In case it's not clear to anyone, my entry was the Enchanted Tree.
The criticisms of it seem to fall under two main headings: it doesn't follow established norms and it's too strong for its points. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I disagree on both counts
Technically, I agree with the first criticism. If this were nominated for the SoV, I'd vote against it.
Where I disagree is that this is a bad thing. This is not a custom that is designed to be added to the canon. I guess people can dislike non-canon-suitable customs, just as I have a dislike of the Uncommon Hero mechanic, but that strikes me as very limiting as a reason in itself.
I don't think anything is unclear or ambiguous. (I guess changing the name of the bonding, as someone suggested, might help clarity a little. "Nearby Feylund Hero Bonding"? "Limited Feylund Hero Bonding"? The "Strategic" qualifier that some cards use doesn't seem to fit well.)
On the second, I don't think people have thought through enough what you need to do to get any value from the tree beyond being an extra figure to take out at some point.
The bonding is much less potent a power than usual for a couple of reasons. First, the limit on the distance. You're not getting a 5pt commander because after the first activation of each hero you probably can't use them again with tree order markers unless you're deploying a forest. This costs more points and is also risky as it'll be relatively easy to cut a hero off from his bonding supply.
Second, it's effectively more like the Minions' "nonding": you can usually do little to nothing on a tree turn, so that's not a source of much value (unlike the typical bonders).
If you just draft 1 at 5pts, you're getting a bit of cover in the start zone for your endgame units, and some slight flexibility in initial deployment of your Feylund heroes, and then one more unit to (easily) destroy. That's not worth much. Even if it's worth, say, 10pts I don't think it's a game-breaking (or even better than a B on the power ranking) discrepancy.
I think the sweet spot for them is probably around seven of these. Beyond that, you might struggle to get them all on the board, but that's probably enough to have a solid base to direct your troops from.
I imagine there will be tension between extending the reach of the forest with putting them next to each other for a little defensive boost (and more reliable bonding in the vicinity).
The one worry I do have with playstyle is that they encourage/allow a turtling strategy: plant lots in your startzone and have Syvarris and Sonlen pinging away with, say, Brunak or Bram to whack figures that get too close. I don't think that this is a top tier army by any means though.
The build where they make the most difference might be the Elf Wizards. With Ulginesh they get extra reach on the activations and offer some insurance against an early assassination of him. Still, they're not as good as adding Raelin, and they work better at higher point totals (and they're, much as I've tried at various points to disprove this, a bit rubbish to start with), so I don't think there's anything to worry about.
Relatedly, I don't understand the concern about Tree x100 at 500pts. That would be a contender in worst army competitions. Taking lots of trees is not as bad as Iskra-without-Retchets or Hive-without-Marro, but it's worse than, say, Hatamoto-without-Samurai. To construct an army to lose against a pure forest, you need something that cannot reliably destroy two trees per round. So, single attackers with an attack of at most 3 are about as strong as you can get. A ton of Sahaugin Raiders? Deadeye Dan?
All of this is playtest-free theoryscaping. Maybe those saying it's undercosted are right. I'm hoping to give it a whirl and see how it plays out in a few games. If it is too cheap, I'm more inclined to rein the stats in further (drop defence one more, reduce the range on the bonding, maybe even require a roll for placement) than put it up to 10pts where I think forest armies will be completely out of the question.
Thanks to everyone who commented on it (even those of you who didn't like it and now look silly for being so utterly wrong
). I'm not sure what the workshopping will look like, but I'll definitely be adding this to my own custom thread and welcome further chat there, even if nothing else emerges.
And extra thanks to Dr. Goomonkey for running the competition. I've had a brilliant time from the moment I started thinking about powers until
Necroblade showed up the conclusion of the voting (and probably beyond if the workshopping happens).