Sylvan Covenant

Base mechanics:
Wood elves have no regular worker units.
Instead, they use Druids and Treants to gather resources and build new structures.

Essenece of Life:
Druids can perform Druidic Evocation to generate Life Essence - A third racial resource.
They can use said Life Essence to summon Wisps, Treants and other Spirits of nature.

Wisps are summoned creatures who automatically harvest lumber and extract gold from gold mines.
There is a limit of two wisps per druid.

Seed of Life:
Treants are slow and sturdy frontline melee units.
They have an ability to take root and grow into Wood elf buildings.
You need Life Essence to build structures - Treants cannot grow without it.

Is that a recolored texture for the tree of life?

@stein123 It is!
I was surprised a simple hue shift could result in such a natural color.

It really does, looks really good!

Oh wow, these textures are looking sweet so far

I'm definitely curious to see what develops of this next, maybe we'll get to see them fleshed out in the next contest?

@Wazzz Thanks!

I already begun working on them, and the contest rules specify that "Submissions may not begin development before the contest start date".

Ah, in part that's a shame, but in other parts it means it might get done sooner, so now I just don't know how to feel about that

@Wazzz It will get done anyways

Right now I am contemplating whether I should start using more modern code or stick to the things that I am more confident with.
I am coding everything in GUI, but I might as well start learning Lua for the custom UIs. The new Damage Engine is out, but I am still using the old one. (mainly because I can't import the new vesrion without my editor crashing.)

Modernizing my tools might (or might not) increase the quality of the end project, but it will also increase the development time significantly.

As an alternative, I might develop it on an older patch so it is playable in both classic and reforged. That way I won't have to worry about me not making use of the new Editor features.

I've actually seen custom UIs done well by Tasyen in JASS, too.

I think it's definitely going to be a tough choice for you - there's virtues to both. Going for more modern tools could potentially give you greater options (I am of the understanding LUA has some very desirable traits, although I've never used it myself), while going for what you're more familiar with would likely yield more consistent results.

Either way, I'm going to do my best to play what comes out I think

@Wazzz Thanks! I am glad to hear that.