An evening of gaming with the Farstriders 16.05.19

I had a great evening of gaming with Warhammer TV’s very own puppeteer Nick Bayton this week. He was testing out his recently painted Thorn’s of the Briar Queen and I was using the Farstriders who I have completed recently too (see my painting post https://adventuresintheunderworld.blogspot.com/2019/05/painting-farstriders.html if you are interested in how I did them). 

I have probably had around 15 games with Farstriders now and have refined the deck into an aggressive damage dealing build which can pick its battles with some big movement buffs. Nick’s Briar Queen was running an objective/key build that could buff the Queen up into a real beast at removing priority targets.

In game one we set up wide and I tried to ensure that I deployed in range of some easy targets and so that I could comfortably get into enemy territory for inspiration.

Generally speaking this went well with some good scoring and shardgale helping me to remove the chainrasps but Nick managed to score well too and by the start of turn three we were down to the Queen and Varclav against Farstrider.

I went all in to kill Varclav and made sure to end in a spot that wouldn’t allow the Queen to teleport into melee range with her unique upgrade. Thankfully the bird didn’t let me down and with glory seeker and fighter’s ferocity Varclav went down. Nick got two keys on to the Queen and ended up with a score of 17 after getting as Nagash Commands and Superior Tactician. I had Singled Out, Conquest and Swift Advance which got me to 19. A real closely fought tough match.

In game two I offset the boards to create a kill corridor and make it harder for Nick to get to the objectives in my territory. I had an utterly terrible turn one with a single chainrasp going down and no objectives scored as well as only getting one fighter into enemy territory due to Howling Vortex. Meanwhile Nick had scored four.

Nick used Hidden paths to get Varclav onto an edge objective deep in my territory but I used spectral wings to attack him with Swiftblade taking him down to one wound thanks to Great Strength. The Queen then got Deathly fortitude and attacked the trapped Eagle Eye but rolled no successes netting me miraculous escape.

I was gradually killing chainrasps and got the Queen too resulting in a 15-6 win. Really pleased to see that the deck can pull itself out of a bad turn one like that. So the first best of three went to me…

Nick wanted to keep practicing with the Thorns so we played another best of three. The first game of which is probably the luckiest I have ever been both in terms of dice and cards. I set up long and proceeded to systematically take out the ghosts. A glimpse at my hand below shows how great this game was for me!

My poker face was pretty bad when I drew this - the middle card on the right is pit trap too :)

The real highlight of this game was taking out both the Queen and Varclav in the same power phase. I shot Varclav with Farstrider’s pistol, reacted with rapid volley to shoot him again and used Pit Trap to get him to one health. Then I used Raptor Strike on the Queen before finishing with Shardgale to kill them both! There was much laughing, wooping and hilarity after this moment which may have terrified half of the people in the bar. Nick came in for the kill with the Everhanged who hit with a crit, naturally I rolled double crit defence…He reacted to attack again and got two successes, I got two blocks! Ouch.

In the end the final score was 20 glory to 3. Hands down my biggest positive glory differential but there was a whole lot of luck involved.

We played a final game with Thorns which I don’t hugely remember beyond setting up offset again and getting rolling early resulting in a 15-4 win.

Time for a change so Nick pulled out his Cursebreakers and quickly built himself a deck using all of the new magic based cards from the latest expansions. I can say that Cursebreakers are a truly scary opponent and was supremely unsure about how to tackle them with the Farstriders’ playstyle. I tried my best to choose my battles utilising my greater manoeuvrability and threat range to control the tempo and if all else failed hoping that two defence dice would save me! I forgot to take pictures of these games :(

Game one started well with long boards and a combination of Rapid Volley, Trap and Encroaching Shadow allowing me to kill Rastus at the end of the first turn. Unfortunately, Nick’s Cursebreakers were packing even more unavoidable power phase damage than I was and Farstrider went down quickly. I tried to get back in the game but after failing to hit with a five dice cleave attack from Swiftblade, Nick got some score immediately objectives and some upgrades onto Stormsire making him into a magical turret of death and I lost 8-4.

Winning streak over I went into the second game with offset deployment and a plan to only choose to engage when I had some redundancy over killing the enemy Stormcast. Nick deployed Ammis in front of a lethal hex so I ignored my plan and deployed aggressively. This paid off as a Swiftblade charge, trap and the lethal killed her in the first activation of the game. Off to a strong start I played cagey until I had the necessary cards and wiped out the Cursebreakers in the first activation of round two resulting in a 12-7 win.

Phew, what a great evening of games! Nick was a gent of an opponent as usual and my burger was decent too. I am really happy with the power deck but I think I need to tweak objectives a little. In 5/6 games I redrew my objective hand and chose to discard Giant Slayer and Victorious Duel every time. I am really torn on these objective as scoring two immediately is so good but if you get them at the wrong time they are so hard, or even impossible, to score. I think I am going to experiment with something a bit more reliable, possibly utilising some of the cards from the latest two warbands once I get round to picking them up.

Unfortunately, we had no time to play the final game of the best of three so that will have to wait until another day. I’ll be ready for the sheer brutality of Stormcast vs Stormcast games from the off next time.