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.

A Brutal ForgeDar Mech List at 1500

Here is a list that I wrote recently when I found out Hornets got buffed. I have run a variant of this, but with the Hornet changes that list dropped so much in points that I could fit in a lot more potency.

HQ

• Farseer - Jetbike, Mantle of the Laughing God

Troops

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

Fast Attack

• Nightwing Interceptor
• 2 Hornets - 2 x Pulse Lasers, 1 Holofield Upgrade
• 2 Hornets - 2 x Pulse Lasers

Heavy Support

• Pheonix Bomber - Anti-infantry Missile Upgrade
• 2 War Walkers - Scatter Laser and Bright Lance
• 1 War Walker - Scatter Laser and Bright Lance

1500 Total Points, 2 Scoring Units, 11 Kill Points

Shooting Potency: 2-14 S7, 38 S6, 23 S8/AP2

The idea is to flood the board with AV hulls and strong long-ranged shooting. The Farseer should be casting Guide and Prescience on the Hornets and I'd probably pick up Psychic Shriek for his third power. That makes my first choice powers the ones I can definitely get.

Speed is of the essence. Not only does the list have two hard-hitting fliers with vector-dancer, but it also has Hornets that can flat out and still snap fire. With rerolls to hit and their volume of fire, they should still be able to take some good crucial shots against back armor. This is even better against flyers since you have to snap fire at them anyway and many flyers have AV10 in the back.

"But you only have two troops!" This is a problem for sure, especially considering that my two troops are as soft as they come when their Serpents crash. It basically means that in objective games I have to crush the enemy's troops. Wave Serpents are fortunately very durable, so that may help me keep those Dire Avengers alive until I need them. Depending on how I perceive the enemy's ability to bring down my Serpents and kill or strand my DAs, I can play more or less defensively with them.

There are plenty lists that could give this one some challenge, particularly if the ForgeDar had to go second. With a list focused on shooting capability it is just so beneficial to strike first and negate some of the stuff that can bring down AV 10-11 targets easily. Still, it's a really brutal list that was for some reason made much better than it even needed to be when IA: Aeronautica upgraded the jink save for Nightwings and IA: Apocalypse 2013 updated and improved Hornets.

Hornets are actually something I want to post about later on because the changes to them were astounding, to put it lightly. But that will have to wait for another day.

Jetbike LoLtarch Conversion (WIP)

This is a project I started a long time ago and just never got around to finishing. What held me up was annoyance at having to redo how he attaches to the bike. His left foot binds to a magnet in the hood, but instead of a magnet I had originally put a pair of paperclip clippings inside his foot. Well the other day I cut his foot all to hell and started redoing it with green stuff and a proper magnet. I also bound his other foot to the handle bar it had been resting on.

One of the benefits of magnetizing him is that I can reuse the bike for another conversion I want to do. When I run my Jetseer Council I like to have 2 Farseers on bikes, so later on I'll magnetize a Farseer to this hood with a different pose. Another benefit is that it makes transportation much easier because everything fits snugly in my case. On the other hand, I really want to do another project like this some day using a model made all in one piece so I can get a more action-oriented pose out of the rider. Something like a guy leaping off the front. But that would mean a smaller point of contact on the bike and reduced stability--better in my opinion for a show piece than a unit to be used on the table.

Ignore my ugly base please =) I'll clean it up someday, I swear it...

And here is a video about the model and conversion. Pay no mind to where I mention another video. I realized afterward that this one makes it redundant.

Post them up if you have any questions or comments! Cheers!

Last Weekend's Gaming Sans Pictures (D'oh!)

Unfortunately I have less to say about last weekend's gaming than I'd hoped. I hadn't known what exactly we were going to play and was surprised to find out I was supposed to field both armies. I didn't have any lists prepared for that and I only brought my Eldar. It was also a good deal later than we'd thought it would be when my buddy rode in. Still, we got a kill team-ish game in and had a great time. We sort of just eyeballed the points costs for some footdar squads and then put them in pairs. Then we rolled off on each pair and the winner got to choose one of the two squads. We didn't really pay attention to full squad sizes and we allowed combat squadding for all of them. A kill point to be awarded for the death of half a squad, or for a full combat squad. 1 Farseer each. I ended up with 7 Rangers, 3 Warp Spiders and 9 Guardians with a Shuriken Cannon. He got 5 Scorpions, 5 DAs and 4 Fire Dragons.

Honestly I thought I'd mop him up before he ever got near me and on the first turn it looked like that's what would happen. I layed out 4/5 Scorpions and it looked like I would kill off his DAs. But he rolled very well for his assault range on his Scorpion who got to kill off my heavy weapon. Then his DAs made about 12 4+ saves in a row and Battle Tranced behind my terrain to lay waste to me. We had a few combats that were dragging on when we called it. If he wasn't going to table me, it would be a boring 3 turn slapfest while we take turns rolling dice.

It made for a really fun game. I hadn't been on the receiving end of Battle Trance yet and I feel like it is the best army-wide rule you could ask for except maybe ATSKNF. It's fantastic for both defense and offense. This game was also only about the third time I've used my terrain (that this same friend actually did up for me) and it was pretty rad playing on it. Hopefully after my vacation next week in Hawaii (woo!) then finances and parenting time permitting, I might be able to have more of my doods out here to play on this killer table I almost never use. I'll try to actually get pictures next time too. Sorry!

Spotlight: Allan Carrasco

In case you haven't figured it out yet, I love Eldar. I had a good time playing Eldar vs Eldar over the weekend and I'll be posting something short about it this week, but just now a friend of mine shared an awesome CWE army on Facebook that I really wanted to share with you. It is by none other than the brilliant freelance sculptor, Allan Carrasco. You might know his work from Kingdom Death (NSFW). Everything he does is really gorgeous, so I'll just post a few pictures from his site and leave it to you to go check out his other work. Under "own works" in the "painting" link you can find some truly awe-inspiring stuff. Aside from the Eldar I'm partial to the Deathguard he did. Thanks to James for sharing this in the first place! Enjoy!

Rumors: Future Eldar Supplements - Biel-Tan and Saim-Hann (2013.07.25)

Here is some more cool rumor news from Natfka. Sounds like in addition to Tau Mercenaries, the Black Legion and White Scars, there are whispers of Biel-Tan and Saim-Hann supplements in the works. I saw elsewhere that the Biel-Tan supplement would be the first to feature a model wave as well. That would be really exciting to me because I saw the lack of aspect warrior updates as a missed opportunity in the initial launch (you know, not taking into account the Iyanden supplement launch strategy). There are a few of them that really need new versions  (hey there Hawks and Spiders).

via Stickmonkey on Faeit 212 

I'd heard Biel-Tan was being worked on after Iyaden, and Saim-Hann was later. But from what I've heard lately it seems the supplements are pure labors of love, and not necessarily slotting into releases like we've traditionally thought. That they are following a "when it's done" release scheme, and not strict deadlines. Multiple digital supplements in a month would also not be unheard of.  

There is a lot going on. I've heard scattered rumors of 2014 seeing many new models introduce to codexes with rules in box, but I haven't confirmed this.

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.

Ongoing (I hope) Vassal Game: 1850 Seer Council vs Chaos Daemons

Had about 1/3 of a game the other night and I'm dying to finish it. I hope I see the guy again. It was getting crazy late here and he must have had something going on because it was taking him 10 minutes to roll one save. A half hour later (at 1:15AM) he said he needed to go afk for 20 mins, so I took some notes, saved the map and told him I hoped to finish another day. Still I learned a lot from what I did get to do.

Here are the lists.

Mine: DEldar Council 1850
Farseer - Jetbike, Singing Spear 120 Fortune/Guide/PsyShriek
Farseer - Jetbike, Singing Spear 120 Guide/Foreboding/ Prescience
7 Warlocks - Jetbike. 1 with spear 355 Empower, Enhance, Conceal, Conceal, Destructor, Quicken, Embolden

Troops
5 Dire Avengers - Wave Serpent (Holos, Scatter Laser, Shuriken Cannon) 210
5 Dire Avengers - Wave Serpent (Holos, Scatter Laser, Shuriken Cannon) 210
3 Windrider Jetbikers - 1 Shuriken Cannon 61
3 Windrider Jetbikers - 1 Shuriken Cannon 61
3 Windrider Jetbikers - 1 Shuriken Cannon 61

Heavy Support
1 War Walker - BL, Scatter Laser 70
1 War Walker - BL, Scatter Laser 70
1 War Walker - BL, Scatter Laser 70

Dark Eldar
HQ
Baron 105

Troops
5 Kabalite Warriors - Raider (Torment Grenade Launcher, Grisly Trophies)
5 Kabalite Warriors - Raider (Torment Grenade Launcher, Grisly Trophies)

Heavy Support
Ravager 105

Total 1848


His
Great Unclean One,
+ Greater Reward (x2),
+ Mastery level 2,
Cost: 255 points.

Herald of Tzeentch,
+ Locus of Conjuration,
+ Mastery level 2,
+ Exalted Reward,
Cost: 125 points.

Herald of Nurgle,
+ Locus of Fecundity,
+ Mastery Level 1,
+ Exalted Reward,
Cost: 125 points.

12 Plaguebearers,
+ Plagueridden
- Lesser Reward,
+ Instrument
Cost: 125 points.

12 Plaguebearers,
+ Plaguebanner,
+ Instrument,
+ Plagueridden
- Greater Reward,
Cost: 150 points.

12 Pink Horrors,
+ Blasted Standard,
+ Iridescent Horror
- Greater Reward,
Cost: 140 points.

12 Pink Horrors,
+ Blasted Standard,
+ Iridescent Horror
- Greater Reward,
Cost: 140 points.

4 Rot Flies,
Cost: 168 points.

5 Flesh Hounds of Khorne,
Cost: 90 points.

Skull Cannon of Khorne,
Cost: 125 points.


Soul Grinder,
+ Daemon of Nurgle,
+ Phlegm Bombardment,
Cost: 180 points.

Daemon Prince,
+ Daemon of Nurgle,
+ Daemonic Flight,
+ Mastery level 2,
Cost: 250 points.



While I haven't gotten to finish this whole battle, a few things really stand out in this match up.

1) A Fortuned Council is hilariously resilient against shooting from units of Horrors. You get a 4+ chance to Deny and you can reroll that. Then the enemy has to roll to hit and then you've got excellent rerollable saves to keep you alive. Any psyker with less than three mastery levels is going to have a hard time shooting witchfire powers at you.

2) Reveal I have found to be incredibly good against Nurgle units. They really rely on shrouded to keep them alive againts guns that can blast through their toughness. Especially the ones without Feel No Pain. It's tough when you have to choose between your 2+ cover and negating the enemy's cover, but there are situations where I think that is worth doing. In my game I gave up Conceal to Reaveal a Nurgle Daemon Prince. Getting himout of the sky would have put him into 4+ cover ruins and Shrouded would put him at a 2+. My chances of shooting him down after that would be slim. I didn't get to finish my shooting in this phase where I'm trying to kill him, but i have a lot more guns left and he only has 2 more wounds. Removing Shrouding should help me put him down so I can get my Council into assault where I won't need a cover save.

3) Witchblades are brutally good against Nurgle daemons. It's funny that they wound an Iron Arm GUO on a 2+. But it's great against basically any of the Greater Daemons, the Princes and the Grinder. If I can shoot a Bloodthirster to death rather than assault it I'll definitely go that route, but wounding so easily is really fantastic against guys who pay so much for good toughness.

4) Ghost helms are for suckers!...sometimes. I rolled double 1s once on a Farseer. I had the Warp Charge to protect myself, but I really wanted to cast Guide too. Enter Renewer. I took the wound on my Farseer and immediately cast Renewer on him to restore the wound. This way I get to cast what I need anyway and I just had to risk the psychic test with a guy I wouldn't have cast with otherwise. Not a bad trade in my opinion...although I might feel differently if the Warlock killed himself on Perils lol.

Current status of the game:

General thoughts:
I need to be careful with putting vehicles anywhere near Horrors. He managed to mutate one of my Warlocks into a Tzeentch Herald with an 11 result on the Warp Storm table. That one Herald proceeded to nuke one of my Walkers who died in a hurry. I see the potential Horrors have though and I'm trying to put him in a position where he has to engage my Council instead. So far his forces are split in two and it looks like I'll focus down the right flank and then pick off the deep strikers when they arrive before moving on his left flank. I just have to keep him away from the two objectives and have enough firepower on both to kill the two Plaguebearer squads when they arrive.

Getting into Vassal and a Pseudo-BatRep vs Space Marines at 600pts

I don't know why I never did this before. Here I am in the middle of nowhere with no way to play 40k unless I travel four hours and spend over 100 USD in train fares, and I wasn't using the only means to play games on the internet. Well for whatever reason, I've finally come around and started using Vassal. If you don't already know, it is a board game simulation engine that uses modules full of sprites and menu options to help people play games over the net. There is a 40k module, among many more others, so if you want to get into this all you will need to do is download both of those from the links I put in above.

At first I had misunderstood what Vassal even is. I thought it made a video game out of 40k, so I was looking around for rules updates for Eldar and wondering how they keep up with the releases. But it turns out that it really is a board game simulator. All it provides is a random number generator, a scale map and sprites to put on it. It gives you a way to measure and move pieces. That's it. It feels delightfully old skool to play on, like PC games 25 years ago that needed manuals and maps to be played.

I've had a chance to sit down and play two games so far. One at 550pts and one at 600. The app took a little getting used to, but once I got the hang of it I found it's not hard to play with at all. It does seem to take much longer to play the game and some guys over at DakkaDakka said the same, so I suppose there's no helping that. I feel using Skype or something to talk while playing instead of typing might go a long way to speed things up.

The games I played were really fun. Using Vassal allows me to play with models I don't own so I'm loving that I can test stuff out that I want to buy (not so sure my wife will like that when I order a bunch of stuff to kitbash decent Jetbike from though lol). The first game I played I tried out a small mech force and found myself facing off against IG with something like 10 autocannons and 3 Chimeras. I knew it'd be rough when I saw how much high-strengh dakka he had, but things went downhill a little faster than I expected due having the initiative stolen and rolling a pair of unlucky turns. Still it was a great learning experience for both the program and for fighting Chimeras, which I'd had little experience with.

The second game I played I actually got a few pictures from, though I did forget the early turns. I ran some fun stuff that I'd wanted to try out. I had a Loltarch (Jetbike, Mantle of the Lauging God, Banshee Mask, Laser Lance, Fusion Gun), 2x3 WRJ with a ShuCan each, 4 Shining Spears (Exarch w/ Star Lance and H&R) and 2x5 Warp Spiders. My enemy played SM and had a Librarian, a Techmarine w/ Thunder Fire Cannon, 5 Scouts with sniper rifles and a heavy bolter, a stock Predator, a stock Razorback and a Tactical Squad with a flamer, a plasma cannon and melta bombs. Unfortunately I could tell he would struggle against my list when I saw what he had. I have tons of stuff to kill MEQs with and more than enough anti-tank to kill two vehicles that didn't really have the firepower to scare me much. The only things that really worried me was the plasma cannon nuking my Spiders and the TFC being able to wound my Loltarch through his cover save.

 

Hm, it seems I don't know how to take photos correctly yet. I just have this one. You can see from this how the game went though. He deployed everything in the top left and had his Tac Squad in a single unit of 10. I played very aggressively, turbo-boosting to assault from turn two. My Shining Spears ate a lot of fire and I lost everyone but the Exarch in turn one, but the Exarch did me proud. He shot and assaulted the Razorback turn two. Between him and the WRJs they brought it down to 1HP and destroyed the heavy bolter. Unlucky, but it wasn't a problem because my opponent tankshocked him and he lanced the last HP away with a Death or Glory attack! Very exciting moment because I rarely try my luck at that.

In the top left you can see where my Loltarch massacred the Techmarine in combat. Using his warlord trait he also helped me deep strike 5 Spiders who failed miserably at nuking the predator with side armor shots. Even though they didn't do what I wanted them to that turn, I did see the huge potential battle focus has for improving DS options.

On the next turn I shot his Scouts with everything I had. It took everything too, because the Techmarine had given them 3+ cover in those ruins. At the end of it there was only the Libby alive and my Loltarch assaulted with my SS Exarch. The Exarch accepted the challenge and lanced the Libby with his S8 Star Lance to cause instant death.

My opponent was a good sport about the game and kept playing even though things looked pretty hopeless at this point. I blew up the Predator with melta from my Loltarch, shot up the Tacticals and lost connection when they were running away. 

I don't know if I'll meet him again, but he was a nice guy and I'd love to play him again. I'd like to help him fine tune his small-game list because I feel like he's spending a lot on some options and not getting enough firepower out of them. It's unfortunate that my army was perfect for killing the targets he presented me too. On my side, I think the only thing I'd really have done differently is back off with my Autarch and use his full movement before assaulting. On the first turn I put him way too close to the Techmarine. My opponent didn't think to assault, but if he had I might have died instantly to a powerfist attack. Might have killed the Techie first too; can't really tell. But I'd rather not play so sloppy that I put myself in a position to find out. With a likely assault range of 17+ inches, I should have played at my speed advantage and positioned better. Oh well, glad to learn a lesson from not getting pummeled. That's always nice.

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.

Spotlight: The Work of a Brilliant, Unknown Sculptor

All right, so he (or she) is only unknown because I'm ignorant of eastern European languages. I originally saw these on Kaughnor's blog, but while writing my first post on the Seer Council I actually stumbled on the original thread where they surfaced. I think it's Russian that the artist is posting in, but I guess it could be one of the similar languages of the surrounding region. The sculpts are breath-taking and if he were selling them I'd have a whole unit on its way right now.

Enjoy.