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My favourite HQ lately has been the long proven Farseer/Jetbike/Spear/Doom, who greatly improves units like Dire Avengers or Banshees and is decent versus tanks. Another favourite was Farseer/Jetbike/Fortune with Seer Council on bikes to bind the opponent and increase the efficiency of fragile close combat aspects.

The FAQ now says that Farseers joined to a unit including a Warlock with Embolden may reroll Psychic tests, which makes a Farseer with Spirit Stones and both Doom and Fortune much more viable. The first idea is to use a Seer Council to provide a Warlock with embolden, but councils tend to be extremely expensive, so I got a bit creative:

Farseer/Bike/Spear/Stones/Fortune/Doom - 163 pts

9 Guardian (!) Jetbikes/Warlock on bike/Spear/Embolden - 251 pts


This combo needs a bit of explanation probably:

- Farseer joins Guardians to benefit from Embolden. Embolden makes sure that the expensive unit doesnt fall back.
- Jetbikes may turboboost to gain 3+ invul. rerollable saves and, given the size of Jetbike bases, will cover a lot of ground (which will result in 4+ invul saves for everything behind them in 5th Ed.) and can bind the enemy in combat.
- Jetbikes actually provide similar capabilitys as Avengers in Serpents while being less susceptible to transport destruction, while maintaining similar mobility, shooting and even better saves and toughnes. In other words: Jetbikes do decent twinlinked shooting, especially with Doom.
- This unit provides high resilience and versatility with its decent anti infantry tools and still can deal with tanks.

It combines nicely with units like Harlequins (Doom will slightly improve them in 5th with rending on the to wound roll) or Banshees.

Are you implying that Farseers weren't a viable choice?

So I can buy Runes of Witnessing for 10 pts and pass 98.1% of my psychic tests or I can spend 50 pts on a Warlock with Embolden and pass 99.3% of psychic tests.

Am I missing something here?

Actually, I'm more curious to see if 5th editon will allow me to field Eldrad and his Warlock retinue and cast Fortune/Doom from within a Wave Serpent. It's looking like I can: Fortune Wave Serpent, Fortune unit inside for good measure and move on and get stuck in.

Personally, I wish I didn't have Runes of Witnessing on Eldrad. I have the worst luck with it and nearly every game cause a wound to him.

Sarigar: You can not use the Runes of Witnessing...and in 5th if you can actually get a perils wound through all his BS, well, good luck with your future dice!

To the OP: Doom makes Harlequins quite scary, but only against infantry. Against vehicles they are still 'the suck' much like stealers are. I use my Seer Council to great effect in 5th edition, and while you do save alot of points you don't have the reliability a seer council brings. It isn't indestructable, but against many many armies it's a big red 'I Win' button.

Guardian Jetbikes cannot 'deal with tanks' by any stretch of the imagination in 5th edition. Not with 1 farseer and 1 warlock. Skimmers will just laugh at your pathetic attacks and then without the 4+ re-rollable invulnerable you'll be plasma'd to death in short order.

Kudos for thinking outside the box. Give it a try. If your experience is radically different from mine, please inform the boards.

Just FYI, lots of people were using this combo long before the FAQ came out. A psychic test is a kind of leadership test, and Embolden allows rerolling of leadership tests. The FAQ was actually unnecessary (although useful) in this respect.

avantgarde, obviously you don't buy a Warlock just to reroll your psychic tests. You get it in a unit that would have benefited from it anyway and treat the psychic test reroll as a nice bonus. Also, RoWit makes testing more dangerous, whereas Embolden makes it safer.

I think that's part of a trend we're seeing in GW printed materials: lots of stuff that was implicitly described is now being explicitly mentioned. It's good to see that it's stimulating discussions of tactics.

Speaking of tactics, if the Farseer casts Guide on the unit, then the Farseer and his Warlock protege can huck their Spears at a target with a re-roll to hit. Sounds like a pretty solid Eldar unit.

Don't know about it being a recent trend. At a guess, about half of all GW FAQs for 40k have always been devoted to unpacking existing rules.

Beg to differ on the Guide idea. Rerolling one 2+ and one 3+ to hit is not exactly a great return on your power usage. If the Farseer and lock are in a unit that would already be a good candidate for Guide, then that's icing on the cake, but the marginal benefit of getting to reroll to hit for those two Spears is rather low.

It just seems to me that a couple of twin-linked Lascannon-strength shots might be useful now and again.

Useful, yes--when was a re-roll ever a bad thing?--but it doesn't in itself make for "a solid unit." It makes the Farseer's Spear 16.5% more effective and the Warlock's Spear 33% more effective. A poor return for a 20 pt power (not counting the Spirit Stone, should you need it) before you work in the shooting of the rest of the unit.

deleted, did not further topic discussion