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It seems that no one has really stated 'the perfect council size'(that I could find); but I see many occasions where people are saying your council is to small or has to much of this, or shouldn't have this. So what does 'the perfect seer council' consist of? How many of each warlock psychic ability really works the best? Should you take Singing Spears or not, and how many if you should?

I myself run a jet council but others may run foot or even in a serpent so please consider this as the sizes may very greatly between the types...

Its a trade-off between costs and efficiency.
I usually take a full Seer Council on foot mounted in a Serpent.

I usually run a fortune seer on bike with singing spear + 5 warlocks on bike with 1 embolden, 1 enhance, and 3 destructors.

andeR wrote:I usually run a fortune seer on bike with singing spear + 5 warlocks on bike with 1 embolden, 1 enhance, and 3 destructors.

Looks rather small to me.

i usually play 1500-2000 point games and i personally don't like investing too many points into a single unit. That way i'm not totally screwed if they get tar pitted or wiped out.

For Jetbike mounted Seer Councils I like to go with 7-8 Warlocks, 1 Embolden, 1 Enhance and 2-4 Destructors.

For Seer Councils on foot you should really be fielding the maximum amount of Warlocks (10), since their survivability isn't a high as that of a Jetbike mounted Seer Council. More Warlocks makes up for a bit of that loss.

I prefer the 9 man jetlock unit with 7 destructors +embolden+enhance and the fortune/doom seer. Many of my opponents are marine and 7 destructors even with doom can have a hard time killing a full marine bike unit quickly enough (last night I had managed to land 21 wounds only to kill 3 guys; unlucky me but its not unheard of, I would rather be more confident of the kill)

I find the foot council a little to slow, even with the serpent it becomes an either move or fire unit with a turn delay if I wish to charge (since a serpent is not an assault vehicle)

If a smaller game (1750 or less) I will start trimming the council size (to about 6 models) or swap the jetlocks for guardian jetbikes

I'd run an 8 strong biker council with enhance/embolden/2-4 destructors or a full sized foot council with enhance/embolden/3-5 destructors. I would pretty much always mount a foot council in a Wave Serpent unless I had a very, very good reason not to. I'd also take Eldrad either way.

I used to put foot councils on foot, Wave Serpents get shot down but that was when you could have multiple Farseers and had to deal with Entanglement.

There are reasons not to take Wave Serpents, they block LoS. But I have not used a Seer Council in 5th Edition I have used an Avatar in all my games he is (finally) too good. And I like Farseers with Banshees anyway.

Its always worthwhile to run two embolden warlocks as insurance. Nothing quite ruins the day as taking just enough fire that your one embolden warlock has to take a save ... and have him be the one save that you fail. Well, nothing except then failing a test and not having the ability to reroll


Sliggoth

In fact, my Seer Council never goes out without two embolden Warlocks.
The rerolls of morale checks and psychic power tests are priceless.

Agreed. I've started experimenting again with my Eldar. 2 Emboldens are a necessity IMO. Right now, I'm liking the Farseer and 7 Warlocks on Jetbikes. I will soon add an Autarch on Jetbike to the unit to see how the additional Power Weapon attacks help. I've actually had my Jetseer unit tarpitted, then whittled down.

A larger Jetcouncil is one of the best anvil units in the game.
The Autarch with laser lance may turn it into a hammer unit as she is the only one with a tougher weapon.

I've toyed wiht the idea of taking 10 warlocks with Eldrad. I get to still keep Eldrad but I also run a council with him. Eldrad's power weapon spear offers some punch in CC and he's more resilient when locked in with assault terminators. They do have to walk, and that's a negative, but the cost savings for the walking council is pretty nice.

IF you take Eldrad you take Yriel. At this point your army is a basically centered around this unit, but this unit basically rolls almost everything in the game.

Beyond foot based hth units, and jet bike based warlock units, there are also alpha strike units with destructor.

8 warlocks with 1 enhance are really good. 6 with destructor and singing spears is also an interesting throw away unit. It can tank hunt or mess up troops.

I prefer not to take mine on jbikes, it gets to expensive. Mine isnt this sive but my perfect one would be 2 farseers 8 warlocks, with 1 each of Conceal (extra durability) enhance (better in combat and shooting) and embolden (as said before re-rolled Ld tests are priceless) Finally id go with at least 3 destructors, not nessecarily 5 but theyre very good for thinning down large units of models.

deFl0 wrote:IF you take Eldrad you take Yriel. At this point your army is a basically centered around this unit, but this unit basically rolls almost everything in the game.

You think Yriel would be a good fit for this unit? I was considering an Avatar who would stay close and get fortuned by Eldrad. The Avatar would draw incoming fire and could also go off to pick on an enemy unit that is attempting to tarpit the council. Both HQ's move up each turn towards the enemy to become a threat. I'll also include 3 Wraithlords for a big HtH kick. I'm going to write a list up and post it in the army list forum to see how it looks.

wuestenfux wrote:A larger Jetcouncil is one of the best anvil units in the game.
The Autarch with laser lance may turn it into a hammer unit as she is the only one with a tougher weapon.

I got a rough surprise in the last Ard Boyz when this unit went up against Terminators in two games. One bad round of armor saves (with Fortune) and my unit was in very bad shape. Too many points to have run off or get tarpitted. This has got me thinking the Autarch powerweapon attacks may be necessary. I'm ok if they kill something in assault and then get exposed to shooting in the following turn. Even with bad armor saves, they shouldn't run away from shooting (LD10 w/ reroll).

Why cant you use Eldar MC's for the anti-armor attacks and leave the council to be resilent (also allowing for smaller non-autarch councils)

Field both, the enemy has to shoot at one and the jetlocks are by far more mobile (and more of a threat to shooty armies)..

The seer council does have problems with troops such as termies, the armor save turns the combat into an iffy thing. That is when an autarch can make a huge difference since th autarch will usually kill more of this type of model than the rest of the council put together. The down side is that the autarch is not a good buy against more ordinary opponents, so it all depends on what type of target you expect to run into.

Sliggoth

Lately I've been running a 6 man jetcouncil w/ fortune doom stones 1 enhance 1 embolden and 1 destructor along with 5 Shining Spears with an autarch w/ mandiblasters and a laser lance. It's worked pretty well all around as they both charge around the same time. But I've been wondering if a larger council with just an autarch would do better. The spears do kill almost anything, but at the same time almost anything kills the spears... Which do you guys think would do better?