Total theory right now, but I think it has legs. So I wanted to make summoning great again under the current rules. I do not think the FAQ will allow slann to sack multiple spells. The way it is written clearly indicates that they want you to have to take the Oracle with the slann and astrith bearer as a penalty to summon. Sucks but thems the breaks. So to solve this issue we look to our new allies the sylvaneth! We are going to take a treelord ancient and a branchwraith! The ancient uses his once per game ability to summon a wildwood for us. Then the branchwraith can use the woods to grow new dryads every turn! This will make up the difference in our slower summoning I think, as well as bring two more dispels and a decent model in the ancient. To power this summoning engine we are going to use the slann’s spell celestial equilibrium to buff all our spells. Thanks to the astrolith bearer and the ancient knowledge trait being DT grants us, this spell should go off every turn. Best part is, the spell isn’t keyworded to Seraphon so it will be buffing all our wizards, even the sylvaneth ones! Makes the dryad summoning super reliable! Now this is a lot of points and summoning doesn’t allow us a lot of expensive units, so we are going to consolidate this strategy with a Dread Sauruan! The dread isn’t the deadliest beast(realitively speaking, he’s still deadly), but it is super tanky, and we have extra wizards to make sure he gets buffed every turn with arcane shields. While the opponent is trying to deal with our dread, it should buy us the time we need to refill our board with so much stuff the opponent can’t deal with it all. Rounding out the list are some utility endless spells to help fight through hordes and even the odds. Balewind is always handy to have on our slann, and bound geminids and bound purple sun will really mess with our opponent and help funnel them into our dread the way we want them too. And now the list Starborne Dracothian’s Tail Constellation Slann- General, Ancient knowledge, Celestial Equilibrium, Stellar Tempest 260 Skink Starseer- Tide of Serpents 140 Astrolith Bearer- 140 Skink Oracle- Godbeast Pendant, Bind Endless Spell 260 Treelord Ancient 260 Branchwraith 80 3x Skinks-Boltspitters with Daggers and shields 180 Dread Saurian 510 Balewind Vortex 40 Bound Geminids 70 Bound Purple Sun 60 2000/2000 340/400 Allies. Edit. Forgot to list the astrolith bearer but it was already accounted for in the points total.
I like it!. I currently have plans to make a Jungle Themed Drycha, Treelord Ancient, Branchwraith, and 30 dryads. They seem somewhere between viable and cheeky as allies.
if they make our realmscape engine actually usable, using the ancient to create a big forest in the middle of the board to shoot every turn would be very viable. Take a knight heralder and kroak as well to make the amount of mortals every turn obscene.
Got a practice game in against a friends Stormcast. It did pretty good actually! The dryad engine got going and ended up summoning 40 extra dryads over the game. The dread was amazing and did his job of tying up the enemy amazingly. Ended up with about 40 summoning points over the game, which I pretty much used to summon skinks everyturn to flood objectives. Wish I had a bit more punch to just one shot units but the mortal wound grind through all the spells got me there.
Being starborne and not having access to scaley skin and the shoot twice granted by thunderquake would really hurt them I feel. They aren’t the re-rolling wounds and saves monsters they used to be and actually die pretty easy in starborne. Dread hits hard even though it’s not many attacks, has built in protection against spells, and can be buffed to a 2+ against shooting. I like that more for this list and what I want him to do. Mainly go out kill a bunch of stuff and take about 3 turns to die actually after thinking about it that’s not a bad idea. I’m going to change the starpriest to a starseer since I have the extra 20 points. This will make command point generation easier and give me the control fares ability to buff the dread to a 2+ against missiles.