Landohammer

Your best bet vs a shooty/casty Cities list is to take Dreadwood and Spiteswarm, and bring a battalion. Use your extra artefact to give your Branchwraith/wych the Stave, so they have two casts. Basically the plan is to cast thrones, cast Spiteswarm, and give your Hunters +3 to charge. Then teleport them with the Dreadwood teleport. You will then have a 6 inch charge into anything that isn't screened, and you can reroll the charge with Envoys of the Everqueen. Assuming you make the charge you will be wrecking his lines. Rinse and repeat every turn. Works every time, (unless you fail the rerollable 6 like I do )

Oh man you went to Cancon? I'm so jealous. Have you posted a summary of your games? (sorry if I missed it, it may have got buried). So I think the key component of the unit is always taking a minimum of 6 swords. A lot of folks worry that they won't all get into combat, but in my experience I can guarantee that 4 will get into combat, and I almost always get 5 in combat. Outside of the obvious ability to absorb casualties, the additional bodies just get compounded when you trigger Call to Battle, double swing, reroll 1's, and explode 6's. If you absolutely cripple a unit, the return swings are less of a problem. Buuuuuut, you have a point. There are some hard counters such as ASL or anything that makes you reroll to-hit rolls of 6. Both of which are surprisingly common. (Nurgle, Slaanesh, StD, and Stormcast all have access off the top of my head)

So outside of the obvious choices of Viridian Pathfinders battalion or just flat out buying CP, the only option I know of is the Penumbral Engine. Its 100 points though 😓

@Pennydude Looks fun but if you wanted to maximize the cheesiness you should drop some characters for more Sword Kurnoth Hunters. A lot of folks bring TLA for the guaranteed forest, but I have found that a Branchwraith with Throne and Spritsong Stave push out forests a lot more efficiently.

Absolutely. I 100% agree. Drycha is an absolute powerhouse, and played a crucial part in all of my wins. She is just so reliable, its hard to leave her at home. So I am going to be honest with you: Hunters in winterleaf are probably overpowered. There isn't much in the game that can withstand 6 of them, especially if you factor in Arch Revenant buffs, magic, and Frozen Kernel. Consider that every 6 to hit is a potential FIVE wounds. I was able to get 5 in combat normally, and the Arch revenant was usually nearby too. They absolutely murdered everything they touched and were hands down my MVP of the tourney. One thing of note, is that this tournament included Realm Spells, so I had access to the Realm of Fire spells, most notably "Stoke Rage" which casts on a 6 and gives a unit +1 to charge, and +1 to wound. The synergy of that spell with our army can't be understated. This really makes me reassess Skaeth's wild hunt. Being able to give my Hunters (or even Spites!) +1 to wound really seems powerful.

@Pennydude They did fine, but I found that they always competed with the Kurnoth Hunters for premium front line space. They essentially fullfill the same role but Hunters are just better at the job. So they were kind of like my third string combat unit. In retrospect, I should have brought something to give me a shooting phase. Evocators are great, but without a means to deepstrike or teleport them, they lose quite a bit of value. If I owned 3 more Kurnoth Hunters I would immediately drop the Evocators altogether. I had purchased them for my Living City army, and I really only fielded them to show off their paint job. I painted them green and called them "Treevocators" all weekend 🤣.

Just got back from a one day tournament and I figured I would give a quick recap. List summary below. Game 1 vs STD. Knife to the Heart My opponent out-dropped me but curiously chose to take turn 1, so his first turn was a bit of a waste. I summoned a forest right in his face and teleported 6 Kurnoth with swords and made the charge into his 10 man unit of Chaos knights. I popped Call to Battle and killed the entire unit. Unfortunately for him he had moved most of his units to the flanks so he didn't have enough bodies to defend his objective. I scored the double turn into turn 3 and pushed onto his objective for the auto-win. Major victory! Game 2 vs Tzeentch (Conflaguration). Places of Arcane Power. This game was weird. I outdropped him and so he spent first turn just kinda plodding forward cautiously as a moving castle. I used my turn to run Drycha, Archie, and Wraith on to the objectives. However he used Kairos to make my Wraith's run into a 1, so I ended up short on that one. Clever move! He then used his flamers and pink horrors to just shoot me up and ultimately tabled me. HOWEVER, I had scored so many objective points on turns 1-3 that he was unable to catch up so I scored another Major Victory! Game 3 vs Daughters of Khaine. This list was brutal, with like 4 hags, and 4 maxed out units of infantry. However I was able to do another forest-teleport-Hunter alpha strike and combined with the Frozen Kernal and Call to Battle, I eliminated one of his hordes. I then scored the double turn and pushed the Hunters into another horde, and did a lot more damage. Unfortunately, his battleshock immunity and rerollable FNPs let him keep that unit alive and combined with a double turn of his own began to eat my army. Fortunately I was up on BPs significantly. But on round 5 I was overly tired and made a critical mistake of skipping my movement phase. He capitalized by making a long bomb run+charge and stole the game. Major Loss Summary I went 2-1 overall and tied for 3rd out of 13. Had a blast. List Winterleaf Outcast Battallion -Drycha -Arch Rev (Kernel) -Branchwraith (Stave) -20 Spites -10 Spites -5 Spites -6 Hunters with Swords -6 Hunters with Scythes -5 Evocators

So in theory, its a good idea. It helps restricts insane combos. It also adds more value to Battalions and potentially makes the "no subfaction" choice an actual option. Unfortunately the real-world result is different. Subfaction abilities are simply too powerful to pass up on, and there is almost always one clear outlier. In may cases the subfaction bonuses are actually better than the allegiance abilities. So competitive armies frequently end up in 1-2 subfactions. The rest are disregarded completely. Its also annoying that they dedicate so many pages of the codex to artefacts and command traits that just never even get read/used.

I am actually working on a Living City army as well. It gave me a reason to strip/repaint my wanderer models that look like a 5 year old painted them. Deepstriking from the table edge is actually pretty strong. There are so many places to arrive that its really difficult for opponents to anticipate. For me, the biggest challenge with Living City is the 1:4 ratio. This generally means that you are only going to get a max of 2 units of Sylvaneth, unless you build some kind of crazy 12 drop list.

TBH there aren't many Dispossessed units that are going to contribute much to a Sylvaneth army. In fact, the only units that I would even consider as allies would be the cannons, and those are ALSO available as Mercenaries. (Blacksmoke Battery) If you want to mix Sylvaneth and Duardin and remain competitive, its probably better to run Living City. You can have Dispossessed as your battleline, a few Sylvaneth units, and then take Fyreslayers as mercenaries. It would be a motley crew of a list but it would be fun!

See above for my responses in red. I think a big part of the argument in favor of deepstriking assumes the use of TLA which is completely fair. The TLA essentially eliminates all of the risk.

So just playing devil's advocate here bc me and Trevelyan haven't debated in a while: So isn't deepstriking to forests inherently more risky? A lot of armies can get across the board quickly and easily zone out a single forest. Not a lot of armies can snipe a 9 wound 3+ character on turn 1. Also losing the Enraged/Embittered buff for a turn is pretty critical. It effectively halves her ranged output, or potentially quarters her melee output. When you go the deepstrike route, you generally need to push your free forests as far out as the scenario permits to get value out of it, so this just makes the problem worse. Having to rely on summoning a second forest is scary. You know your opponent will be saving Unbinds for it. TLDR; Deepstriking to forests is just too risky in competitive play. If you are scared of alpha strikes, proper screening is much safer.

So the nail in the coffin of Ironbark is that per CA 19, nearly the entire Fyreslayer army is fieldable as mercenaries. You just have to give up your first CP, but otherwise its the same (minus access to 1 unit) and you even get a small buff. But most importantly you get to keep your glade of choice.

Great question. I have no idea lol. Its honestly never came up. On a side note, I actually rarely deepstrike units into the forest, and when I do, its usually cheap disposable units like 5-10 spites. If you go second, you run the risk of having your opponent zone out your forest and prevent units from arriving, and this terrifies me lol.

@a74xhx Nice bat rep! I have always found games vs KO to be fun but particularly challenging. They seem to have a strong counter army for us. We can't really threaten them at range, they can see through our forests, and we aren't quite fast enough to catch them.You played it exactly right though. Play the objective game and hope he runs out of turns to catch up. I primarily play Winterleaf, but this is one of those games that make me lean towards Dreadwood.

I always hurt my brain trying to decide on Spite unit sizes. Five is dirt cheap, 10 is perfectly efficient, but 20 gives the huge discount. The only size I never take is 15. 10 spites are so efficient because the entire unit can usually attack. Its an average of ~14 wounds excluding glade buffs. Not bad for 120pts! I really like Dreadwood, but I get annoyed a bit at how it dictates lists. I feel nervous with anything less than 3 characters and the Hive is mandatory. Alternatively Winterleaf can be slapped on anything. As long as you have a dude to hold the Kernel you are good.

I think maybe his value diminishes a bit without endless spells in the list, but I imagine most Tzeentch players will be including at least 1-2. So he will always have something to do. I don't imagine I would ever use his teleport unless someone leaves a critical objective wide open turn 1. In a Guild of Summoners list he is just too cheap to pass up. With a vortex he can get me a third of the way to a LoC on turn 1!

So is it just me or is the Changeling essentially an auto-include? Even if you completely disregard his teleport, you still get 2 guaranteed casts for 120pts on top of a fantastic debuff. As a Demon character he also gets the Locus. So if you camp him near some horrors he can essentially guarantee your horrors are -2 to hit right?

This has come up a few times before so I will summarize my previous posts Ahkelia Morrsarr - Fast, hit hard, and resilient. Helps to put pressure on your opponent/objectives early on without the need for teleports. Wildwood Rangers - Reliable anti-monster unit. A unit of 20 is conveniently priced between 3 and 6 Kurnoth Hunters and can fulfill the same role. Celestar Ballista - Efficient (both $ and points) way to have a meaningful shooting phase. Sisters of the Watch - Effective shooting phase Characters - Waywatchers, Lord Relictors, Knight Azyros, Knight Incantors, and Tidecasters. All are reasonably costed and contribute something that Sylvaneth lack.

I actually really like Host Arcanum. A free unit of Screamers is also cool! But didn't one of the youtube reviewers mention that 2d6 rolls now require two destiny dice? Is that how destiny dice work now? If thats the case, then my Destiny dice will go quick. I use most of mine on charges and casts

I would recommend a Lord of Change/Kairos and a box of Kairic Acolytes. That will give you a 1000+ pt army easily and fill up your battleline, at least for 1000pts games. If you hate painting the same models over and over then avoid Pink Horror altogether.

Can someone clarify Skyshoal Covens battalion for me? Does "normal move" include retreats, charges, and runs? Seems like it could be crazy powerful if so. Thats 4 units potentially generating D3 mortals per turn (twice if they charge!). Edit: I just found the FAQ. Only moves made in the movement phase are considered normal. Charges and Pile-ins are considered something separate. That makes sense. Still seems like a pretty decent battalion though.

I just want them to be cheap, and have the ability to cast allegiance and endless spells. I am not too optimistic on their shooting capability. For the most part GW errs on the side of caution for shooting. Historically each cast in Tzeentch armies have been ~90 points, so I find myself running out of points quickly even with just 4 or so casts. So if I can fill battle line and also score meaningful casts then I will be happy.

So far the changes are all looking great. The changes to acolytes is *really* interesting, especially if they get access to allegiance spells. Also the Locus effectively makes all Daemon characters -1 to hit in melee. Thats a huge buff for LoC. Pink Horrors could really become insane if they manage to get -1 to hit.

Exactly. They essentially just pulled an allegiance/general buff out of the army and put it on something you have to buy. Khorne may have been a bad example since they do have some strange tendencies to build brass stuff. Deepkin, Gloomspite, Ogors, and Slaanesh are more obvious offenders when it comes to spontaneous terrain generation.