Trevelyan

As I saw someone comment elsewhere: ‘Promising the mouse a lifetime supply of cheese if he kills the dragon, doesn’t help him kill the dragon’

The latest Warcom article on balance changes admits that the entire Sylvaneth faction - every single unit - is below the power curve and merits additional VPs for killing tougher units in other factions. If nothing else, it’s a sign that Geedubs thinks we need a serious competitive boost.

With 95 points to spend and a Gnarlroot list with plenty of casters, you should consider picking up the faction endless spells.

There are some paint schemes. The 2E codex has some painting guides for them, but no one will worry if you actually use them or not. The only ranged unit (other than monsters or heroes) we have is the Kurnoth Hunters with bows. There aren’t a lot of ways to deliberately buff them in Glades, the best option is the Heartwood artefact - Horn of the Consort - that allows nearby Kurnoth units to reroll hits. That lends itself to a cluster of bow Hunters around a hero with the Horn. Treelord variants and many of our hero’s also have good ranged attacks. That opens up the possibility of using Gnarlroot to allow rerolls of 1 to hit for all wizards (including heroes) or nearby units. That helps the treelords (directly for the ancient or indirectly for others) and named characters (Alarielle and Drycha both have good ranged attacks), as well as potentially buffing any bow Kurnoth unity near a wizard.

I would recommend you get a Start Collecting Sylvaneth box. It comes with more Dryads and a second Treelord - unless you are very keen on magnetising, you’ll want more than one variant. It also comes with a Branchwych, which you could proxy as a Branchwraith in casual games. You could play most glades with the models you have, especially casually. You absolutely do need trees. Sylvaneth has a number of abilities that key off them and several ways to place more during a game. A single box is unlikely to have enough trees for serious play, but you can easily use the trees in a box as a template for some flat proxy bases in a casual game (also much easier to transport and to place models around without snagging on a branch). I cut a load from a Deepcut Studios mat that work well for me.

You’ve completely missed my point. The errata doesn’t change her BR Kragnos warscroll. It changes her obsolete Battletome Sylvaneth 2E warscroll. GW has errata’d the wrong book. They might have meant to limit her spell access in Living Cities, but GW has so lost touch with the current state of Sylvaneth rules that they don’t know which book has the latest warscrolls. And while someone somewhere probably only intended to align access to spells among deities, the copy text for the Warcom article makes it clear that others saw this as a buff for Alarielle because, again, they’ve got no idea that she had access to all the spells since late 2E: ”And if you are taking Alarielle the Everqueen with a Sylvaneth army, or Morathi-Khaine with a Daughters of Khaine army, they will both receive access to that army’s spell lores in addition to the spells they already know.” - Warhammer Community. So what we really got was a handful of point reductions and an awkward reminder that GW doesn’t have a clue about the Sylvaneth faction.

Although amusingly the Alarielle errata applies to the obsolete Sylvaneth Battletome warscroll rather than the BR Kragnos updated version. At this point either Geedubs has no idea what is happening with the faction or they are deliberately trolling Sylvaneth players.

I know which section they are referring to. My point is that while it doesn’t explicitly state when the Faction Terrain change applies, the fact that it is listed among a series of other pre-game setup conditions for the battlepack without any other changes that could be read as applying throughout the game and without stating that the faction terrain change applies at all times strongly implies that all of those are pre-game changes.

It’s worth pointing out that there is no conflict between the GHB and the revised AW warscroll for the initial setup. The latest AW version has the same 3” minimum included in the GHB (clearly limited to setup before game only). You aren’t letting the GHB supersede anything at setup. The setup restrictions are intended, in large part, to ensure that the game starts with a reasonable distance between terrain pieces and that players placing faction terrain are not able to do so in a way that creates an impediment on the table; the constraints are universal. But the ability to actively summon more trees during a game is a particular feature of our faction. It can create constraints for other players, but unlike the initial placement it is not guaranteed - we can get safe woods down if we pay up front for the artefact or a TLA to place them, otherwise we are using spells that can be unbound. And opposing players have the opportunity to simply limit placement by controlling areas of the table. That’s why I agree with Mirage. Once the game begins, the pre-game setup rules don’t apply. We are working with a different set of constraints for artefacts, warscroll abilities and spells and there is no reason to believe that the GHB limitation on placement before you’ve deployed armies should supersede individual warscroll abilities and spells that have not been errataed on several occasions in spite of GW putting considerable work into changing the way Awakened Wyldwoods operate.

Are we the only faction that can summon faction terrain during the game as well as place it at the start? That alone might be a cause for ambiguity. While the Faction Terrain subheading doesn’t explicitly mention “before game” placement, it is clearly placed in a sequential list after discussion of generic terrain features and before determining the traits of mysterious terrain features. Suggesting that this isn’t part of the pre game sequence is a stretch. More interesting is the revised Awakened Wyldwood warscroll itself. The language there talking about the 3” limit is clearly only talking about setup at the start of the game. The warscroll doesn’t mention later placement, which is significant because the pre-BR version (still listed on the AoS app) very explicitly does apply additional restrictions on placement beyond those in the spell used to summon it. It is possible that GW really did mean the section of rules on setup to supersede all subsequent summoned distances. It is possible that GW removed the extra restrictions on the old version from the updated warscroll for Awakened Wyldwoods but still expected people to apply them. It is possible that GW decided not to errata any of the applicable spells and abilities that summon Awakened Wyldwoods to clarify the summoning restrictions when updating the rest of the army. But I find it the less convincing interpretation unless/unroll we get clarification.

That could just as easily be an omission in the errata as a deliberate choice. It makes very little sense to selectively limit spelL selection.

I think it’s the same restriction we’ve had since the 2.0 Battletome dropped in 2019, so it’s a little late to start worrying about it now.

That’s another non-sequitur. You were, and still are, the one complaining about the points increases on some units. If you don’t believe that points changes are ever a solution, and that issues with the faction run much deeper than points changes can reach, then that’s a very different proposition and a very different conversation. But the only complaint you’ve made is about the points. All of the comparisons you’ve drawn with other factions have been about relative point increases. You can’t then pull a volte-face and ask everyone else to point out when points changes made a difference.

I’d assume the difference vs Sword Hunters is a consequence of the changes to unit size (capped at 6 Hunters). 6 Hunters was the break point where people actively debated whether swords or scythes were better. Swords were pretty much universally preferred in units of 3 and scythes in 9+. Now there is no situation where scythes are definitely better, and the limited number of times you can reinforce a unit makes units of 3 Hunters, and so swords, a more likely option. For bows, GW seems to be really pushing the Unleash Hell command ability for ranged attacks. Add the Redeploy strategy and it looks like ranged units have plenty of scope to stay out of combat and contribute more firepower. That’s likely the source of the point premium over scythes.

You are conflating some very different things. You say that you don’t expect much errata and criticise the claim that the rules are better, then go back to complaining about a difference of 15-25 point on a 200+ point unit, as if that’s the difference between sunlit uplands and an eternity of darkness. Simply put, points aren’t rules, and points most definitely do change on at least an annual basis for every faction, and more frequently if tournament results show that a faction is broken. If a tweak to the points is all you want then, assuming your assessment is correct and Kurnoths are overpriced for 3E, we absolutely will see a point drop before the edition is done - how many points changes did we see in 2E?