Eldar Seer Councils

Both H-O and Warseer have recently been discussing Seer Councils. You can see Warseer’s here and H-O’s here. Farseer pic by Dverning (awesome yes?). Since it requires little cognitive effort on my part, I’ll chime in with a simple post again! Hopefully the Guest authors might post something whilst I’m asleep... we might get batreps from AbusePuppy’s semi’s <3! So, I covered Seer Councils rather briefly before near the birth of this blog with a sample 2k list. We’ll cover it a bit more in-depth here and take into account some of the changes in 40k since then. SW/BA/Tyranids have all been released and fit into the mainstream understanding and they have all brought significant psychic abilities to the table. This has unfortunately impacted negatively on the Eldar army overall and specifically on any army which is relying on psychic powers to succeed due to the overall increase in psychic defense. The community catches up at some point afterall.

This specifically has impacted heavily on Seer Councils which rely on Fortune and re-rolling their saves. A Seer Council is a group of Eldar psykers, specifically Farseer(s) and Warlocks which band together in a battle to pewpew their opponent. They don’t have fantastic combat prowess but through destructor can be quite effective close-range shooters and due to their inherent survivability from invulnerable saves and Fortune, can be a pain to kill. There are two types of councils, jetbike based and foot based (with the subset of using a Wave Serpent). We’ll disabuse the notion of not taking Councils on a bike, how you should arm them and what they are used for.


So you want to take your Seers without a 3+ save. Let’s repeat that: without a 3+ save. Don’t really need to go much further! Whilst you pay the hefty price for that 3+ save it’s well worth it. Your Council is essentially meant to be a tank unit and a re-rollable 3+ save makes it very resilient to torrent and small arms fire. Furthermore it protects against Null Zone considering a bare Seer only has an invulnerable save. There is also the added toughness which also helps against small arms fire (really, 4+ against S4 is huge compared to 3+ for a unit you want to survive and dominate the battlefield) when taking Jetlocks. Foot councils also have the obvious disadvantage of mobility. Whilst a council in a Serpent might be able to move as much if not more freely than a Jetlock council the inability to jump out and assault or JSJ leaves them more vulnerable to shooting or sitting ducks for a turn in their Serpent. Foot councils at least have the advantage of being significantly cheaper than a Jetlock council but a mounted council loses some of that. Overall the points are worth it for the extra toughness, 3+ save and mobility. If you’re taking a council, take them on bikes or not at all.

So now that we’ve decided on a Jetlock council, how do we arm our Council? First off we’re going to look at the differences from ‘older’ councils to current councils. With psychic defences being quite prominent, your Fortune needs to be much more reliable. First off, dual councils fall off a little bit. Whilst it offers your duplicity on the battlefield, you’ve got one Fortune chance per council and one should fail each turn, leaving an expensive squad open to torrent. This means casting Fortune twice on a single squad and the problem with Eldrad (easiest way to do this) is he can’t run around on a jetbike. Eldrad can certainly be used as support in a Serpent when you do versus psychic defenses but you have to keep it close to the council in a Serpent which limits your army somewhat. Or you could run two Seers on bikes in the same council. This puts more eggs into your basket and loses flexibility on the battlefield but makes your tank unit...well reliable. Also when versusing non-psychic defense armies, the double Seer is over the top. I would therefore lean towards Eldrad but would certainly steer away from double councils which were more common previously. You also lose the advantage of having an Autarch for reserve rolls.

So what should the squad be armed with? The Seer should have RoWit, Fortune, RoWard (unless Eldrad is in the army) and a Bike at the minimum and Stones + Doom is highly recommended for army wide support. A minimum of 6 Jetlocks should also be used and becomes a balance between Council size and army balance. At least one Embolden and Enhance are also musts so the unit has WS/I5 in combat and can re-roll all Ld tests (inc. Psychic tests). The rest of the Warlocks should have as many destructors as the army can afford, jetbikes (obviously) and NO SPEARS. Whilst Spears bring in wound allocation fun and add some ranged anti-tank, the Council loses significant combat ability making it more easily tarpitted. This is bad, stay away from them.

So now we’ve got our Council armed in theory, how do we use it? The Council will be taking 2-3 AV12 vehicles from your army which reduces the Eldar’s survivability (in a different way) and makes them much more aggressive in nature. The Council is not a huge offensive threat in combat but can wreck tank walls which don’t move quickly and torrent infantry units very effectively with mass S5 AP4 templates. More importantly though they are a huge psychological tool which takes a lot of firepower to down which has impressive mobility so is hard to hide from. The Council should therefore not be used as a hammer but a trump card. The Eldar army is still all about survivability and trouncing your later game and the Council is particularly effective at this since it can multi-assault and survive. Do not think of it as a dedicated combat unit as things like TH/SS termies will rock it back on its heels and is easily tarpitted against hordes. Again, it’s a trump card which Mech Eldar generally doesn’t have in that you have a very survivable unit outside of tanks which can do damage in combat and get up in your face and survive.

The game of psychic armies has changed. I feel pure Mech Eldar is much better than Jetlock led armies but they are some very pretty models and I know my Autarch on a bike which is useless cries out for use at times :P. It’s a much different way to play Eldar and whilst not as reliable or powerful as pure Mech, is a change of pace injection and contrary to belief, not cheesy but rather an enjoyable change for anyone who faces Mech Eldar regularly.