Tactica: Farseer
With the advent of the updated Codex:Eldar, one of the newly tricky selections is the Farseer.
He has been re-tuned, and is ready for business. While he isn’t the complete master of “smackdown” psychic powers that the Librarian is, I believe GW did a fine job of cementing the Eldar as the “most powerful psychers” int he galaxy.
Lets take a look at this guy and what he can do.
He went up in base cost from 40 to 55 in the new codex, but like the Librarian comes with some decent standard equipment so its a wash overall.
The only statline difference was a lowering of his T to 3, to bring him in line with his race. The obvious drawback, is that being wounded by Perils of the Warp will now cause instant death…ouch! But, he has plenty of tricks to help him out in that department.
He still has his 4+ rune armour, but now comes bundled with a witchplade, shuriken pistol, and a ghost helm. The helm will save against Perils on a 3+ so he is pretty safe in that department.
Major options will be stones (always take), and the singing spear, (sometimes take).
The real primary decision is jetbike or foot. With the new GW FAQ, that states that models riding in vehicles don’t count as being on the table and cannot use psychic powers (except by using a non-existant Eldar firing port), you have 2 major builds.
a) Foot Farseer: he advanced on foot with the army and aids them. This is very good for static armies with firepower centers.
b) Jetbike Farseer: he moves up with fast movers and vehicles and supports them from the front lines (always slinking away to safety with his 6″ assault move)
Keeping a farseer embarked in a vehicle for several turns is no longer a good use for all those points you have invested with the FAQ. I do not recommend it.
Farseer Powers:
You have 5 choices here and can use 2 per turn (with spirit stones).
Doom: this is a nasty new power, mainly due to its nice 24″ no LoS range. Pick an enemy unit and if Doomed, you may reroll failed to wound rolls against it. This is a bread and butter power for a Jetbike farseer, who is supporting high volume of fire low strength fire (like S:3-4). Used in conjuction with Dire Avengers or even Swooping Hawks, Doom will produce crazy numbers of wounds. For a foot farseer in a defensive army, use with rangers/pathfinders for horrible effect on monstrous creatures.
Eldritch Storm: this is a hidden gem in the codex. It went from 35 to 20pts in the new dex and is much more powerful. It allows you to place WITH NO DEVIATION a pieplate anywhere within 18″, no LoS needed. Anything under takes a S:3 pinning hit or 2d6+3 vs vehicles. Vehicles are also spun to face a randon direction, with the eldar player choosing if a HIT comes up on the scatter dice. This breaks down as follows:
Rear Exposed: 50%
Side Exposed: 33%
Front Exposed: 17%
You can blaze a trail of destruction through enemy vehicles with a jetbike farseer using this on heavy tanks as the first shot in the shooting phase, followed up with the rest of your army laying into the exposed rear/side with your suberb S:6+ ranged weapons.
Fortune: genericly useful power to keep your critical units alive. Works well with either farseer build. The better the target unit’s armour/cover save is, the more invulnerable they become.
Guide: This is a superior choice for a defensive foot Farseer supporting a low BS(3) force. While Doom works wonders with Dire Avengers, Guide is stunning with scatter laser war-walkers.
Mind War: unchanged, what was the no-brainer of 3rd has become the also-ran of 4th. While it is still nasty in the hands of a jetbike farseer who can reliably snipe veteran sergeants or heavy weapon troopers, it is hobbled by the more desirable other powers.
Finally a note on the Runes.
While Runes of witnessing seem like a good deal at first, a farseer with Ld:10 rarely fails powers anyway. The runes also increase your change of invoking Perils. As a 0:pt option, maybe, at 10:pts…no way.
Runes of Warding are a different matter. For 15:pts, they are a steal. If you are plagued with Librarians canceling 1/2 of your powers, these will cause him to wound himself almost 50% of the time (and remember that using a force-weapon to cause death counts as a psychic power), and completely shutdown the Ld:9 psychers out there. Any enemy psycher who is T:3 will often never use their powers for fear of Perils induced instant death. It is a worthy insurance policy, and doubly worth it if your area sees common use of Librarians.
-bigred
