Hey there, So myself and my friend will be squaring off against each other at some point in a 1000 point tournament at our local store. He plays Sylvaneth and I play Seraphon. My list is: HEROS 1x Skink Starpriest w/ cor shield UNITS 20x Skinks 10xSkinks 6x Ripperdactlys BEHEMOTH 1x Bastilodon BATTALION Shadowstrike Starhost His list: HEROS 1x Spirit of Durthu 1x Branchwych 1x Branchwraith UNITS 10x Dryads 10x Tree Revenants 3x Kurnoth Hunters w/bows I've beaten him with those exact lists once before but he only had access to one Wildwood. Any general tips for going up against Sylvaneth would be greatly appreciated!
Pray to the dicegods your rippers get to swoop down onto something valuable. Support them with the bastilidon to Ensure whatever they target is properly dead. Hope you can capture some objectives before you get horribly murdered. Other than that, this matchup is going be rather painfull (unless you're a considerably better player). At a 1000 points you can't really field the synergies that you need, and you're going to have considerable trouble trying to kill durthu or his kurnoth hunters, while those two can easily murder your entire army on their own. As a general tactic your best shot is probably to try and kill the kurnoths hunters if you ever get the chance, simply cuz you need to get rid of their shooting, ignore durthu as much as possible, only throwing skinks in his way to slow him down but never actually try to fight him. Then damage the other stuff as much as possible, to try and deny him the oppertunity to score objectives (getting objectives when all he has left is durthu is gonna be difficult..) Also, try to take out the branchwraith as early as possible to stop her from summoning reinforcements. Also, you may wanne switch out the coronal shield, your starpriest shouldn't really get close enough to enemies to make consisten use of it. Sidenote; why in the world does durthu's groundshaking stomp work against flying units as well as stuff like a bastiladon, that's just silly...
How I beat him last time was by LoSaTing my Basti into range of his revenants and demolishing them in the turn one shooting phase, followed up by tying his units up with the Basti and dropping my rippers from the sky on his kurnoths. All that went well I won a turn three victory as there are only two objectives one deep in each of our territories and you win if you hold both by turn 3 or on turn . Thanks for the tips though I know for certain he won't makes the same mistakes as last time but I'll target his wraith asap. Considering his list is there any other artefact you recommend taking? I don't plan on ever engage durthu if I can an avoid it haha.
Also remember that you can’t shoot through the woods - so if possible stay away (mostly because Dorthu and co can port to them (and gain bonuses) so keep him having to move around - remember that the dryads also have 2x attacks each and a 2” reach - so most of the unit will be able to attack at once - again keep them penned in (bottle necked) if possible so they only scratch at you rather than chuck 20+ dice your way. Soul snare shackles are pretty good for this if you can squeeze in 20 points, they hold a fair radius that can block/damage and slow them down even more - whack them near objectives on their side or as a blocker for them coming out of their magic trees. Or failing that - prismatic palisade is a great way of needing their hunters long ass range or again blocking a treeline
If you only play with our artifacts take either the prism of Amyntok, the light of dracothion, or the incandescent retrices on our skink heroes on foot, though none of our artifacts are especially impressive. If you use realm artifacts then the feather that gives -1 to being hit from ranged is a good one to protect the starpriest from being sniped by his hunters.