Kaylethia

I didn't see much talk about the new Drycha battallion, so here goes: I think getting rend on a 3+/3+ profile can work well for us, and I'm going to try it out in my next game. As it's probably a 1k game, I'm thinking 2x20 spites, drycha, the battallion, an arch-rev and a branchwraith. Winterleaf glade, because the only thing funnier than 20 spites putting out 61 attacks that explode on sixes is 20 spites putting out 61 (81 with the Archie buff) attacks that explode on sixes twice. Play it a bit more safe, have Drycha summon wyldwoods, 'wraith uses ToV and summons dryads to tank hits, spites (hopefully) kill things dead. Keep a CP or two in reserve for battleshock, and try to keep the spites away from harm.

The madlad gave permission, enjoy. The first chapter starts tomorrow and lasts for two months.

One of the guys on our local discord server put together A Tale of Some Warlords which grew to a massive 21 participants despite our regular AoS group being only five people. Better yet, he's a mad narrative genius, and decided to do a Sons army that is themed, converted and kitbashed into the knights of the round table. I think @KingBrodd would be proud. One of them will have a tower with Rapuntzel in it on his back, another will be holding a battering ram like a stick-horse. I'm taking the opportunity to paint up all my sylvaneth that I've bought over the years, but haven't felt motivated enough to paint so far, despite painting a nice amount of everything else. Playing-wise, I felt very disheartened with my sylvaneth, but a friend got me into a Warcry campaign that we try to play each week, and it's been a blast. Thanks again for the thread, @Kramer

I've found Sylvaneth to be very fun in Warcry. Spites can stop an enemy model from moving, tree-revenants can teleport, the branchw[ych|raith] have their uses, and dryads can point at something and say "that has to go." And hunters are far scarier than heroes. It feels a lot more like playing Sylvaneth than playing with them in AoS currently, so if you have a chance, give Warcry a try. You had me before this, and I love it. I've tried the Dreadwood, Outcasts, Drycha song and dance, and when your main opponents are CoS, Warclans/Ironjawz, Gitz, Kharadron and Fyreslayers, bravery only applies to you. I've played against a IJ list with Warclans allegiance that wins on turn three with 8 cp left over, because the player forgot to use them on rerolls, and that's after Inspiring Presence. Nasty.

I'm guessing a 60mm base and a really tall model at that price. I think it was 38€ from an LGS on their preorder. I think I'm going to skip the preorder until the warscroll is out, and the rules teaser didn't give me much hope. Bravery shenanigans cost extra points for almost no return under the present rules. I hope the new warscroll has two casts and maybe even a bonus to casting, that's even more points. Baseless speculation: I'm guessing the new model is at least 250 points a with around 8 wounds, no dpr, a 4+ save. One cast with a bonus, or two casts without. High movement, possibly even flying.

I can generally get out two, the second one is usually by taking the first turn so my opponent can't move their stuff up the board and block my placement. I usually have room enough for one more after that, but it's too out of the way to matter for dryad spawning or teleporting.

I'd like to add a bit to this. The nerf came with second edition, not the new battletome. Faction terrain rules meant that our primary, synergistic style no longer helped us in the newer game, and actively hindered us. The change (welcome as it was at the time) to wholly within with our own battletome hurt us even more. We have a few options that still work, but are frowned upon. 1. Hunters: Range, durability, command ability extension. Frowned upon, because early AoS had a Hunter spam list in mixed Order. 2. Dreadwood: CA teleport that works better than the one with woods. Aggressive, risky, and there was an alpha strike list for 1.0 that could delete roughly two units first turn. I'm hoping BR gives us something to work with, but I wouldn't count on it.

The following is my salty opinion on the current state of Sylvaneth. A lack of mortal wound mitigation outside of the usual "bring more models", our monsters tend to get shot off the table (or in the case of papa D, bracketed to not hurt so much at a minimum, dead at the worst), reliance on spells without casting bonuses (scenery isn't reliable game-to-game and the Gnarlroot artefact helps on one limited spell per turn), woods can be a gamble to get out and our core warscrolls rely on having them. Our best options look lime hunter spam with minimal battleline (triple spites with outcast) with dreadwood glade to get a command point teleport anywhere. Dryad spam can work, but they rely on woods for their defensive buffs, and if you're trying to play for objectives, you're most likely leaving cover, possibly their -1 to hit behind.

Revenants could probably convert well with human of aelf faces. Dryads not so much, I think. Hunters and treemen are probably right out.

Here it is, deader than a doornail I played two games of Warcry with Sylvaneth a few weeks ago. Pointers: take a bit of everything. Tree-Revenants can steal some missions by teleporting, Spites are good cheap units to get your activation count up and give you board control. And if that's all you have, taking as many dryads as possible will work too. Good luck, and welcome back to the hobby!

@Popisdead The Heartwood artefact did more than the A-Rev, since it gives rerolls to all hit rolls wholly within 12", not just ones. The list came out to an even 1000 points, so swapping an A-Rev in would've reworked much of what I wanted to try. The game went better than expected, called in the top of the third round. I chose to go first; my opponent just moved and ran in the first turn. He won the roll, chose to take the double, just to deal some damage to me before I start shooting again, and I got the double going into the third round. Called it after my turn, he had a Weirdnob Shaman and two units of Brutes on the table, while I had lost one unit of sword Hunters and a total of six models from two summoned units of Dryads. I don't really know how I'd update the list for bigger games, maybe 30 Dryads and two A-Rev or 20 Dryads and a TLA at 1500 points. It was an interesting experiment, and by far the most coherent Sylvaneth list I've played in a long time, even if it was "going full potato." We're trying to match schedules to have a 2v2 game, where I'm planning on playing a Winterleaf 3x30 Dryads, A-Rev and Branchwraith 1k list.

Since my local FLGS allows some use of their tables, provided everyone wears masks, I'm off to try out the following: Heartwood glade General Branchwraith 2x5 T-Revs 2x3 bow Hunters 2x3 sword Hunters My opponent is on an unknown IJ list. We'll be playing Shifting Objective on a 6x4 table for a change of pace, our usual 1k games have the battleplans modified to fit on a 4x4. If I have the time when I get home, I'll try to put together a blow-by-blow.

Yup. You can make your awakened wyldwood from 3 to 6 pieces. The tips have to touch, and it needs to be circular.

The new one has a few tricks, the kit has a small, a medium and a large piece. If you have multiple kits, you're free to mix and match the pieces for your 3-6, and that lets you play around with the size a lot. The smallest version fits a unit of ten dryads snugly.

@Nos You have put into words what I've struggled with. My main opponent is a strong player who I keep learning from, and while his experience with Sylvaneth is based on reading the tome and playing against me, he also views the army as being in a good spot, for the same reasons as you listed. While I keep losing against him, due to my own lack of mastery, every game hammers home a new part of the basics.

The 2019 FAQ had this: In a Pitched Battle, faction terrain must be set up more than 3" from any other terrain features and more than 1" from any objectives, in addition to any other restrictions that apply to it. Sometimes this will make it impossible for a faction terrain piece to be set up; in this case, it is not used.’ I've always taken it to mean to layer every restriction and use the worst, and I have a rules lawyer-y player in the group, so everything has to be "exactly by the rules or FAQ as written, damnit." I'd be very happy if you, or someone else could point me in the right direction. I've popped off an email to aosfaq, will see what comes from it, but my scouring of the internet hasn't turned up anything regarding Wyldwoods and Awakened Wyldwoods rules- or model-wise.

I would say no. Fleeing models are removed and count as slain. Essentially, the trigger (a model being slain) to choose to use the ability doesn't happen, and the slain status is applied retroactively. Similarly, "as though it were X phase" abilities do not work with buffs that apply in X phase, and I believe that the FEC chalice, which activates after battleshock, doesn't count models that fled.

@Aezeal @Mirage8112 Forgive me if I've missed something, but the new faction terrain rules are the same as GHB 2019 errata ones, including the line about additional restrictions applying. And how are you getting 3 woods? Sure, the terrain table has Wyldwoods, but our scenery is an Awakened Wyldwood. And if you mean by the Unique entry on the table, the GHB 2019 Designer's Commentary explicitly said not to use the warscroll and to generate a scenery effect when using faction terrain as Unique. I think I'll err on the side of caution until they clarify it either way.

@Popisdead Druanti is the name of the Arch-Revenant in Looncurse and the single model box. No actual named warscroll.

I know, the idea is that you have a backup in case one gets nuked off the table.

Has anyone tried how our old-school woods generation via TLA (I'm thinking bring two, and they can't slag both?) and the artefact? Giving us two extra non-magically sourced woods, although the risk is that you can't really keep them in reserve until later. I think we could pivot away from a magic-reliant build, without playing MSU 24 bow Hunters, if needed.

I argued for units of 10 before the new book, without Arch-Revenant or Winterleaf buffs, and this just makes it much better. I think that Tree-Revenants should be almost an auto-include in any list that can spare the points even if you're paying 70 points to have your opponent keep something back for five rounds. I've had an opponents keep 100-200 point units in their backline to keep me from stealing objectives or assassinating a hero and allowing me to leverage that difference elsewhere on the board.

My previous point was made comparing the regular TL to a minimum size unit of Hunters, as they are similar in output. Hunters drop almost a third in output per five wounds and require a unique spell to undo that drop, while the TL drops in output every other wound beside the first, doesn't drop roughly 20% per bracket (sorry, that's off the top of my head, I might run the numbers tomorrow unless someone else does) and we have multiple separate sources to restore wounds. There are other aspects that make this comparison lean toward one or the other, but it is something I've been throwing around locally for a while, and will try out at some point.

Taking 20-30 Tree-Revenants sounds like something I would do. And I think I'll try it out some time in the next few weeks and report back. They need someone or something that can keep them from running away in battleshock, but the hilarity should be worth it. I actually just today put in an order for a couple more boxes of hunters, planning on building them out with bows, because their MSU leans heavily into my playstyle of shenanigans and artillery. On the topic of fixing the book: I'm not even sure which way I'd lean. Having another KO (or was it fyreslayers?) 1.0 book would be bad, I still remember the ramblings that went on about having to tape all of the errata into the book. But I wouldn't say no to some functional errata. When they teased the endless spells, I was almost certain that was going to be our mobile wooden fortress of teleport-y bullcorn. Alas, no such thing. I haven't had enough 2k games to fully comment on what I feel could or should be changed, just that I don't think the above-casual level of play encourages the Sylvaneth playstyles. And our book has multiple things that are likely to cause a negative play experience in more casual games like Hunter spam, Dreadwood teleporting (any table-wide reposition, really, as it can feel like a huge gotcha) and our general capability to punish mistakes.

I'd say problems with Sylvaneth don't stem from our points, but rather a playstyle issue in the current tournament metagame, as well as feelbads from 1.0 days and people overcorrecting for past "sins" like covering the table in woods, congalines, hurricanum + hunters in old Gnarlroot, etc. Regular TL is basically a unit of hunters with a different dropoff and a different recovery mechanic. Tree-Revenants are already a valid (if narrow) choice. And I think TLA could stay the same but gain a second cast. We could do more with a few changes to some warscrolls than points changes.