I'm getting the same starting vanilla problem reported earlier. Poking about a bit it seems to me that it doesn't fully extract everything from the pack archive, as several files were missing from the installation directory. I didn't check everything, but I did notice that everything after ThaumicTinkerer wasn't there. It doesn't appear to be a problem with the archive the launcher downloads; it is slightly (~150kbyte) larger than the download you posted earlier and appears to contain everything needed (including the missing mod files). I haven't done a file-by-file comparison, so I can't say for certain that it is complete though.
Manually extracting the archive downloaded by the launcher into the installation directory seemingly works, but I get a duplicate mod error for a mod called "AmalgamateTechnomancy" trying to start it up. You can check the log here:
http://paste.feed-the-beast.com/view/cae3d418
Another interesting bit from that log is that it's apparently launching with FML 7.10.25.1208, rather than .1224+. I have no idea why it's doing that.
In another twist, the server pack downloads and runs just fine.
EDIT: So, I couldn't well leave this alone and kept picking at it. Technical stuff ahead!
The starting-as-vanilla problem seems to have come from a missing or badly made pack.json file. I copied one from another pack and manually adjusted it to the same forge version the server version uses, .1230. This got me back to the point with the duplicate mod, so after reading through the debug log for a while it seemed to me that FML got confused and added the CS2 Amalgamate mod
twice, for whatever reason. Once right in the middle of all the other mods, but also one time prior to that when it was walking around the file tree searching for mods. I have no idea why it did this, so I tried packing up the SC2_AmalgamateTechnomancy directory in the mods directory into a zip archive. After a few false starts (mainly me derping + 7zip being helpful by keeping the original directory), I finally got it working. It's running right now, I'm connected to my local server and stuff seems to work as it should.
TL;DR: manual tweaking got it working. Yay me!
On another note, Electro-Magic tools seem to be missing a ton of textures. Is this a known bug or something?
EDIT2: So, one of my peeves from playing earlier just reminded me. Why are high-end foods nerfed so hard? A feast or other large meal loses more than half its value in food and saturation after one of them. Why should I bother going to all the steps necessary to get them if they're so nerfed?