AoS 2 - Sylvaneth Discussion

[Reinholt]

On 8/27/2021 at 8:07 PM, Mirage8112 said:

Supposedly the rules writers have been made aware of the difficulty with the way the warscroll is written and are working on a solution. Hopefully we get some clarify on how this is actually supposed to work.

Hopefully they can fix this sooner rather than later to fix the teleportation issue as well.

1: "Delete this rule and replace it with the rule here instead"

2: The rule referenced does not exist in the place they told you to look for it.

/facepalm

As a TO I would tell people to go back to using the original rule (the one deleted), but man that's shoddy craftsmanship. Edit: also from a TO perspective, probably something to put in your tournament pack before people even show up to prevent some real gotcha moments for either the Sylvaneth player or their opponent.

Edited August 29, 2021 by Reinholt

[Alfavega]

Hey Guys,

what do you think about my first list for a Tournament with Sylvaneth.I played them a long time ago.Mybae you got some tipps or changes for me

Thanks you for your help!

 

 

 

[Yondaime]

On 8/23/2021 at 6:06 AM, Popisdead said:

I just tried the mathmallow list today (similar ish)

Alarielle, 6 Bow Hunters, Warsong revenent (plus chaff?) was scary and dominating at the casual level.  I was pleasantly surprised how well Alarielle works now.  

 Honestly i didnt tryed it yet

But arent kurnoth bow REALLY underwhelming? you pay all those points for a mediocre DMG, yes they have a 30" range but i dont really think they are worth, swords tho do unholy damage

 

So i am really curious, what does makes this lists so strong? whats the tactic behind it?

[Mokoshkana]

3 hours ago, Yondaime said:

 Honestly i didnt tryed it yet

But arent kurnoth bow REALLY underwhelming? you pay all those points for a mediocre DMG, yes they have a 30" range but i dont really think they are worth, swords tho do unholy damage

 

So i am really curious, what does makes this lists so strong? whats the tactic behind it?

Gnarlroot with "All out attack" on a unit of six bows gives you hits on 3+ (2+ for leader) with rerolling one's and wounds on 3+ which isn't too shabby. Quick napkin math makes me think the unit would force an average of 7 or 8 saves with d3 damage per failure. That's not too shabby.

[Kaylethia]

3 hours ago, Yondaime said:

So i am really curious, what does makes this lists so strong? whats the tactic behind it?

Projection of force. 35" range (always count movement) but lower damage, applied where and when you need it.

As opposed to scythes or swords, who have a lower threat range (actually variable due to teleports, but that applies to bows as well) and require some support (can be command abilities, screening with chaff, etc.). Melee options also have a higher risk of being taken off the table, while ranged units have a better chance of applying their pressure throughout the game.

I would advise to think about bow Hunters as artillery, as their output is similar to artillery pieces, when compared on a points basis.

[Yondaime]

8 minutes ago, Kaylethia said:

Projection of force. 35" range (always count movement) but lower damage, applied where and when you need it.

As opposed to scythes or swords, who have a lower threat range (actually variable due to teleports, but that applies to bows as well) and require some support (can be command abilities, screening with chaff, etc.). Melee options also have a higher risk of being taken off the table, while ranged units have a better chance of applying their pressure throughout the game.

I would advise to think about bow Hunters as artillery, as their output is similar to artillery pieces, when compared on a points basis.

you dont have any objective pressure power tho, which is what wins games, sure you can summon 3 other kurnoth with alarielle and/or make a dryad factory (but at cast value 7 is really unreliable)

the melee ones on the other hand do a lot more damage 

Also they hit at 4 normally and at 5 heroes with look out sir and overwatch, which is terrible, yes you can use all out attack but you use a CP to make a 400+ unit half decent

Maybe if i use flaming weapons on them theyr dmg output improves a lot

again i dunno, have to try this list myself, but i really cant understand why take bow instead of the melee counterparts

Edited August 30, 2021 by Yondaime

[Predien]

4 minutes ago, Yondaime said:

you dont have any objective pressure power tho, which is what wins games, sure you can summon 3 other kurnoth with alarielle and/or make a dryad factory (but at cast value 7 is really unreliable)

the melee ones on the other hand do a lot more damage 

Also they hit at 4 normally and at 5 heroes with look out sir and overwatch, which is terrible, yes you can use all out attack but you use a CP to make a 400+ unit half decent

Maybe if i use flaming weapons on them theyr dmg output improves a lot

again i dunno, have to try this list myself, but i really cant understand why take bow instead of the melee counterparts

You're right about the melee ones doing more damage but in this current meta we have things like Archaon, Morathi, and Megagargants running around that can easily delete a unit of melee Kurnoth Hunters in a turn. With a 35" threat range on bow hunters, besides teleports, not a lot of things can cover that distance in a turn. I don't love bow hunters as much either but I do think there's some play for them now compared to 2.0.

[Yondaime]

3 minutes ago, Predien said:

You're right about the melee ones doing more damage but in this current meta we have things like Archaon, Morathi, and Megagargants running around that can easily delete a unit of melee Kurnoth Hunters in a turn. With a 35" threat range on bow hunters, besides teleports, not a lot of things can cover that distance in a turn. I don't love bow hunters as much either but I do think there's some play for them now compared to 2.0.

Surely they are better now than ever, i'll try and post the results

[Ravenrei]

3 hours ago, Mokoshkana said:

Gnarlroot with "All out attack" on a unit of six bows gives you hits on 3+ (2+ for leader) with rerolling one's and wounds on 3+ which isn't too shabby. Quick napkin math makes me think the unit would force an average of 7 or 8 saves with d3 damage per failure. That's not too shabby.

The leader has 3+ to hit as well. Bonus on the roll to hit can be maximum +1, and his leader ability already gives him +1 to hit roll … sadly

[plavski]

Bows are good for forcing all out defence and they're also naturally great for unleash hell, making your opponent have to pick their charges in ways they might not want to. You can (could) also teleport them around the board via the trees and get into hero sniping position. They're a very flexible threat piece that puts your opponent on the back foot. Summoning bows with Alarielle just throws more fuel to that fire, as being able to position artillery where you want at a moment's notice is undeniably strong.

Edited August 30, 2021 by plavski

[Mirage8112]

On 8/27/2021 at 11:06 PM, Mokoshkana said:

This is just shoddy craftsmanship. Where is the QA on this? The warscroll has now changed thrice in three months, these last two have just been written in a manner that screams “it’s Friday and all I have to do before I leave is write the new Wyldwood warscroll, so I’m just going spit out something quick and hope for the best.” I have zero faith that it will get fixed in a way that doesn’t invalidate something else or create a whole new cluster of questions about an interaction that the devs/QA folks just ignored. 

The thing is, the more I look at it the more it looks like a deliberate attempt to just remove a mechanic they didn’t like without giving anything back in return.

When you look at the other changes to the warscroll, every change was either a straight up nerf (removing the ability to place 3 separate trees, and hard ruling 3” placement) or an equivalent change to the mechanic. We live and die by our trees (literally and figuratively), and now we’re literally the only faction in the game (I’m aware of) who has abilities on our warscroll that we cannot use as written in matched play. 

What’s also weird was how short lived the previous incarnation was. From what I understand we’ve had a respectable showing, but I wouldn’t say we’ve been dominating the competitive scene lately. Either one of those changes would have been a clear nerf to forests (3” placement /single forests per casts) but both?

So what gives? Even without the removal of our allegiance ability, the other two changes are pretty clear nerfs to a critical mechanic of our army, and there hasn’t really been any equivalent balancing.  So why hit us with the nerf bat so harshly? It just doesn’t make any sense.

So I’m curious to see how long this faq of the faq takes, because it seems to me to be  the goal of this faq was to clamp down on our ability to teleport. They’ve given us less nodes to teleport to and made putting new ones down harder. 

And unfortunately removing our allegiance ability dovetails a little too neatly with that. 

I guess we’ll see, both in terms of what they do and also how we do with the new mechanic in the tournament scene.

 

 

Edited August 31, 2021 by Mirage8112

[Yondaime]

15 hours ago, plavski said:

Bows are good for forcing all out defence and they're also naturally great for unleash hell, making your opponent have to pick their charges in ways they might not want to. You can (could) also teleport them around the board via the trees and get into hero sniping position. They're a very flexible threat piece that puts your opponent on the back foot. Summoning bows with Alarielle just throws more fuel to that fire, as being able to position artillery where you want at a moment's notice is undeniably strong.

Again, spending a CP to unleash hell with bows is literally wasted, they are 12 attacks that hit on 5+ which is horrible

[Kaylethia]

4 hours ago, Mirage8112 said:

So what gives? Even without the removal of our allegiance ability, the other two changes are pretty clear nerfs to a critical mechanic of our army, and there hasn’t really been any equivalent balancing.  So why hit us with the nerf bat so harshly? It just doesn’t make any sense.

I've long since felt that Sylvaneth is a bit too tricky to play, while creating NPE's for opponents, especially newer ones or just new to fighting Sylvaneth. We bunker up in trees. Hunters. Teleports giving new avenues of attack that your opponent constantly has to account for. 

I feel like they haven't liked this aspect for a while now, but don't want to alienate existing players, and SC: Sylvaneth should still be popular enough to be part of the required minimum linup that a retailer should carry. So they can't just remove the problematic parts, as they're entrenched in the playstyle, and they haven't come up with a suitable alternative either.

[plavski]

1 hour ago, Yondaime said:

Again, spending a CP to unleash hell with bows is literally wasted, they are 12 attacks that hit on 5+ which is horrible

Re-rolling 1's in gnarlroot. It's not nothing, it's a threat and you can absolutely catch people out with it and force them into bad plays.

[Yondaime]

14 minutes ago, plavski said:

Re-rolling 1's in gnarlroot. It's not nothing, it's a threat and you can absolutely catch people out with it and force them into bad plays.

Mate you do 3 dmg on average on a 4+ save, for 400+ points, and a cp,  i'd not call that a big threat

[Kaylethia]

3 hours ago, Yondaime said:

Mate you do 3 dmg on average on a 4+ save, for 400+ points, and a cp,  i'd not call that a big threat

Depends. Can your alternatives also thicket, fight and trample?

You get similar numbers when shooting at heroes with Look Out, Sir. But the key here is that you're doing so across 30" of range, likely from the first turn.

Three damage doesn't look like much by itself, but when you also have Tree-Revenants to pop in and finish the job... Unless your opponent is using units to guard their hero from them, in which case you've split their army, and it's still good for you.

Sylvaneth isn't likely to hold up in a damage-per-point analysis, because the army doesn't play fair, and the whole is usually better than the sum of its parts.

That said, look at the lists that the list above beat, and try to see how it beat them. I haven't looked, but I'm guessing a combination of pressuring the opponents key pieces and opportunistic attacks when the opponent left something open.

[Abstract_duck]

I would somewhat understand GW being unhappy about the mobility ability of the sylvaneth. It's hard to balance as it is because of the uncertainty of the amount of forests you'll have in 1 game. Furthermore, I still feel like it doesn't completely fit. In a sense, it fit's a growth theme, but it doesn't really fit with the notion of ancient forests and the like. I'd love if woods were stronger, and you, for instance, would place 1 or 2 woods at the start of the game, perhaps even on objectives if you want to (displacing other scenery pieces if necessary). Id imagine a playstyle of having a decently strong and protectable 'home-base/territory' + hit and run style attacking outside our territory would fit the sylvaneth a lot. Here, for instance, it'd be cool if some units like treelord could return to the forests from where-ever they are... or even transport dryads and the like with them as an ability. That'd really push an ability to hit at one side of the field & quickly return to protect the forests. It seems more fitting then a map wide teleport contingent on whether you get your spells of or not. Of course, warscrolls would need to be rebalanced quite a bit. 

[Reinholt]

9 hours ago, Mirage8112 said:

The thing is, the more I look at it the more it looks like a deliberate attempt to just remove a mechanic they didn’t like without giving anything back in return.

 

If it was deliberate they would have fixed the previous line about referencing the warscroll and instead just said "Delete this ability" without the line about where to find the replacement.

I am >99% certain it was an oversight. If you want to remove the teleport, you know there are many other changes in the book you have to make, because it's integral to several things. In short, you need a new book. But just hacking it out while leaving a reference that also clearly says it is in is not deliberate, it's an error. You don't gaslight people with rules by stating a teleport exists elsewhere and then not writing it if you want the teleport out. You just clearly delete the teleport.

This is also a super easy mistake to make when you don't have a technical writer or QA, because it's a mistake of omission. There's no typo or grammar issue or anything for your proofreader to find because there's, you know, literally nothing. Unless you attempt to play the army you don't find it.

Which tells you the real answer: they are just winging it on rules for a billion pound company with no process.

Golf clap.

Edited August 31, 2021 by Reinholt

[Landohammer]

13 hours ago, Mirage8112 said:

The thing is, the more I look at it the more it looks like a deliberate attempt to just remove a mechanic they didn’t like without giving anything back in return.

 

We often disagree on stuff, and here is another one lol.

There is no way they intentionally removed our primary allegiance ability. Other than sub faction abilities, the teleport is pretty much all we get. If blocking LOS and the charge phase damage on 6+ is all they do, I wouldn't even bother bringing more than 1 to games. 

Personally I do think the teleport as a mechanic is bad, since it forces players into having to purchase and transport multiple forests to games to fully capitalize. But removing it entirely in a FAQ so quickly after it was overhauled just can't be how they intended to do it. They would have waited for a new codex or at least a WD article. 

 

[Popisdead]

On 8/30/2021 at 3:05 AM, Yondaime said:

But arent kurnoth bow REALLY underwhelming? you pay all those points for a mediocre DMG, yes they have a 30" range but i dont really think they are worth, swords tho do unholy damage

 

So i am really curious, what does makes this lists so strong? whats the tactic behind it?

They probably were in the past.  Not now, new game, new rules, big shifts, play games to find out (otherwise we're just blathering on the internet).  It took two games for me to realize Alarielle is REALLY good right now.  I would argue other than upon AoS 1(2?) book release she has not been this good.

Bow Hunters provide a fair bit of things in game for me.  

a) Range pairing with Alarielle.  It's a solid threat.  

b) Defensive range (objectives)

C) Garrison buildings

D) all out attack & Gnarlroot rr 1s. (rr 1s is very underated in a game where you often roll two 1s out of 3 attacks it seems)

E) protect your Warsong Revenant.  

F) 6 gives you some decent damage amortizing out rolls.

 

The point is to identify threats and deal with them over the game, not expect them to dominate a single round.  I would take 30 Sisters of the Watch if i wanted that.  

[Aezeal]

10 hours ago, Kaylethia said:

I've long since felt that Sylvaneth is a bit too tricky to play, while creating NPE's for opponents, especially newer ones or just new to fighting Sylvaneth. We bunker up in trees. Hunters. Teleports giving new avenues of attack that your opponent constantly has to account for. 

I feel like they haven't liked this aspect for a while now, but don't want to alienate existing players, and SC: Sylvaneth should still be popular enough to be part of the required minimum linup that a retailer should carry. So they can't just remove the problematic parts, as they're entrenched in the playstyle, and they haven't come up with a suitable alternative either.

It's it so that several armies (incl stormcast) have more versatile teleporting? And while hunters are good most armies have an equivalent which is usually in the same ballpark in efficiency.

[Kaylethia]

3 minutes ago, Aezeal said:

It's it so that several armies (incl stormcast) have more versatile teleporting? And while hunters are good most armies have an equivalent which is usually in the same ballpark in efficiency.

I honestly don't know about Stormcast, three people in my area have picked them up due to Dominion, but no games yet. If you mean reusable and abusable (every turn, teleport out of combat to charge again, works with every unit in your army as long), I'm not sure I agree. If you play for the massive, crippling turn, those other armies are probably better.

On your second point, yes, they do. My comment was aimed more at the casual to occasional player, not tournament goers. Going against a unit that shoots you from across the table, teleports away if you get close, spreads command abilities, and buffs their own defense should they get caught looks very intimidating to someone who hasn't played against Sylvaneth before. 

That isn't to say, getting shot by Lumineth is less an NPE, just that the combination of Sylvaneth abilities in general is different enough to be hard to quantify. Since Sylvaneth play in so many phases, it can feel like they can do exactly the thing your army is weak to, and some of those things are just on warscrolls we bring.

[Landohammer]

18 hours ago, Popisdead said:

 

 

The point is to identify threats and deal with them over the game, not expect them to dominate a single round.  I would take 30 Sisters of the Watch if i wanted that.  

You would have to bring Living City to field Sisters since the 3.0 FAQ removed Wanderers as allies. Just another kick in the ribs for Sylvaneth😭. I have been considering an Ironbark list just to bring 20 Irondrakes, but the Irondrake allegiance rules are so bad I cant bring myself to do it. 

I'm still not sold on Bow Hunters but I haven't given them a fair shake yet. The models are pricy and I never bothered magnetizing the 21 Swords/Scythes that I own. So its a $110+ investment to try them out. 😳 

 

[Popisdead]

48 minutes ago, Landohammer said:

You would have to bring Living City to field Sisters since the 3.0 FAQ removed Wanderers as allies. Just another kick in the ribs for Sylvaneth😭. I have been considering an Ironbark list just to bring 20 Irondrakes, but the Irondrake allegiance rules are so bad I cant bring myself to do it. 

I'm still not sold on Bow Hunters but I haven't given them a fair shake yet. The models are pricy and I never bothered magnetizing the 21 Swords/Scythes that I own. So its a $110+ investment to try them out. 😳 

 

Oh sorry, haha I meant I also have played a 30-SotW CoS list and it was,.. brutal.  They point and click remove something reliably every turn.  Bow Hunters don't.  So like Alarielle it's a bit of all sorts of things that add up for them.  Obviously you don't aim them at something with a save and save stacks on it.  Irondrakes are better in CoS.  As much as there was this feeling of synergy between Sylvaneth and Living City it never seemed to materialize in an incredibly useful format.

I have 6 Bow Hunters (I admit I bought 3 in AoS 1 then 3 more recently) but my 6/6 Sword/Sycthes are old Treekin on 50mm bases with KH weapons and bitz to bulk them up.  So I've been through enough long ago to have things on hand.  Surely your opponents must be okay with counts-as?  My opponent joked I could use a coke can as an endless spell for all he cared.  

[Kiekeboe]

18 hours ago, Landohammer said:

You would have to bring Living City to field Sisters since the 3.0 FAQ removed Wanderers as allies. Just another kick in the ribs for Sylvaneth😭. I have been considering an Ironbark list just to bring 20 Irondrakes, but the Irondrake allegiance rules are so bad I cant bring myself to do it. 

I'm still not sold on Bow Hunters but I haven't given them a fair shake yet. The models are pricy and I never bothered magnetizing the 21 Swords/Scythes that I own. So its a $110+ investment to try them out. 😳 

 

I've tried Ironbark as well, was great fun, just not very competitive it seems, but there are options. Irondrakes need a Runelord and you can't fit 20 Irondrakes with a Runelord in <400 points. If you want irondrakes/sylvaneth, Living city is the way to go tbh.

What I would recommend if you want to try Ironbark is a Runesmiter with 10 Auric Hearthguard. It's a solid deepstriking/scalpel package with good ranged damage to snipe key targets. Especially vs monsters it's effective. It's 21 shots, 3+/3+/-1/2dmg (vs a monster + all out attack). Teleport a miniscreen of Tree revs, deepstrike the Fyreslayer bunch behind them and fire away. If they survive or if you double turn you can use the Runesmiter prayer to give them rerolling wounds the next turn to finish off the wounded monster or pick a new one. I'm definitely going to give this another go now that I'm thinking of it again.