The warband review series now turns to The Farstriders, a 3-fighter Elite Strike warband from Shadespire and an old first-edition favorite of mine, now available with online-only rules in Embergard.
Recently, Windy ran the ITC numbers and found that in the past year, literally zero instances of Farstriders appeared in registered Grand Clashes. The only time they were featured at all was when the player name running them was BYE ROUND. Why that is can probably be attributed to a bunch of factors – Sanson and friends perceived as not that strong, especially in the framework of ‘they’re just Emberwatch but worse’.
Hopefully today I can shed some light on what makes them fun, different from Emberwatch, and different even from other Elite Strike gangs available. While competitively they’re more of an uphill battle, they can hang if played well and have a few unique tricks up their sleeve that can make them a blast to play.
Sadly, they’re not the same warband I got best in faction with in 2024, but they’re still fun!
Click here to see a Master List of all warbands in the game
Farstriders: The Lore
Originally from the Shadespire season, the original iteration of Warhammer Underworlds, The Farstriders are a trio of rangers from the Vanguard Chamber of Stormcast Eternals who were sent there to scout out what exactly as happening and do some early reconnaissance. All three are incredibly self-sufficient, and their chamber trained them to undergo long campaigns in small groups without reinforcement or resupply for a long time. That’s good, because they’ve been grinding the underworlds in their baby-cast thiccmarines armor for 8 years, well past when their AoS unit type was squatted.
Sanson Farstrider is a guy notorious for ranging far and doing so quickly (yet disappointingly has 3 move in second edition). Almeric Eagle-Eye has acute vision and a preternatural sense for danger, often warning his comrades against unseen blows and able to handle himself in the tangle of a brawling melee. I like to think of him as Spider-Man like in his tingly senses. Finally, Elias Swiftblade was a champion duelist in his mortal life and has a long history of swordsmanship in his immortal phase to commend him as well.
These three are in Embergard and Spitewood because of no clear lore reason, and the logistical real world reason of they were released in starter sets shortly before the edition change so they were brought along in a digital warscroll. I’d bet good money they intended to have the Emberwatch be their spiritual successor and just threw this together as a way to let us play with toys we already had. What exactly does this low-effort scroll contain? Let’s squint those eagle eyes and stride into the mess that is Second Edition Farstriders.
Farstriders: The Warscroll
Inspire
The Farstriders have had this inspire condition since 2017, and its limitations persist here in second edition, perhaps even more so. To inspire a fighter, you must make two attacks with them in the same action phase, and they have to be with different attack profiles. You can achieve this using upgrade weapons if you so wish, but this means realistically you’re only inspiring one, MAYBE two fighters per round. In most games, you’ll charge 3 times, then make a charged-out ranged attack in activation 4 with one of your fighters that used melee earlier to inspire them.
You could potentially make a standing shot with a fighter, then charge them into melee, and do the same with a second fighter, but that’s often not the best move in terms of board state. The other big issue with this is that both of these attacks are by necessity made with the uninspired side of the profile, THEN the fighter inspires after those attacks are done. So you don’t get to reach anyone’s good accuracy, Eagle-Eye’s grievous, or Swifblade’s cleave until round 2 in almost all cases, and rarely more than one of those fighters until round 3 (should they survive that long). It also presents you with a tough choice – sometimes the right thing to do is make a second melee attack, but you really want to inspire. Maybe you feel obligated to use guy who is about to die, and you’ll just inspire somebody who won’t survive to use their better profile.
This inspiration condition becomes much harder to manage in second edition as we have very few cards that allow for out of sequence attacks, most notably Improvised attack in Countdown to Cataclysm. Without that, you’ll have a hard time inspiring many fighters, and you’d really like to have them inspired.
Vanguard
We now get to see what’s probably the roughest part of the warscroll, and boy is it ROUGH! Let’s look at the conditional requirements:
- The fighter must be inspired
- They must be vulnerable
- They must be in enemy territory at the end of the activation
- They must use a core ability while meeting the above conditions
If you should so happen to pull off this miracle (remembering how difficult it is to inspire a fighter, and remembering how unlikely they’ll be activating after inspired within the same round), you then get to choose one of two options:
- Uninspire and heal the fighter 1 health. For the rest of the round, they cannot be inspired or healed again.
- Pick and enemy within 3 hexes and roll a number of dice equal to the round number, with 50% odds per die that you succeed. On a roll of Hammer or Crit, deal a damage to the enemy fighter
I’ll be brief, but you should almost never pick option 1. You worked hard to get inspired, now you’ve lost it and cannot get it back again. You heal them, but they’ve gone from 1 health to 2 and are still definitely killable. Then, you can’t heal them again with Healing Potion or even an Aqua Ghyranis, so they’re still definitely killable. Oh, and also because they’re not inspired, you can’t trigger Vanguard again this round. Unless you REALLY need that heal for some niche reason, this is the wrong answer.
Option 2 is where this warband can do some really good stuff, but your ability to access it is quite limited as we detailed above. After your vulnerable inspired invader uses a core ability, if you’re within 3 of an enemy, roll some dice to tag them for damage. It’s incredibly unlikely you’ll do this in round 1 based on the inspiration thing, so you’re probably throwing 2 or 3 dice. In round 2, you have a 75% chance of landing a hammer or crit. In round 3, you have a 87.5% chance. This means you probably will ping them for a point of damage, and blessedly this rule does NOT state that the target can’t be vulnerable so you can kill things with this.
As a sidebar – this cannot do multiple damage in the same roll. On a roll of hammer or crit, not for each hammer or crit, means ‘if the roll has any of those’. For a bit of fun, let’s say you house rule or they update this someday to allow for more damage: round 2 you have 25% chance of doing 2 damage instead. Round 3 you have a 50% chance of 2 damage, and a 12.5% chance of 3 damage. Wouldn’t that be something.
OK, all that out of the way, the ideal use will usually be as a finisher. Hit somebody with an attack so they’re vulnerable, then close the door with Vanguard. If you should so happen to have a fighter inspired vulnerable and in enemy territory, you absolutely want to activate them as often as possible to sling this ping out as many times as you can. Try not to charge with them unless that would put you in a charged out position, or if they can charge away from danger so they live longer. I have had this work beautifully in round 3 where I am firing arrows into hordes, killing with a double tap so to speak. I have taken out Dromm with a grievous charge melee for 3 and then vanguard to seal the deal. It’s very powerful but you’ll very rarely get to use it.
Ranger Elite
Here we reach the first of three once per game abilities. A major limitation of this warscroll is that all three of these must be used immediately after your action step, rather than in any power step. They would be muchy more flexible this way, and I hope any future rules adjustments account for this if they don’t rework it in its entirety.
Ranger Elite allows you to push every friendly fighter up to a number of hexes equal to the battle round – but you have to push all of them. They also must end the pushes in enemy territory. A warscroll sidestep for up to three fighters and up to 3 hexes is awesome, but the timing limits you and you must push everyone, even if you don’t want to. You also must end in enemy territory – that means you can’t use this unless all your fighters can reach that position.
Another issue is that it gets better as the game progresses, but you’re substantially likely to lose a fighter per round or thereabouts. In round 1 you’ll push 2-3 fighters one hex. In round 2 you’ll push 1-2 fighters 2 hexes. In round 3 you’ll push your last guy 3 hexes which is cool, but only if you’ve managed to hold on to the ability that long.
Regardless, this can open up a charge, punch, or shot you didn’t have the movement for earlier – though you have to wait until you next action to benefit from it. More often you’ll use it to snag a token that’s been left empty (or that you failed to overrun onto). I have also used it to get back into Enemy territory for objectives that specify it and score some cheeky glory.
Forward the Vanguard!
This ability is potentially very useful, though again is limited in multiple ways. You again have to use it immediately after your activation. You then select a fighter and get to move them – out of sequence moves are legitimately awesome in this game, even if you have to use it in this less fortunate window.
The catch is that you need a fighter who is not in enemy territory, and they cannot be adjacent to any enemies either. While the move can end anywhere you please, I’m often using it to get into enemy territory because your other warscroll abilities prefer you to be there. That said you can run from neutral into friendly or friendly into neutral if the situation arises, as well as run around in the same territory. An OK way to get onto a token or something else to deny enemy scores in a pinch.
The ability also is nice in that it doesn’t specifically say whether the friendly fighter has move or charge tokens. You can use this to charge and then yo-yo back. You can use this to move after a charge. You can use this as a double-move. You can shoot or punch and then move, getting a move token and allowing you to attack again later in a backwards charge. It also doesn’t specify that the fighter you move has to be the same one who activated in that action step! It has a lot of utility, despite the conditions placed on it.
Behind Enemy Lines
Again, immediately after your action step, though this one doesn’t feel as bad in that timing window. If you have a damaged friendly fighter in enemy territory, you can drop a guard token on them. This is useful if that fighter is holding a key location like an Aqua Ghyranis, Treasure token, etc, or you’re just hoping to get the tiniest boost to your defense. I’ll cheat ahead and say you’re on 1 shield across the board whether inspired or not so guard is not super useful defensively. This does however allow you to occupy a position in your action step, and then prevent drivebacks so you get to keep it.
This all assuming you have a fighter damaged and in enemy territory. The rest of the warscroll asks you to dive over the line, and you’re going to have somebody damaged at some point. Once again in this ability’s favor, the warscroll doesn’t say it has to be the same fighter who activated, so you can guard whoever needs it when the time arrives.
Another nice little wrinkle is that you can declare Behind Enemy Lines and Ranger Elite in that same window, meaning you can activate, then push onto a token and guard. It’s harder to do the same with Forward the Vanguard! since that fighter can’t be in enemy when you declare it but then won’t be in enemy when you pick them for a guard token, so you can’t combo that one the same way. You can, of course, move one fighter and guard another though.
Farstriders: Fighter Cards
Sanson Farstrider
Farstrider, the leader of the warband and its namesake, has a stat block nearly identical to his friends with 3 move, 1 block, 5 health. He gives up 3 bounty while the others give up 2, as is standard for most Elites. His melee accuracy is modest uninspired (and the 2 hammers you see here was erroneously published at launch as two swords which is absolute amateur work) but his uninspired ranged attack is a remarkably good 3 hammers.
Inspiration does nothing for him except give him an extra die on his melee attack, but that becomes 3 hammers for 2 damage and isn’t bad by any stretch. I tend not to use him too aggressively at first because he gives up the most bounty, and rarely push to have him inspire unless the board state supports it as he gains the least.
Almeric Eagle-Eye
Cabanas’ favorite lil’ man supposedly has the sharpest eyes this side of the Anvil of Apotheosis but has the worst ranged accuracy in the warband. Get it together, GW.
3 swords isn’t bad, but it doesn’t improve when he inspires. What DOES improve is his melee attack. He already has 2 hammers brutal on his starting profile, which means you can run him into a flanked spot or swing at somebody in cover and not worry about it as much.
If he does inspire, you get a great 3 hammers to hit, keep brutal, but also pick up grievous. This makes him your only built-in 3 damage threat, though at significant investment and delay. He’s very important to inspire if you need that big punch. You probably will.
Elias Swiftblade
Our swordsman has the distinction of having all swords on his profile, which is cute if suboptimal. He does get 3 dice in melee immediately, which can help score some dice-based objective cards as well as increase your odds for a crit to overrun, and he benefits disproportionately from flanking as a result.
Once he inspires, he’s a pretty accurate 4 swords with cleave in melee, and 4 swords ranged as well, so he can hit things pretty reliably especially if he gets flanking effects. Depending on what kind of opponent you’re facing and how badly you want that cleave, he’s a reasonable choice for first inspiration.
Potential Pairings
Blazing Assault fits everybody, especially invading strike, which this warband definitely is. You’ll get help with damage output too, which they kind of need.
Emberstone Sentinels is actually a surprisingly good option for them. The push, move, and guard abilities help you get onto treasure, and if you’re doing it in enemy territory you can benefit from the warscroll while still getting some sweet hold glory.
Countdown to Cataclysm is another one of those one-size-fits-all decks, but you really appreciate the pings to augment damage as well as the ability to get some more pushing in Countercharge and especially love the defense from Utter Conviction. A 3-damage weapon in Desperate Rage both helps dish out more hurt but also is a second weapon profile to help inspire, and in a pinch you can get a boost from Hurled Weapon the same way. The crown jewel though is Improvised Attack, which sneaks out an extra different attack to cheat an inspire in a power step.
Reckless Fury may be one of the best fits for this warband as it is easy to charge with three fighters who all have ranged attacks and doesn’t care as much if you killed or even hit anything in a lot of cases. Your positional and guard tools on the warscroll help you score things like Living Bludgeon and Sally Forth which other warbands struggle with. You also aren’t crying in the rare case that Vanguard pings somebody to death since it won’t block your scoring conditions.
Wrack and Ruin I would argue is the best thing out there for this warband if you’re willing to live on the edge so to speak. More pings means more damage, and you have some positional tools to force the positional scoring in Stay Close or Alone in the Dark. Most ideally though, you have ways to hurt yourself and force the vulnerable-in-enemy requirement for Vanguard (and score Living on the Edge) as well as the fact you can equip a number of upgrades to help in that regard. Misfortune lets you ping yourself there. Fiery Temper keeps you in position and also pings you to vulnerable if you want. Desperate Defense helps keep you vulnerable instead of slain. Unstoppable helps keep you alive once vulnerable. It doesn’t hurt that it’s super fun to play too.
I have played it with Edge of the Knife and actually had a good time. Yes, you have no Tempered fighters to start, but you’ll get there reliably enough on 1 shield. This article was written for Ironsoul, but the concept flows well enough for any Elite Edge aggro build, and doesn’t have to be BA but could be Wrack or RF just as easily for this warband.
Raging Slayers isn’t the world’s best deck, but you’re already charging into enemy territory and have some mobility tools to get yourself back into enemy territory for scoring, and similarly don’t mind the Poor Footing driveback as much for the same reasons.
Deadly Synergy is often a tall ask for Elites, but this warband has the guard tech and mobility in the warscroll to get united and stay united more reliably, enjoy the multiple melee upgrades for inspiration purposes, and the scoring package is pretty easy since you have ranged attacks on everybody so you can shoot from unity and still do ok.
Finally, Nexus of Power is actually reasonable for the Farstriders. Again, your mobility tools in the warscroll let you steal a token and get covetous, even if you failed to overrun. Eagle-Eye has brutal from the rip so you can punish people camping on a cover token to block your scoring. You have a guard option to stay covetous on that token. It’s risky with only 3 fighters, but Nexus in within your grasp if you’re willing to push for forward tokens.
In Practice
Data from the Nemesis Statistics Project has them sitting at a 49% win rate across the edition (outside of legacy matchups) though only with 51 recorded games. In the most recent meta they still sit at 50% but with very few plays. People really aren’t using them much these days which is a shame. Across the edition, their best results appear to come from the Blazing/Cata combination which is reasonable for them.
Please consider submitting your own games to the project! It’s pretty easy if you click this link.
As mentioned at the top, we don’t have ITC numbers for this warband because people aren’t taking them to Grand Clashes. Hopefully that will change, especially if they get some much-needed love in a rules update down the line. The silver lining is… if you go to an ITC event with these guys, you might just win a best in faction trophy even if you lose every game!
I personally have played this warband 8 times in the Nemesis Format with a 50% win rate. Regrettably my glory differential is negative as when they lose, they tend to lose hard. I especially enjoyed them with RF/EK, and once even cracked 25 glory. Such things are possible! Even with this warband! I liked RF/Edge, I also had a laugh and a half with Wrack/Nexus while beating a BA/RF Mollog handily.
I regrettably have never played against this warband. I wish I did more often, but it’s vanished in my local scene with second edition’s warscroll being so janky.
I also had an enjoyable experiment with ES/RS despite calling it “the worst deck combination” – you can read about that process here, and my Farstriders game went really well!
A very reasonable and normal invading aggro pairing of BA/RF is also very good for them – I know a few people who routinely play Farstriders with that pairing though I don’t have a deck to share with you.
Staggerers has a few decks up that you might want to try: THREE different Wrack/RF deck 1, deck 2, and deck 3.
Staggerers also has an ES/CC deck that seems like it would be a lot of fun – get into enemy territory and hold their treasures!
The Battle Mallet Podcast cooked up this BA/CC deck for them at launch, which is now illegal as it has two restricted cards. Just drop Illusory fighter for something you like better, and you’re all set.
Finally, Staggerers built this “Challenge Deck” with Wrack and Edge of the Knife. Here’s their pitch:
Challenge Deck for this Week (Week of 1st September): Living on the Edge
Ever hated getting slain by your opponents? Well, prevent that by killing yourself first! This deck revolves around speedrunning the Farstrider’s Vanguard ability while quite literally Living on the Edge. To win the challenge – simply win a game with the exact deck provided!
Wrap
So there you have it! Despite their steep fall from grace, the Farstriders remain fun if a bit challenging, and they are still competitive (with limited data) despite the community impressions of their being ‘bad’. I still play them every month or two, and suggest you break yours out again if you haven’t played them in a while. Whether you prefer these OG shooters or you like Emberwatch better, you’re right (they’re both cool). And whether you play them or think they’re better left in the first edition dustbin, I hope you enjoy spending glory in the Spitewood – preferably after taking a core action with an inspired vulnerable friendly fighter in enemy territory…
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