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What do you think is the optimum size for a seer council of Warlocks on bikes? They get pretty expensive fast at 45 points for a basic warlock on a jetbike without a power or shining spear. If you want to add those they can be pretty costly. I was thinking 5-6 warlocks and a farseer. A large unit is much harder to hide and warlocks get pretty expensive pointwise and conversion wise. What do you think?

5-6 or 10.

They are expensive.

One of the best units in the game atm in my opinion.

Thank you for the reply. Do you think it is worth giving the Warlocks spears? I have not done the conversions yet and want to have the what you see is what you get right.

A few spears gives you some tank threat.
Just remember that bike locks really aren't a kill unit. But I don't think anyone will have the patience to kill your locks either.

Nope. If you want anti-tank Warlocks, run them with Jetbikes. Much cheaper.

The Seer Council is a durable CC unit that's highly mobile. You want enhance + fortune on it. Protect the Farseer in CC at all costs, without him the squad loses alot.

Bike Locks are very killy. Give them some Shining Spear support, and they really shine.

Spears are two handed weapons, so you lose an attack.

They are good AT but for S9 slashing you need swords instead.

Saying that I would always give the Farseer a spear, to make the most of Bs5.

IMHO the optimum size is 4, same with all jetbikes. Small enough to hide, optimised regarding casualties taken and cheap enough to field. If you want more take extra units.

6 if money is an issue, otherwise 10 and forget Spears. If you're going to give 'er, give 'er. If there's too many just attack more than squad/ vehicle.

Spear on the Farseer might make sense and you probably don't want him in combat anyway, other than 100% safe on the sides someplace.

And I wouldn't "hide" them, I would charge in the face of the enemy. Re-rollable 3+/4++, yes please.

The reason for 10 is that it really helps you with outnumbering, and because they're such fast shock troops. Don't forget these guys will mow down Orks and Nids too, especially if you have a couple destructors in there.

If I want rerollable 3+ saves I'll buy extra marines.

If I can kill 45-60 or some odd points in warlocks for every other 3+ wound I deal, sign me the hell up.

Without 25 or 30 pt fodder warlocks this unit is a not nearly as good as it used to be, and I question whether it is even any good .

My thinking is that, if you use 10 models, and you turboboost away and hide the moment you get to 6-7 models left, it will be a winning unit. Possibly if you flee at below scoring, but that's less of a sure thing (since you get into the chance of being broken or wiped out).

Against a lot of armies you'll struggle to kill 600 points with it, since there just aren't enough turns in the game, and a lot of times I doubt you'll get more than 300 points (So you should not risk losing it or getting below scoring).

It does look pretty ridiculously good against Orks if you don't get shot (a squad of 30 shootas is going to kill almost two warlocks per round of shooting).

At six men, I see it being too vulnerable to massed shooting. Someone can score a 350point squad for the same amount of firepower it takes to kill 230 points of marines.

It's a good unit, don't worry .

Think of it as being like a unit of jump pack terminators with no shooting.

Only they _do_ have shooting ... and you can doom it.

Each warlock is 3 S9 hits on a vehicle, and they're I5 against Dreads.

Their only real weakness is psychic hoods or anything else that stops the fortune, but hopefully Runes of Warding will also serve to ruin someone's day.

So a typical unit would look something like this

Farseer
Spear
Fortune
Doom
Spiritstones
Runes of Warding

10 Warlocks on Jetbikes
Enhance
Destructor x2

thats well over 600 points in one unit. Might even be like 700 points.

Thats ok if they do alot of damage and are surviable. After all I do field a 632 point Prince on a Stardragon in my fantasy army. Is very fun to field though.

Might proxy it and give it a shot on vassal at some point.

Looks like it might be pretty expensive to convert as the warlock conversion kits are $35 a piece and I would like to make a cool female farseer sort of the one in Dawn of War. I might go with Stelek's idea of just using guardians with swords for the warlocks and green stuffing a cloak. Less expensive and less time consuming.

I might take some warlocks with Guardian Jetbike squads as well but equip those with Spear and Destructor seems to be the norm for that.

I don't use the spear on the farseer, nor doom or spiritstones...and I never bring destructor.

The unit is very pricey, so you need to learn to use it. I often take the re-roll LD tests power.

Sure you can flame alot of people, especially in cover...but you can outassault everyone so why bother? They'll die just as easily to TL BS4 assault 2 S4 shots from your bike, after all...and you do want to be able to assault them.

You can green stuff a all-around cloak, or you can pickup GW cloaks and use those.

If you really want to give your opponent a hard time / upset them take two of them at 10 strong each.

Durable points value units are good - 2 warlock squads will score over 900 points in a recon mission. Against builds with a substantial static element (e.g. oblit lash) you don't even need to engage to win the misson.

My GT final list this year is:

Farseer, bike, runes of witnessing+warding, fortune
10 warlocks on jetbikes, enhance, embolden

Farseer, bike, runes of witnessing, fortune
10 warlocks on jetbikes, enhance, embolden

5 pathfinders
5 dire avengers

Vibrocannon
Vibrocannon

(some edges to be ironed still (maybe swap out the avengers for something useful), but it is 2 months away)