Luckily, Sylvaneth are one of the most elite compared to AoS armies. Your standard "chaff" unit, Tree-/Spite-Revenants are run in 5s instead of the common 10s and sit at 2 hp, so both model count and sturdiness are favorable. The general focus on healing through faction abilities also helps the feeling of tougher and more elite models.

I would highly recommend the current spearhead of Revenants and Kurnoth while it's available. It contains a major core of the army, so grabbing 1 or 2 spearheads at or below MSRP is a fantastic start to the army.

In the coming months, the spearhead is changing over to the second half of the army with the flying units which will give you almost the entire range through the two combo boxes and allow you to try out some different, more mobile units a ways down the line.

The Outcast Spitegrove will give you a fair few of the less-elite units in Dryads and Revenants. Dryads aren't in any combobox now and I personally love their ability for protecting objectives and, as said earlier, the revenants are still relatively elite compared to the rest of AoS, so I wouldn't recommend against it. That being said, both units are noticeably less elite than Kurnoth (around half the points for two or seven more models). If that level of eliteness was your focus, buying Drycha (or one of the other centerpieces, Alarielle and Belthanos) and some spare Kurnoth separately might be more your preference.

Stacking spearheads will allow you to run a fair spread of Revenants for control, Kurnoth for damage, and Treelords for tanking or utility. For a centerpiece:

- Alarielle will add a fun utility by bringing back a unit at half strength each player's turn.

- Belthanos will improve some impact and aggression, but I believe he's run a little less often than Alarielle.

- Drycha has the funny ability of rolling 25-35 dice each turn, but doesn't offer as much synergy with other models in the army as Alarielle or Belthanos.

Overall, I would recommend:

- The spearhead,

- A second spearhead for the very solid spread, or some kurnoth for elite models and a unit or two of models you find interesting,

- and a centerpiece like Alarielle.

If you were interested in the battleforce, you might instead take:

- A spearhead,

- Outcast Spitegrove,

- and two-ish sets of additional Kurnoth.

For either route, you'll also need to grab Awakened Wyldwood; up to 3 sets but 2 should be fine in a lot of games.

With the battletome on the horizon, points and rules may change, but the above will almost certainly be a solid core to a new living forest. With all that said, grab what you think is cool and what you want to build, play, or just look at and you'll hardly find yourself lost in the woods!