Sylvaneth really need some love

[Santious]

Hopefully in the new errata the sylvaneth points can be re done making them a bit more relative with new armies. For example take a look at  spirit if durthu at 300 points to the new lumineth model Avalenor at 360 points. Just look at their warscrolls and tell me if only a 60 point difference is justified.  

[xking]

Sylvaneth need more units.

 

[Doko]

I could say tye same,compare the treelord mage vs sorceress in black dragon

 

Or the regular tree man to war hydras

Also durthu for 300 is a steal,if any buff is needed is to his downgrade table,something as 6 damage down to 5 and then 4 etc and not a direct downgrade of 6 damage to d6

 

And i also think that avalaenor is a joke for that cost and his stats must be 400+ for that damage aura etc.

 

I have been thinking about get a start collecting to play my citys as living city and so i have rodden silvanety tome and i really think that all tye scrolls are great but i dont know why they are so low in tournaments

[SirSalabean]

They need new dryads. Other units are still holding up fine. They need more units for sure though.

[Neverchosen]

Sylvaneth need Kurnothi Aelves 

[Frowny]

I think more than anything they just need to be able to actually play their game. They were fine before their new battletome. Just being able to reliably summon and use their own woods and had meaningful allegience abilities. Currently they have scenery rules and thats pretty much it. Their allegiance ability is just their scenery ability, and all the suballegiences are variations on rerolling 1's. 

I think it could be solved mostly with some much better allegiance abilities. Like 'the first time a model in your army uses a command ability  each turn, you may place a sylvan wildwood within 18 inches of that mode'. would go a long way to making them more reliable and interesting.

Point drops would make them stronger but feel like sylvaneth. They need new allegiance abilities. maybe this could definitely be fixed with a Broken Realms style update.

 

[Azamar]

I think the spirit of Durthu’s high points cost like reflects the fact they can be teleported from wood to wood and get in the enemies face quickly- they’re  much harder to avoid or pin down than a spirit of the mountain. Not to mention that they’re generic heroes, so can benefit from artefacts and command traits, which can considerably buff them (a winter leaf durthu could, once per game, pile in and attack twice for example with 6s turning into 2 hits. near a wyldwood that’s absolutely terrifying). Plus there’s ways to heal them, keeping one in the fight longer- I’m not sure that can be done with the battle cattle. 
 

I’m not saying Avelanor isn’t better mind you, but bearing the above in mind I’m perhaps not surprised there’s only 60 points in it. 

Sylvaneth do seem to be on the weak side overall. Having pretty much all their allegiance abilities tied to wyldwoods, not to mention abilities on multiple warscrolls, means how well you can get by is tied to how many wyldwoods you have and can deploy. I was lucky enough to get a couple of the old woods super cheap- I wouldn’t get nearly so much mileage out of Durthu or dryads if I only had one. 
 

The biggest problem in future IMO is the abilities for the Giants that let them destroy terrain- a minor inconvenience for most armies, but for Sylvaneth that starts to block most of their abilities. Worse still, the wood remains on the table, so not only can you not replace the wood at that spot, you then have one less model you can place down elsewhere. Only one model in one army at the moment (although I know it can be used as an ally) but if that kind of ability starts appearing for other factions that’ll be pretty devastating for Sylvaneth 

[Jaskier]

The big problem I've found - and I'm not sure if this is accurate for everyone, but it's my experience playing them - is that it's much harder to actually get all your Wyldwoods on the table nowadays thanks to the changes to placement restrictions, and the fact many armies now bring their own terrain pieces.

Old Sylvaneth could slap down woods with virtual impunity (which wasn't a good thing for the game I feel, balanced or not it wasn't a fun play experience for anyone, but they may have gone too far in the opposite direction) and get plenty of mileage out of the fact their allegiance rules were tied to them, but the new book both made them much more difficult to place and didn't address the fact the allegiance rules should've been updated to reflect their dependency on placing Wyldwoods. I guess the real question is what good is a set of allegiance rules and warscroll synergies based around a particular terrain piece if the terrain placement rules harshly restrict where you can actually get mileage out of them? 

I still love the army thematically and think they are at least somewhat stronger perhaps than people give them credit for, but I really believe now (after voicing the opposite opinion previously) that there's no denying the terrain placement changes hit the army harder than the rules designers for the new battletome expected. If nothing else, the battletome is fantastic to play around with in a more casual setting. 

The inevitable addition of the Kurnothi should help solve some of the factions' core problems (namely a lack of diversity.) It's a real shame that currently it seems the best way to run Sylvaneth models competitively is to splice them into another battletome. 

Edited December 18, 2020 by Jaskier

[Greybeard86]

9 hours ago, Neverchosen said:

Sylvaneth need Kurnothi Aelves 

Centaurs, satyrs and similar things for Kurnoth. Less emphasis on trees and more on animals, I d say. 

I dont  know what is needed to make them competitive, but I hope GW future proofs more the battletomes now that aos is a bit more mature. It freaking sucks all that roller coaster from OP to trash tier.

[Fulcanelli]

Just a curiosity, since I don't play Sylvaneth... why dryad models are so generally unappreciated? I actually think they're pretty ok 🙂
(But I also like oldhammer metal derpy-dryad, so...) 

[El Syf]

Let's not forget all Treelords have that nasty stomp ability that affects anything. The times I've forgotten this charged my VLoZD in and then get stomped into going last, it's not a nice experience. That should not work on other monsters or flying units in my opinion.

Other than that I agree they do need attention, Sylvaneth are my regular opponent and always feel Alarielle is even worse than Nagash when they are both meant to be Gods of their respective realms. 

Edited December 18, 2020 by El Syf

[mojojojo101]

Wyldwoods feel absolutely key to way they play but they also feel really annoying and unreliable.

I haven't played many games with them but when I have they just feel like a bit of a damp squib, like, it should be cool and fun, it just isnt. Thats particularly bad for an army that seems to be a fairly big draw for newer players.

Others are more qualified to suggest proper fixes but I'd like to see basic Treelords go battleline in Oakenbrow to turn that faction into something akin to Gristlegore but with trees!

 

 

[Kadeton]

Sylvaneth have one of the most aggressive and lethal lists in the game, loading up a ton of buffs on a big unit of Hunters and getting an easy and devastating first-turn charge.

Pretty much every other way of building a Sylvaneth list definitely suffers from the book being outdated and a lot of the warscrolls being relatively bad. But you could say the same about Idoneth - just because they're a mono-build doesn't mean they don't have teeth.

I would absolutely love to see the Kurnothi elves join them, though.

[Santious]

1 hour ago, El Syf said:

Let's not forget all Treelords have that nasty stomp ability that affects anything. The times I've forgotten this charged my VLoZD in and then get stomped into going last, it's not a nice experience. That should not work on other monsters or flying units in my opinion.

Other than that I agree they do need attention, Sylvaneth are my regular opponent and always feel Alarielle is even worse than Nagash when they are both meant to be Gods of their respective realms. 

I feel like that 4 stomp is the only thing keeping them somewhat relative, if anything I think it needs to be a 3 up for small units n keep the 4 for big boys. Only cause its not like they are moving across the board, making u fight last n taking ur key people out. They move 4 inches so its more of a defense anti deep strike type of thing or in the heat of battle and we all know those branches need as much help as possible since anything w mortal wounds pretty much snaps us in half. If they have no way of negating mortals then why not make them a little more tanky maybe give them more wounds , I mean they are made out of hard wood and not flesh. And to my last point, yeah Alarielle is such a joke blows my mind that shes a "God" such a nice model and so important to the lore to be such a waste. Same w. NAGASH.  Breaks my heart to see such potential go to waste 

 

[xking]

Sylvaneth DON'T need Kurnothi, what they need is more Sylvaneth.      Sylvaneth are easy to expand, they are based on plants. I can think of several new units from new treelords to new revenants.  Such as, a treelord with a bow that shoots giant arrows(does artillery level damage) ,  a treelord priest unit of  Alarielle , a treelord based on a fruit tree.

Revenant are also easy, from vine-revenants and thorn-revenants to even poison-revenants and nymph-revenants.     We could even have something as simple as tree-revenants with bows and tree-revenants on beetle cavalry.

Edited December 18, 2020 by xking

[NotAWzrd]

They could do with a new type of tree revenant unit, something akin to Druanthi and Khinerai. I like the idea of them being dark, twisted, almost insectoid fairies (kind of like the Dark Elves in God of War?). That would at least give them some more thematic depth so you can choose to go with a more dryad / tree lord heavy army or a mainly tree revenant army.  I’d much rather Kurnothi be their own faction than a part of the Sylvaneth. 

[TheCovenLord]

4 hours ago, El Syf said:

Let's not forget all Treelords have that nasty stomp ability that affects anything. The times I've forgotten this charged my VLoZD in and then get stomped into going last, it's not a nice experience. That should not work on other monsters or flying units in my opinion.

Other than that I agree they do need attention, Sylvaneth are my regular opponent and always feel Alarielle is even worse than Nagash when they are both meant to be Gods of their respective realms. 

Kurnoth hunters can also "trample" significantly larger models for mortal wounds. I get what they were going for (giving them a higher damage output through mortal wounds) but its definitely immersion breaking to think of Kurnoth hunters somehow stomping on a megagargants foot for mortal wounds....

Edited December 18, 2020 by TheCovenLord

[Neverchosen]

11 minutes ago, TheCovenLord said:

Kurnoth hunters can also "trample" significantly larger models for mortal wounds. I get what they were going for (giving them a higher damage output through mortal wounds) but its definitely immersion breaking to think of Kurnoth hunters somehow stomping on a megagargants foot for mortal wounds....

In my head I always imagine them stomping being akin to Earthbenders in Avatar the last Airbender but instead it causing roots and vines and such to rapidly grow from the ground.

[Doko]

4 hours ago, Kadeton said:

But you could say the same about Idoneth - just because they're a mono-build doesn't mean they don't have teeth

Seems you domt have seen the last tournaments where MULTIPLE idomeths have gone 3\0\0, yes arent tournaments of 5 games due to covid,but some of these tournaments are of 50 players and have as 6 idoneths at the top 3\0\0 and every list have the overbufed new turtle(any have even 2 turtles),have 2\5 sharka in every list and some have also the avatars.

So now idoneths lists after the huge buffs of morathi in tournaments use every unit of the tome out of thralls,in my opinion they are the less monobuild army of all aos rigth now.

[NinthMusketeer]

Sylvaneth have some core design issues that need to be changed to make them properly functional;

Wyldwood reliance -- The army cannot rely on the woods for the majority of its allegiance abilities. Can it be a big part of them? Yes, and it should. But because of how varied tables can be in their terrain the ability to place an move woods is wildly inconsistent from game to game, and perhaps more importantly if the abilities become stronger to compensate then it starts to become extremely unfun to play against Sylvaneth.  And there almost certainly needs to be a spell which gives an existing terrain piece the wyldwood abilities until the start of next hero phase.

Elite Infantry -- Dryads work find as basic infantry, but they are trying to pull the weight of all infantry roles because of how the revenant warscrolls are. First off, revenants should be 2w infantry. They have a 32mm base, they are big, and Sylvaneth desperately need the wounds count for the army. Secondly, and hear me out on this; tree-revs need to lose their teleport ability. The problem is that when they have that ability they need to pay points for that ability, but it does not scale. A unit of 10 tree-revs is paying twice for their teleport ability, a unit of 15 is paying three times, yet that ability doesn't get any better for it. Same for martial memories; it needs to scale. Otherwise you have a unit that is only ever worth taking in 5-man, something that severely limits their potential uses in the army. They need to be hitting on 3's as well. Spite-revenants would be OK if they got an extra wound, but bonus attacks or bonus rend on the charge to better fill the roll of glass-cannon-berzerker would help the army a lot.

Rend -- This is a game-wide design issue rather than being specific to Sylvaneth but is particularly relevant to them. GW is very stingy with rend in AoS, and the game suffers for it. Units like revenants can't be given a 4+ save because that would become a 3+ save in cover, kurnoth hunters need to pay a fortune for their save re-rolls because again, in cover it is a 3+. Attacks with no rend can't reliably damage 3+ save units, and can barely damage 3+ rerollable at all.  But there's a lot of units out there without much rend at all. Sylvaneth pay more for their saves than others because as an army they can get cover so readily, but that makes them suck when the terrain isn't working out. If rend -1 and rend -2 were more of a thing they would not need to pay as much for the privilege and we could move dryads to a 4+ base (instead of +1 to saves when at 10 or more) as well as revenants.

But seriously, there are more units that deal mortal wounds than have rend -2. That's absolutely silly.

[Kadeton]

16 hours ago, xking said:

Sylvaneth DON'T need Kurnothi, what they need is more Sylvaneth.

Personally I would prefer this, as I have no real interest in the Sylvaneth but would go crazy for some Kurnothi. But given that's where Skaeth's Wild Hunt ended up, I'd expect them to end up combined, albeit hopefully able to build pure Sylvaneth, pure Kurnothi, or a mix.

[NinthMusketeer]

Tree kin! Let's get more of the 'dead wood' look back, there is enough of the 'graceful' wood growth of the treelord & hunters!

[Aeryenn]

On 12/18/2020 at 12:42 AM, Neverchosen said:

Sylvaneth need Kurnothi Aelves 

I suspect that while Sylvaneth represents the flora, Kurnothi might be their own force representing the fauna. Like Green and Red in dc comics (Swamp Thing and Animal Man).

[Neverchosen]

3 hours ago, Aeryenn said:

I suspect that while Sylvaneth represents the flora, Kurnothi might be their own force representing the fauna. Like Green and Red in dc comics (Swamp Thing and Animal Man).

That is a great comparison (would Gloomspite represent the grey?).

I would imagine that the general would unlock specific battle line and synergies within the faction. For example a Sylvaneth hero would keep the current battline options and the Kurnothi Hero would unlock the fauna units as battle line. Howevr Dyrads and maybe (Satyr) Wardancers would probably be unconditional battleline options?

 

I also would hope that the Kurnothi Aelves would get different benefits from Wyldwoods than their treebased allies.

[Frowny]

I'd love to see the wildwoods change to a single tree, not a circle of 3. Then put all the buffs on a wholly within 6 inches or 12 inches, and with clever wording such as "dryad units are at -1 to hit in melee as long as all models from this unit are wholly within 6 inches of any or any combination of sylvan wildwood models."

Now they are easier to place because you only need 1 model, and you can use them to cover your advance as you slowly push forward and cover the board in trees. 

Then you need to give them better abilities to cummin them. I'd favor something like "the first time you cast a spell each turn and the first time you use a command ability each turn you may place a sylvan wildwood wholly within 12 inches of that model."

Now you slowly tree up the board and move up heroes to keep foresting forward