitched Battle, faction terrain
must be set up more than 3" from
any other terrain features and more
than 1" from any objectives,

 

Claiming that my verdant Blessing forests and TLA forests also should follow the 3'' rule. This pretty much meant that I could only place 1 forest during the game on quite a meaningless spot because the field was already filled with the 10 other terrain pieces - leading me to concluding that basically the only tactic in even friendly games is the dreadwood Kurnoth ambush. But before pretty much needing to setup using the one thing that led me to wanting to play sylvaneth.. What is the argument for 1''? the 2019 clarification in the FAQ is apparently not cutting it because the 2020 GHB explicitly also refers to warscroll abilities, while the 2019 doesn't.

 

Edited May 16, 2021 by Abstract_duck

[Pennydude]

General consensus has been that the allegiance ability woods is 1” from enemy territory, 3” from other terrain, and 6” from objectives and all others are 1” from everything. I’ll have to look more into the TLA woods bit. 
 

The other person is definirely wrong about the Verdant Blessing forests because that’s not an allegiance ability.

[Abstract_duck]

20 hours ago, Pennydude said:

General consensus has been that the allegiance ability woods is 1” from enemy territory, 3” from other terrain, and 6” from objectives and all others are 1” from everything. I’ll have to look more into the TLA woods bit. 
 

The other person is definirely wrong about the Verdant Blessing forests because that’s not an allegiance ability.

Thanks! Glad to know about the spell.. That helps a bit. I'd be interested on your perspective on the TLA (and I guess also Alarielle's spell), your views on sylvaneth in previous discussions here have been very insightful and useful for a starter like me. As of now, though, I feel like that 3'' does invalidate the use of the TLA.. of which the usefulness was already doubtful if you ask me. 

 

[Lanoss]

Maybe if we get rules in BR:Kragnos we may see a change (or at least a clear ruling) as to how the woods get dropped... 

 

...one can hope anyway 

Edited May 17, 2021 by Lanoss

[Enoby]

Hi all! Bit of a random question but I was having a discussion the other day - why do so many people consider Sylvaneth so bad?

I definitely understand they're not great, but after playing against them a few times, they seem better than Khorne, Beasts of Chaos, and Gloomspite Gitz. I'm sure I'm missing something here but Sylvaneth seem to have pretty decent monsters with the treelord (a 3+ save is good and they have good but swingy damage for a low cost), dryads don't seem awful either, and Durthu is a beast in combat. 

I totally understand why they're not considered top tier by any stretch, but why are they considered the worst (or joint worst) army?

Any insight would be appreciated

[Pennydude]

@Abstract_duck I think you are right about the 3" rule for the TLA's Silent Communion.  I've never played it that way nor have been challenged.

That rule is a load of BS.  Well, might as well keep beating the dead horse.

@Enoby Part of why the army is not taken is the large barrier-to-entry cost of Awakened Wyldwoods (AWWs).  You need a minimum of 3 kits at a total of 150+ USD on top of your normal army costs just to play.  AWWs are key to how the army plays and just the simple layout of board terrain can make or break you.  

Dryads are fine around an AWW but don't expect them to kill anything.  Actually, don't expect our battleline to kill anything unless you catch someone off-guard with a bigger unit of Tree-Revs that teleported somewhere.  Other than a block of Dryads around an AWW, our other battleline picks all have 5+ saves and 1 wound so they die to a stiff breeze.

TLA is good since it's a durable wizard, but the main problem is that all TL variants bracket pretty hard after taking 3 damage aka "being looked at funny".  Especially Derpthu.  Going from flat 6 to D6 damage is BRUTAL.  A lot of people wish that the TLA was a 2-cast wizard and I may be one of the few that doesn't want that to happen.  I'd rather see Silent Communion be changed to "once per game per TLA, maybe only can be activated once per turn" instead of the current "once per game, period".

Kurnoths are the bread and butter of the army.  It's not quite eel-spam bad but you usually see 12-15 or more Kurnoths in a list usually a combination of scythes and swords.  That's almost half a list for 15 models just to have the killing power.  Bow spam is a thing in Heartwood due to the artefact but that's only for tryhard cheese.  And if you are tryharding like that, why are you taking Sylvaneth to begin with?

The army has no real allegiance ability that does them any good other than the Place of Power.  There's practically no way to get bonuses to cast other than... casting a spell... within a glade (Gnarlroot's artefact at least lets you roll 3d6 and take the best two).  

Alarielle has been worthless even at 600.  Remember, she was 660pts AND was nerfed on top of that previously before the point reduction back to where she used to be.  At least we are getting a new warscroll for her THANK GOD.  A god model that has no damage save, no bonuses to cast, and THE BEETLE HITS ON A 4+ AND NO MELEE ATTACK WITH THE GIANT SPEAR OMGWTFBBQ.

Maybe the saving grace is that five of the seven subfactions (not Ironbark or Oakenbrow) are actually pretty decent and gladeless is a good option too.  The stuff outside of glades are actually pretty good, in my opinion. 

I say all this and it's still my favorite army.  I think it's difficult to find a more aesthetically pleasing army than Sylvaneth.  It's still fun to play and always get awesome feedback from my friends and spectators when the army is on the table.   Kurnoths are so strong and great, the stomp from the monsters can be game-changing, and there's actually quite a bit of shooting if you build it right.  I'm sitting on about 5500pts of the army and plan on playing it a lot more once things start opening back up.

Some things I wanna try are allying in some of my Deepkin because eels, sharks, and Eidolon of the Storms are HAWT TECH.
 

[Kaylethia]

1 hour ago, Enoby said:

Hi all! Bit of a random question but I was having a discussion the other day - why do so many people consider Sylvaneth so bad?

I definitely understand they're not great, but after playing against them a few times, they seem better than Khorne, Beasts of Chaos, and Gloomspite Gitz. I'm sure I'm missing something here but Sylvaneth seem to have pretty decent monsters with the treelord (a 3+ save is good and they have good but swingy damage for a low cost), dryads don't seem awful either, and Durthu is a beast in combat. 

I totally understand why they're not considered top tier by any stretch, but why are they considered the worst (or joint worst) army?

Any insight would be appreciated

The following is my salty opinion on the current state of Sylvaneth.

A lack of mortal wound mitigation outside of the usual "bring more models", our monsters tend to get shot off the table (or in the case of papa D, bracketed to not hurt so much at a minimum, dead at the worst), reliance on spells without casting bonuses (scenery isn't reliable game-to-game and the Gnarlroot artefact helps on one limited spell per turn), woods can be a gamble to get out and our core warscrolls rely on having them.

Our best options look lime hunter spam with minimal battleline (triple spites with outcast) with dreadwood glade to get a command point teleport anywhere.

Dryad spam can work, but they rely on woods for their defensive buffs, and if you're trying to play for objectives, you're most likely leaving cover, possibly their -1 to hit behind.

[Arzalyn]

On 5/17/2021 at 9:59 AM, Enoby said:

I totally understand why they're not considered top tier by any stretch, but why are they considered the worst (or joint worst) army?

@Pennydude and @Kaylethia summarized many of the reasons, but I would like reinforce some of the key points for me.

We only have 1 allegiance ability that don't requires a Wood to function, and it's a no battleshock around a piece of terrain of our choice at the start of the game. So we need some Woods to make our allegiance works (and some warscrolls too). How can we get more Woods other then the one we get for free at our territory? There is 4 ways to do so:

- All our wizards know a spell that summon a extra wood on a cast of 6. The unique cast bonus we have comes from a spell (with cast of 5) that gives +2 to cast but requires the wizard that cast it to not move or teleport. Alarielle is the unique wizard that can cast more than one spell naturally. Other than her you need to get a artifact do gain a extra cast (so you have to go without a subfaction or get a battlion to get it).

- The Treelord Ancient gives you a Wood for free once per game. You can only use this ability once, if you have more than 1 ancient just one of them can create a extra Wood.

- There is a one use artifact that create a extra Wood.

-Allariele can create a extra wood if her spell destroy a unit (cast of +7, roll dices equal to the cast and each +4 deal mortals).

Generally speaking the best way to get a extra wood a ancient (which cost 260 points) or try your luck with the cast (which against some army will not happen). Other than getting extra woods, one of the major problems we have with them is finding a place we can place them. Even if you use only the small footprint trees, it can be quiet changeling to find space in some tables that fulfill the placing requirements. Depending on terrain placement + the objectives position you can have some areas of the table that you cannot have a Wood place where you need it.

The Woods itself have a fairly lackluster warscroll, they block line of sight (sylvaneth unity includes, but flying unities bypass this), and can deal d3 mortals if a wizard cast within 6" of them and you roll a 5+ or if a no-sylvaneth unit is within 1" at the end of the charge phase and you roll a +6. We mostly want them to be able to use our allegiance abilities (placing reserve units, teleporting a unity/treelords), make some warscrolls better o simply using them (dryads getting the -1 to hit, durthu getting +2 attacks, branchwraith summoning dryads in them). 

While the playstyle of defending a area around the woods is flavorful, it was a playstyle frowned upon and nerfed with our second tome. We don't have much control over the area we can place our Woods, and we don't have the most resilient units to help defend it (spites and tree revenants are really fragile, dryad depend on their unit size + woods nearby to be tanky, our monsters loose a lot after taking a little damage). Tournament wise, most competitive builds tent to play the opposite than intended, fairly aggressive, spaming kurnoth hunters (a good unit and don't depend on the woods in general) and the Hive endless spell to give them +3 to charges (which end having the same problems we have with getting wood thought the spell).

To summarize I think we end at the bottom by a combination of: a necessity of a resource that is hard to rely to be able to use your basic tools, mostly ok to bad warscrolls and a playstyle that is both hard to play and lack some of the tools to be executed well.

Edited May 18, 2021 by Arzalyn

[Kaylethia]

2 hours ago, Arzalyn said:

While the playstyle of defending a area around the woods is flavorful, it was a playstyle frowned upon and nerfed with our second tome.

I'd like to add a bit to this.

The nerf came with second edition, not the new battletome. Faction terrain rules meant that our primary, synergistic style no longer helped us in the newer game, and actively hindered us. The change (welcome as it was at the time) to wholly within with our own battletome hurt us even more.

We have a few options that still work, but are frowned upon.

1. Hunters: Range, durability, command ability extension. Frowned upon, because early AoS had a Hunter spam list in mixed Order.

2. Dreadwood: CA teleport that works better than the one with woods. Aggressive, risky, and there was an alpha strike list for 1.0 that could delete roughly two units first turn.

I'm hoping BR gives us something to work with, but I wouldn't count on it.

[Havelocke]

On 5/16/2021 at 1:53 AM, Abstract_duck said:

When reading about the distance of forests from other terrain features, what is the notion that forests summoned during the game follow the sylvaneth book rules when playing a matched game?

 

On 5/16/2021 at 5:31 AM, Pennydude said:

General consensus has been that the allegiance ability woods is 1” from enemy territory, 3” from other terrain, and 6” from objectives and all others are 1” from everything. I’ll have to look more into the TLA woods bit. 
 

The other person is definirely wrong about the Verdant Blessing forests because that’s not an allegiance ability.

Pretty sure Verdant Blessing is an allegiance ability, actually. People most commonly think of Battle Traits when they think of allegiance abilities, but Command Abilities, Artefacts, Spell Lores, and Glades are all also technically allegiance abilities.

The general consensus, as mentioned by Pennydude, is definitely the way most people play. I'd recommend it, too, as woods can end up being very hard to put down when additional restrictions are imposed. That being said, your opponent's reading of the rules is the correct one as per the rules strictly as written.

[Pennydude]

1 hour ago, Havelocke said:

 

Pretty sure Verdant Blessing is an allegiance ability, actually. People most commonly think of Battle Traits when they think of allegiance abilities, but Command Abilities, Artefacts, Spell Lores, and Glades are all also technically allegiance abilities.

The general consensus, as mentioned by Pennydude, is definitely the way most people play. I'd recommend it, too, as woods can end up being very hard to put down when additional restrictions are imposed. That being said, your opponent's reading of the rules is the correct one as per the rules strictly as written.

@Havelocke I stand corrected, you are right that it is an Allegiance Ability.  It's been over 15 months since I've played Sylvaneth and between then and now, I've only played one game and that was back in December with my IDK.

So it does look like our woods must be at least 3" away from other terrain and 1" away from models and objectives per GHB 2020.




WOW GEEDUB MUST HATE THIS ARMY.

[Havelocke]

1 hour ago, Pennydude said:

WOW GEEDUB MUST HATE THIS ARMY.

No kidding. I have to think that if more games were being played this year, we would've seen an errata by now.

 

I'm excited to see what changes to terrain come with third edition. If the rules call for more terrain on the board, as has been rumored, we could be in for some pretty dire times until our rules get updated.

 

Or maybe BR:Kragnos will change something. I'm not holding my breath, but it's possible...

[Arnied3]

17 hours ago, Havelocke said:

No kidding. I have to think that if more games were being played this year, we would've seen an errata by now.

 

I'm excited to see what changes to terrain come with third edition. If the rules call for more terrain on the board, as has been rumored, we could be in for some pretty dire times until our rules get updated.

 

Or maybe BR:Kragnos will change something. I'm not holding my breath, but it's possible...

If 3.0 does update the terrain rules for more of them on the board, then they'll have to do something different for the faction terrain. It would cripple us the most for sure

[Pennydude]

Not an super competitive match, but I played against Stormcast Thundercats last night in Total Conquest (2x6 Evocators on Dracolines, 3x5 Liberators, 2 Lord Arcanum on Dracoline, and a couple of other heroes).

I ran Gnarlroot glade:

Alarielle the Everqueen (Throne of Vines)
Treelord Ancient (General, Nurtured by Magic, Vesperal Gem, Regrowth)
Drycha Hamadreth (Regrowth)
Branchwraith (Chalice of Nectar, Verdurous Harmony)
5 Spite-Rev
5 Spite-Rev
5 Spite-Rev
3 Kurnoth Hunters w/Greatswords
3 Kurnoth Hunters w/Greatswords
Outcasts Battalion
Extra Command Point
Emerald Lifeswarm

We called it after Round 3 when it was 19-13 in my favor.  I had a unit of Kurnoths sitting in woods near an objective and got charged by 4 of 6 Thundercats, took no damage, and carved them to bits with some help of the TLA over 2 turns.  My other unit of Kurnoths got slaughtered by the other Thundercats unit.  I summoned a Treelord with Alarielle to help control combats and on round 2, the combined firepower of Drycha shooting, Treelord stomp and attacks, and Alarielle's beetle destroyed the full 6 Thundercats.  By turn 3, he only had 2 heroes and 10 Liberators on the field while I had Alarielle, Drycha, TLA, Branchwraith, and 3 Kurnoths all at full strength.  

I'm planning on running this in a small one day event this weekend, because I want to compare Alarielle's current rules with whatever her new warscroll ends up being.  Plus, the event doesn't require painted models so LET'S GOOOOOO!  Once I'm done painting a TL, TLA, and Durthu (second of each), Alarielle is next.

[Abstract_duck]

23 hours ago, Pennydude said:

@Havelocke I stand corrected, you are right that it is an Allegiance Ability.  It's been over 15 months since I've played Sylvaneth and between then and now, I've only played one game and that was back in December with my IDK.

So it does look like our woods must be at least 3" away from other terrain and 1" away from models and objectives per GHB 2020.




WOW GEEDUB MUST HATE THIS ARMY.

I thoroughly regret asking this question.. But, thank you all for the answers! 

[Pennydude]

31 minutes ago, Abstract_duck said:

I thoroughly regret asking this question.. But, thank you all for the answers! 

Don’t ever regret asking questions! That’s how we all learn.

[ColsBols]

So I've got 3 of the old trees on the way but people keep offering me more, how many wyldwoods do I reasonably need?

[Arzalyn]

11 minutes ago, ColsBols said:

So I've got 3 of the old trees on the way but people keep offering me more, how many wyldwoods do I reasonably need?

I Never got more then 4 down. Unless you generally play with little terrain, it's hard to find space to place more than 4. 2/3 is what I'm able get out most of my games.

[Kaylethia]

I can generally get out two, the second one is usually by taking the first turn so my opponent can't move their stuff up the board and block my placement. 

 

I usually have room enough for one more after that, but it's too out of the way to matter for dryad spawning or teleporting.

[Arzalyn]

So the Warsong Revenant is coming next week and the article today gives some clues about his rules:

"Warsong Revenants are consummate all-rounders who make fantastic additions to all Sylvaneth armies. As well as possessing the ability to enhance the Bravery of friendly units while reducing that of your enemies, they’re no slouches in combat. The fact that they’re Wizards is an extra bonus too. Add their song to your wargrove by pre-ordering these pipers of Alarielle from next weekend."

Honestly hope he does more than a gives a +1 bravery to sylvaneth and -1 bravery to others...

Edited May 23, 2021 by Arzalyn

[Abstract_duck]

As of now, I fear it's going to be disappointing. That said, I'd like a viable fear army - and perhaps 3.0 is going to change bravery and make it better. I'm afraid we'll have lost outcasts by then, though.. considering the rumour that battalions are changing. So perhaps this is just going to be the replacement. 

Buying it for the model regardless 

Edited May 23, 2021 by Abstract_duck

[Arzalyn]

So we got a battalion box after all, Drycha + 10 revenants (spites for the battalion probably). The battalions rules are generally quiet bad, but the box offer a good saving for those that don't have Drycha.