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This is a two-part question, as one leads to another. I am building a Sylvaneth force and I am looking at the next direction to expand my collection:

1. I already have have two Branchwyches. In order to get another Treelord Ancient and the need for always-more-dryads, I thought about buying another Start Collecting box set of them, but it comes with another Branchwych. Without the Branchwych, it is still cheaper to buy the box set instead of the dryads and treelord separately. But could I, would I, ever get use out of a third Branchwych?

2. IIRC, no two wizards in your army can cast the same spell in the same turn. Does that not put a limit in the number of wizards that you can have that would be useful, even if you played a apocalypse-style 5K point game?

1.
I wouldnt have thought so. Maybe try kitbashing it into a Branchwraith?

2.
Yes, basically! Bare in mind the game is designed around up to 2k, and it really does break down a bit much beyond that. If you were wanting to do some sort of Sigmar apocalypse game, I'd suggest talking to your opponent about house rules around this sort of thing. Apocalypse sized battles tend to be a more causal "for fun" affair anyway, and less ruthlessly competitive!

Bare in mind that each Wizard type usually has a unique spell on their warscroll, which will help you. If you run an army that has 3 kinds of Wizards and a lore of 6 spells that means you could potentially cast 11 spells without duplicates! (Including Arcane Bolt and Mystic Shield).

1 - As Stux said, kitbash with dryad bits to make a branchwraith. One branchwraith is auto-take for every Sylvaneth army; it's an 80-point model with a warscroll spell to summon 100-point units.

2 - Technically yes, in reality no. In practice the number of different spells you have access to exceeds the number of wizards you can take. To use Sylvaneth as an example...

For starters every wizard has arcane bolt, mystic shield, verdant blessing, and its own warscroll spell. Not counting special characters that is one each for the Ancient, 'Wych, and 'Wraith, so 6 spells total. At 2000 points you only have 6 character slots. Even if you did spam just one of those options, you would still have...

One spell from the Lore of the Deepwood for each wizard. Now the chances that all six spells will be useful in a given turn are basically nil, but unless things are going exceedingly well for you and you have no damaged units it is reasonable to expect 2-3 of them are going to be realistic cast options.

Put together it means that in a practical sense you will have at least 6 different useful spells to cast for the bulk of every game. (Turn one perhaps not, but then most units do not achieve much first turn anyways.) A 2000-point list must be heavily invested into magic to be casting that much in the first place. Endless spells will also dig into casting from summoning your own and/or dispelling enemy ones.

This is assuming that there is a house rule in place not to use realm spells which adds seven additional options for every wizard. Given the commonality of such a house rule this is not an unreasonable assumption, but it is important to note that realm rules are part of the core game and what rules are written around.

1 - As Stux said, kitbash with dryad bits to make a branchwraith. One branchwraith is auto-take for every Sylvaneth army; it's an 80-point model with a warscroll spell to summon 100-point units.

I do have one Branchwraith already, but I have heard that dryad-spam builds take two, in case one gets killed. Can you show me an example of a kitbashed Branchwraith from a Branchwych? I'm trying to figure out what dryad parts would make it look passably like a branchwraith.

First things first leave the insect-spite off, then the important distinguishing factor to replace is the scythe. I would cut the arms off at the shoulders and replace them with dryad arms you like the look of.

I don't have my own example to show, but really all it takes is to replace the Scythe hands with claws. What I did was cut the Branchwych arms off at the elbows, and attach the wood-claw arms from the Tree/Spite Revenant Kit. The Tree/Spite Kit comes with a lot of extra claw bits of all different sort, no matter how you build them.

Then, to make it stand out a little more, I made it live up to it's Wraith name a bit, and painted parts of its claws and a good chunk of it's face and horns to look like a ghostly, spectral blue colour.

I accidentally ended up with about 6 Branchwyches!

I have started a conversion into a Branchwraith if you’re interested? It uses some bits and a couple of dryad branches. There is a photo on my blog at www.mirror-of-minds.com or I think there’s one on my Instagram too. Link should be in my signature.

 Bhazakhain wrote:
I accidentally ended up with about 6 Branchwyches!

I have started a conversion into a Branchwraith if you’re interested? It uses some bits and a couple of dryad branches. There is a photo on my blog at www.mirror-of-minds.com or I think there’s one on my Instagram too. Link should be in my signature.

That's some nice stuff in general, I love the Eldar tanks.

I hope you don't mind be basically taking that idea