Rumors: 7th Vehicle Damage and Perils of the Warp Charts

Some new rumors (or perhaps leaks!) that I came across on BoLS a few moments ago. 

The vehicle chart is roughly what I would expect factoring in for the rumored 7+ explodes result. The thing that really caught my eye was (obviously) flyers crashing on a 1-2 out of d6 when immobilized. The old locked velocity rule never sat right with me when damaged mobility should logically make a plane crash. This is a welcome change in my eyes.

The perils chart is interesting, but I hoped it would be a lot more interesting (read: utterly brutal and unforgiving). Psychic powers seem like they're about to get even more useful than they have been. While perils is likely to happen more often with people rolling 5 or more dice and praying they don't double up on sixes, I don't see the need to reward someone for tempting the warp beyond casting the spell they were attempting. That's the inherent reward and it seems sufficient to me. 

I've seen people on the boards who think they're going to summon a million Pink Horrors with fifteen Heralds of Tzeentch. I think they are likely in for a surprise when they nuke themselves and their units too. When not casting powers Tzeentch has very low leadership. This chart would not be terribly friendly to them. Just a few days before 7th comes out (coincidentally on my birthday, though I'll be in Tokyo watching an Uematsu Nobuo concert[!]), so we only have to wait a little longer to see what truth lies behind these rumors. 

via Gary:

Vehicle Damage Table:

1-3 Crew Shaken: vehicle only firing snap shots like normal
4 Crew Stunned: vehicle only firing snap shots and cannot move or pivot. Zooming flyers cannot turn and must move 18". 
5 Weapon Destroyed: as normal and if all weapons have run out of ammunition or or already destroyed count as immobilized
6 Immobilized: Chariots count as Crew Stunned, Flyers 1-2 flyer crashes with Crash and Burn rule. 3+ it counts as crew stunned.An already immobilized vehicle suffering another immobilized result loses an additional hull point.
7+Explodes: D6 radius for a Strenth 4 hit on nearby units. vehicle destroyed

Crash and Burn: lg blast and scatters 2d6 for S6 hits.

Wrecked vehicles are those that lose all their hull points. becomes scenery

Perils of the Warp:
1. Dragged into the Warp: Psyker takes a leadership test, if passed suffers 1 wound or glancing hit no saves.if failed he is removed as a casualty and his unit takes d6 S6 AP1 hits. The hits come from the psyker for allocation
2. Mental Purge: Psyker suffers 1 wound/glancing hit no saves. randomly select one power from the psyker. its lost for the rest of the game. 
3. Power Drain: Psyker suffers 1 wound/glancing hit no saves. if its the psychic phase, both players lose d3 warp charge points 
4. Psychic Backlash: Psyker suffers 1 wound/glancing hit no saves.
5. Empyric Feedback: Psyker takes a leadership test. if failed Psyker suffers 1 wound/glancing hit no saves. If passed no effect.
6. Warp Surge: Psyker takes a leadership test. if failed Psyker suffers 1 wound/glancing hit no saves. If passed psyker gains a 3+ invul, fleshbane, armour bane, and smash until the next friendly psychic phase.

Finally getting around to posting about my game! 2k Eldar vs Eldar

I was already planning to visit friends in Tokyo about a month back, but out of nowhere I got a free day off on a Friday and I got some 40k in too. What a lucky break! Scott and I are slugged it out with the most brutal lists we could put together at 2000 points. I laid down my ForgeDar Council to see how it would fare against him without allies. Here's my list.

HQ

• Farseer - Jetbike, Spear
• Farseer - Jetbike
• 8 Warlocks - Jetbikes, 1 Spear

Troops

• 5 Dire Avengers
• Wave Serpent - TL Scatter Laser, Underslung Shuriken Cannon
• 5 Dire Avengers
• Wave Serpent - TL Scatter Laser, Underslung Shuriken Cannon

Fast Attack

• Nightwing Interceptor
• 2 Hornets - Dual Pulse Lasers, One with Holos
• 2 Hornets - Dual Pulse Lasers, One with Holos

Heavy Support

• Pheonix Bomber
• 2 War Walkers - Scatter Laser/Bright Lance
• War Walker - Scatter Laser/Bright Lance

2000 Total Points, 13 Kill Points, 2 Scoring Units

Not having Dark Eldar presents some of the old challenge in using the Seer Council (no Hit and Run). And it makes my powers less reliable (no Grisly Trophies). Part of what we were trying to do was test ways of bringing down the Council when it is backed by a powerful list, but not by the Baron.

Opposing Eldar:

HQ

• Spiritseer
• 3 Warlocks on Jetbikes, 2 Spears

Troops

• 5 Wraithguard with D-Scythes
• Wave Serpent - Scatter Laser, Holofields
• 5 Wraithguard with D-Scythes
• Wave Serpent - Scatter Laser, Holofields
• 3 Jetbikes with a Shuriken Cannon
• 3 Jetbikes with a Shuriken Cannon
• 3 Jetbikes with a Shuriken Cannon

Fast Attack

• 2 Hornets - Dual Pulse Lasers
• Nightwing Interceptor

Heavy Support

• Falcon - Scatter Laser, Shuriken Cannon, Holofields
• Warp Hunter - Holofields
• Warp Hunter - Holofields

Basically our idea was to force the Council to roll a lot of 4++ saves against the Wraithguard and Warp Hunter templates. There is also a good amount of firepower coming in from other platforms on the other side. If the Council were dwindled down, my relatively low AV force might be dealt with over the course of the game.

Deployment.

I failed to roll either Fortune or Protect. And getting too focused on trying to Fortune I forgot to roll for Prescience and Psychic Shriek. I was off to a bad start. Then I lost the roll for first turn and failed to seize. This was basically the worst case scenario for the army I brought.

Scott's Saim Hann force. A work in progress, and I think his best painting to date.

But what we found was that while my opponent made a few mistakes in his movement phase, particularly putting long ranged assets too close (he's used to Dark Eldar skimmers with rifles firing from the inside) and his D-Scythe Wraithguard too far, it wasn't of great consequence that I lost a lot of my Council. What I had been wary of was him hammering even 2-3 models with 5 templates with both units. That could cripple the Council without even accounting for firepower coming from his vehicles. Instead the Wraithguard were too far away to lean on their optimal target and he had to fire on the Council with his Hornets and tanks. That spared my own vehicles a lot of damage. His battle tanks were also too close to avoid getting assaulted by the few Witchblades that remained, meaning that despite hurting the unit badly they were still causing roughly the same damage they would have at full strength.

Council casualties and their following assaults. Scott's Hornets really pounded them. We found Hornets to be obscenely powerful in this game, especially when Guided.

I discovered a few things about my list in this game. The Council is as amazing as always at killing vehicles with weak rear armor. While I think it would have been too diminished to fight large units of infantry or other tarpit units, I think it is likely armies with points invested in those units would have a hard time hammering the Council at long range. A list like that may not be able to deal with my Serpents, Hornets, Walkers and Flyers as well. It might also not have the ability to ignore cover which is huge in dealing effectively with a Fortuned 2+ Council, which before the game started was a very real concern.

Fielding a Council in my ForgeWorld mech list basically throws a wrench into target priority for my opponent. It takes very specific tools to bring it down. Even if it doesn't have a 2+ and 2+ cover, and even if it doesn't have Fortune, at long range you need to use weapons with AP 2/3 to kill them effectively and that keeps my mech elements mostly unmolested. Ignoring the Council, especially when there is a nice opportunity when they don't have Fortune up, can spell doom for many armies as well.

I also discovered that Pheonix Bombers are much better than the internet seems to believe. I've seen any number of times that people advise taking Nightwings instead for better jink saves, similar firepower and cheaper costs. But similar firepower is so untrue in my opinion. With the missile launchers you get a lot more shots at very good AP. I found my Bomber could basically remove a unit of Wraithguard every turn. And I'd be comfortable shooting it at almost anything: vehicles, weakly armored troops, other planes, really anything but AV14.

Before flyers.

After flyers. Cleared a Serpent and WG unit.

And finally what I learned is that even though I love the Council I built and using its rules is really ridiculously fun, I can't see what place it has in 40k generally. Most armies can't deal with it, especially not when it is backed up by a powerful force. I already felt like it clearly doesn't belong in casual games, but even when you tailor specifically to it and field a quite brutal army it throws off the balance of the game too much in my opinion. It takes a lot of force to destroy even when it doesn't have any of the powers that make it durable. And it takes very specific equipment even if you apply the force. You really need both AP2 and ignores cover and there aren't many armies that can wing that. Even if they can, I don't like it when a battle can be compared so easily to paper, rock, scissors. It's a strategy game, after all, and strategy ought to win the day.

I think I'm done using my Council, and likely my Forge World units, in all but Apoc battles. Fun as they are there just aren't many situations where they are fair. For most of 5th edition I played feeling like within reason (ie as long as you're not facing utterly ridiculous lists from the few top tier books at the time), superior strategy would win out. But the game is clearly not balanced for competitive list-building under 6th when there are units that deal a lot of damage and are essentially unkillable to a lot of armies. I suppose that's just something I have to learn to accept. Hopefully it draws me back toward aspect warriors because then I wouldn't need to paint or build anything to keep my lists up-to-date.

Reexamining the Seer Council (Part 5): Divination

While I see Telepathy as a much deadlier discipline than I used to, many Divination powers provide the means to manipulate the statistics in our favor, something I think is invaluable in a game of dice. Some powers are much more desirable than others, but with a very good primaris and ways to use each result, on the whole rolling here is a very good idea.

Primaris: Prescience
Rerolling hits is fantastic for any combat unit. Since the best you can hope for is a 3+ to hit, it is common for many CC units' damage to bottleneck at the to-hit roll. Prescience also helps with throwing spears, shooting witchfire and buffing support fire, just like Guide. The range is shorter, but since the Council is likely to be in combat and benefits so much from this spell I take one in every game. The Council doesn't have enough attacks and can't afford to let potential hits go to waste. It works incredibly well when used with other reroll, buff and debuff abilities such as Enhance, Doom, Jinx and Misfortune. Example: 8 Warlocks charge with Enhance for WS5 and Prescience against Jinxed (-1Sv), Doomed, Misfortuned Terminators. 24 attacks, 20.2 hits, 19.6 wounds, 10.8 failed saves. Okay, okay so we probably won't have all those powers, but it's fun to consider what rerolling everything can do to a unit. And having even one or two of those rerolls makes a big difference.

Foreboding
If I were to roll on Divination this is not exactly what I would be looking to get, but I would be far from disappointed to land it. One of the best things an assault-oriented unit could hope to do against the Council is assault it and deny it the bonus attack for charging. Warlocks and Farseers have very few attacks, so each and every one counts. Getting assaulted this way could tie up the squad or get more Warlocks killed than we can afford to lose. The units that would be looking to assault you would be tough units and horde ones. Boyz, Tyranid swarms, Zombies, Terminators, MCs and the like all come to mind. With TL ShuCats we actually have some decent overwatch potential, but shooting at full BS could really put a stop to an enemy assault, or simply deter them from attempting in the first place. A full round of shooting would really hurt with all those pseudo-rending shots and even if the assault succeeds, the charging unit may be significantly weakened.

Forewarning
I can only think of two uses for this on a Council. The first would be to throw it up on supporting units nearby. DE allies, Warp Spiders, a Crimson Hunter, anything that can keep up with the Council and needs every bit of defense it can get. The other use would be to put it up when you use the artifact Spiritstone to reduce your Farseer's warp charge costs. He could get a different 4++ this way and then enter combat with guys who might hurt him with AP2/3. Pretty situational and most likely unnecessary, but I'm just stretching here to come up with a way to use a second 4++ on a unit that already has one. Depending on my support situation, I might be looking to swap this for Prescience.

Misfortune
Before the codex dropped this was by far my favorite power in Divination. I suppose it is still my favorite, but I feel that many damage sources that benefitted from this before are effective without it because of pseudo-rending. The Council, however, needs it as much as ever. In combat they still need every advantage they can get against units with good armor. Jinx and the Remnants of Glory can help, but in the event I don't land Jinx, I might be hoping to get Misfortune to help with heavy armor. The Remnants are nice and reliable if you want to spend the points, but they do cost a lot and Farseers without Death Mission don't have enough attacks. Misfortune ups the damage of the whole unit and anyone supporting. As I said for Prescience, I think it works best with any other powers that improve our statistical chances to kill the enemy. It works well against anything that will receive a save, including vehicles taking cover. On another note, the range on Misfortune makes it easy to use to help support units instead of just the Council. In my last game it was instrumental to my Dire Avengers and Jetbikers taking out some Screamers that would have otherwise been hard to remove. This allowed my Council to move on and collapse a flank of IG, giving me access to the Colossi that threatened my scoring troops.

As an aside, this is another benefit of slinging out a lot of different maledictions--no limitations on targets with regards to shooting and assault. It allows a deathstar unit to influence a lot of the board all at once, where most deathstars' greatest weakness is their inability to fight in more than one place at a time.

Perfect Timing
In my opinion, Ignores Cover has become one of the most important, most powerful special rules in the game. With 6th Ed. we are seeing a lot of units with stealth and/or shrouded. There are also a lot of Aegis Defence Lines in use. Pounding through 4+ saves with dakka is one thing, but firing on 2+ saves is just beyond pointless. Reveal can go a long way to helping against the stealth/shrouded units, but nothing beats simply bypassing the cover all together. I think this power works incredibly well in combination with Jinx because it becomes possible to reduce MEQs to sliced salami using the Jetbikes' shuriken catapults. Stacking Jinx on the enemy and ignoring their cover can have simply devastating results and it doesn't take much luck to pull this combo off. Depending on your army make up you could even split the Farseer with this off to a nearby squad of Fire Dragons or Wraithguard that has disembarked. Have fun surviving 10 Fusion Guns with Ignores Cover! On the whole I think Perfect Timing is great as long as you have units that the Farseer can actually join who can benefit from it. It improves the value of Jinx and our pseudo-rending a lot and provides versatility in lists that are packing units with heavy-hitting guns.

Precognition
This mini-Fortune is a little better for our Farseers than it used to be. Now that Farseers have access to decent weapons, it might be worth it to reroll with them. Another less obvious use would be to tank hits using a Farseer with this power. In the event that he fails his saves, heal him up with Renewer. If he gets hit with ID weapons, roll your Look out Sir and pray. But in that event you need to roll three ones in a row and have a good chance to survive. If I get Fortune first (and I tend to roll for it twice before going to Divination), I will probably swap this, but the protection it can provide may be worthwhile if I don't have rerolls on the whole unit.

Scrier's Gaze
In order to use this power, the Farseer needs to be on the board. So if anything benefits from it, it will likely be a part of the army that is not the Farseer's unit. Due to the cost involved in using a Seer Council, the rest of the army is typically small and fragile as a matter of course. As a result, if I put anything in reserves it is likely to be objective snatching WRJs. I want those things off the board just about as long as possible. Sometimes if they come on, I use them for a little backfield support when the enemy has few other units to harm them from range. Usually though, I am happy to have anything that will help me try to keep them in reserves. Scrier's Gaze might be able to do that. But so does the number four result on the strategy warlord traits (I've rolled that three games in a row. Weird). This is a power that in many cases I would probably drop for Prescience. But if I am really depending on my reserves coming in late against an army with say, 3 Colossi (as in my last game), I'll be glad to be able to keep them off the board.

Divination is probably the most reliably useful of all three available disciplines. The Primaris is amazing, as are most of the chart results. I recommend always making sure to take at least one roll on Divination just to get Prescience as it is just too helpful in combat when unbuffed Warlocks have pretty unimpressive WS for their cost and number of attacks. I'd be likely to spend more rolls in this discipline in two instances. First, if I get Fortune then I will want something good that definitely costs only one warp charge. Divination has no powers that cost two, whereas Telepathy and Runes of Fate have a few each. Second, if I fight against an army like Space Marines or Chaos Daemons then Terrify doesn't enable me to perform sweeping advances. It doesn't do anything at all to Chaos Daemons. Against Marines, they might run off the board if they are close to it, but ATSKNF really hinder's the best uses of Terrify and some of the other Telepathy results don't compare as well to Misfortune, Perfect Timing, Prescience, or Forboding. Judging what you need based on your army, your opponent and what your Warlocks get is key (did I say always roll them first? Do. They only have one option and it's very helpful when deciding with the Farseers to know what the Warlocks have). Perhaps even more so than other lists, it is important to consider these variable factors when rolling because the Council is much harder to use without Fortune. In the case that you don't get soon, you have to consider the possibility you won't have it at all and plan accordingly to bolster your defenses and the efficiency of your offense accordingly.

Notes on Experiences with Telepathy and my Council

I said in my post on Telepathy powers that I think it is perhaps very much more powerful than Divination in terms of causing enemy models to die, but after playing against some Space Marines and Daemons I'm sort of feeling a little differently about it in certain match ups.

ATSKNF makes Terrify much less potent agaisnt Space Marines. Because it allows them to auto-pass regrouping tests, you cannot assault a Horrified SM unit and cause them to die before the assault even takes place (I thought you could and posted it that way earlier; I still need to correct that mistake). They will also auto-regroup at the beginning of the next turn. This doesn't make Terrify useless in any way, but to put it lightly I'd say it's not quite as good as automatically removing them from the board. At the least, some of the other powers in Telepathy are still quite good against them, but I'm feeling like having a guarantee at Guide/Prescience and potential Misfortune would be more beneficial.

Against Chaos Daemons, however, Terrify is righteously worthless. They don't have Fearless as a USR, they have some other immunity like it but under their Daemonic Instability rules. Under the same rule they also can't be pinned, so the 1-2 result from Hallucination is no good either. Again, Psychic Shriek is still solid as are some of the powers where they test against their Ld (they're only immune to morale checks). But once again, against these armies I feel like other powers are more useful. Blessings like Foreboding and Prescience, maledictions like Doom and Misfortune--all of those help kill hordes and MCs where you need good statistical reliability. Against Daemons I'm likely to be looking in this direction the next time I play. If I do roll on Telepathy it will most likely be to get Psychic Shriek, especially because many Daemons units have very low Ld to start with. On the other hand, all Daemons have invul saves which can hinder PsyShriek's success. Something to keep in mind when estimating damage potential during game.

I think I still have a lot to learn about judging my opponent's army and rolling my powers accordingly. Some powers are much better against certain armies. Others are much worse, or maybe even of no use at all. I also apparently need to calm myself when rolling my Farseers since I'm currently in the middle of a game where I wanted Fortune so badly I forgot to make sure I got Prescience. Now I have a Farseer with Guide, Executioner and Death Mission. And he doesn't even have a combat weapon good enough to make DM worth it. Luckily the other Farseer got some good stuff, but you've really got to suck it up sometimes and make the best of your last few rolls when you're not getting Fortune. There are other ways to protect yourself and prolong your Council's rampage. I'll be going over that battle and what I'm doing to keep my Council in the game without rerolls later on.

If you've read the Council posts and seen any other mistakes, let me know. Eventually I'll clean them all up and compile them for easier browsing.

Reevaluating the Seer Council (Part 4): Telepathy

Because it has already come up and I see such potential in it, I want to cover the discipline of Telepathy even though I'd wanted to save the best for last. Telepathy has some powers that are nothing short of devastating with the new Seer Council. While some may have thought before that it was the weaker of the two BYB disciplines available to Eldar, I think it should be almost immediately apparent that it is one of the reasons to take a Council at all now.

Telepathy

Primaris: Psychic Shriek
I brought this up a few times in the Runes of Fate post and I also wrote about it before the new codex came out because it is one of those few witchfire powers that is better than almost any gun in the game. It cares not for your toughness, armor or cover. Even high Ld doesn't protect against it because on 3d6 the average roll is a 10.5. Basically, anything short of good invul saves or vehicle status stands little chance of protecting the target. The range is short, but it matches up well with the other ranged weapons available to the Council. Also with the Jetbike's speed, it's really not hard to be using this soon and to good effect.

Like many other Telepathy powers, where Psychic Shriek gets absurdly powerful is in combination with Horrify. Even a single cast drops Ld10 units down to Ld7. Now you're likely to hit pretty hard with the Shriek. Cast it twice and the target is Ld4. If they're not a horde-sized unit you have not-too-unlikely chance to wipe the entire unit with a single cast. A whole unit of any elite infantry dead before you even fire the first shuriken! That's incredible! And it works just as well against Riptides who are trying to protect themselves with ablative drone wounds. The dead drones and Ld penalties from Horrify will almost certainly cause the Riptide to run if you don't kill it. At any rate, this is something I intend to take just about every game. Rolling on Telepathy with your Farseer's last roll is not a bad option at all when you're not getting what you want. You might roll something great, and in any case you can always trade for Psychic Shriek, which is great.

Dominate
This power also works very well with Horrify. The target has to take a Ld test to do anything of any value, so if you can debuff their Ld you can essentially ignore them while you get to killing something else. At only one warp charge, I see this is a fantastic power considering one of the best ways of dealing with a Council is to gang up on it. Powers like this that allow you to crowd-control allow the Council to do its job unimpeded. I do suppose the target could still cast non-shooting psychic powers and maybe turbo-boost if they are Jetbike type units, but I'm not sure on the exact wording. And the psychic test will be unreliable if we've cast Horrify on them.

Mental Fortitude
If you don't already have Fearless through either an attached IC or a Farseer's Shard of Anaris, this might be of some use. You can also cast it on nearby units and that could be useful if you have supporting units who need this. For just the Council however, I'm strongly considering spending the points for the Shard of Anaris. For not that many points you get a great weapon and Fearless for the whole unit. Very nice. If I had that I would probably swap for Psychic Shriek if my support units don't need Fearless.

Puppet Master
This is a focused witchfire power and a very good one at that. The only problem I have with it is that it forces the Council to target the unit with its shooting and therefore its assault. Unless you detach the Farseer, your options become quite limited. How would I make these decisions in a game? Depends on what I target. This power works best on vehicles because they have more guns and failing to get the "focused" part of the power to work becomes a non-issue. If I have multi-assault options from there, I might hold off on throwing my spears so that I don't prematurely destroy the target. On the other hand if I really do want to destroy just the vehicle, throwing the spears gives me another chance to do that because I might fail my assault range roll. Vehicles can also be free points toward winning assaults for Councils, so it may be worth making sure they are still there when the assault phase comes along.

Against infantry this power loses some of its pizazz because of the chances you will not get to shoot with anyone who has a decent enough gun. On the other hand there are always some units that only have awesome guns. Combat squads that have been split up to have four special/heavy weapons in one half come to mind. So do CSM Chosen and Havocs. And mirror match Eldar with Wraithguard or Fire Dragons. There are infantry squads where this could be useful, but there are just so many more where it won't be. Take a long hard look at the enemy army before deciding whether or not to keep this one. Chances are I would use it, personally.

Terrify
I think this gem has been hidden away in this list just waiting for a power like Horrify to work with it. I know there are some who have been using it to good effect, but Ld penalties make this power one of the deadliest in the entire game, in my opinion. Units with Fearless are written and balanced to rely on it. And players who use those units are probably very used to not worrying about getting swept or running off the board. Savvy Eldar players ought to be able to do amazing things with Terrify.

It forces an immediate morale check, if Horrify is applied first you can significantly boost the chances that the unit runs at the beginning of the movement phase. The real fun begins if they don't run far enough from your units because charging forces them to roll against their leadership again. If they fail, they are removed from the game. It's not a sweeping advance, so it works against ATSKNF, a special rule which I loathe with all my being. If they do pass the test (not likely with enough Ld penalties) you have amazing chances to sweep them if you win combat (and they don't have ATSKNF *shaking fist*). If for some reason you just don't want to be anywhere near the unit you Terrified, that's no problem either. They're going to run and you can scoot back with your Jetbike assault move. Then you're 4d6" away from them; maybe more if they fail their regrouping test on their turn.

For the Council, Terrify is a return to days when they killed with sweeping advances and Fearless status on their enemies meant extra wounds for free. Terrify brings back slaughtering enemies for taking few to no casualties and then barely winning combat. They never used to hit crazy hard because they lacked the volume of attacks and had no way of getting through good armor saves. Now they have Jinx, Remnants of Glory and Terrify so they can still chop their way through enough guys with good armor or not, Fearless or not, and still win combat to sweep them off the board. Horrify, Torment Grenade Launchers and Enhance/Drain may even help us to ensure that the sweeping advance is successful.

Invisibility
Despite the ease with which we can get Shrouding, I think Invisibility remains valuable to a Seer Council. With it they can deny their targets Counter-Attack and force them to swing at WS1. That goes a very, very long way to keeping Warlocks alive through return attacks. Then there is the fact that it provides Stealth in addition to Shrouding, and thus a 2+ cover save from normal movement, not just Turbo-boosting. One more benefit that may not be immediately obvious is that casting this with a Farseer is safer than casting Conceal with a Warlock. Farseers have enough wounds to survive Perils and have Ghost Helms to protect them if they have Warp Charges left over to spend on it. Since this   can cut down on the number of tests you need to make it can protect your Warlock investment. And lastly, Farseers have better leadership so casting Invisbility will work more reliably than Conceal.

Hallucination
There are good and bad sides to the last Telepathy power. Of the bunch it is the most random and that is surely the biggest drawback. The 1-2 result does nothing against units immune to pinning, so Terrify becomes necessary against Fearless units. But in that case you might as well direct a different plan of attack at them all together because of the other ways to take advantage of Terrify. The 3-4 result is the best against most units because it prevents them from doing anything more meaningful than moving. That could do a lot to relieve pressure against your forces and allow the Council to work at wrecking enemy units. The 5-6 result causes the enemy to hit themselves once each with their best melee weapon. I got this off once against a big unit of Wyches and it seemed cool until they promptly failed to wound much and then saved most of the wounds they cause. There are units where this could be good but many units with decent armor will whiff against themselves because their S is the same as their T. A unit of Terminators would be pretty funny punching themselves in the face, but even Psychic Shriek has a good chance to do just as many wounds and only needs one warp charge.

Due to the three very strong powers that require the enemy to roll against their leadership, Telepathy is an incredibly powerful discipline to combine with Ld penalties. There are two places to get these, Horrify and Torment Grenade Launchers. The Council is not guaranteed to have Horrify, but with eight or so Warlocks, the chances are quite good. Torment Grenade Launchers come on flimsy vehicles and work at very short range, but they are cheap and if you are already taking Dark Eldar vehicles for Grisly Trophies, they may be of value.

Reevaluating the Seer Council (Part 3): Runes of Fate

You may not need Farseers to unlock the Seer Council any more, but they bring some psychic powers to the unit that combine incredibly well with the Warlock's powers and traits. For the boosts they offer to defense, offense, versatility I think they're just too good not to take if you want a proper deathstar. The thing to look at when thinking about Farseers is the powers you are aiming to get and which of the three charts to spend your rolls on. Your aims may be influenced by your list, Warlock powers and Remnants of Glory. The first set of powers I'm going to go over is:

Runes of Fate

Guide
The usefulness of Guide in a Seer Council will depend on a number of factors. For the Council itself, it will matter how many Singing Spears you brought and whether or not you even have any need to throw them. And it could affect any witchfire powers you're going to throw out, but the ShuCats are already twin-linked and it will be wasted on them. Otherwise it will matter what the rest of your list looks like and what shooting units are going to be within 24" of the Council. Obviously this excludes any Wave Serpents already twin-linking through TL Scatter Lasers, but it could be a nice boost for Dark Eldar allies who are keeping close by to assist the Council with Grisly Trophies. If I planned to have someone useful nearby, I wouldn't mind trading for Guide if I get something I don't at all want. Maybe even one on each Farseer if I have a lot of supporting fast firepower and am just not getting the rolls I want.

Executioner
I'm not at all a big fan of witchfire powers. The few that are better than guns still need a Ld test, can still be blocked by Deny the Witch, risk Perils of the Warp, cost valuable Warp Charges, use up an even more valuable roll on the chart AND need to roll to hit. If you could trade the roll for a good gun, I gladly would. That said, Farseers don't come stock with good guns. You could buy the relic long rifle, but it's expensive and unnecessary to the goals of the Council. If I already have Guide and can't swap, Executioner could be of value. At the very least, it is better than a TL Shuriken Catapult. You could use Executioner if you absolutely have to and since I want us to be able to do something with each roll we make I have to look at this power's potential to kill off someone you'd like dead in a squad. And its ability to wound high toughness targets. But you can only cast a single Witchfire power per turn and while I'll go over this in great detail later, I'd much rather have Psychic Shriek.

Doom
This power is better than it's ever been due to its new utility against vehicular targets. The Council already wounds everything on 2s and has Armorbane against vehicles. Doom helps the Council most when firing ShuCats and when swinging witchblades against AV13-14 targets. Still, it could be a huge boost for Dark Eldar allies with poisoned shots and it's great for bolstering the effectiveness of S6 dakka vs vehicles, so I'd be thrilled to get it. If you roll Doom and Fortune, your spell casting is pretty much decided each turn, but what if you wanted to stack your odds of being able to use all three powers each turn? The first thing that comes to mind is to take the Spirit Stone of Anath'lan on a Farseer; it lets you trade your invul save to reduce the warp charge cost of a power. With shrouding, it is likely you won't be rolling your invul anyway and you can play it by ear if you run up against AP2/3 shooting with ignores cover. This would mean that at the list-building stage you already know which Farseer you are rolling more than once on the Runes of Fate with. That reduces flexibility a little, but the pay off would be big if you rolled both Doom and Fortune.

Eldritch Storm
Here's another witchfire power that I'm not likely to want. It is both better and worse than it used to be, but regarless it doesn't compare well against many of the blessings and maledictions available to us. I wish it still rotated tanks. At least with fleshbane it might wound tons of stuff if you get a good shot off against some bunched up targets, but who doesn't spread out when they see you roll up large blasts? It also has haywire rules now and can damage tanks, but so can a S9 Singing Spear. And with haywire, ES is likely to just burn off a single hull point from the target. This is another one you might be able to use, but since it competes with Psychic Shriek and costs 2 warp charges it could just get little to no use when you need to be casting more important powers.

Death Mission
I see a lot of potential in a Farseer casting Death Mission and riding with his Warlock posse. The problem is he needs a better weapon to really take advantage of the buff. When using 2 Farseers, you don't know which Farseer might get this so each one needs a good relic weapon. That bumps their cost up 15-30 each, depending on what you buy. With a Jinxlock I think the Firesabre would be great since the AP3 would be just as good as AP2. The Soulshrive from the Iyanden supplement could be nasty too. And with WS10 and I10 a DMSeer would rip people apart in challenges when using the Shard of Anaris (as a bonus it also gives the user, and by extension the unit, Fearless). Fleshbane, Rending and Instant Death in challenges is no joke with a Death Mission stat line. Basically if you manage to get this power on one Farseer and Fortune on the other I think it might be worth using it if you want a beatstick to stand in the stead of an Autarch. You wouldn't be able to cast the other excellent powers with him afterward, but with the right equipment this can make a Farseer an absolute monster.

Fortune
Obviously this is the money maker. It combos incredibly well with Conceal and Protect, providing durability that the old Council could only have dreamed of. It also picked up rerolls on Deny the Witch, a valuable and unexpected improvement. Once you have this you can relax and roll for stuff you feel like using, in my opinion, as this is almost the whole reason I'll be rolling on the Runes of Fate. While Death Mission would be fun and probably good if I have the builds for it, and while Doom could help support the rest of the force, none of the other powers make or break the Council. Despite Fortune's importance, I think there is less to say about it because everyone knows how amazing it is and how much the Council needs it. I'll just say that rolling on the Runes of Fate multiple times to get Fortune is risky as not all the powers are great when compared to some of the things we want to do with Divination and Telepathy. Just be careful with how many times you're willing to roll because you could get yourself stuck in a situation where you don't roll anything you need and have no more rolls to spend on other charts. That goes against the versatility available to us in rolling for many of the best psychic powers in the game.

Mind War
And finally the last result on the chart, a focused witchfire power. Mind War now works a little differently. You're not guaranteed to kill the guy you want and if you roll poorly you could debuff yourself. Not a problem, really, since Farseers are not the only thing we're relying on to do damage. It does work well with Horrify since debuffing the enemy Ld could help you kill them. And at least these days it ignores cover, but so does Psychic Shriek which can kill way more guys and combos just as well. I don't really want this power, but it certainly has some worthwhile use. The warp charge cost is high, so it could potentially fall to the wayside if you need to cast Fortune, but I'd put some thought into whether or not I'd swap for Guide because depending on what powers other characters have roll this might be of value.


In extreme summary: Fortune.

In a regular summary: take care that you don't get too greedy when rolling to get Fortune. The other powers have their uses, but with many of them costing 2 charges you may not be able to cast enough powers and your Farseers won't be operating at their full potential. Even though we can technically put many of the weaker powers to some use, charts like Telepathy and Divination have much better powers overall and rolling on those charts would be much more beneficial than getting stuck with a lot of Runes of Fate powers and no Fortune. User beware.

Revisiting the Seer Council (Part 2): Runes of Battle

The Warlocks' psychic powers are where the new incarnation of the Seer Council starts to get really interesting. Because they are random and you only get one roll each I think a large unit is necessary, whereas they used to be able to function in some capacity with five to six bodies. I personally have eight Warlocks and a Farseer converted with plans to sculpt up another Farseer at least. I think about that many rolls ought to provide decent enough chances to get some of the powers we want, with decent chances again of seeing doubles of the ones we really want.

At Ld8, I'm thinking Warlocks might need Dark Eldar allies with Grisly Trophies to provide psychic test rerolls. That would protect them from perils that would otherwise kill them outright. Something to consider when we get to list-building, at any rate.

Now let's have a look at the powers one by one.

Runes of Battle

Primaris: Conceal/Reveal
The unit needs at least one of these and it might be beneficial to have two. That's all right because you're likely to roll up plenty results you don't need and will need to fall back on this with at least someone. First the obvious benefits: with Shrouded you have a better save against AP3 and AP2 than you do with your invul save. Much better if you turbo-boost. That can be pretty huge in some situations, especially if you fail to roll up Fortune. Having a 2+ cover to help you get into position won't make up for not having rerollable saves, but it will definitely help a lot. Having two Warlocks with Conceal may be necessary in case one of them fails his roll when you really need the power up.

The other half of this power, Reveal, is brutally effective against units that rely on those special rules because the ones that do are likely to be relying on that to protect them from your pseudo-rending shuriken fire. Reveal may also help against vehicles with those rules should you want to smash them with some S9 Singing Spears. In turns where you already got Conceal up, you're free to use Reveal with anyone who has it. Another nice reason to have two.

Destructor/Renewer
Destructor is almost as good as it was before. I like having Soul Blaze on it well enough, but I don't think that makes up for the 6th edition providing Deny the Witch saves against it. Still, it's not at all bad to have a Heavy Flamer template on a unit with the speed to put it in the worst of places. It should provide some decent benefit to the unit when shooting.

Renewer on the other hand is obscene the way I'm thinking of it. A unit of 8-10 Warlocks can count on scoring 1-2 of these from the chart. Let's assume we get two Renewers and we have two Farseers leading the unit. We position the Farseers so that one is in the front and the other is the closest model to him, the one who will take Look out Sir wounds. You roll saves on the first guy until he takes a wound. Then you start rolling Look out Sir and pass wounds off to the next Farseer. You'll have to estimate the damage you might take and how much you can pass along, but the goal here is to only take up to two wound that are S<8. On your turn you are free to then heal the two Farseers up and negate all that hard work the enemy did. I used to soak damage all the time with my Farseers and this just makes that tactic so much nastier. Just be careful not to put yourself in a position to take a lot more wounds than you can reasonably save and LoS. And be careful of weapons that will ID your Farseer. Then you'd be relying on cover/invul and as nice as it is that we have those, we're not trying to spoon feed Slaneesh our Seers' souls.

Embolden/Horrify
I personally love this power set. The first of the two is handy as all get out for a unit that falls back 3d6 when they get unlucky and fail a morale check. Or that can't afford to whiff in combat and get swept. You could also cast it to apply Fearless after you've already fallen back so you can automatically regroup. A very good power that shouldn't be overlooked.

Now Horrify can just be disgusting in all the best ways. Have a look at the first paragraph on maledictions on p68 of the BYB if you need to refresh yourself. That's right, the effects are always cumulative. So one cast brings the target down from Ld10 to Ld7. Another cast would have them at Ld4. Good f%#king luck passing whatever morale checks I can throw at you this turn. Pinning tests can come from a number of places in our codex, Terrify could come down on the enemy from a Hemlock, basic shooting could have the unit flee and an assault could sweep them. Oh, did you say you're Fearless? Not anymore if Terrify hits you from one of the two Farseers or the Hemlock, which is guaranteed to have it. There are a lot of different ways to use this power and I think it has a definite place in our unit. I'd definitely want at least one, but maybe two. But no more than that. Ld4 will reliably fail and it'd be fine to take Conceal/Reveal over a third one of these.

Edit: Another use I forgot to mention is one that CKO brought up on DakkaDakka. If you can use this to make a unit with ATSKNF fall back, they will run from you 2d6 and you can back off 2d6 too. If you don't want to be in combat with them you can get away nicely. On the other hand, something he didn't mention is that you could cast this on a unit, then turbo-boost to block them in so they can't run and then shoot them with other units in your army or use a Hemlock to make them run. Then they die instantly. Somewhat situational, but it's not so bad since Horrify is cast in the movement phase and you can move 36" in the shooting phase. Hmmm...

Enhance/Drain
This is a good power to have, but a little less necessary than it was before since Warlocks have base I5 now. Still, hitting most stuff on 3s with WS5 would be nice. Against someone else with WS4 you would need three casts to bump them down to WS2 and yourself up to WS5 so that they hit on 5s. As funny as that would be, I just don't think it's practical. That's committing a lot of chart rolls, risking a lot of psychic tests/perils, hoping they fail a lot of Deny rolls just to weaken a unit you will probably steamroll anyway. And if not, you might be better off backing away and shooting them instead. Still, part of the point of analyzing these powers is to think about how they can be used, because we have little control over what we get. Since we don't need many conceal/reveal Warlocks, we've got to consider how to make due with what we end up with. Basically Enhance/Drain is another good one to stack up if you can, but a single cast of it gives a good boost to your combat prowess too.

Protect/Jinx:
As a whole I think this is by far the best power. There are good combos and uses for the others and they're necessary for the unit to operate at full potential, but I'd keep up to four or five of these if I happened to roll them. On the defensive side, Protect makes Terminators out of Jetbikes. With Fortune, they would be tremendously hard to remove. But we don't have that many rolls on Runes of Fate and sometimes you just can't seem to roll that one result you want. So if you don't have Fortune, this is your new substitute. Is it enough? Maybe, maybe not. That's going to depend on how much dakka and how much AP2 shooting your enemy can leverage on the unit at once. Not all lists can bring enough firepower down on Terminators to end them quickly. Much less if they're able to get anywhere on the board in a single turn with a 2+ cover to negate the AP2 shots. Getting at least one Protect off does do a lot to keep this unit in the game. Between soaking S1-7 shots with Farseers and positioning to prevent the enemy from weighing too much firepower against you, Protect should be a great boon to the Council.

Jinx is one of the powers that got me thinking about this unit again in the first place. It's pretty awesome that you can make MEQs out of Terminators, right? But remember when I mentioned that maledictions are always cumulative? Yeah. Two casts of this and those MEQs get no armor save from basic shuriken weaponry. Okay so it makes the Seer Council a destructive powerhouse in shooting. They already have pseudo-rending guns anyway, how well does it keep them from getting bogged down in assault? Ork Boyz, one cast means no save. Two for large units of IG. Now you're basically swinging the power weapons people always wanted Witchblades to be when fighting hordes. Against TEQs and MEQs, they might be getting saves, but rolling 4+ and 5+ respectively is not going to go well for units that are written to be balanced based on their armor. This is a power that goes against so much that is essential to 40k's game balance. Obviously it will combo well with Runes of Fate, Telepathy and Divination. I'll be returning to this many times in other posts.

Quicken/Restrain
There has to be one near-total dud in the bunch and this is it. Very simply, Jetbikes can't run, so the buff side of this one is worthless. On the other hand, Restrain could be used like crowd-control. You could keep an enemy unit that is 18" away from running. That would make it harder for them to reinforce against your Council or maybe slow them down when they're trying to dash toward an objective. Or behind cover. I could see using one of these. Maybe two, but any more than that and I'd be pretty disappointed not to have rolled better results on the chart.

Empower/Enervate
Empower boosts your strength by one. In most situations this won't help much because the Council's weapons always wound on a 2+. They are however only 3+2d6 against vehicles so it could help boost your damage against vehicles in combat. The Remnants of Glory weapons are not all fleshbane, however, so it could really help a lot with making those low AP hits count.

I think Enervate is amazing. Probably more than most people do. There are two reasons. One: every body matters--a lot. If debuffing the enemy's strength means even one Warlock is spared in combat, it was worth taking. We've only got one unit and they only have one wound each. They need to last and need to do amazing things to help you win, so leverage every chance you have to manipulate the statistics in your favor. The other one is less obvious, but check this out: remove the threat of ID from powerfists, thunderhammers and S8 MCs. With enough casts, Dreads too, but Dreadnaughts should never even get a chance to swing against massed Witchblades. I'm not sure if many people have noticed this at all, but it makes Farseers pretty damn good at challenges, especially where they only need to score one wound before I1 occurs. This gives a lot more control over your Farseers' protection and circumvents powerful wargear that some players rely on.

Whew that's a long post! It was worth it to me though. There is a lot to say about these powers and I think being thorough is the only way to say anything meaningful in 40k. Still, these are first impressions and I think with some experience there is probably more that can be added. This also doesn't account for combos, lists or match-ups. I may write a follow-up once I've used my Council a few times. For now though, I'll be moving ahead with the Farseer's Runes of Fate next.

If you feel I've overlooked anything, got something wrong, or are simply astounded by my radiant brilliance, post about it. I'll be sure to post how great you think I am--er I mean, about your contribution...

TLDR: JetCouncil > WSCouncil

It occurs to me that I didn't even really mention taking a Seer Council without Jetbikes. That's because I wouldn't ever recommend it. There are just too many benefits to taking the Jetbike and too many detriments to taking a Council on foot or in a Serpent. A foot Council seems like a complete and utter waste of time. I just can't recommend that and couldn't have in the last book either unless you were using Yriel and Eldrad. If you can support it with some kind of reasoning I'm all ears, but for now I'm going to limit my comments to Jetbike and transported units.

Pros to Jetbikes:
+1 Toughness which affects ID threshhold for Farseers
3+ save that can be improved through Runes of Battle
5+ Jink that can be improved through Runes of Battle
Twin-linked Shuriken Catapults
Fastest ground-based movement profile in the game
Can cast powers against any target

Cons to Jetbikes:
Vulnerable to anti-infantry weapons
Can be assaulted directly
Can be targetted by powers and abilities that can't affect embarked units

If you don't have a Jetbike you have no armor save to buff with Protect. No guaranteed cover save to buff with Conceal. Half as much shooting potential. Poor ability to apply Destructor templates. You can't even use the maledictions you're spending all those points on until you disembark. Then disembarkation restrictions also mean you are ineffective for a turn after getting out. Jetbikes cut out the downtime from a unit that needs to be taking as many actions as possible. With as much as it costs it has to have a big enough impact on the battle to basically win you the game. There are just so many reasons to want the Jetbike I hardly even thought to mention running Seer Councils without them.

Re-examining the Seer Council (Part 1): Wargear

I'm not sure that I specifically try to find uses in units that the Internet says are bad. There may be something to that too, but I also like to believe that people write things off before they ever give them a fair chance. I feel like people had an all-too-spontaneous reaction to the new Fire Dragons, Guardians, Wraithknights, Wraithlords and Falcons. But at least those have still been getting enough attention that some people are coming around and giving things a try. What I haven't seen anyone say anything other than "NO!" to is the Seer Council.

Why? Up to 12 psykers with access to excellent wargear and what are in my opinion the best powers in the entire game. And they're not worth even attempting to use because you can't ensure having heavy flamers and rerollable saves? Oh right, and Mind-strike Missiles (let me get to those later). I am reading the opposition to this correctly, aren't I? The Seer Council is on the whole cheaper than it used to be and while it may take some adaptability to use now, I think it is better than ever due to better wargear, more versatile powers and more destructive potential in the form of multi-faceted psychic combos.

First of all, the wargear is fantastic now. The Eldar Jetbike is unbelievable. It gives more movement than it ever has and protects our Farseers from S6/7 weaponry. It gives a jink save that is great additional protection when combined with Conceal. And it also provides us with twin-linked shuriken catapults that are ferociously potent now. The Singing Spear has also been buffed because it is no longer a 2-handed weapon (though it does only hit vehicles at S9 when thrown), therefore you get your bonus attack in close combat with it and that's something Warlocks need badly. Both the Eldar Codex and the Iyanden supplement have access to weapons that can make our Farseers a credible threat in combat, potentially very powerful with the right psychic buffs.

I don't have the Iyanden supplement, but I've seen the rules as they were posted all over. I like those artifact weapons much more than the two we got in the codex. The Spear of Teuthlas is basically a rending singing spear and would be a fun, effective and fluffy choice in a Seer Council. The Soulshrive is very powerful and gaining +1S for each kill wouldn't be hard to start up if you had a Warlock buff you from S3 in the first place. And the Celestial Lance would be a fine choice and would be something like what the Laser Lance Autarch used to add to my Council.

In short, the Council is faster, tougher and stronger than it was. It received a number of buffs that came in the form of new wargear and changes to the old gear. They have more attacks than before and more access to AP2, 3, and rending. All of this does one very exciting thing in my opinion: it frees up the need for an Autarch HQ or another assault unit to bail them out of assaults where they could get tarpitted. With an open second HQ slot, I can take another Farseer to reinforce my chances at getting some of the various powers I think will benefit this unit greatly.

And this is where I want to take this series of posts. I want to talk about the Warlocks' powers next. I'll go over what I'm hoping to get and why. I'll also cover ways I expect you can make the most of the less-than-optimal powers. The Farseers will come after that and may need multiple posts on their own because they have three disciplines available. All of them have powers that can greatly boost the unit, but because they're random and there are more results than the Warlocks' powers, I want to be thorough when talking about what to do when you don't get the best of the powers available.

Returning to GK Storm Ravens for a moment, if you want to run a Seer Council, you just have to accept that Mind-strike Missiles are stupid and will remain stupid for a while. Luckily not all GK players use Storm Ravens and not all 40k players use GKs. Playing against one might mean reserving the Council and slapping the Raven down with a Crimson Hunter. Really though, with about 700 points invested in this unit, you'll have to go into that game knowing you've got a handicap because 200 something points on the other side negates almost half your army. I'm going to be completely ignoring these missiles while I write about the Council. I don't think Deathstars are the most competitive way to play anyway, so it shouldn't be a big deal to negotiate something with your friends so you can play with a list that's meant to be a unique good time. You know, rather than losing games before they start due to a rock, paper, scissors style match-up.

Post-script on BttF and Verne

"The hell was the point in that?" is what you're probably not asking because if you weren't into just reconsidering fiction in different ways then you wouldn't have made it through six paragraphs of wondrous, sparkly adventure with your inner child. But you should. I studied in a whole department full of people wasting time classifying and reclassifying fiction. I mean, classifying it is fine if you can do something with that. That's the point. Understanding the boundaries of a genre can help you write good fiction within it. And maybe even to write great fiction that pushes outside the existing limits.

Back to the Future is the first of those two. It is extremely good fiction that was created within the existing limits and frameworks that were already established. In terms of science fiction it did little that was new, simply tackling a subject that hadn't been explored deeply in popular media. It did so in film, a medium that at the time was getting much more attention from large audiences than print. The story also follows familiar patterns wherein the protagonist adapts to a new setting and overcomes conflict with the traits he acquired uniquely from his own culture, ultimately proving wrong those who criticized him in the beginning.

And despite not reinventing the wheel, Back to the Future was an instant success and remains a favorite just under thirty years later. So why is it that if you take a course in writing at a university they will chastise you for writing "genre fiction," as if that were the lowest of lows to which you could stoop? If someone can write greatly, then more power to them. But if someone else can only write well, then the same power to them too. I wish universities would quit trying to discourage people from making careers out of writing entertainment. Brilliant as a work may be, I'm more likely to spend time and money on the one that entertains me while it reminds me what the human experience is like. Even if it holds less technical merit.

On Adventuring in Science Fiction: Back to the Future and Jules Verne

I was watching Back to the Future 3 the other day and it got me wanting to read some classic science fiction. More specifically it got me wanting to read some Jules Verne. It's not just that his name comes up a few times in the film, but it's what I think Zemeckis and Gale felt when dreaming up the science in their story. I think they felt the same sense of adventure at exploring the unknown as you feel when you open one of Verne's novels.

If you've ever read Verne, you'll know what I meant when I said "dreaming." His stories embody a romantic fascination with possibility, with discovery, with exploring the unknown. They're a different kind of science fiction than the kind where the characters discover the unknown and then destroy it under relentless firepower and vorpal death. Or the kind where the opposite happens. It's not like they're without conflict, but I'd say thinking 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea is about exterminating sea monsters would be missing the point.

Back to the Future has so much in common with the science fiction Jules Verne was writing. Verne's stories look to the unknown with wonderment; they look to the depths of the ocean, the center of the earth, and then all the way around it with an earnest fascination and sense of adventure. I feel like this is an approach to science fiction that not all writers can accomplish in their work because they just don't feel it in their hearts. It may be that you have to love not just science, or science fiction, but also adventure and discovery. It seems very child-like to me, like building a fort or camping out in your own backyard while feeling that you're in the middle of the forest.

I'm not nostalgic for classic science fiction. It's not like "back in the day" people wrote more fantastic, adventurous sci-fi. Look at H.G. Wells and his excellent, classic work. War of the Worlds contains scenes that bear war genre conventions and The Time Machine dips into the conventions of horror and post-apocalyptic fiction. Much of his work is not about adventure or feeling the thrill of exploration. It proposes scientific discovery and examines the limits of human morality. It's a very different kind of science fiction.

Obviously Zemeckis and Gale weren't trying to predict the course of scientific progress, as cool as it would be if the first time machine really were a DeLorean. And they weren't guiding scientists the way Arthur C. Clarke was. However the work they did bears great resemblance to Verne's, with them exploring time in a way that makes the reader feel ten years old again; Doc's words, not mine.

Verne, Wells, Clarke, Zemeckis, Gale and many, many others have written science fiction and they have all got their own perspective on what can be done with their genre. Part of the appeal to science fiction is the variety that comes along with it. And how well other genres blend into it. I don't know what Zemeckis and Gale saw in time travel that compelled them to write about it, but I think the ease with which I can watch and rewatch their films is testament to them feeling something very deeply. I found myself wondering after the film what that might have been. And how Verne must have felt when writing about what could be at the center of the earth at a time when no one had any idea. Well now there isn't a fun mysterious center to write about and people are writing about other planets. Other times. Other dimensions. When we have solved those mysteries (assuming they even can be solved), what will people be dreaming about? What adventure will there be for people to sense, what unknown for us to explore, and what will we be writing about it?

Fire Dragons vs. Wraithguard: What Brand of Death Would You Like to Serve?

With their basic loadouts, I don't really see a huge difference in these units' damage potential against AV14. Both of them are likely to kill any tank they shoot. That's why I don't get comparisons that focus on their ability to destroy a singular vehicular target. I think it's better to compare them where they really do differ. As far as I can see, that means looking at the differences in offense vs multi-wound, high toughness models and vs vehicle squadrons. The defensive disparity really matters too and so does the Wraithguard's potential to be unlocked as troops.

When comparing these two units' capabilities against multi-wound models, the first thing I consider is the target's toughness. I lump those values into three categories: < or =4, 5 and >5. If the target is T4, the Fire Dragons get the job done at a good discount. When you hit T5, the Wraithguard will decimate the target where FDs will scratch them. But there aren't a lot of T5 multi-wound units running around. A few that come to mind are Attack Bikes, Nurgle Oblits, some Daemon MCs, the CSM Daemon Princes and Nob Bikers. It's a little situational, but I'd be glad to have S10 if those units happened to be on the other side of the table.

T6 is that sweet spot where people will go out of their way to field the unit. And there is a heck of a lot of it. Most MCs are T6 and there are a few exceptions in the Daemons, Eldar and DEldar books that take it higher than that. A single 6 to wound out of 5 shots isn't praying for a miracle and it would mean the end of a very dangerous and expensive Bloodthirster, Wraithknight, Dreadknight, Riptide, GUO, what have you. You get the point. That's something Dragons just can't do, and with as many wounds as MCs are coming with in the new books I think it's a very valuable benefit.

Against vehicle squadrons, I think Fire Dragons have a lot going for them as long as they get into their melta range. It's great and deserves mention that Wraithguard outperform almost in every way (not AP1) at 7-12" range. But once you get into melta range with Dragons it is a whole different story. Every single hit has a good chance to give you some devastating results. Getting one Explodes result or stipping enough HPs to destroy a vehicle is easy for both units. However being able to pen with almost every hit and then roll with +2 on the chart really matters when trying to wipe a whole squadron. With 3-4 pens you could actually reasonably expect to totally cripple the squadron. The problem here would be botching your rolls. It could easily happen. And if you disembarked that turn you can't assault with melta bombs yet. You can run with Battle Focus and hope for the best, but even with a new, shiny 3+ I don't like our odds in the enemy back field. Which brings me to...

Having T6 on Wraithguard. Many people are quick to point out that T6 is not that hard to wound, but remember that the other option is T3. Besides, Wraithguard aren't as easy to kill as some will lead you to believe. The enemy is forced to fire anti-tank weapons at infantry. What's that? Oh yeah, Dark Eldar and Tyranids get poison for super cheap. Okay, so you pay for toughness you don't need against 2 out of like 13 armies. But DE poisoned shots are on soft infantry and vehicles. You did bring lots of S6/7 dakka to make those units cry, didn't you? And that same S6/7 dakka will help clear the Nid bugs that want to poison you too. The fact is that lots of armies have to dedicate valuable weaponry just to deal with a unit that has done it's job well just for shooting once. And maybe fantastically well if they can't be prevented from shooting again.

Being made troops on the cheap by a Spiritseer is an incredible boost as well. I made a list I thought looked pretty solid save for only having 3 troops. Then I realized I had accidently made my WG troops by taking a Spiritseer. I took that HQ because it was cheap and useful and found myself with a unit of T6 troops with awesome guns as a bonus. Bringing tough troops without having to ally in other armies is an excellent boon to our codex. I think many people intend to run a Spiritseer simply because they're cheaper than Farseers. Unless I'm using all 6 troops slots for something else (pretty unlikely unless I were spamming a really cheap option like DAs, Rangers or GJBs), bringing Wraithguard as Troops sounds like an amazing alternative to using Dragons as Elites.

I'm not actually trying to call this comparison in favor of one unit or the other. I have both and intend to field both in some list or another. Even bringing them in the same list might be fun, though somewhat overkill. They really do work differently enough that they both hold value to me. They play differently and probably work better in some combinations than others. That is something I'm seeing in many places in the codex: units that fill a certain role, but accomplish it in different ways. I think it is the mark of a very well-balanced codex.

Taking Enemy Objectives with...Guardians! Yes, Really...

I had an interesting conversation yesterday with my dude Scott, who I usually talk tactics and other 40k-related stuff with. We were going over the pros. and cons. of Guardian Defenders vs Storm Guardians in the role of taking objectives from enemy units. His feeling was that Storm Guardians are good enough at melee now that their assault makes up for the missing shots from an equivalent value of Guardian Defenders. I'm still not sold entirely, but it is a point worth making and a unit worth considering so I thought I'd go over the finer points of the comparison and how the units could be applied to give some reasoning behind both choices during list-building.

I want to save some time with the damage calculations because the figures aren't that different. I ran a comparison of 10 man units with no upgrades using the Heresy Combat Calculator.  Defenders kill about 1 MEQ more between shooting and assaulting, either giving cover or not. Both squads can probably kill about 4-5 MEQs in a turn. I chose MEQs because they're my standard for killing-power. If you can kill many of them without ignoring armor then you can do a number on pretty much any infantry.

From here the comparison gets more difficult and is likely to depend on your list. Guardians don't want to be in prolonged combats with or without 2 CC weapons. If you're not softening the target first you're risking losing combat and getting yourself swept. Or maybe just getting bogged down and killed over the course of a few turns. So you're going to need a plan on how to approach the objective you want to take. And you're going to need to specialize your unit's upgrades to that plan.

This is where the two units will really start to differ in both cost and role. Defenders can get a heavy weapon platform (HWP). Stormies have access to 2 special weapons (melta or flamer) and up to 2 power weapons. Both can get a Warlock. They're likely to want different powers, but conceal can work well for either.

Guardian Defenders need a transport to get in range with the bulk of their firepower, but assaulting is not necessary for them to get their kills. This makes it safer for them to trade shots with the enemy at close range. Using Conceal, they can easily get 3+ cover and dish out 3-4 MEQ kills per turn. They just need to utilize that Battle Focus to keep away from unwanted assaults. The platform might be helpful with a Shuriken Cannon, but I don't think it is necessary at all. I consider the HWPs harassment weapons to contribute to the battle while Guardians hold backfield objectives. Still, if you have the points, 10 Guardians (G's), a HWP and a Warlock make for a perfectly full Wave Serpent.

Where Stormies always excelled for me is in flaming the enemy with multiple templates. Tri-flamer units are still possible, but less likely because Destructor is a randomly generated power. But now that they have assault grenades and I5, assaulting entrenched units is a better idea than it used to be. Still, moreso than with Defenders, you have to commit to engaging the unit when you disembark. That's problematic to me because we don't have assault ramps. So we're stuck trading shots at 12" and backing off with Battle Focus until we can get into melee. At least for the first turn, that means we should have taken Defenders in the first place. If we do survive the turn after we disembark, we'll need to take overwatch and roll to get into combat. There are a good number of unknowns there and I don't like unknowns much when risking a unit this soft.

Stormies have it a little extra tough in my opinion because there are more hurdles for them to get into a situation where they are better than Defenders. But even in assault they are only 33% better on the charge, whereas Defenders are twice as good at shooting shuriken. When shooting, you are more vulnerable to other units on the table, but if you're hitting an isolated unit (which you need to do with either of them) you should be able to protect yourself well enough by running behind your tank.

You have to support either unit. They're only Guardians and even with their new stats and better wargear, they are not primary attack units. What would work well with Defenders and Stormies taking enemy objectives? I think there is a very long list in the new book. Let's assume the Guardians, whichever way you go, are in a Wave Serpent. That's some support right there. Scorpions, GJBs, Warp Spiders, more G's (Storm or Defender), Dire Avengers in a Serpent and Swooping Hawks could all work well at close range. At long range you could use almost anything, but since the target is likely to be in the enemy DZ, you're likely to want something mobile or tall, something that can get around or see over obstacles to get a good LOS. I like Falcons, Serpents, War Walkers and Vypers for this. Other options may work well at either close or short range, but I suggest having this pairing in mind before the game even starts. Look at the table's terrain and judge where your long-ranged support needs to be in order to make sure the target is weakened when your Guardians disembark. When using short-ranged support, time their arrival with your disembarkation. Crunch the numbers so you have a good idea of how many you can kill between the 3+ units (Guardians, Serpent and Spiders, for example). If you're not killing the target at long range over the course of a few turns, you'll need to know that your damage spikes high enough on the the one turn you unload your firepower that you won't take much damage in return.

Whichever one you take, they will die horribly if you blindly throw them at full-strength units. Eldar in general have a dire need to soften targets before infantry engage them. Even the best of our Aspect Warriors ought not be engaging full squads one-on-one. Without support we lose games due to attrition. We just can't afford to take the decrease in effectiveness that comes with taking casualties. And it doesn't help that most of our infantry units support each other with spectacular short-ranged guns. This is why lists have to be designed with battle groups in mind. I think if either unit is supported and is hitting a unit in a situation where they aren't going to get crushed in return, it really doesn't matter that much which you use. You just have to be aware of what it takes to apply your damage to the target and prepare accordingly. If you really want to assault, get what you need to survive out of your tank for a turn and to be sure that you will make it into combat with most of the squad intact. I think it can work, but you'd have to put some effort into it. More, at least, than hopping out and hosing the enemy with shuriken before backing away to safety and doing it again the next turn.

Do you have a preference for one or the other when using the unit aggressively?