Landohammer

I will make it easy for you. Are you willing to buy, paint, and transport 2-3 Awakened Wyldwoods for $50 each? If yes; Sylvaneth! If no: Daughters! Sylvaneth are my favorite army, but the purchase and transportation of multiple forests is a turn off for many. The old Citadel Wyldwoods were only $33 if you can still find them.

At the absolute bare minimum, you need 2 forests. Your primary allegiance ability is the teleport, so without two to port between, you are handicapping yourself severely. The new forest models are surprisingly quick to paint if you leave off the branches and leaves at first. They are a fraction of the surface area of the old Citadel Woods. Just add the branches later when you have extra time.

As I posted earlier, Sylvaneth will probably never be great at magic heavy lists. With that in mind, Alarielle is probably a great place to start. She is our only multi-caster and also has the best spell in our army on her warscroll. Additionally Branchwraiths or Branchwyches with the Balewind Vortex or Chromantic Cogs and Gnarlroot Glade can become quite effective, especially if they stay out of Unbind range of enemy casters.

Yea this is a lesson I also learned. It will also frequently happen vs Nagash, Khorne, Gloomspite and any time you play in the Shadow realm. We as an army, just aren't that great at casting. We get no inherent buffs, and only one of our casters get to multi-cast. We also tend to block our own LOS alot. Truly magic armies are going to cast 6-9 spells each turn, usually with a bonus to cast or a reroll. Sylvaneth on the other hand, average 1-4 and usually one of those is Throne of Vines. Overtime I have just learned to not overly invest in wizards, battalions or endless spells. At the end end of the day, you win tournament games by putting bodies on objectives, and 250pts of bodies will never be useless.

FWIW, i think T-10 is still technically correct. Question; Are there any units in the game that inherently possess the ability to "reroll failed bravery tests?" Because if that ability is ever present on a bravery 6+ unit, then it would be impossible to use. Personally, I just finished painting 40 Spite-Revenants, so I will be shamelessly playing it in my favor, at least until someone makes me stop lol.

I would rather they fix it rather than remove it altogether. I do agree that having models run away creates a negative play experience to some extent. However, consider that having to kill 60 wound hordes off an objective is a much MUCH worse experience. Morale losses multiply the impact of good/bad decisions. Morale in wargames is there for several reasons IMHO. 1- Realism - Combatants in the middle ages rarely fought to the last man. Units on the losing end would almost always flee rather than fight to the death. 2- Unit/Army Differentiation - In a game with this many units, it becomes hard to make them distinct. (see KOW). With a moral mechanic, veteran units can be made more brave than militia, and Demons and Ghosts can be terrifying to behold. 3- Game Brevity - Morale losses help to end encounters, rather than have them drag out the entire game. Individual combats should come to an end so the game can progress and end with a decisive outcome. (and in a reasonable amount of time).

Good point. The re-roll is mandatory so it will trump any ability they have to opt for a reroll. However as a lover of Spite Revenants, (I use 40 in my list) I really dread the day my opponent rerolls a 6 into a 1 because of some bad wording. I know it will happen eventually 😭😭😭

I believe battleshock is a bit broken in its current form, but it definitely has a place in the game. Otherwise massive hordes would need to be killed to the man.

Yea unfortunately, RAW, you are correct. Rerolls happen before modifiers period. So the Spite reroll is really only effective vs a very small number of low bravery units, and then only if they roll poorly. However IMHO the intent was likely different. We should definitely get this submitted as an FAQ. Further making this weird, is that most units CANT fail an unmodified bravery test. So they will be discarding their first roll regardless. So about half of the time, this ability would actually HELP the enemy unit. As a roll of a 5 or 6 could be rerolled into a 1 or 2. Ouch!

I am mildly annoyed by it. But there are much more problematic uses for a single CP (cough cough Death) However the larger problem in general is the ability for many armies to ignore it altogether. This particularly hurts me as a Sylvaneth player, since a large part of my army focuses on bravery debuffs.

I like your theme of a magical army, but I think you lack the heavy hitters to push bodies off objectives in a competitive format. As it stands, only Drycha and your 3 Hunters are real threats in combat. Two TLA are a bit redunant, as they don't compliment each other very well. I recommend you swap one for something like more hunters or Durthu if you can find the points. Ancients are in a weird place right now, as a vanilla Treelord + Branchwraith do the same job but better. (Treelord fights better and Branchwraith has better spell and easier to protect). They are also also 20pts cheaper! I would also recommend you drop some of the 360 points in spells/battalions and add more bodies. Hope this helps!

Yea squirmlings are melee. Its is frequently a tricky decision for me to choose Embittered or Enraged though. I always go with the Flitterfly buff for Turn 1, and then switch to Squirmlings buff for the remainder of the battle. Drycha is pretty fast so she frequently finds herself in combat by turn 2. Focusing on Flitterflies can keep Drycha alive longer, but buffing Squirmlings is much more efficient since it gives her the potential to do 26 attacks in both your turn and your opponents turn. When combined with Gnarlroot or Winterleaf, she can pump out an insane amount of damage. I have actually grown to prefer her over Durthu lately.

As I mentioned before: When in doubt, take Winterleaf. It makes every single unit in the army better, and doesn't rely on CP. As a fan of Spites and teleporting, Dreadwood is also really solid. But its unfortunate that it doesn't buff Spites more. As it currently stands, Winterleaf Spites out-perform Dreadwood Spites, and the Frozen Kernel is probably one of the best (if not THE best) artefact in our book.

I really like the outcast battallion, but I don't think its worth it on just 3 units of 5 spites. I doubt 5 Spite Revenants will even survive to a morale phase once they reach combat. So at that point you are just paying 100pts for a second magic item and a CP. Probably best to drop the battalion for more bodies. Preferable more Spites or Tree Revenants.

TBH Balewind is just a solid endless spell all around. Its a must-take for anyone running Gnarlroot IMHO. The Branchwych combo is hilarious and I think it would be fun to try. However competitively it probably won't hold up, as dispelling the Vortex would knock off all of your thrones and send you back to square one. The stacking throne effect is pretty important though I imagine it would be more efficient on Alarielle, preferably when she is fighting something nasty on an important objective.

I absolutely love the dice. These are particularly creative and are waaaaay better than the cheapo wooden dice from the last codex. However all of my opponents have hated them lol. (common response for faction dice). I strongly recommend everyone pick up a set because they will sell out soon and will end up on ebay for $50+ Good catch. I believe you are correct. You might be on to something!

You are probably right. Winterleaf fits my personal play style so perhaps I over value it above the rest. Also, admittedly, I have only played one tournament with the new codex so I haven't given the others an honest try yet. But, to be fair, all of my games have in fact, come down to gigantic fights between blobs. There is only so much we can do with teleports, magic, and shooting. At the end of the day you will have to have a way to pull Archaon, 30 chainrasps, or 50 skinks off an objective. (all of which I experienced in that tournament). I may just have to be the Winterleaf apologist until I see something that convinces me otherwise lol.

Good summary! If I had to find one thing to complain about in our book, its that Winterleaf is just so good that it tends to overshadow the others in competitive play. For example, Dreadwood is meant to buff Spites specifically, but winterleaf spites outperform dreadwood spites while also buffing every other unit in the book. Winterleaf also has the best glade item. It kinda makes you wonder if Winterleaf exploding 6s were perhaps originally intended to be for Dryads only? All of the other primary glades specifically favor certain units. IE Gnarlroot - Wizards Dreadwood- Spites Harvestboon - Durthu Oakenbrow - Treelords Yet winterleaf buffs everyone? Doesn't seem right.

Very true, but that means that unless you take a third wizard, you give up taking the two heal spells which are the the true power spells in the lore IMHO. Probably better to just straight up attempt to cast the summon 3 times. The net result is the same: 2 summons. But with my version, Alarielle can do whatever she wants on turn 1. (I like to cast Throne plus Glade Wyrm early on) Its tempting to invest a lot into Branchwraiths: Cogs, Vortex, Gem (which requires a battalion tax usually), Gnarlroot, Thrones, etc. But IMHO this can become a bit of a trap. The whole point of summoning is to get units for free. If you find yourself making sacrifices for 10 Dryads, you may want to consider just taking more Dryads lol. I personally only use the Branchwraith in 1000pts games. She is an absolute must-have at that point level. At 2000pts the 10 man units of dryads just end up being speed bumps or objective campers.

I personally only bring 20. Do note that if you are fielding dryads as battleline, you can always bolster your summoning pool with your casualties. Here is my logic for 20: I only want to summon turns 1-3 since after turn 3, the dryads just don't have the time to contribute much. And with a casting cost of 7, I will generally only successfully cast the spell 2 out of 3 times. Thrones is tempting, but most of the time I prefer to give it to Alarielle, as she can make much better use of it.

I still plan on fielding him personally, but that 8 on Infernal Flames becomes REALLY steep without the +1 from the familiars. Now he needs a ton of support (LOC, arcane sacrfice, etc) to get casts off reliably and with 4 less wounds he is much easier to snipe. In a meta full of hordes its quite an impactful change.

You probably aren't alone with those changes. I foresee the following changes to be extremely common -Gaunt Summoner (-180) +10 Pink Horrors (+180) - 3 Enlightened (-160) -Cogs (-80) So about 30% of the list makeup changed. Probably not dramatic per say but definitely far-reaching!

I absolutely agree with all of those points. And 6 Scythes may be the most terrifying unit in our book to use the Frozen Kernel on. However I personally don't like having all of my eggs in one basket. 6 Scythes plus a Arch is 25% of your list and a lot of the time you just aren't going to get to attack first, especially if you fail the 9 inch charge after a teleport. Additionally, I actually prefer to use Alarielle's command ability on Hunters, since its actually an Aura affect (rather and a single target like the Arch). This allows both greatsword units to reroll 1's to wound along with any units nearby including Alarielle herself. Also, 3 greatswords are the perfect unit for Alarielle to summon after she has moved.

I can only really comment on the armies I play with. -Tzeentch - Remains the Same. Point hikes on key endless spells have really hurt. Also note the Gaunt Summoner with Chaos familiars, which was in literally every list, was straight up dropped from matched play. However a few key points drops helped offset. Lists will likely change pretty dramtically but overall a net of zero. -Sylvaneth- Increase from low tier to mid tier. Though technically this is because of a new codex (and not a GHB update) the sylvaneth got better at everything they do. With the exception of Kurnoth Hunters, the power creep of the book was actually quite modest so hopefully this is indicative of future codex releases.

Yes, mainly because of the greatswords getting 4 attacks instead of 3. So you end up rolling 12 dice instead of 9. This really becomes apparent with Winterleaf since each 6 has the potential for FIVE wounds. (1 mortal + 2 hits * 2 damage). Again, I think Scythes are still VERY strong (even in units of 3!) but greatswords are just more reliable at their job.