New Eldar stuff from Forgeworld!

Well, Imperial Armour 11: The Doom of Mymear went up for sale on the Forgeworld site today! Of course I placed my order immediately. It should arrive before Christmas, after which I will be scouring it and posting a follow-up to my reviews of the beta rules for all the units which I posted here previously. Keep watching!

Don't overthink.

That's about it. Rather than a long rambling rant, or some stream-of-consciousness gestalt about some list or codex or splatbook, I'm going to try to keep it simple here.

Overthinking is just as bad as - and possibly worse than - underthinking.

The New Necrons in Spearhead

Back to every hater's favorite expansion! With all the talk about Necrons in the GW-verse, from model critiques to list-analysis, let's not forget the application of the new codex to Spearhead!

The Ugly Truth About 40K

The other evening I had an interesting chat with Patrick over at the 11th Company. It's always nice to talk to someone outside of your local metagame; people just look at things differently. We talked about a lot of things, but mostly commiserated on the sad state of our 4th edition codices. This got me thinking...

How Fast can Fast be?

Hi there! I'm waxing philosophical today, looking at some Theoryhammer and attempting to extrapolate out where the game is going with future codex releases as we head into 6th edition 40k. If this is not your cup of tea, you can probably skip it, since there won't be a whole lot of crunch here. This is purely an exercise...

Craftworld Eldar rumors

I find myself in possession of a small amount of time; insufficient to make meaningful progress on my Deathwing army, yet sufficient to address the recent "Craftworld Eldar" rumors posted on BoLS here...

Guilt-posting

I admit it, I fell of the wagon. I've got several posts in the works but they've all grown into monsters and need to be edited or parsed out. In lieu of my usual high-quality content, I'll simply update you with what I've been doing offline, 40k-wise:

Deathwing: Boots on the Ground

I got my first taste of running a full-sized (1850) Deathwing/Ravenwing list Wednesday night. Let me tell you, it's a world of difference when your guys are T4 and have a 3+ or better save...

My ICs Hobby Challenge: Dark Angels

If you don't know by now, I'm a big fan of the Independent Characters' podcast. I've known the hosts and their circle for quite a while and been a guest twice. So when I heard about their upcoming Hobby Progress Challenge preparatory to Adepticon 2012 (head over to their forums to check it out), I was thrilled! It came right at a time when I'd decided to hang up Eldar for a while.

OH but what to build?

Kublacon 2011 Recap: Part 3 and Post-mortem

I staggered into my 3rd round of the day with 2 losses under my belt. Needless to say, my morale was pretty low by now despite both games being highly entertaining. Still, I was determined to at least have a good time with my LAST game of 40k in which the Eldar would be my primary army.

Kublacon 2011 Recap: Part 2

Still reeling from my grinding battle vs. the Sons of Sanguinius, I drew my second opponent, Chris. I'd met Chris before. Chris was playing orks, lots of orks. Fortunately, this was an army I'd had some practice against fairly recently, so I felt confident that I could handle him.

Kublacon 2011 Recap, part 1

I'm back from Kublacon and the Kub-Waaagh (formerly Golden Gargant). It took a few days to recover but now it's time to tell the tale of ... the DOOM of the Eldar!

Delays, delays, delays!

I wanted to post up my Kublacon tourney log, complete with some pictures, but now I can't seem to get the images off my phone. Rest assured, it's coming along, I just have to get the RIM app reinstalled.

D-Day minus 1: Kub-Waaagh is go!

Well, this is it. Last day before Kublacon. Tomorrow I will trundle up to the convention in the wee hours of the morning to try my hand - one last time - at playing Eldar competitively in a tournament.

Kublacon Jitters and the 11th hour list review...

Hi all! Kublacon is coming up in ew like 4 days now, right? How did I do on my hobby progress? Not so hot. Based on some playtesting (primarily against orks but with one game vs. a Vulkan list), I'm really feeling the lack of melee units in my army list.

GW Haters are Hating GW!

I've read the same articles as you, the same blogs as you, the same forums as you, and I've been around long enough to be surprised when something that GW does actually - er - surprises me. The last week of business announcements, for example; resin releases with simultaneous price increases, countrywide embargoes for online retailers, etc., has certainly been an aggressive set of moves.

Overall it looks like they are pulling a money grab, and putting the screws to us, the consumers. Looks like. But is that what is really going on?

Farseer Fail's Dirty Little Secret

And it has nothing to do with the ex-governor of California...

I've got a dirty little secret. It's something that's been hidden in the background, behind all the glitz and glamour of my fabulous life. I tried to ignore it, but... it's been weighing on my mind now for a while. Things came to a head during the last week, when I was busily prepping my army for Kublacon... 

---

When I should have been working on my Eldar army, modeling up jetbikes with real guardians (not the old '90s conehead riders that come with them) and tooling up my jetbike Seer Council, finishing my fire prisms, and so on, I was instead spending time with... with... 

the other army. 

Yes, my fans, I'm afraid it's true. I can now join the ranks of other famous cuckolders (is that a word?) like Elliot Spitzer, Arnold Schwarzenneggerrggugung, and Jesse James. There's another lady in town. She lives in my closet. 

Her name is Dark Angels. 

Hard to say how it all went wrong.

It started off as an idle thought.  I didn't intend to stray... I was just curious. I wondered what the cheapest army was, at the time. After a little digging and some creative thinking, I came up with Deathwing. See, around this time, Assault on Black Reach was fairly new, and flooding eBay with cheap orks, deffkoptas, tactical marines and, yes, terminators. 

Soon I found myself parked in front of my computer, furtively bidding on those precious little 5-man units. It seemed so harmless! I could pick up five terminators for as little as 5 or 6 dollars, whereas the retail on a box of assault or shooty terminators cost nearly ten times as much. How could I resist?

Of course, then I crossed the line. 

After accumulating several AoBR termie squads, I realized I would need to fill in the blanks. How do you fill in the blanks with Deathwing? Well with Ravenwing of course! Those Dark Angel upgrade sprues that came with the Ravenwing box allowed me to start upgrading those termies with assault cannons. 

Then there were the close combat weapons; thunder hammers, lightning claws. I needed a box of those, at least. Then a friend of mine told me he was getting out of the Dark Angels to play Black Templars; I snatched up his loot like a bullet-sweating crackhead. Veteran squads, a DA battleforce, and more…

Oh but transports! I need transports, of course! A Land Raider Crusader… which turned out to be one of the old plastic-metal ones. Well, I could use this one for my tactical, vet or command squads. I picked up another Crusader, a new one. Ah sweet. I picked up another Ravenwing box, too, so that I might bring a full Doublewing list if I wanted. More devastators, a razorback, another rhino, some more vets, more devastators, and so it went. 

The first step is to admit you have a problem. 

So instead of painting up my faithful Eldar last week, I found myself slaving to the call of the Deathwing, assembling terminators and a Land Raider. The shame, the shame! 

Don’t do plastic-crack, kids. Like Whitney Houston says, “Plastic-crack is whack!”

Farseer Fail's Wishdex, part 6: Vehicles

What, did you think we were done? Foolishness! We haven't broached the subject of vehicles, except to address them as particular units. Specifically I have issues with vehicle BS and upgrades.

Farseer Fail's Wishdex, part 5: Heavy Support

On to the Heavy Support slots. There are a lot of these, and mostly they are good choices. Mostly...

Farseer Fail's Wishdex, part 4: Fast Attack

Hoo boy. Well, here goes!

Farseer Fail's Wishdex, part 3: Troops

Okay, so far I haven't proposed any really dramatic changes. I've been saving it up for the Troops!

First let me say that Eldar players have, at this time, one of the finest and most varied menus of scoring units to choose from of any 40k army, particularly when you consider other 4th edition codices still circulating. Necrons have, at the time of this writing, one Troop choice, and Tau have two, neither one of which is terribly impressive, IMHO. The legacy marine codices such as Dark Angels have only one, as well. So it is with a certain amount of sheepishness that I propose the following changes for our forthcoming codex, whenever that may arrive.

Farseer Fail's Wishdex, part 2: Elites

Last time around I posted my list of recommendations for the next revision of Eldar HQs. This time I'm addressing the coveted Elite spots.

Farseer Fail's Eldar Wishdex, part 1: HQ

We all have one. We all have things we wish were in our rapidly aging codex but aren't. I've taken a look around the web at various wishdexes over the years, but I've found most of them to be a bit over the top. In fact, I think that the Eldar Codex can be repaired or brought into line with relatively few changes! Of course that won't happen; GW will not release a new codex without significant alterations. But if it were me, I would opt for the following changes.

Thursday Night Throwdown Eldar vs. Orks: Rematch!

Last Thursday I played my buddy Dave over at Game Kastle. I showed up late and we only got 2 rounds in, after which I declared victory (that's how we roll, us Eldar players, sneaky and utterly without honor)! This time around things went a little more smoothly...

Apoligies in advance: I meant to have photos for this battle report, but the camera on my new Torch is terrible. Seeking alternatives...

Don't Be "That Guy": On Being A Good Sport

 A recent article posted over at BoLS got me thinking about this topic again. We've all heard stories about "that guy", the apocryphal bad sport who cheats, whines, games the rules/FAQs, the opponent or the judges, then when he doesn't get his way, rips his shirt in half like the Hulk, flips the table and runs out into the parking lot screaming.

I don't believe this guy really exists and in any case that's pretty extreme behavior for any setting. I do believe, however, that we can ALL take steps towards becoming better sports (and I do include myself). You know what I mean; actually earning that "10" in the sportsmanship category rather than accepting it as the default value.

Hobby Progress!

Whew! After a long dry spell, I finally got a game in. We only got 2 rounds in due to the late hour, but it ended with a glorious victory for the Eldar! Although the game was short, it got me thinking...

Me Fail Blogging, That is Unpossible!

Oops. Sorry I've been so tardy in updating this blog. I know how much it sucks to return to the well only to find it dry time and time again.

Like most bloggers, I started off with a few strong articles evenly spaced apart, then started to drift into the doldrums. I'm working to correct that, but right now all the balls are in the air, so to speak, so I need to get those puppies back down where I can reach them before I can be 'infotaining' again.

But! There is good stuff to come. I don't want to give away too many of the goodies, but here are some hints as to what you can expect from this blog over the course of the next 3 months:

• Forgeworld product reviews (in particular as they pertain to Imperial Armour 11)
• Spearhead! The expansion that got no love!
• Some mini-tutorials on pinning and magnetizing
• More list kung fu and links to other content that you might find interesting and useful, like this one! Check out the interview with Reece Robbins on the subject of Footdar in #61!
• More articles on tournament prep and general gaming
• More articles on Hobby
• Pictures!!!

In addition, yours truly will be popping up on some forthcoming podcasts. More information on that to come as the podcasters' schedules normalize post-Adepticon.

I just ran across this interesting article over at Neogrognard. While the article focuses on the relationship of R&D to Marketing within RPG businesses, it also relates to the difference between the crunchy player and the enthusiast player in the 40k realm. I found it very relevant to my earlier article on Hype.

Kublacon 2011: The Lessons of the Past

Retreating to Craftworld Urm to lick my wounds after my ignominious and sound defeat, I came to several conclusions about my "Arachnophobia" army list.

1) The Doomweaver doesn't do much to a unit that doesn't want to move; for example, one sitting on an objective.

2) Even three Night Spinners isn't enough to bog down the entire board.

3) I really need to start following my own advice...

Dundracon 2011: Round 2 and 3 - We're not Dark Angels!

Continued from here, or you can read the entire thing from start to finish here...

In round 2 I drew Austin, running a nicely painted Dark Angels army - as vanilla marines. I was soon to find out why...

This scenario was based on victory points (not kill points, mind you!). Whoever came out 201 kill points ahead was declared the winner. We were lucky to be on a board with a medium amount of terrain.

I forget the exact details of Austin's list but it contained a librarian attached to a tactical squad, all deployed in a drop pod, another drop pod containing an AC dreadnought, two rhinos with tactical squads, and a land raider crusader with a chapter master and 7 terminators (if memory serves, 4 with thunderhammer and storm shield and 3 with twin lightning claws).

There isn't much to tell about this game; Austin and I took turns beating each other in the face through turn 7. The high point for me was watching his terminators fail their invuln saves against 3 dangerous terrain wounds, but other than that we did extensive damage to one another throughout the game. When the game ended on turn 7, Austin came out 300 victory points ahead.After the fact, we realized the game had a fixed length of 6 turns, but I don't expect that the result would have been any different.

I don't really have any complaints here. It was a tough game based on actual points value of units destroyed instead of kill points and we both gave it our best shot. It was a good game and I don't know if I'd change anything if we were to repeat it.

Round 3 I drew Ian, whom I'd played against at Kublacon in 2010.

I was NOT happy with the scenario. Basically, we would roll for objectives as in Seize Ground, but in order to gain points, we had to have a scoring unit sitting on an objective at the end of our opponent's turns. This is bad for Eldar, since it involves sitting still for basically an entire round, a tactic that doesn't lend itself well to an army with low numbers, low toughness and medium armor.

Ian brought another vanilla space marine list; two drop pod dreadnoughts, an LRC full of termies, a rhino with a tactical squad and another drop pod containing a Master of the Forge and a bunch of sternguard.

We both kept most of our armies in reserve, though I started my dire avengers on the table. On my first turn, I ran my dire avengers into some trenches near which I'd placed my objectives. On his turn, the first of his drop pod dreads came down, disembarked and roasted an entire unit of dire avengers while managing to contest the other. No points for me!

Later on he put another heavy flamer on my other dire avenger unit and toasted them too. At this point my only hope was to stop him from claiming, but it was already too late. My army stalled out a bit in turn 2, preventing me from putting enough pressure on any of his scoring units to keep them off of objectives. It wasn't until turn 5 that I was able to pop a rhino sitting on one of his objectives, after I'd already tried to pop it with a night spinner. Oops.

We had a pretty good, crazy game, but after my Troops were fried I was unable to respond quickly enough to keep the game a draw. I believe Ian finished with 7 loot counters to my zero. Ouch!

Mistake One.
Like the Cajun says in Apocalypse Now: "Never get off the boat." I could have left my dire avengers inside of their transports for at least the first turn, allowing me to rack up 2 loot counters a round. I could have also done the "Turbo Dance" between the two nearer objectives, possibly buying me even more time and loot counters. This would have at least slowed the dreadnoughts down, preventing them from hitting me in close combat on anything but a 6 and granting me cover saves against his weapons fire on a 4+.

Mistake Two. 
After losing my Troops choices, I should have prioritized taking out Ian's tactical squads FIRST, ignoring the dreadnought and other apparent threats. I lost focus and started picking off units that were simply targets of opportunity instead of working toward the scenario.

Overall, I had a good time (y'know, as good as it gets with three losses anyway) and it definitely gave me some useful information overall. No more "soft" lists for me! I'll definitely be bringing something less fluffy to Kublacon in May!

Wondering what I have in mind? Well you'll have to wait for my next post!

Fonkin out!

Dundracon 2011: Round 1 - Eldar vs. Tau

The first game of the tournament was a modified Seize Ground mission using table quarters. Objectives could NOT be placed in the same corners that both players deployed in. There wasn't a lot of line-of-sight-blocking terrain besides a large, round storage tank of some kind.

I drew Keith and his awesome-looking Tau army (Keith went on to win the best painted category for the tournament).

Dundracon Post Mortem: and I do mean Post Mortem!

Well guys, I said it going in. And I quote: "I could be sabotaging myself. I could misjudge the metagame, and there's always room for statistical anomalies, but overall I'm looking for a good 3rd game at Dundracon this time."

I did everything right, leading up to the con. I packed early, double-checked that I had everything I needed, finished magnetizing my night spinners and got plenty of rest. Everything was smooth sailing...

Until the first game!

Dundracon Day 1

Yes we are off! Off to the Con on this miserable (for California), dreary, drippy morning! I couldn't be happier.

What you can expect upon my return is - at the least - a Fonkin-style tourney battle report from the Rogue Trader game (with pictures), plus any other items of note that might prove entertaining. So far my schedule is looking like this:

Get to the hotel and check in, then quickly finish magnetizing and gluing my night spinner turrets for the tournament on Saturday. If time allows I'll probably try to get a practice game in with some of my less-practiced buddies, or if not maybe get an evening of cards and socializing in.

Saturday starts early with three rounds of 40k running until probably around 7 or 8 o'clock.

Sunday is high-level, totally rad, planet-saving 1st edition D&D.

Hope to see you there! Ta ta!

Dundracon 2011: T minus 3 days and counting!

After a hard weekend of moving all my family's worldly belongings, I'm really looking forward to the con! Not only because of the Rogue Trader tournament, but because this is a convention I go to every year.

Dundracon 2011 - 40k Tournament around the corner

It's tourney time in this neck of the woods, and with the approach of the ONE Con I'm pretty much guaranteed to attend during the year, my thoughts turn to lists.

With MSU, Null Deployment, Razorspam, Wolfmissiles and Dark Eldar Alpha Strike all abuzz on teh interwebz, one might be tempted to gear one's list towards beating these power-builds. I, however, am not. I'm going to go have FUN. Too bad the WAACs won't be joining me...

Let's take a look at my first prospective list...

Grokking Eldar for beginners

I decided to post this as an article rather than respond with a comment for reasons which will become evident.

""Okay, so, I am thinking about getting into 40k. I am really intrigued by the Eldar fluff, but am having trouble figuring out exactly how they work tactically. Are they mostly fast-moving, with a lot of long-range shooting? Or do they rely more on assault? I'm getting conflicting messages from the Internet, so I thought I'd ask a reliable source. Kurthl337"

Well, first of all thanks Kurthl337 for considering me a reliable source! I know what you mean about getting mixed messages from the Internet; this can be very frustrating for someone trying to learn about the army. I'm guessing you already read my article about hype. If you haven't, I suggest you do. It should clear up some of those mixed messages you're getting!

The short answer to your question is "all and none of the above", but if you read on I'll elaborate on that...

Dundracon!

I apologize for not updating my blog more frequently during the last week. As of today my family is:

1. Moving to a new place in 2 weeks.
2. My wife is starting a new job now.
3. We are going through the process of finding daycare for the first time NOW(welcome to the Bay Area).
4. Everyone is getting sick.

Oh yeah, and Dundracon is coming up on the 18th. Cripes! So my bandwidth for even thinking about 40k is almost zero right now.

Hornets, Shadow Specters and Warp Hunters, O My!

If you've wandered by the Forgeworld website recently, you may have noticed some new Eldar models. Or perhaps you've seen the pictures of these models from the last Games Day floating around the web.

I recently posted a review on these new UNOFFICIAL additions to the Eldar arsenal over on the Independent Characters' forum.

I won't repeat that review here because I'm lazy, but I would encourage you to head over there and read it if you're at all interested, as well as checking out the site in general. If you're not familiar with the ICs they are a biweekly podcast about 40k, and they tend to include a lot of material not only about the local gaming scene here in the South Bay but explore a lot of the rules material in a fun and creative way.

One caveat: just so you don't think I'm a hypocrite after my Hype article, remember that this review I posted contains MY opinions about the new units. You might have some unique insight that I lack. If so, I encourage you to share your opinions either here in the comments or in the forum thread itself.

Don't Forget to Discuss Terrain with Your Opponent

This is a biggy. I do it all the time, particularly at scheduled events. You rush to your next game, get all your stuff straight, pore over the scenario rules, roll to see who picks/places and off you go. Then, on turn 3, it happens: Guy 1: "Uh I get a 4+ cover save over here..."
Guy 2: "Wait, 4+? I've been giving myself 5+ all game in these ruins. They are about the same..."
Guy 1: "Well the rules say X."
Guy 2: <flips table over and rips his shirt off, running out the door screaming profanities>

Well, I've never seen that last bit happen, but ask yourself how many times you've screwed yourself over by assuming something about terrain only to realize that your opponent has been assuming something entirely different?

While this is not usually a big deal (typically only a one-place difference on the assumed cover save value), it happens so frequently, in nearly every game I play, that I expect it's had a pretty big overall impact on my game.

Don't believe the hype!

If you're reading this, and new to the Eldar or to Warhammer in general, you've probably been trolling around for advice on how to build your Eldar army; what models to buy, what units to use, what works, what doesn't, what to look out for.

Are you overwhelmed with opinions yet?

You've probably dredged up and pored over a thousand articles on "mechdar" or "foot slogging lists" or "mobile tank vs. jetbike armies". And you've probably found equal numbers of opinions arguing for either side of any argument, particularly when it comes to "The Only Viable Build for Eldar in Fifth Edition."

What is this blog about?

Hi there, and welcome to Farseer Fail!

I've been playing Warhammer 40k since 1999, and the very first army I bought into was the Eldar. They remain my favorite army to play; they offer a very different style of play from Space Marine armies and horde lists, and while they offer some distinct and specific advantages over other armies, they are also fragile, a real house of cards in which the entire list can come tumbling down if one key element is missing or removed.

Now let's get something straight right off the bat; I suck. There's a reason this blog is called "Farseer Fail". In 2010 my tournament record is something like 1-4-1. That's 1 win, 4 draws, 1 loss, and I consider that something of a personal best. On at least one forum I am known as "Doom of the Eldar". However, I used to lose pretty much every game I played, no matter against whom. Now I'm pulling draws and wins more often and I finally feel like I'm learning how to play this game, as well as this army (more coming in a future article; "How not to learn to play 40k".


The intent of this blog is to provide some useful advice to the new Eldar player, or possibly the not-so-new Eldar player who feels like they are spinning their wheels and NOT progressing in skill, or list-building, or what-not. Having been that guy for quite a while, and not having much luck interpreting the wisdom of the true Eldar wizards out there (sometimes what they say is just beyond my tactical understanding) these are things I feel I can write about with authority.

What I will do is try to show you what NOT to do, hopefully using examples from my own experience. What I will NOT necessarily do is tell you WHAT you should do or HOW you should do it. There are plenty of other places to find that sort of information (in particular I've found Fritz's advice from SaimHann.blogspot.com on running Eldar very helpful). I am NOT a super-competitive player, and in all honestly I'm not that GOOD of a player. All I'm doing here is sharing a few of my painfully acquired lessons in what not to do. From my own experience, learning what NOT to do in 40k is at least as important as learning what you SHOULD do. This is particularly true of the so-called "glass hammer" armies out there like Eldar.

So keep your eyes peeled for the first article, which is all about the worst enemy of a starting Eldar player: HYPE.