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Hi everyone!

I have never played a game of AOS, but a friend of mine who used to be into WHFB is keen to have a game. Over the past few months, I've accumulated a few miniatures, mainly Sylvaneth and wood elves (are they called wanderers now? Is that right?) This is what I have:

The Start Collecting Sylvaneth box, which consists of a Treelord, 16 Dryads, and a Branchwych.
Another Treelord, which I'm making into a Treelord Ancient
A Spellweaver
5 Sisters of the Thorn

I also have two Great Eagles, but I'm not sure if I can use them. They appear in the Wood Elf war scroll I downloaded from the GW website, but I can't find them in the battlescribe app when I was trying to determine points values.

I've downloaded the rules and all the warscrolls. Are these still relevant, or have they changed?

Is there anything else I need? Do I need the Generals Handbook? What about the Sylvaneth book? I keep reading people mentioning a Sylvaneth Wyldwood or something. I don't know what that is. Is it terrain? A unit? Is it something I would have to buy? Does it have a points value, like a 40K fortification?

What units would be good for my army? I like the look of those blue elves that are trees from the waist down. Are they good? I don't think I can afford that woman who rides around on a beetle, or the one with the honeycomb shoulderpads at the moment, particularly if I'm going to have to buy books.

One final question - what's up with Dryads? In all the points values things I can find, they are listed in batches of 10 - 120 points for 10. And yet you can only buy the models in boxes of 16. What's going on with that? You'd have to buy 5 boxes to get a round number. I may have answered my own question there...

Sorry about all the questions. I hope you guys can help me out a bit.

I can only answer some of your questions but here goes:

Wood elves are called wanderers now, or at least will be when GW get round to updating them.

I cant get the battlescribe app as I don't have an iphone. My other half has wood elves, and we intend for her to use a couple of great eagles. I think the points are in the GHB, but my copy is way over the other side of the house (!) so dont have it too hand. If no one else pops up with them, I will grab the book and check the points for you in a bit.

You dont *need* the GHB, but its a rather nifty little book and gives you the rules and ideas for playing in the three 'gw' sanctioned ways, as well as points for almost everything, including the outdated/OOP/older stuff like wood elves.

So why you dont *need* the book to play, I think it will become pretty much the standard way to play with strangers or at a GW or at a tournament. The only time I see you not really wanting to use the GHB is if you have a very regular group or friend, and you run your own no points games, even then its packed with info for narrative play.

You can pick a copy up for about £11 online, and I Think its worth the money in the long run, as it contains a lot of information for how ever you like to play (I assume you like points, as per your other questions, so the GHB would be great for you)

You dont *NEED* the Sylvaneth book, but if you like the art/fluff/miniatures/rules enough then it might be worth grabbing. I've not seen that book yet, but it really depends on how 'into' them you are.

The Sylvaneth Wyldwood is a set of three of the citadel woods terrain. I believe they grant you extra rules, but not having read the book I couldn't tell you what they are.

You dont need the books over miniatures, but depending on your group, they may want you to use the GHB. Sounds like you already have models so you could start out using what you have, grab the books now, and add the new stuff later. I'm more a modeller than a gamer, so I tend to buy models before books, but it depends on your gaming style.

You are correct about the dryads. You pay for the full ten no matter how many you are short, so that one box of 16 will cost the same as 20 (in points) *The conspiracist in me supports the idea that yes, this is why GW did this, to sell more minis* but really, its not an issue to me, at home we wont play with points, and if we did the 'left over models' just go to the supply's for converting any way.

Great eagles are 60 points each and I believe you can have up to 3 in the same unit.

Thanks for the help, guys. I picked up the GHB from my local GW, and it does look like a great book. I like the idea of the warband campaigns. It reminds me of something similar from the old Realm of Chaos books.

I've downloaded all the warscrolls from GW, but I still don't have rules for some units. I bought some Sigmarines second hand, but I can't use them. I guess the rules for them must be in the box-set. No real loss, I bought them to paint rather than anything else.

It's good to know I can use the Great Eagles. I might not be able to use them, actually, as they belong to my wife! I bought and painted them for her birthday, so she might object to me throwing them into battle!

I've found out about the wildwood, and basically it's a bit of scenery that gives various benefits to the Sylvaneth, but I think I need to have a 100% Sylvaneth army to summon them. You also need three large citadel forests to make a wildwood! £54 worth!

Regarding Battlescribe, you don't need an iPhone to use it. It's on Android, and there's a desktop version. It's more useful for WH40K, as it will let you know if you've got a legal army, and if you print it out it includes all the unit's rules and stats. I've been taking a printout from there whenever I play 40K, as it has all the information I need right there.

Once more, thanks for the help!

The best thing for getting the rules is the app. Confusingly the miniatures you have are now spread across 3 factions - Wanderers, Sylvaneth and Wood Elves. In the app you'll be able to find the rules for each under those factions. You'll also be able to find the Stormcast rules in the app - there are no unit warscrolls that aren't free in AoS.

If you don't want to use the app then it is a bit tricky to find the rules, you'll have to navigate to each unit on the Webstore and click the rules link to download a PDF with their warscroll on.

As mentioned above, your miniatures fall under 3 factions, but that's fine because they are all "Order" miniatures and in Matched Play you can freely mix units from across factions so long as they are part of the same Grand Alliance.

I would really recommend the GHB and I would say it's the only book you need to get started. The other campaign books are specifically for Narrative play, and the battletomes are a must only if you are interested in a particular faction.

I would get the GHB and play some games! :-)

Thanks Bottle, that's really helpful as well. I didn't even know there was an app! I should have thought to look for it, really.

It's pretty great that all the warscrolls are free. I thought it was just the old traditional factions' ones that you could download from the website.

Just for your helpful advice, I'm going to vote for you in the painting thread! (Only joking, I was going to vote for you anyway, I really like your Genestealer.)

Edit - in the app, it sometimes wants me to purchase things before I can view the warscroll. What's up with that?

 feltmonkey wrote:
Thanks Bottle, that's really helpful as well. I didn't even know there was an app! I should have thought to look for it, really.

It's pretty great that all the warscrolls are free. I thought it was just the old traditional factions' ones that you could download from the website.

Just for your helpful advice, I'm going to vote for you in the painting thread! (Only joking, I was going to vote for you anyway, I really like your Genestealer.)

Edit - in the app, it sometimes wants me to purchase things before I can view the warscroll. What's up with that?

Some content is an optional, and paid, for extra. So things like battalions, battle plans, Times of War are optional add-ons to the core rules that are paid for. If you want them, then buy them, otherwise don't worry as you certainly don't need them to play. Most of them are also available in the story line books (so, all the Realm Gates wars books include new optional add ons). Additionally the battletomes contain similar optional extras but a bit more focused.

 feltmonkey wrote:
...You also need three large citadel forests to make a wildwood! £54 worth!

You actually don't need to have 3 forests, as per the warscroll: https://www.games-workshop.com/resources/PDF/AoS_Warscrolls//aos-warscroll-syvaneth-wyldwood-en.pdf

The warscroll states that you can make your wyldwood with up to 3 forests, so you can just use one or two.

 feltmonkey wrote:
Thanks for the help, guys. I picked up the GHB from my local GW, and it does look like a great book. I like the idea of the warband campaigns. It reminds me of something similar from the old Realm of Chaos books.

I've downloaded all the warscrolls from GW, but I still don't have rules for some units. I bought some Sigmarines second hand, but I can't use them. I guess the rules for them must be in the box-set. No real loss, I bought them to paint rather than anything else.

It's good to know I can use the Great Eagles. I might not be able to use them, actually, as they belong to my wife! I bought and painted them for her birthday, so she might object to me throwing them into battle!

I've found out about the wildwood, and basically it's a bit of scenery that gives various benefits to the Sylvaneth, but I think I need to have a 100% Sylvaneth army to summon them. You also need three large citadel forests to make a wildwood! £54 worth!

Regarding Battlescribe, you don't need an iPhone to use it. It's on Android, and there's a desktop version. It's more useful for WH40K, as it will let you know if you've got a legal army, and if you print it out it includes all the unit's rules and stats. I've been taking a printout from there whenever I play 40K, as it has all the information I need right there.

Once more, thanks for the help!

Thats my bad, I read battlescribe but I took it that you meant the 'official' GW AoS app which I cant use on my windows phone. If I had read your first post properly I'd realised that you meant battlescribe!

Again, you can pick up the GW forest quite cheap in discount stores online. But even cheaper is too make your own. I picked several of the fibre optic christmas trees from poundland when I was still living in the uk. Add one poundland picture frame. Pull the optics apart from the tree, and use the back of the picture frame as a base. I traced around the the GW forest base to get an similar size/shape but cut it slightly wonky to give it some variation. Popped the trees on in almost the the same spacing., and you have a piece of wood terrain for £4. I jazzed it up a little with some the old warhammer resin basing bits that I have had no use for for ages and I think it looks pretty good. Its helpful that I have all winter themed armies. Otherwise you would need to get rid of the snow of the poundland trees and add some flock of your own to them.

Yeah the great eagles and wood elves of 'mine' are also my other halfs. As she doesn't paint or model it does mean I can double my purchase and modelling supplies, with out eating in to my hobby funds!