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Debatable. I don't think so myself, Dryads are just so blah. Not all that great really. Same thing with tree kin. Although you can do something super fluffy with wild wood rangers themed stuff. Worth consideration.

 Unyielding Hunger wrote:
Just noticed that the Wood Elves finally got that update I have been wanting before I started Fantasy. So, here is my question; Can an all Forest Spirit army still be viable?

Yes, but you'll have no fortitude.

If all forrest spirit had been more viable I may have been tempted back into wood elves / fantasy before 9th edition hits next year... close call

The forest spirit army is decent. If you play it right you can with it. one problem is the subtle nerfs to the treeman. The ancient is decent, but I wish you didn't have to take life with it. Beasts would be great. the loss of a strength and wound is a big deal. Making it harder to survive cannons and to kill good armor saves. Another problem is dryads. I don't think they are as bad as the general consensus states, but they really need a musician, which they can't have.

One problem doesn't have to do with wood elves themselves, but there are a lot more armies that have access to cannons, or some other kind of flaming war machine. Which hurts pure forest spirit armies.

Treekin are still pretty mean, and now really cheap and easy to fit in to a list.

If you want to run trees, I would throw in a few units of glade guard with poison arrows and banners. They can fairly easily wipe up cannons. or use war hawks wild riders, or glade riders to get to them.

If you want a close combat army for wood elves, wild riders are the go to unit. 5 attacks per model with armor piercing and rerolls for most of the attacks... Yes please!

I think that ability to mix forest spirits with non-forest spirits shouldn't be over-looked.

A block of Wildwood Rangers, with an attached Branchwraith can give them a much needed 5+ regenerate with the lore of life signature spell.

Except for the difference in bases makes for a problem with ranking up.

danny1995 wrote:
Except for the difference in bases makes for a problem with ranking up.

You want the dryad in the corner anyway, to minimize the attacks she takes.

I thought the Branchwraith had to take Beasts Lore ?
Don't have the book yet, so I might be mistaken

Nope, branch wraiths can only take the lore of life.

 HawaiiMatt wrote:
I think that ability to mix forest spirits with non-forest spirits shouldn't be over-looked.

A block of Wildwood Rangers, with an attached Branchwraith can give them a much needed 5+ regenerate with the lore of life signature spell.

Hey, now that's a neat idea. I'd been glossing over the rangers since they felt really meh to me, but I'll keep that in the back of my mind.

 Evertras wrote:

 HawaiiMatt wrote:
I think that ability to mix forest spirits with non-forest spirits shouldn't be over-looked.

A block of Wildwood Rangers, with an attached Branchwraith can give them a much needed 5+ regenerate with the lore of life signature spell.

Hey, now that's a neat idea. I'd been glossing over the rangers since they felt really meh to me, but I'll keep that in the back of my mind.

Yeah, I really like the models and hope they can work somehow. @11 points, you can get a pretty good sized block for not too expensive. I wish they were S4 base though, S5 is just a little shy of awesome. ITP is ok, but not critical on an Ld9 unit. Mostly I like the idea of a ton of dudes with giant axes and a single tree nervously attached in the corner.

-Matt

TanKoL wrote:
I thought the Branchwraith had to take Beasts Lore ?
Don't have the book yet, so I might be mistaken

It's Durthu that takes Beast Lore. But the treeman ancient and the branchwraith only have Lore of Life.

Well, I'm excited to start buying and painting new models and trying this out! I definitely think that a mixture of Forest Spirits and non- makes sense, and the 5+ Regen signature spell buff idea is fantastic, so thanks for sharing that.

I just can't abandon my Glade Guard and shooting to go with an all-Trees army list though--it's too much a part of what the WE are to me.

HawaiiMatt wrote:I think that ability to mix forest spirits with non-forest spirits shouldn't be over-looked.

A block of Wildwood Rangers, with an attached Branchwraith can give them a much needed 5+ regenerate with the lore of life signature spell.

HawaiiMatt wrote:

 Evertras wrote:

 HawaiiMatt wrote:
I think that ability to mix forest spirits with non-forest spirits shouldn't be over-looked.

A block of Wildwood Rangers, with an attached Branchwraith can give them a much needed 5+ regenerate with the lore of life signature spell.

Hey, now that's a neat idea. I'd been glossing over the rangers since they felt really meh to me, but I'll keep that in the back of my mind.

Yeah, I really like the models and hope they can work somehow. @11 points, you can get a pretty good sized block for not too expensive. I wish they were S4 base though, S5 is just a little shy of awesome. ITP is ok, but not critical on an Ld9 unit. Mostly I like the idea of a ton of dudes with giant axes and a single tree nervously attached in the corner.

-Matt

I've been keen to run some WWRs - would the branchwraith or a shadowdancer be better for them? I suppose you could run a block of 15 or so as a response unit against any chargers to the main archer bunker? Or would they work in smaller units alone?

What do you do with bases when mixing in models with different base sizes?

 Daba wrote:
What do you do with bases when mixing in models with different base sizes?

They tag along on the side.

Only when they don't fit "correctly"
40x40 fits within 20x20
25x25 doesn't
The "characters joining units" covers this question in the BRB

Just wanted to say i had a great first game with my Wood Elves today vs Warriors of Chaos that really show cased certain units. Waywatchers for example where utterly invaluable, i had 2 units of 10 and my god did they mulch through the usually invulnerable Chaos Knights before plinking a few wounds off of the Juggernaughts. First turn each unit of 10 fired at 2 separate units of 6 knights, knocking 3 and 4 down first turn. The look on the Chaos players face was so sweet as he eyed the Waywatchers with something between fear and loathing.

The second unit which really proved their worth where Wild Riders, i took a unit of 8 and threw them straight forward. Second turn they ploughed into a 14 man level 2 warrior bunker. I reformed to fit everyone in and picked up my dice, the WOC asked what my stats where, he asked me to check again

So, 24 Ws 5 Re-rolling Str 5 Armour Piercing attacks later he only had 5 men left, he killed off 2 WR but then the Deer killed off another 2 guys (we played them as benefiting from Frenzy) and he ran away like a girl to get run down. They then later charge into the rear of the Juggernaught combat with my Dryads where 2 and a half Blood Crushers where wailing on some Dryads. 18 Ws 5 Str 5 Armour Piercing attacks killed off all but 1 (doing 4 wounds) and forcing the check on Ld 4, he ran away like a girl.

I must say that my new found fire power is very much to my liking! Those Wild Riders hit like a ton of bricks!

sounds like you had a hell of a game!! the one thing that i would comment on is that i dont believe the frenzy would confer to the mount. PLEASE take this for what its worth as i dont have my BrB on me right now. but i remember something about Jugs not getting frenzy except for when they have the frenzy banner. but i could be talking out my ass.... in fact most likely talking out my ass.

Well the Jugger's probably should get it, but for them just the riders do. But for the Wild Riders the entire model has Frenzy, not just the Rider, so i assume it would effect both.

Believe me, you do not want to be in the way of a very angry stag!

LMAO, Ya regardless of rules, the Wild Riders are a wicked cool model!!!

So it sounds like they should have brought out a new plastic kit for waywatchers. Because running 2 squads of 10 sounds awesome, but at 3 for $18, that would cost me about $120!!

Or I can just run my glade guard as waywatchers.

I have some real Waywatchers and some Glade Guard (But only the ones with the Hoods!) and mix them all in together. This way i can split of the real Waywatchers to be Waystalkers as they would look different from my normal Waywatchers

Waywatchers are definitely this books must have unit, ignoring Armour saves is crazy!

So i bought the "Hobbit" wood elf models. Box of 10 models with 9 differant posses. all for 40 bucks. Ya they are a TINY bit smaller but because they are scouting it wont be to bad. I also am building up the bases so they sit at the same if not higher level.

 Icculus wrote:
So it sounds like they should have brought out a new plastic kit for waywatchers. Because running 2 squads of 10 sounds awesome, but at 3 for $18, that would cost me about $120!!

Or I can just run my glade guard as waywatchers.

Is there not more kits to be released over the course of this month? Would make sense for GW to put out a new kit for such a good unit. If not, I'm sure a conversion wouldn't be too hard to do.

 The Shadow wrote:

 Icculus wrote:
So it sounds like they should have brought out a new plastic kit for waywatchers. Because running 2 squads of 10 sounds awesome, but at 3 for $18, that would cost me about $120!!

Or I can just run my glade guard as waywatchers.

Is there not more kits to be released over the course of this month? Would make sense for GW to put out a new kit for such a good unit. If not, I'm sure a conversion wouldn't be too hard to do.

Mine are gonna be shadow warrior torsos, Glade Guard longbows, and Dark Rider masked heads.

Hmm, I may have to do some Dark Elf kit-bashing as well. That seems like the smarter way to go.

 Puddle_Pirate wrote:
So i bought the "Hobbit" wood elf models. Box of 10 models with 9 differant posses. all for 40 bucks. Ya they are a TINY bit smaller but because they are scouting it wont be to bad. I also am building up the bases so they sit at the same if not higher level.

Nice idea! They're made by GW/Citadel too, so they would probably be fine to use in a tournament.

I have tooled up some Glad Guard with extra hand weapons to serve the purpose, but it sounds like I too, may need to bulk up on this unit.

Thanks for the battle report, Awesome Alex! I've got 5 old metal Wild Riders; I wonder if I can mix them into a unit of the new ones...probably, but they just won't look as cool.

Nice idea! They're made by GW/Citadel too, so they would probably be fine to use in a tournament.

GW doesn't host tournaments anymore, and I don't see any TO refusing any miniature as long as it's not confusing for your opponent
An elf bowman is an elf bowman

 ALEXisAWESOME wrote:
Waywatchers are definitely this books must have unit, ignoring Armour saves is crazy!

They really, really are! And it really, really is! The big thing is that they are really, really versatile.

Against small elite heavily armored blocks, you just ignore armor saves.
Against big lightly armored blocks, you get Multiple Shots(2) and plink out double the BS5 (or more with Hand of Glory!) shooting. Crazy useful.

--

I'm normally a skaven/beastmen player, and looking over this book is downright terrifying. Couple thoughts:

The Acorn that gives forests is the entire magic allotment for a Lord choice. My thought for best spot, is on a High Magic Spellweaver. The lore attribute starts granting him protection counters to make up for his complete lack of defense or save of any kind, where a lord would be left FAR more vulnerable.

OTOH, Lore of Dark Magic makes skaven players cry. I don't want to think of how many spells I'll have to let through, just to be sure I have dispel dice for Shroud of Dispair; thankfully it has a short range. Bladewind will wipe out an average of 22 slaves (say, 50 slaves. 2/3 will fail the WS2 check, and 2/3 will be wounded by the spell); for a 9+ cast. For actually good units instead of tarpits, Word of Pain drops WS by d3, and Bladewind is naturally Armor Piercing.

Glade Captain w/ Moonstone of the Hidden Ways and Hagbane Tips - 118
14 Glade Guard w/ Hagbane Tips - 210

Small footprint unit that can pop from forest to forest shooting poisoned arrows at Warmchines, Monsters and other small unsupported blocks. By the time most enemies turn around, you can just leave again. You could go with a smaller 10 elf glade guard unit, but I wanted to take full advantage of the extra ranks from being in a wood.

Treemen are a pretty decent monster for their cost. Tough, decent saves, with good LD + stubborn. Ancients lose out a little bit in stats, but make for one tough Level 2 life mage if you want. When Beastmen are redone, I hope our monsters are on this level.

As for magic arrows, Arcane Bodkins are really nice with the -3 to armor saves, but I would probably run Hagbane or Trueflight, myself. Massed poisoned attacks are nasty and make up for S3 shooting. Trueflight lets you hit with your BS4 all the time. Outside half range? Stand and shoot? Target in hard cover? Nope, still hitting on 3s...

Looks like a fun book. If I ever started a Force of Order, Wood Elves would be my go to.