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I am currently running a space marine list that revolves around two squads of sternguard led by a librarian (tigurius and epistolary)

a brief army list:

2 TAC squads with Las cannon and flamer drop pod with locator beacon
1 TAC squad with MM and melta drop pod with locator beacon
scout squad with ML and snipers

2x sternguard with 6 combi-meltas, and 2 meltas drop pods with locator beacons

Scout bikers with grenade launchers and locator beacon
bike squad with 2 meltas and MM attack bike
3 Typhoons

2x thunderfire cannons.

With this list (or something extremely close if you can make such a modification), I have a great deal of trouble with models that nullify psyker powers. None more so however than the Eldar Farseer with Runes of Warding. (yes, inquisitors with mystics and demolishers will bend me over one knee and spank me, but I haven't seen the eldar Farseer in action, while the inquisitors I have)


How can I deal with this model? Ignoring it seems like it would cause me a lot of trouble, but it seems like a unit that would be ridiculously easy to shield by putting him in a transport, and then place him in the middle of my opponent's army, where Fortune can keep his transport protected.

I was thinking about using Null zone after a drop pod assault, but considering that this power will only work about half, hopefully there are better options.

Enough rambling, how can I kill this guy? Or would it be smarter to ignore him?

at a glance at the "Fortune" ability, the farseer cant "Fortune" a vehicle. fortune allows re-roll of failed saves while a vehicle doesnt get a save

Unless it moves flat out ... in which case it has a 4+ cover save that fortune can make rerollable ....

It is going to be very difficult to kill a farseer unless the eldar player decides to put him in a vulnerable position. If the eldar player wants to keep the farseer alive, he can put him in a skimmer, fortune the skimmer, and move the skimmer flat out to gain a re-rollable obscured save.

I don't have any tips for you - you'll have to capitalize on a mistake by the eldar player. Close combat will work quite nicely, especially if you can get a powerfist into B2B with the farseer.

kill dem stunties wrote:Unless it moves flat out ... in which case it has a 4+ cover save that fortune can make rerollable ....

ah thanks for pointing that out. Its not a good chance but if you can deepstrike them behind the waveserpent the farseer is in, you can use firedragon bolts which ignore cover saves and shoot the rear armour 10 with your strength 4 weapons. yes I know, at best you can glance but if you succeed in wrecking it (2 weapon destroyed or immobilized results) then the farseer must disembark and you can assault if you wish... regardless the farseer is now in the open. problem being you MUST roll a 6 to glance, but with rapidfire and multiple guys droping in using that ammo, you may get lucky and take it out

Do eldar tanks have things that make them re-roll dangerous terrain checks?

The Thunderfire cannon has the Tremor shot that specifically forces skimmers and all other vehicles to take a dangerous terrain check when the tank moves, which perhaps will make it harder for the flat out/fortune combination.

But yes, I kind of have to hope they make mistakes, but what would be a nightmare scenario that I could expect to face? And how would I beat it?

re-reading some pertinent rules, if he DOES move flat out and you are able to immobilize it like I suggested, it is wrecked, due to the dangerous nature of moving fast and crashing into the ground. that improves your chances quite a bit... since (as far as I can tell) a waveserpent doesnt have any weapons, a weapon destroyed result will count as immobilized and therefore wrecked as a skimmer that moved flat out. with you already at their rear armour and their only access point being rear armour, you can then assault them.

I see you using locator beacons. you could have your scout bikers try to keep up where you think he will move and go with turbo boosters that gives you 3+ cover and allows you to deepstrike within 6" with 0 scatter. if your sternguard are already on the table, attach a librarian and use Gate of Infinity to jump to your scout marines to maximize your chances

TK, a Wave Serpent has a turret-mounted TL heavy weapon and a TL shuriken catapult under the hull.

OP, focusing fire on the Farseer's ride with your Typhoons and TFCs is probably your best bet. Making it take dangerous terrain tests will help.

That said, I don't think it's honestly worth focusing so much on. I know your army prominently features the two psykers, but they still get their powers off 50% of the time against RoW. Maybe just focus on the mission, and don't cast with your regular 2W Librarian unless it's important.

wave serpents have weapons ... can have 2 IIRC

ah I see the weapons now... they were in one section but not the other

Mannahnin wrote:TK, a Wave Serpent has a turret-mounted TL heavy weapon and a TL shuriken catapult under the hull.

OP, focusing fire on the Farseer's ride with your Typhoons and TFCs is probably your best bet. Making it take dangerous terrain tests will help.

That said, I don't think it's honestly worth focusing so much on. I know your army prominently features the two psykers, but they still get their powers off 50% of the time against RoW. Maybe just focus on the mission, and don't cast with your regular 2W Librarian unless it's important.

So you think that my army will be able to function even without utilizing the two sternguard units?

I'm not being sarcastic, I just figured that my army would more or less crash and burn if my Psykers were shut down. Not just for tactical reasons, but also because the psychological impact of effectively losing what I see as the core of my army is quite damning. I played against an IG mech force with a Deamon hunter inquisitor and dual mystic with LR demolishers. Even after immobilizing The landraider on a lucky tremor shot on turn one, I was only barely able to get a tie.

Very few armies are going to crash and burn if their psykers get shut down, off the top of my head the only one which completely relies on casting a psychic power for the army to function is the Eldar JetCouncil. You are still Marines so aren't going to suddenly fall over when people shoot back, you still have meltas and missiles to drop the Eldar skimmers and can usually beat them to death in combat (if you manage to catch them).

More importantly though what psychic powers are you thinking will actually achieve anything against Eldar in the first place? Unless there is a council Null Zone is useless (and even then just the Hood causes enough problems for them), none of the assault based powers are going to be of any help on the drop and Eldar have no reason to get close to you in following turns. Except for Vortex (which is very risky and a bit of a long shot) none of the shooting powers (including Machine Curse) are going to scare vehicles (I'm assuming that you are playing a decent Eldar list which means its probably going to be mech), Force Dome won't save you from being torrented away, leaving just Gate as a potentially useful utility power.

I'm assuming you are running 2 x 10 man units of Sternguard so you can combat squad (Librarians go with them)? Unless you have some terrible luck, even allowing for all the Eldar defensive tricks the Sternguard should kill 2 vehicles each on the turn they arrive (they should manage this against any army actually) which is going to instantly cripple most Eldar lists. They probably need a couple of extra combi meltas to do this reliably and I would recommend a Heavy Flamer rather than a Meltagun (just stick to combi meltas) so you can hurt infantry as well if you need to. The only trick is getting them to arrive when you want them to. Against lists with Mystics and things like Farseers which are major force multipliers (and often relatively fragile) you would be better off dropping the Tacticals etc in first while you soften things up (ideally taking out Mystics etc).

As far as your list goes, assuming this is 2000pts, you probably don't need the Scout squad as you already have 6 scoring units. The main change I would be to either add or drop a Pod to give you an even number, ideally I would change all the Tacticals to having Rhinos/Razorbacks (they only have a single special weapon so aren't that scary out of Pod) and give the Thunderfires (yes the Thunderfires) both Pods. You will very rarely use them, just deploy them seperately (DoW games going first the Pods can help in some cases) but this means you have two useless/empty Pods and two Pods with the Sternguard. This means if the situation requires it the Sternguard don't have to arrive first turn (say is there is nothing on the board because your opponent reserved everything or has castled up really well so you can't get to his vehicles) and instead you can just drop a couple of empty Pods in his face which at the very least will slow him down and then the Sternguard arrive a bit later (and with Tigerius they should be on time) and still kill things exactly the same way.

What does the rest of his list look like? Eldar lists typically are centered around each unit playing off the other, and Farseers are more 'support' type units and less the actual point of concern itself. I guess what I'm trying to say is maybe it would be better to de-fang the snake rather than cut the head off it. If he's guardian heavy, I recommend a whirlwind. That will also put some fear into any IG armies you happen to come across as well. If your biggest concern is vehicles, then I'd say massed ML fire should be able to take care of the problem. Meltas and Lascannons are kind of useless against Serpents because of the Energy Field thing. They've always been more of a "crumple under volume of fire, not quality of fire" type army.

In my experience, it is I that fear your psykers, not the other way around. Just get within 24" of my Farseer and the Hood will mess with my fortune ability nicely.

The dual psychic defenses our armies contain tend to screw us both in equal measure.

I support the "play the game" idea. Don't give the Farseer too much attention. Kill the other stuff. Eldar die easy enough.

I'm sorry. I realize I really should have mentioned this. I thought I had.

My army is a Gate of infinity army that relies on using that power to teleport around, concentrating the firepower of the majority of the army on a few targets a turn. This means that I'm using the drop pods as a vehicle for locator beacons.

The concentration of fire method means hat combat squading would reduce my firepower, as the librarian can only teleport with the squad he is attached to.

Also, this is a 2500 point list, and while I realize how useless scouts are in just about every way. They do infiltrate, and will be getting a 2+ coversave, and will allow me to deploy my tactical squads on more prominent targets than whatever homefield objective I might have.

As it is, I have 5 drop pods, so I can drop my tacticals first turn should my opponent stay in reserve, and then, as you mentioned, be able to count on both squads coming in on time.

As far as the idea of the Heavy flamer, I used to run those, however, considering the thunderfire cannons that support them, as well as scout bikers (on the turns that they don't go flat out), and the special ammunition, and the potential 6 frag missiles from the typhoons (a rarity, but there could be a time where using Frags on infantry instead of Kraks on vehicles or other targets would be prudent) I felt that having 2 melta shots that I could count on for the entire game would be more useful. It also means that from just average rolls, I can destroy around 4 AV 14 tanks before I run out of melta. And did I mention that Tigurius can use avenger?

As far as the rest of my opponent's list, there isn't one. I've been trying to put together a fairly decent take all comers list (which I failed at, if you metagame my army vs Necrons you'll see why ) and had a bunch of people tell me that Farseers will shut me down.

Thanks for all the advice people, greatly appreciate it and would greatly appreciate more

Drop Tigirius, he's a waste of points. All you need to do is get within 24" of the Farseer with your Hooded Librarian and watch him cry.

Gavo wrote:Drop Tigirius, he's a waste of points. All you need to do is get within 24" of the Farseer with your Hooded Librarian and watch him cry.

Tigurius does the following:

1) He almost ensures that my reserves will come in whenever I want them to.

2) If I'm not using Null zone, he can help in the shooting phase

3) because he can use Null zone, in addition to GoI, and Force dome, I can give the other librarian force dome and GoI. If I didn't have his extra power, I would have to worry about either taking null zone for both, or Force dome for both. Alternatively, I could have one with Null zone and one with force dome. None of these options are very attractive, and though a 5+ save isn't much. it's a LOT more than nothing.

Anyway, I'm not planning to make any changes to the list until substantial testing, but thanks for the advice

There is/was an unresolved debate about whether GoI can work with locator beacons. You may want to check the YMtC index for the various arguments.
I say this if you're planning on using this tactic in a tourney scenerio since some TOs may not rule in your favor. If you're just talking about a FLGS or a local group then go with what you want.

Leo_the_Rat wrote:There is/was an unresolved debate about whether GoI can work with locator beacons. You may want to check the YMtC index for the various arguments.
I say this if you're planning on using this tactic in a tourney scenerio since some TOs may not rule in your favor. If you're just talking about a FLGS or a local group then go with what you want.

Yes, I actually started a thread about that very topic.

The somewhat general consensus was that, the rule for GoI actually says that GoI is a "deep strike attempt" in the latter half of the rule. So the question is rendered moot.

Thanks for the warning though, it's definitely something to keep in mind.