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Let's chat: The Farstriders


Biboune

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Experimented with swapping Victory After Victory and Chosen Champion in place of Victorious Duel and Behead the Beast.  I really like not having to get after that leader. It just feels too tough pull the assassination, even with the great range on the Farstriders because people can play so defensively with their leaders.  Victory after Victory feels pretty doable.  Chosen Champion is a dud draw in round one, but often easy in later rounds.  Only thing I might swap for is Heroes All.  With Inspiration Strikes as a ploy and the easy inspire condition, might be more reliable.   Then again, as soon as you lose a dude, that one's dead too.

Edited by Red_Zeke
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I continue to be happy With Victory After Victory and Chosen Champion.  Alone in the Darkness has warmed on me. I recognize that playing into Sepulchral Guard was a dire test for that card, with so many bodies walking around.

Now thinking of pulling Complete Victory for Superior Tactician and possibly Brave but Cautious for... something? Punishing Volleys? Defensive Strike? Ploymaster? Total Annihilation (jkjk)?

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Got another three games today. Magore's, Gurzag, and Magore's for a 5-0, 13-0, 15-0.  The first game I placed boards longways to starve the Fiends of Glory, but starved us both instead. It was so bad, it took me till the third round to even score Master of War despite holding it at the start.

 

Dropped invisible Walls for Quick Thinker which was super clutch.  I didn't like Punishing Volleys at all, as it potentially dictated a lot of your round. Went with Defensive Strike instead, which seems fine.

Record with this deck through all it's evolutions so far is 11-0, but many/most of those games are against newer players or decks also getting fine tuned. Haven't gotten in a Skaven, Slayer, or mirror match game yet. Also, no Katophrane testing, so... you know...

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8 hours ago, Red_Zeke said:

Got another three games today. Magore's, Gurzag, and Magore's for a 5-0, 13-0, 15-0.  The first game I placed boards longways to starve the Fiends of Glory, but starved us both instead. It was so bad, it took me till the third round to even score Master of War despite holding it at the start.

 

Dropped invisible Walls for Quick Thinker which was super clutch.  I didn't like Punishing Volleys at all, as it potentially dictated a lot of your round. Went with Defensive Strike instead, which seems fine.

Record with this deck through all it's evolutions so far is 11-0, but many/most of those games are against newer players or decks also getting fine tuned. Haven't gotten in a Skaven, Slayer, or mirror match game yet. Also, no Katophrane testing, so... you know...

Unless your objectives have changed a lot - your issue against Scaredy Kat is the low amount of objectives you can get turn 1 and likely turn 2 against the turtle.

Realistically scorable turn 1 you have:

Brave but Cautious
Alone in the Darkness
Skirting Danger

Farstriders do have tools to play against SC Kat, but you need to keep up in glory. Hold Objective 1-5 are a good shout, or the Supremacy effects can be.

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  • 3 weeks later...

The more I play with this warband, the more they grow on me! Given how slow this thread has been moving, I'm curious how other folks out there are feeling about their Farstriders.

I've personally been trying to nail down a good agro deck to some mixed results. Against Objective-heavy warbands it feels quite strong given the utility that drivebacks from boltstorm pistols offer. These warbands also seem to typically open me up to earlier inspirations by pushing into their side of the board turn 1, which just adds to the overall strength.

The flipside however is that I haven't really figured out the best approach to dealing with other heavy agro warbands (such as Magore's or Ironskull's). Beating them at their own game feels risky given that it doesn't feel like the Farstriders inherently pack the same turn 1 punch that these warbands do. It also seems to simply feed these warbands Turn 1 inspirations that can get things snowballing against me.

Deploying a single farstrider (or sometimes none at all) in charge range turn 1 and baiting agro warbands to come to me has worked reasonably well. The goal being to soften someone up with a boltstorm shot or two, then snag a kill either at the end of Turn 1 or in the beginning of Turn 2 to then snowball from there. The problem here though is that inspirations became very scarce due to playing so far back and the games become very low scoring for both sides.

My gut is telling me to accept that inspirations will be rare when going up against agro warbands and to simply play around that fact.

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There are absolutely some matchups where the only fighter I inspire is the one that I play Inspiration Strikes on.  Sometimes I'll sneak a second inspiration via Hidden Paths. I generally go for Farstriders and then whichever of the other two will be more useful (damage vs cleave).

I've found the Magore's and Ironjaws matches to be very favorable because you can give ground, score passively while picking off isolated fighters, all while starving the enemy of aggro glory.

Reavers have been coming up with big wins too, though they feel a little more challenging because their speed makes it tough to cut into just a few of the fighters while isolating the rest.

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I'll have to experiment with some more passive objectives and see if that makes the defensive playstyle less nerve-wracking. Winning games with 4 or 5 glory doesn't feel particularly good, or safe for that matter.  Using hidden paths to sneak an inspiration is interesting, I haven't experimented with that ploy as of yet. Looks like I'll be putting together another variant of the deck this weekend.

Also glad I'm not the only one who favors getting Sanson inspired first in most cases. The star falcon has netted me quite a few clutch kills. This warband in particular really warmed me up to triple sword attacks.

 

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My style sounds similar to Red_Zeke's although l'm happy rarely inspiring and dont even have Inspiration strikes in my deck. My play style is to keep my opponent off balance using movement ploys and long range attacks while moving in close when the opportunity presents itself.  Movement ploys also allow for late dashes into the opponents half for a little inspiration. 

 I have a significant number of passive objectives in my deck but if I score only 4 or 5 glory I'm going to lose. A win is usually around 8-11. I have found I need to score that or higher more often to beat the best decks so have tweaked my objectives for the next clash. I'll post the deck list and lessons learnt after that. 

Edited by Skellisquad
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@SkellisquadI did just rotate in Spectral Wings and Swift Stride with zero regrets for both. I carry a fair number if defensive upgrades, so do like getting a bit of inspiration in to compound the defensive buffs. They also serve to protect a fighter if I can't get them all out of danger.

 

Also, can you post up your deck?

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So I'm actually playing a hyper aggressive Farstriders list which can really take the fight to any enemy warband. It also throws a spanner in their plans because they don't expect it.

I use Sigmar's Finest and Dauntless to score some super cheeky glory points which compliments very well with the hyper aggression. Throw in an Army of One on your guy left standing and he's running 3 defence dice while inspired. If that dude is Eagle Eye with Furious Blow on him then the opponent has to be careful if they even want to attack him. 

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I've gotten some great mileage out of Furious Blow as well, though I'm not quite aggressive enough to be running Army of One.  Here's the latest version for me:

https://www.underworldsdb.com/shared.php?deck=0,226,227,228,231,373,376,384,389,424,433,215,219,329,330,331,334,347,348,361,369,234,235,243,244,252,257,272,284,289,291,298,306

 

Thinking about it, I don't think in 20 games I've ever even had to roll for tethered spirit, so maybe something a touch more aggro is called for there?

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You're definitely running a midrange deck where as I'm full aggro. I can't run defensive strike and don't need inspiration strikes for example.

Mainly I threw it out there as more of an example of how flexible the farstriders are. Imo they are better agro than ironskullz!

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@Red_Zeke I've only played against an agro skaven deck twice. Unfortunately I didn't glean much from them. In both cases my opening hand came up with inspiration strikes, which led to me being able to snipe Skritch in the opening turn of Turn 2 on each game with an inspired Sanson. Removing Skritch so early and scoring Victorious Duel put me so far ahead that I didn't feel like the rest of the game was too much of a struggle.

Inspired Sanson was a big threat for just about the entire warband though. A crit Star Falcon can down any of the 2 health skaven on its own, which would leave room for Trap or Shattering Terrain to be used in situation where I wanted to confirm kills or take down something with 3+ life.

@Malakree I'd never considered both Dauntless and Sigmar's Finest. I can definitely see the synergy with Army Of One.

Given that the deck you're running is hyper agro, are you running any sort of defensive ploys at all? Even something like Healing Potion or Warning Cry? I tried running a deck loaded up aggression ploys and a couple of movement ploys at first, but just about always lost a member of the warband by the end of Turn 1 to other agro warbands. I suppose this just plays into the Dauntless and Sigmar's Finest gameplan for you if it goes down that way?

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I run warning cry for change of tactics, to guard my last fighter and guard a fighter after they charge.

Also yeah I actually Want to lose fighters early especially if I can get a second in command down as that stops them scoring things and means I can score victorious duel etc. even if transgender goes down.

losing 2 fighters round 1 is potentially scoring me 5 glory ?

Edited by Malakree
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So I’ve had a bit of success and wanted to share. My view on Farstriders is making the ultimate disruption deck. The goal is less about scoring huge amounts of points myself but about stopping my opponent scoring. Shoot them off objectives, stay out of reach of charging units. I use lots of “score immediately” cards to get easy points to upgrade my guys making them harder to pin down and attack. Ploys like Great Concussion and Distraction help keep the event at bay.

Biggest issue is that when it goes really well it’s quite boring as my opponent can’t score, can’t upgrade and can’t hit me. It wins but it’s not much fun to play against.

Wondered how we might build upon their disruption qualities.

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1 hour ago, Red_Zeke said:

Also- wow. I've never seen anyone run Second in Command!

I know, I didn't expect much when I decided to try it but actually it's been really solid. 

It messes with people no end because they go all in on Farstrider then can't actually score leader kills off it. On the other hand losing him early doesn't stop me scoring Victorious duel or Plant the Standard which is so nice, there's a lot of utility in it for how I'm playing them.

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41 minutes ago, Skellisquad said:

I'm really keen to try the super aggro Farstriders now. I've had enough of running away!

Not sure just before a Grand Clash is the time to switch decks though

No, I've been tuning the deck for about a month and run it in 4 different tournaments so far. Probably wait till you have some time to tweak.

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At *least* two different directions. I've got that mid-range standoff and fight build. I have run into the same issue as @stickybluetoffee- it can be a bit of a downer for the opponent in some matchups. My last Reaver match went 19-0, 20-6 in my favor, and my last Fiends went 5-0, 14-0.  So... know your audience on that front, I guess.

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Tonight I threw together an Aggro deck based on the snippets of info from @Malakree. Not perfect but a very different style. I beat Reavers 8-8, 12-5 and 8-7. 

My deck

https://www.underworldsdb.com/shared.php?deck=212,219,222,225,226,228,234,243,251,257,273,281,282,284,293,305,306,343,347,348,357,361,368,369,373,375,387,389,408,220,227,376

I'll be making changes.

You'd onto realise how hard it is to score Dauntless and Sigmars Finest against Reavers. They struggle to kill your fighters while there's are relatively easy to kill. I didn't score 2 glory in the first game because I was careless and killed too many of them.

Am I the only player who finds Escalation hard to score with Farstriders. I think it might be because it generally relies on the opponent playing at least one upgrade. When you've only got three fighters they don't tend to score much in-turn glory. Maybe against better constructed decks it's easier to score. 

 

 

Edited by Skellisquad
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I've found Escalation a little tough on occasion, particularly if I've successfully starved the opponent of glory. If they're not playing upgrades, not only do you need to spend three glory in a round, but you need to see three upgrades in your power hand. Of course, in that scenario, you're probably fine. I see it as a great card if you're neck and neck, or if one person's a little ahead. And those are the times where you probably really want a boost anyhow.

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