NinthMusketeer

I don't really want to get into the specifics of other armies because this thread is about Sylvaneth.

Those keymen are awesome! Where did you find those? Sidenote: I call dibs on Grove of the Burnwillows!

The goal is to have a balanced game (well, as much as it can be), so the question becomes: do points produce a more balanced games than power levels? For the group of friends I play with the answer sways pretty far to the "no" side. But it could be different for someone else's meta. Thing is, everyone still has their models assembled for points and thus the equipment options are largely pre-selected. Having above average options on some units and below average options on others tends to even out across a whole army. Much (not all, however) of the concern about Power Levels comes from situations where individuals would have to specifically build their models are certain way, which is unlikely to be the case.

Some degree of power creep is inevitable; in a given circumstance where option A is better than option B, a developer will favor buffing option B. Because then those players tend to feel like they are getting something, but players of A will tend not to feel like they are losing something. It is a basic optics thing in making the player base happy. Provided the balancing is done properly, A = B will occur regardless of the method used so why not go with the one that feels nicer for the players? The 'new units/armies are better old to sell them' does not hold up when releases are actually examined. It can just seem that way because the OP new stuff sees more table time than UP new stuff, so the 'strong' new options have far more visibility. Besides, at the time of me writing this Sons of Behemat are the newest army and they are sub-par. As to helping the OP's circumstance: Before deployment roll off, the winner decides to either deploy their whole army first and get first turn, or deploy their whole army second and go second. Then keep that same order the whole game, cutting random initiative entirely. Like it or hate it, double turn is the single most consistent and most powerful means by which an AoS match can become one-sided.* *Aside from army building, but that doesn't occur DURING the match so somewhat of a separate thing. Speaking of, what army and list(s) are you running?

An army doesn't get to the top tourney slot with OP allegiance or OP units; it needs both.

Hm, I liked the earlier humanoid art you did. A lot of those look overdone to me even by GW standards; far more Warcraft/anime than Warhammer (which is not necessarily a bad thing, just not as relatable to this context). I like that khopesh-dual-wielding anubis fellow though.

And thank goodness for that!

The core rules do need a section clearly resolving multiple things happening at the same time. In the meantime we have this old article: https://www.warhammer-community.com/2019/03/21/who-fights-first/ This situation would default to the third option, wherein the current player decides the order, because objectives are still an action taken by the player: "At the end of each player's turn, you must check to see..."

I do. Specifically, I play Skryre. I have 2 command traits and 2 artifacts to choose from.* At least my spell options are all good. *Each chart also has 4 wallpaper options there to fill page space, but you don't actually use them.

The Gobbapalooza got really tripped out and wandered off to a different section of the book, you can't really blame GW they do that sometimes.

I am legitimately surprised anyone would call AoS listbuilding complicated. Pick a sub-faction you like then almost all of it is just picking which units you want in what amount, only a tiny segment of army builds care about restrictions other than battleline. Some units have options if you take them with one weapon or another, but its unit-wide. Then you go through each hero and pick their bling. Most to all of it is often fixed by sub-faction or is narrowed down to a few best options. This is where it can SEEM overwhelming to newcomers with tons of tables and options everywhere. If anything I wish it was more complex via the choice of command traits and artifacts being more meaningful than 'fixed by sub-faction' or 'pick from this list of 3 that are clearly better'. Heck half the options in the average battletome could be thrown out because they aren't worth taking. Some army builds can get tricky though. What armies do you play OP?

Sylvaneth were behind the moment the current battletome hit, if anything they are better off now after point decreases on a number of units. Also Gloomspite are a bad example; bounders and stone trolls are the only overpowered units in a codex that is remarkably well balanced considering its massive roster. You want power creep look at KO. The army just gets more for the same points as others.

Privateer Press makes a dwarf unit called "High Shield Gun Corps" that is very similar, if you are looking for that in miniature form.

Yes, unmodified 5+. Note how that sentence does not indicate a roll; thus the assumption becomes that the previously stated "unmodified hit roll" is what's being used.

Ah, it's just about the imagination and such, those are definitely in the same inspirational vein as your other posts 😉

Right... I think you veered off the 'inspiration for AoS' track when you started posting sexy-elf-chick art. They don't even look like Warhammer elves!

Tree kin! Let's get more of the 'dead wood' look back, there is enough of the 'graceful' wood growth of the treelord & hunters!

So I was about two paragraphs into the explanation when I noticed a critical problem that I did not pick up on before. It does not line up with GW commentary. The problem lies in the "when determining control of an objective" part of Mightier Makes Rightier. This is a trigger for the choice to swap out the objective control rules; when models are being measured for controlling an objective the Sons player chooses which rules will apply. But in Places of Arcane Power objective control is only being determined based on the actions of a Leader model. If a mancrushers unit moves within 3" they are still not a Leader unit, so objective control is not determined. No models are measured, no opportunity to replace the rules with MMR. Meanwhile at the end of turn the normal measure-models-within-6" is not ever triggered because the scenario says those rules are not used. MMR can be swapped in when determining control of an objective but there is no determination occurring. So there is no way to actually use Mightier Makes Rightier at all with just mancrushers in this scenario, meaning they very much cannot gain control of an objective. In fact MMR is useless here even with Mega-Gargants because all it does is change the number of models they count as while the Places of Arcane Power scenario does not care about the number of models. So either Mightier Makes Rightier is not worded properly for what GW intends, the commentary from Warhammer Community is wrong, or I am wrong. I'd put any of those three as quite plausible, they have all happened multiple times before!

Sylvaneth have some core design issues that need to be changed to make them properly functional; Wyldwood reliance -- The army cannot rely on the woods for the majority of its allegiance abilities. Can it be a big part of them? Yes, and it should. But because of how varied tables can be in their terrain the ability to place an move woods is wildly inconsistent from game to game, and perhaps more importantly if the abilities become stronger to compensate then it starts to become extremely unfun to play against Sylvaneth. And there almost certainly needs to be a spell which gives an existing terrain piece the wyldwood abilities until the start of next hero phase. Elite Infantry -- Dryads work find as basic infantry, but they are trying to pull the weight of all infantry roles because of how the revenant warscrolls are. First off, revenants should be 2w infantry. They have a 32mm base, they are big, and Sylvaneth desperately need the wounds count for the army. Secondly, and hear me out on this; tree-revs need to lose their teleport ability. The problem is that when they have that ability they need to pay points for that ability, but it does not scale. A unit of 10 tree-revs is paying twice for their teleport ability, a unit of 15 is paying three times, yet that ability doesn't get any better for it. Same for martial memories; it needs to scale. Otherwise you have a unit that is only ever worth taking in 5-man, something that severely limits their potential uses in the army. They need to be hitting on 3's as well. Spite-revenants would be OK if they got an extra wound, but bonus attacks or bonus rend on the charge to better fill the roll of glass-cannon-berzerker would help the army a lot. Rend -- This is a game-wide design issue rather than being specific to Sylvaneth but is particularly relevant to them. GW is very stingy with rend in AoS, and the game suffers for it. Units like revenants can't be given a 4+ save because that would become a 3+ save in cover, kurnoth hunters need to pay a fortune for their save re-rolls because again, in cover it is a 3+. Attacks with no rend can't reliably damage 3+ save units, and can barely damage 3+ rerollable at all. But there's a lot of units out there without much rend at all. Sylvaneth pay more for their saves than others because as an army they can get cover so readily, but that makes them suck when the terrain isn't working out. If rend -1 and rend -2 were more of a thing they would not need to pay as much for the privilege and we could move dryads to a 4+ base (instead of +1 to saves when at 10 or more) as well as revenants. But seriously, there are more units that deal mortal wounds than have rend -2. That's absolutely silly.

I could go into the technical explanation if you like, but it boils down to just treating a mancrusher unit like it was a leader for the purposes of objectives in that scenario.

Having gone through all these books; they are fantastic. More warbands, more options, incorporation of mercenary heroes as leader options AND they can still be mercenaries too! Updates to the monsters & mercenaries rules, new abilities, some rebalancing where it was needed (looking at you Bray Shaman). And my favorite of all; FLUFF! Oodles of fluff! To start each grand alliance has a run down of what it is and more importantly why/how it is in the Eightpoints. Then every warband gets it's own rundown on the same! No matter what you play there is now an answer to 'why am I here?' It is a fantastic base for writing background & narrative for one's warband and I am so happy to have it.

https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/Default.aspx?type=+[Land]||subtype=+[Land] 27 years of inspiration at your fingertips!

Plaguetouched and LoP are bouncing back 1MW per trigger; as you noted when the number of triggers doesn't matter the wording is different. So if there are three 6's to wound against Plaguetouched 3MWs go back. If the LoP negates two wounds he bounced back 2MWs. Long story short: you have it right.

Uh, no. We were talking about breeding rights being offered as a reward. No one was taking it in that direction.

You can download their AoS warscroll from the pre-order page; slaangor has 3 wounds.