overtninja

If those big trees have legs, maybe we'll be able to walk them around the board, instead of having to use tree-singing to do it, so that we can relocate our teleport locations. Otherwise, they'd basically be the gnawholes that skaven have, which would be pretty lame. 😜

It looks like the revenant hero can sacrifice their flappy bug to auto-pass a wound or mortal wound! That's really nice for a support hero to have.

Depending on the actual size of these new trees, it might be possible to combine the three trees in each Citadel Wood base into a big tree, which I'll certainly try to do - though I'll have to pry the stumps off the bases to do that, but it'll be worth if I don't have to buy all new stuff. :s

It is almost as if there are only so many things you can do with the design of a segmented worm...

I really like this long bitey friend.

Wanderers have very strong ranged options, but don't let yourself be tricked into going too heavy with ranged, because doing so means you only do real damage on your own turn and you won't be able to participate in melee well, which is the primary way to do damage outside of magic (Wanderers don't have much of that, really) in the game. That said, our ranged models are great at what they do - SotW are very, very good as long as they don't move, and they hose Chaos armies. GG do serious damage once a game with -3 rend, and then generally help hold objectives and chip off wounds on things before they reach you. All our heroes shoot to some capacity except the Spellweaver, and some have special shooting. You end up being able to weaken most scary things or eliminate something real bad before it gets to you. You also have the option of sniping out characters, as our heroes and other such hit on 2s or 3s at range. For melee, Wanderers have few options. EG make a great bunker and are dirt cheap, but they are basically a mobile fence - you won't see them doing damage in combat, but they can live forever in the right circumstances. WWR are absolutely fantastic, and they mulch even the toughest monsters, but they are paper fragile so you need to get the charge off or have a big group of them. We have two cavalry options, both are rather espensive. SotT have a great signature spell, but they are stupid expensive for what they do and there aren't many things in a Wanderers army that wants to be up close so they generally aren't taken. WR are good on the charge, and not very good otherwise. They are great at securing objectives late-game, since they have a huge movement. Wanderer heroes have a bunch of command abilities that are pretty strong. You'll want a Nomad Prince to spam their bubble of Reroll 1s to hit every turn, and they are actually pretty good in melee. At their points cost they are always worth it. Waywatchers are incredible snipers and enemy hero bullies. Spellweavers get a free auto-dispel and can bring back 1d3 models with their signature spell, which is pretty nice, especially on our cavalry. The other heroes are less potent, but they all have something cool they offer. I like to bring one of each hero in big games, but I generally go with the NP, the SW, and a WW as default. Wanderer magical items are generally nothing impressive, though there are a few, like the Wending Wand, the Starcaster Longbow, and the Viridescent Shawl that show up in many lists. We currently have 1 super-battalion that's basically a default army list that gives you some nice bonuses; primarily, it allows you to deploy nothing before the game starts and set up everyone on any table edge on your first turn. This can be foiled just like other null deploys, but it's still a great way to catch opponents off guard or generally mess with their strategy. Our allegiance abilities amount to rerolling leadership, allowing our ranged units to retreat and shoot, and teleporting single units around the board edge, which is great with SotW since they don't count as having moved if you teleport them, making a 10-man unit extremely good back-line bullies. Wanderers have a command ability that lets you place a unit that teleports in this way on any board edge, which means nowhere is safe for your opponents. Also an option is to teleport a big block of WWR to the backfield of your opponents, so they can force opponents to fall back to protect their own objectives, or otherwise deal with the very real threat. What the army lacks is, well, all the trimmings - a unique spell lore, unique terrain models, more potent allegiance abilities, and big centerpiece models (the whole army is basically on foot except for two mounted units) which define an AoS army. Also, without a points reduction on the SotT (they're at 220), you're left without much magic at all to play with, which limits your options significantly. It knocks the faction down a peg or two in terms of overall potency, but the model range has options for most aspects of the game and is pretty fun to play, and holds it's own against most other things, though everything feels rather fragile because of the shooting focus on the army - if you can't do damage at range, or your opponent gets an ill-timed double turn on you, things can go bad really fast. With all that said, the army does look really nice, especially given the age of some of the models (they aren't up to the modern CAD-designed model ranges, but they are still really nice imo), and they provide a range-and-focused-assault skirmishing strategy that can be vary rewarding if you are the sort who likes that kind of thing. edit - My regular opponents play Chaos armies, and so my SotW bully them into the center of the earth. I also run a block of 20 WWR because my opponents love Greater Demons, and I've found that a solid melee core makes a huge difference, even if they are expensive to field in bulk. Also, they look like absolute Chads with their huge weapons and optional come-at-me-bro postures. I'd say I win more than I lose, even at the tournaments I've run them in, because I'm very used to the way they play (I played Wood Elves in WH8e, which is why I have them in the first place), and they are a very unexpected faction to face. That said, you basically can't contest a magic-focused list, and you've got nothing durable in melee, so you can't grind against anything at all. I've found that allying in Dryads or Kurnoth have really helped out for melee durability. I should also say that I've since bought up a large Sylvaneth army (I had a bunch from playing WE anyway) and mostly focus on them, but when the GHB2k19 comes out, I'll definitely be trotting out my shooty boys for more fun.

For real, the Wyldwoods have been MVP for me many games, and the whole army would be pretty fragile and slow without them.

Considering how much I use my trees to stop people from charging with huge monsters and spook my opponents who multi-wound models, I'm actually sorry to see them go. They offer great board control and movement abilities. If they aren't replaced with something that provides cover, Sylvaneth lose a great deal of staying power (Kurnoth at 3+ rerollable is way better than 4+ rerollable, and Dryads at 4+ or 3+ is also way better than... 5+ or 4+). Also, I own 8 of them, so... yeah. I'm fully committed to playing the army, but I'm hoping I don't have to buy a lot of new woods. edit - Rather happy if bow Kurnoth get buffed though, it would be nice to field them, they look the coolest out of the 3 varieties.

Best source of melee damage and rend we can get is WWR, and they are very good at both things. If you need even more rending, scythe kurnoth are a good buy, as they are a compact group with plenty of wounds and great attacks, and are one of the few units in the sylvaneth range that don't require a wildwood to buff them up. Also, being 3+ rerollable in cover is pretty aces. I use these guys when I feel that -2 rending will help out (it usually does, but I can get by pretty well with 20 WWR, or even 2x20 if I really just want to saw everything down). Of the units you suggested, akhelians would be a cheaper option, and dracoths would of course be beef (with cheese, 2+ reroll 1s vs shooting is kind of great).

@Nymzee Sylvaneth are a really versatile army, so you can decide what you want to use and how you want to play and still find success while playing. I personally play Dreadwood because I love fielding so many huge monsters, even when considering that fluffing your attacks can ruin your chances of winning with so few units on the field. (I play Wanderers so I'm used to this kind of fragile army build strategy.) What I will say, regardless of how you choose to play your Sylvaneth army, you will want to buy about 6-8 Citadel Woods for your army, because Wyldwoods are one of the most important things about playing Sylvaneth. Their potential to limit enemy movement, ruin charges, block off large models that don't fly from being maximally effective, spook your enemies into not engaging in combat, buffing almost everything in your own army by proximity, covering objectives, blocking Line of Sight, dissuading spellcasting near them, and providing your whole army with huge mobility via teleporting makes them not only necessary, but easily the single most useful thing in the whole army. Along with Big Al being Queen Buff Supreme, Wyldwoods make the whole army bat far above their average. I'd recommend taking the Acorn of the Ages with every game, and make sure you always have Verdant Blessing as a spell on one character, to that end!

I like Precise Shots when I'm hunting mages - the extra damage pretty much guarantees they'll die in a single round if you hit all 3 shots, and the extra rend is basically just gravy on top.

I don't think most games are lost because one player's army is ****** and the other's is overpowered. Most games are lost because someone misplayed, or the dice fell the wrong way on a gamble they took, or models were out of position, or they didn't concentrate on objectives properly, or they deployed poorly - basically, factors the losing player could control (even when dice don't go your way, it shouldn't crumple your whole army - that's usually a fault at list-building, where your list is extremely failure-intolerant, so even one round of flubbed attacks breaks your back). There are a great number of factors that affect outcomes in every game - terrain, unit and model match-ups, objective positions, battleplan rules, realm rules, and so on, and experience is the greatest help towards becoming a better player in those regards. Other times, it comes down to the fact that some army strategies are very strong against other strategies. For example, if one player plays Sylvaneth and their opponent plays big monsters, the Wyldwoods can make it very, very hard for the opponent to move their big monsters around, and almost impossible to charge. In that case, it's very frustrating, but that's because one army directly counters large monsters, and the other player focused heavily on them. Some matchups are pretty rock/paper/scissors in that regard, because different factions focus on different aspects of play and use different strategies to secure victory. Mostly, it's useful to consider whether you are frustrated with your own play - factors you can control and improve on, or frustrated by the game itself, which is not something within your power to improve upon or change.

If they are releasing an Aelf battletome, or they are redoing a bunch of the faction allegiances for the new GA books, I wouldn't be surprised if they are looking at repacking a bunch of the models, and perhaps even updating the model ranges a bit. At the very least, they need to release the old elf ranges with circular bases - most of them still come with square bases it seems. Also, the Glade Guard sprue gives you 16 models, which was normal in WHFB 6E but not otherwise, and even though they still look pretty good, they are 15 years old or so. It might be time to freshen them up, IMO.

I'd rather double down on the teleporting mobility, cover-based mechanics, and skirmishing fight-on-the-move style that we've got than become an allied faction to another army. If any army is going to survive long-term it needs it's own identity, both thematically and in terms of play-style. Right now, the army functions well, but it lacks the additional oomph of a signature spell lore, options for casting and magic (spellweaver and an overly expensive unit don't really cut it), and centerpiece models/monsters that any battletome army would have access to, which puts the army on a second-tier position to basically any battletome force. The model range is actually well fleshed-out, but removing access to the dragon and mounted heroes means there's nothing big or impressive about the force - it's ultimately a bunch of Legolases running about. I'd really like some beast riders or otherwise. A terrain kit, like the waystones that were mentioned earlier in the thread, would be really neat, since that's basically what the army is supposed to be doing lore-wise. If and when the elven factions get some love, even as a soup battletome, I'd love to see some sort of mechanic of that nature.

@Ndino87 I think, at 1000 points, you'd probably be better served with fewer heroes. While they are cheap and pretty strong, it's always better to bring more bodies, or at least more capabilities, especially at lower points. I usually go for a Nomad Prince and a Spellweaver at that point total, sometimes with a Waywatcher because they are easily our most impactful hero based on raw stats and abilities outside of command abilities (that honor goes to the NP, which is why I always take one). GG are only good in groups of 20+, I think, and close enough to a NP to benefit from their command ability. Usually I use them to punish a unit with a 4+ armor save or better in the first turn, and after that anything they do in the shooting phase is just a bonus - and they're good objective holders. As for melee presence, EG are great at standing still, but they are poor at most everything else. If you can position them on an objective, they'll hold it against anything, but without using their ability they are pretty soft targets. I'd still take a group if you are looking to castle up - they are a steal for their points - but in any game with dynamic objectives, your opponent could very easily end up ignoring them. I've had great games with them, but being defensive and relying on shooting hasn't yielded the best results for me, and I prefer to be aggressive and mobile so I can go for objectives and force my opponents to chase me. Personally, I'm a big fan of Wildwood Rangers - they are an appropriately-priced elite melee unit with fantastic stats, including 2" range, which is actually a big deal. Their damage output against anything is excellent, especially with the NP Command Ability to reroll 1s - and against monsters a group of 20 can reliably kill anything they come up against in a single swing - I'm reasonably sure they could saw through Nagash in a single swing if they reach him at full compliment. (Full disclosure - I play a lot of games against Maggotkin, and my opponent uses a GUO with the Endless Gift, making him easily the most obnoxious thing to kill ever. My list has evolved with that in mind - but it just so happens that WWR are great against everything else, too, which is a happy accident). One of the first things I learned from other players back when I first started playing Warhammer like 12 years ago was that a strong list will be able to do something useful in every phase of the game, and if you neglect one phase you have to make up for it in another. In AoS, because of variable turn order, the game is heavily skewed towards melee over shooting, because the latter can only happen on your turn, while melee happens even on your opponent's turn. Even with a shooting-heavy army, I try to keep that in mind, and bringing 1 or 2 strong melee units to your games will make a lot of difference. Also, I fully support bringing as many SotW as you can, because they are fantastic at general damage output, and with a high native to-hit roll they can reliably snipe out buffing heroes, though doing so puts them in harm's way. If you are using 3 units of them, don't be afraid to take a gamble and use one to take out your opponent's caster, general, or other unit that's critical to their overall strategy. Generally speaking, it will pay off in the long run, especially if you can teleport them into a position that's hard for your opponent to charge into.

I was spitballing lists, and I realized that you can take a battalion force of 1 of each hero, 10 SotW, 20 GG, 5 WR, 5 SotT, and two groups of 20 WWR for exactly 2k points. I kind of want to try such a list out - I've got lots of old Wardancers I could proxy as WWR, and I have a feeling that such a list would put the fear of... fear into anyone I fight. Showing up on table edges, alpha striking, and then charging in with what amounts to 82 attacks, rerolling hits, with potential Shield of Thorns, and the command ability from the Wayfarer that lets them pile in and attack again on a Battleshock of 1 - any monsters would just melt, and most other things would whither under that kind of assault. It's not a kind list on the wallet, but it seems almost intentionally point-priced.

@Garz25 @Erosharcos I ran 10 WR, and if they have spellweaver support and you don't send them at anything gross (nothing elite and certainly not alone against monsters or something), they do alright, and restoring whole models rather than wounds works really well with them. They are more for chasing things off lightly guarded objectives than anything else. I wouldn't bring only 5 in a group, I think, unless I was using them entirely to force my opponent to leave a unit on every objective, or chase down a lone caster or something. They are nice to have, but not at the expense of much of anything. I think 10 is a good sweet spot - you get 21 attacks on 3+/3+ on the charge, and 20 on 4+/4+, but sadly without rend you'll not do anything serious to anything harder than a 5+ save. They are great at tagging wizards, lone infantry characters, and their mobility gets them anywhere you need them, really. If you are going with 3 units of SotW, I wouldn't drop them for anything else. Just keep in mind that you are going all-in with shooting if you do that, and you'll really get hurt if your opponent gets too many double turns on you, since shooting only happens on your own turn. It can certainly work, but it requires good fortune and isn't really tolerant of any mistakes, bad shooting phases, or any failure.

Got a 3v3 game in today 2ith 1250 points, with my Wanderers allied with Stormcast and Seraphon against Maggotkin, Disciples of Tzeentch, and Nighthaunt. I brought a WW general with +10" range, a NP with Starcaster Longbow, a SW, 20 GG, 10 SotW, 20 WWR, and 10 WR. The Stormcast player brought mounted Evocators and normal Evocators, and honestly did most of the heavy lifting (The mounted dudes cannot be killed by anything outside of mortal wounds, and they blew apart a GUO solo and tied up like 5 units, including a Black Coach, 2 units of Blightknights, and a bunch of other ghosts), though between me and the Seraphon's shooting and magic we took down quite a lot of things on the Tzeentch side. I was pretty surprised by how well 10 WR did in a unit - they could take a beating and thanks to the SW, they could come back swinging. Also, their threat range is immense, and with their footprint they can tie up a lot of things. Also, WWR continue to be my best-performing unit - they do incredible work in combat. Still haven't gotten to smear a monster yet with them, but between the WR and the WWR, I finally feel like I've got some decent melee presence in the army.

Trees are a lot less powerful if you put 2 pieces of terrain on every square of the board at a minimum, I've found. They are additionally less effective if your opponent has terrain pieces of their own - which every new army basically does now. With the changes to the rules for where you can place Wyldwoods, you're looking at putting maybe 1 or 2 woods down per cast if you're lucky - and your opponent could easily make it harder depending on where they put the terrain down before the game starts, where they deploy their own terrain, and how they position their units. I've not played too many games but Wyldwoods are definitely MVPs of the army - but without them, Sylvaneth would be rather rubbish, since they'd miss out on the bonuses that make them competitive, the LoS blocking that prevents sniping and mortal wound spells from anything that doesn't fly, and the general control of your opponent's movement - especially for blocking their big models. The Sylvaneth really need those forests to function adequately vs. most other armies, even if they are specifically designed to frustrate your opponent.

@Gwendar Thanks man! I'll try to take more pictures when I next play. The more I play Wanderers, the more I think I'll just run them pure, with my block of WWR and WR for melee bite. Dryads have proven to basically be a speedbump, and I'd be better off with EG if that's what I need - but I try to play where I don't need any speedbumps. It's a lot harder, and very failure-prone, but it lets me play more aggressively and decisively. I really don't think Wanderers are a defensive army at heart. I just spent most of the day building Alarielle, in case I want to go pure supervillain at my local gamestore. Frankly, the difference between a battletome army and a GHB army is really stark, now that I've got both Sylvaneth at Wanderers at 2k - With the trees I feel strong and can make decisions confident that my models will perform. Lots of 3+/3+ attack statlines makes a huge difference, as does putting out masses of terrain and having a unique spell lore. Wanderers are so fragile and really have almost no magic presence on the field, and do nothing to alter the battlefield, so you've got much fewer options. I'll still be playing my Wanderers, but now that I've got a really stompy Sylvaneth army, I can have a lot more fun with my Wanderers as a fluffy army. I'm gonna pack a lot of Wild Riders in there, and just go full out converting my models and stuff so even if they aren't going to be dominating anything, they'll look gorgeous. In a few weeks I'll get all the round bases I ordered, so I'll rebase my whole Wanderers army then. That's my next project, along with painting.

I finally settled on a 2k army, I'll probably trot it out for a game on Thursday. I'll be bringing the battalion, all the heroes, with a WW general, 2x20 GG, 20 WWR, 10 SotW, 5 WR and 5SotT, and Ravenak's Gnashing Jaws. My Nomad Prince will have the Starcaster, and I'll give my Waystrider the Hoarfrost to help put the hurt on monsters. I'm entertaining the possibility that I might swap out 10 GG for 5WR, the thinking being that it would make another great target for Shield of Thorns, and a big unit of WR lasts a lot longer, and bringing back d3 models with the Spellweaver sounds really attractive. Also, I've got kind of a Realm of Beasts theme going with my army, and I kind of like the look of that many WR on the field. Anyway, I suspect I'm going to get mauled by whatever my buddy brings in his Tzeench army, but we'll see. He's got a lot of angry birds surfing on dinner platters, which move too fast for me to contain properly - I'll have to shoot them a lot first and hope to do well there.

@Gwendar I think it is useful, especially in smaller games, to split big units of GG into smaller ones - maybe one at 20 and another at 10. This way, you can use the smaller one to block with if you need to and preserve the larger one, or position them so they are far enough apart where your opponent has to choose which one to chase down. Having +1 to hit for numbers is great, but splitting the unit would probably have helped them survive longer.

Had my first AoS 2k game yesterday! I brought a Dreadwood list with 4 groups of Spite-Revenants (in the battalion), a TLA, Drycha, a Treelord, Branchwych, Branchwraith, and 6 scythe Kurnoth against my buddy's Nurgle army, which has The Glottkin, a GUO, a Lord of Blights, a Harbinger of Decay, 3 units of Putrid Blightnights, and two Pusgoyle Blightlords. My dice were real hot, but getting first turn priority, filling most everywhere with trees that blocked the movement of my opponent's big monsters, all the pre-game strategies that Dreadwood gets to use (I rolled all 3), my opponent being slammed by my Wyldwoods on almost every spellcast, and Kurnoth being absolute brutes, the game was incredibly one-sided. I was really surprised how strong the army was, and I felt kind of like a bully with how powerful my trees were, both at blocking the movement of large models and slapping my buddies' whole army around. We both agreed that we need to use more terrain on our tables so I can't fill it with trees next time, and I bought him a beer after he called it a game on turn 2, which was the only civil thing to do at that point. :s Then I played a 1k list allied with another buddy's Stormcast against Nurgle, and continued to bully with my trees to a maximum degree, even with much more terrain on the table. I'm honestly surprised at how durable all my dudes are, coming from playing Wanderers so often and having to play keep-away most of the game. It's really nice to be able to charge into things with my army and expect to do damage, and have my heroes able to keep themselves and each other alive.

What's actually annoying is that many configurations of 2k lists for Wanderers ends up with either 100 points short or 20 points over, because everything in our army has awkward point costs. It's hard to build anything outside a few cookie cutter lists at 2k and take the battalion with this army. I might just ignore the battalion altogether and take another block of GG instead.