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Hey!

I'm possibly starting an AoS army soon, and I'm torn between Sylvaneth and Ossiarch Bonereapers.

I love undead in general, but the nature vibe of Sylvaneth is also appealing. I know nothing about AoS rules at this point, but I play Necrons and Slaanesh in 40k.

How would you describe the playstyles of Ossiarch vs Sylvaneth?

Thanks in advance!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
(I prefer complex tactics by the way.)

Ossiarchs are basically kind of like an oil tanker.

They don't have as fast an army nor quite as many native speed boosts. They do hit hard and they are tough to kill with some healing elements as well and a good number of synergies.

They are the kind of army that is going to win more so when they go into a battle with a good plan ahead and aim for those objectives even if they might start out losing as they don't cover board as fast, they will often win out in the end.

The challenge is that they are not as reactive as some other forces. They are also an elite style army so they are not fielding vast numbers of models to cover the board.

One plus is that with they way they are priced in points VS cash they are actually one of the cheaper armies to collect into.

Personal tastes vary but one of my biggest mistakes in AOS was starting sylvaneth army. The playstyle doesn't appeal at all to me.

Basically it's either MW bomb from afar aiming to do magically MW's by the bucketload. Opponent has no real interaction. Just has to hope he can survive it.

Or it's teleport, charge, kill unit, teleport away, opponent doesn't get to interact.

Results been good for me but it's pretty damn boring as opponent can't do any interaction.

Feels like sylvaneth play different game entirely to others.

Not saying they are unbeatable but their whole stick seems to be remove opponent's interaction to the game.

My most boring games of AOS has been with and against sylvaneth. Even 40k necrons in 10th been more fun and that's against army that practically refuses to die...

YMMV of course but I would recommend bonereapers to start with. They don't seem to be doing bad and at least I have had fun playing vs them as they let opponents do stuff rather than just aim to deny any action.

Ahhh, okay.

Bonereapers might be the way to go, then.

Hecate wrote:
Ahhh, okay.

Bonereapers might be the way to go, then.

That's it? TWO people reply & that's what you base a several hundred dollar decision on?

Why don't you do yourself a favor and do actual research on the game & the two forces that caught your eye?
You can read all the rules - for the game and the armies - on Whahapedia.

I said *might* be the way to go. I haven't spent any money yet.

My friend has the game rules. They're the reason I might be doing AoS. Once we play a game, presumably using Daemons (in 40k, I have Slaanesh and they have Tzeentch), I'll get a feel for the differences between 40k and AoS.

Then, and only then, will I do proper research on the 2 armies I'm considering.

This thread was in the hopes that I'd get a feel for play *style*, to help make that decision.

As I said - I haven't spent any money yet.

Based purely on the minis, I'd go Sylvaneth. And I don't want to read the Wahapedia army rules until I've played at least 1 game (Daemons).

Sylvaneth, as an army that's at least somewhat tangentially related to elves, generally get to enjoy a large quantity of the seething hatred and complaints that everyone reserves for elves in general and Tneva highlights above.

They do have some mechanics that remove an opponent's ability to swing at them - once per turn instead of moving they get to teleport a unit (from a limited area of the board, to a limited area of the board) and they also have a selection of units that natively teleport. They also, once per turn, get to teleport a unit away after it swings.

...In exchange for that, Sylvaneth pay extreme points costs on a lot of their units for what they objectively do. If you as an opponent manage to nail down an Sylvaneth opponent it is quite easy to whack 1/3 of their army with 1 decent swing. Sylvaneth currently have something absurd like a 41% winrate in competitive play. They are not regarded as overpowered at all. On release when all their abilities were brand new they hit the meta with about a 55% wr or so, when they were playing a completely different ballgame to everyone else. Generally speaking youll be paying about 1.5x-2x the points cost for a sylvaneth unit comparative to what other units in other armies do, with the exception of the really light token units like Dryads and Spite-Revenants, where their theoretical ability to do stuff like teleport towards or away from the enemy is basically fully offset by the fact that in practical reality you never will choose to burn that ability you get to use 1 time on a teeny tiny 80pt 5-model light infantry unit.

At this point I've just kind of accepted that any mechanic in any game that requires any kind of different approach to play against it than "walk your stuff forward and punch it exactly the same as you approach every other opponent" is going to get labelled as "bs" despite any and all evidence to the contrary, and generally any game developer is going to be incentivized to keep those factions or units underpowered just to please the people that like to complain.

The Sylvaneth army playstyle is a combination of 'hit and run' and 'area control' where you get to do the hitting and running within the designated advantage areas of the forests and the Overgrown terrain features. I wouldnt describe it as 'glass cannon' as much as 'artificial eliteness' because their stuff is not particularly hard hitting and it's also not particularly glass, it just feels glass because you just arent working with many models on the board.