TreelordRecent

I wonder whether the question of which game system gets favoured may be more correlated to the size of the departments and their respective production regimes rather that a deliberate decision to favour one over the other. The AoS/40K/middle earth team are all separate. It is in all their interests to release as much stuff as possible to make their departments make more money. But there are only so many space marines you can sell before people switch off… and as for other factions, the size of the release has to be calibrated to some degree to the demand. I hear a lot of people wanting more stuff for Beasts of Chaos. But is suspect that most Beast players already have 2000-3000 point armies and may not buy 200 more goats when the new Bestigor version comes out… hence there may not be that much interest in them updating some ranges. For example, how many of the new skeletons and zombies do we see being played? I could be wrong…

Interesting… may be misremembering it. I guess you end up having so many rumours being amplified by a couple of sites and then you believe it to be cast in stone. But that effect could go both ways. https://spruesandbrews.com/2020/10/22/who-are-the-umbraneth/amp/

Fundamentally a DoK Umbraneth soup seems to make sense. If I remember correctly when the warcry warband was released they said they were umbraneth and in the lore they are at Morathi’s service if I recall correctly.

I never played Ossiarchs but I imagine a big deep strike with blocks of 6 scythe hunters on their heroes or special characters with dreadwood and our trees would be the way to go. In terms of other units with lots of rend or mortal wounds I guess Alarielle and Durthu would be helpful. I would target the characters first to prevent the return of their models. The spiteswarm hive can be helpful to ensure the charge takes place.

How practical have people felt the spiteswarm hive to be? I can’t help thinking that it seems easy to use for kurnoths or treelords but that for a large group of 30 dryads it may be hard to place with the wholly within part of the rule.

Ah good point... My bad for misreading Alarielle's command ability... That makes it a lot less viable. What do people think about way finders? Are they a good option?

@Emissary @Trevelyan My list looks like this: Heartwood: Alarielle throne of vines branchwraith throne of vines and spiritsong stave branchwych: horn of the consort, Verduous harmony TLA general, regrowth 3x 3 bow hunters 3x 5 spite revenants outcast battalion 2000 points on the dot. in order to get to an average of 14-17 wounds I keep my kurnoths within range of the horn of the consort and I use alarielle’s command ability to reroll 1s to wound. TLA can also shoot but has less range so he may not hit the mark quite as often. also with this list you can bring on about 30 dryads turn one so that allows you to get increase the body count quite quickly.

You got dryads that you could consider the defensive battleline spite revenants that are the offensive battle line. Tree revenants that are the mobile battle line as they can teleport. I personally favour dryads as they are very good at holding objectives.

Sorry that was unclear... I meant 3 sets of bow hunters... so 9 models in total.

@Grudgebearer In that case Absolutely! I would still recommend the start collecting as you'll save money all round but maybe get 2 then? Alarielle and Drycha are must haves. Regarding kurnoths it depends what you want them to do. I got a heartwood list where I have 3 bow hunters that beefed up to the max do on average 17 wounds versus a 4+ save unit. If you want to take out a nagash or archeon and bathe in your opponent's tears they can be useful. Basically people are a bit divided in the forum but in terms of the general consensus for a unit of 3 kurnoths, go with swords, 6 kurnoths you'll have a bit of a split but most would go with scythes (there are ways to make 6 swords completely viable). The sylvaneth endless spells are good as they can't be used against us. The woods are a must, and I just ordered 6 today... The new book basically allows us to make viable lists with any unit, so take your pick!

Welcome to Sylvaneth! My advice depends a little on your budget because sylvaneth can be an expensive army. But here are some suggestions: My advice would be to get 1-4 start collecting boxes. You get tree lords/ TLA/ Spirit of Durthu, lots of dryads and few branchwyches. 2-3 awakened wyldwoods Then you can consider getting alarielle/ Drycha/ Branchwraith and Kurnoth hunters. There are obviously killer lists you can make with a horde of 60 spite revenants. But that will cost quite a bit and it will be pretty unidimensional, especially if you don't like spite revenants! What kind of play style do you like? and what units do you like the look of?

I have magnetised the bases of my units and got a transport case by armybox. They have metal shelves so the whole thing works quite nicely. For the woods you’ll need another box...

With the new scenery rules I would assume that we could place 1 large wyldwood with 6 trees, and maybe 3 with about 3-6 trees. I think that between the automatic trees/ space / casting ability this is the best we can ever hope for. This is obviously based on having seen the trees at warhammer fest and imagining that we can place them in an elongated circle to stay away from some terrain pieces.

@Trevelyan regarding the spite revenant I agree I think they are obviously more cost effective per point than dryads in terms of their damage output. However I think that with the retreat and charge from forest folk you can easily make most of them attack, and they are more durable. Our first few games will tell us whether we can get away with spite revenants or whether we need to revert to hordes of dryads.

It is very tempting. Although I find that as we are quite command point poor we have a dilemma in front of us. With a unit of 30 dryads you could potentially get 120 attacks. By enlarge that kills everything you put in front of it at the cost of 2 command points. It also tends to be over the top in terms of the damage it can cause. Whereas with Winterleaf you can still do about 25 wounds at the cost of only one command point. You can also do this virtually every turn. Whereas with the harvestboon you can do this at most one or two turns during a 5 turn game. It’s not bad, but I think we can do better with winterleaf. I’d be interested to see what people think.

@SkiRootz I would agree with Emissary. It is the most plausible reading. On a different note, do you find that harvest boon works well with free spirits? I would be most tempted to use heartwood or Winterleaf instead. I think the damage output with the double attacks on 6s or the rerolling failed hits would generate more damage than rerolling 1s to hit. The command ability to give the extra attack can be “purchased” with an arch revenant.

Thanks for the advice! Certainly dreadwood or winterleaf and an arch revenant will combine quite nicely.

@swarmofseals Thank you for the in depth explanation. It does make you want to try them in large numbers with harvestboon and an archrevenant.

I would just add that there may be a case to have a unit of 6 swords if you play dreadwood. As dreadwood allows you to place a unit 9 away from an enemy you may be able to get them all in, in turn one... but in most other scenarios 6 scythes may be easier to use. Following some inspiration from the forum I have built a unit of 9 scythes to make the most out of dreadwood and the archrevenant... I am still to see how they perform.

What do you guys think of the new forest folk and lord of the clans battalions?

In the meta I play in there are a few players with competitive idoneth, Khorne and FEC. Having had a few units deleted quite quickly I can certainly see the value in getting rid of one threat at a time and having a lot of wounds on the board. Most of the lists I play against can easily delete Durthu and Alarielle in one turn. Getting rid of the opponent’s main threat is really helpful! The answer may be dependent on what the points for FEC, Khorne and other factions with very powerful heroes change to. We will know soon enough!

That’s true. The wound output of 6-9 scythe hunters boosted by the arch revenant, and alarielle did make me buy more kurnoths. Add dreadwood to that and pop them 9 inches away from the enemy with cogs and/or the spite swarm hive and you’re laughing. (I know that’s a lot of extra boosters and maybe only 1-2 will happen but that’s just an example of what you can use to make that unit better).

Sisters of the watch are really good but I think that the extra range, better save, realm roots and better melee does make up for the extra 40 points. I certainly considered using glade guard and wayfinders in my lists.

As someone who build 3 sets of bow hunters as I thought they looked good I can only agree! They are quite swingy. That being said with the heartwood enclave and the artefact of the horn of the consort, 3 sets of bow hunters can do about about 17 wounds per turn on a 4+ save unit. Having managed to clear a lord of change in one turn I think there are lists where they can work quite well.

I think that what appears really nice with the new book is that every unit is now playable. You could legitimately build a solid list that includes any of the units at our disposal. It will certainly make things more interesting for us and our opponents.