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Hello all,

I have stopped using my jetseer council due to their lack-luster performance which generally turns them into a giant point sink. However I know that jerseer councils are often seen in highly competitive lists and in upper end tournament brackets (i.e. ard boyz finals, european team championships,..) Maybe I have been running them wrong this entire time.. can you please give me advice on their proper use and/or role in my army?


My basic layout.
~4 troop choices. 1 small/medium jetbike unit (or 1-2 small three-man unit) 1-2 dire avenger units (at least 1 wave serpent) 1 unit of pathfinders (not rangers)
=3 heavies. 2 fire prisms. 1 night spinner/falcon
1-2 elites. definitely 1 unit of fire dragons with a wave serpent, maybe one unit of banshees or scorpions probably no wave serpent.

My HQ was as follows
Farseer, bike, ROwtinessing, ROwarding, spirit stones, doom, fortune, guide
Warlock, bike, destructor spear
warlock, bike, destructor, spear
warlock bike destructor
warlock, bike, enhance


I would always use fortune on the council itself. My jetseer council was definitely good at absorbing shots and casting the essential powers here and there. I would generally use them as a 'deathstar' unit to guarantee death where and when I wanted it. I have been effective at blowing up enemy tanks from the side flank, taking out enemy (non-psyker) HQs, and tackling monstrous creatures which have decent-poor armor saves. I generally try to use the council as the bulkhead of my army, sending them out first and causing as much chaos until they make their points back and die. However whenever I put them into combat with bigger mobs or marines, they seem to always bite the dust.

Any tips on tactica? Maybe a change up in my strategy?



Thanks and LMK what you think.

Don't think of them as a deathstar. They are not that. While expensive like a deathstar, they are not destructive like a deathstar. Instead, think of them as a tarpit/contestor. Their job isn't to kill, their job is to take up space, annoy, harass, and take the killiest units on the other side of the table out of the game.

What you can't kill you avoid/tarpit. That's what these guys are for.

However whenever I put them into combat with bigger mobs or marines, they seem to always bite the dust.

This is where the jetseer loses it's shine. I play a similar list typically with 2 prisms on top of 1-2 6-man GJB's, and 1-2 DAVU units and use my seer council the same way you do.

My boy usually plays necrons or marines and while destructors seem to do a pretty good job of taking them out, the follow-up assaults usually don't finish them off. This is where you use your 6" assault move to hop them away from their targets (preferrably behind cover) and wait out the retailiation shots.

One thing that I've found them ace at is taking on IG either the heavier armor (spears followed by an a charge will lay on significant glances/pens and the locks are tough enough with fortune to survive an explosion) or troops in chimeras: make sure you're close enough to assault the juicy insides then pop the transport with a few spears.

Haven't took out my jet council in awhile but this is how I ran mine.

Farseer should just have bike fortune, runes of witnessing and runes of warding. You want to get off fortune. Second power that might make you get perils isn't that great. You wound on 2s with witchblades anyway.

council should have 8-10 warlocks and double up on enhance and embolden for durability and redundancy. You don't want too many destructors because you will kill too much and be outside of assault range. you don't want spears either because you get less attacks in assault.

Kirika wrote:Haven't took out my jet council in awhile but this is how I ran mine.

Farseer should just have bike fortune, runes of witnessing and runes of warding. You want to get off fortune. Second power that might make you get perils isn't that great. You wound on 2s with witchblades anyway.

council should have 8-10 warlocks and double up on enhance and embolden for durability and redundancy. You don't want too many destructors because you will kill too much and be outside of assault range. you don't want spears either because you get less attacks in assault.

After my fail-council... I think you should take all spears and use them as a 12" S9 bubble. And effectively 2 S9 attacks on the charge if you choose too. Having more attacks by holding witchblades instead of spears dedicates you to assault. Also I use doom not to reroll the 2s from witchblades, but to doom other units near by that will be under fire.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

scuddman wrote:Instead, think of them as a tarpit/contestor. Their job isn't to kill, their job is to take up space, annoy, harass, and take the killiest units on the other side of the table out of the game.

What you can't kill you avoid/tarpit. That's what these guys are for.

Often times the killiest unit will be termies, tyranids with poison/power weapon equivalent, dedicated assault unit (beserkers,etc) How do you take these killy units out without killing them?

i can fully understand where you are coming from on your thoughts on the seer council...however they are really only a distraction unit when used in a small unit as you have posted. i find they do work effectively when used in a unit of 8 or more.

also try to equip them differently as well as it does increase their survivability rate when you make use of wound allocation shenanigans. and yes most of you will say that it really doesnt affect single wound models very well, but it does when it comes to rolling your saves as you will either roll them one at a time or use multiple dice and differentiate between them...my fav way of rolling is 2 die at a time due to fortune per model instead of all at once (personal pref and observation)

now as far as doing a good amount of killing on stuff...i usually fit in as many destructors as i can and about 2 spears with the rest with witchblades. obv. moving into flamer range and fire them before i charge works wonders...after a little over a yr of exp with them i find that i really dont have too much trouble with things when i actually get around to assualting something with them, sometimes it takes a little longer than expected but they still get the job done. but actually the only thing ive had trouble with is massed units of death co. marines mainly just because of the amount of atks they get in cc, other than that they really dont do much but bog down the seers. and as you all have already talked about killy units they really arnt that bad of a threat, in order for them to really be a threat they either have to be able to atk first and/or be able to survive 30+ wounds in the turn

What points level are you playing at? If you are building a JeCouncil based list for anything over 1500pts (below this Eldar really struggle no matter the build) then 8 + a Seer is the smallest sized unit I would run. While they are incredibly hard to kill (assuming you get Fortune up, still their biggest flaw but thats another issue and I won't get into that), without power weapons they relying completely on causing massive numbers of wounds to deal with infantry. Smaller units like the one you have been using are limited to smashing vehicles and high T monsters, you need more bodies in the unit if you expect to take on larger infantry units.

I would still classify a JetCouncil as a Deathstar, its just that they are totally outclassed by other Deathstar units like Nobz and TH/SS in terms of damage output and points effectiveness (their mobility is a non factor cause you get stuck in combat and can't fight your way out). Their strength lies in being able to multicharge a large chunk of an enemy army, even if you don't kill everything with 3+/4++ with re-rolls you aren't going to go anywhere very fast (and it should also mean you win combat most of the time, won't kill much but neither will they). You can make a mess of multiple vehicles in a single turn (while hopefully clipping an infantry unit to avoid return fire) or assault a weak unit and a strong unit, make a huge mess of the weak unit and win by heaps (as you won't lose many in return from the stronger unit) and try and sweep or cause heaps of Fearless wounds.

Spears on a Council are a terrible idea, maybe on one or two mostly for wound allocation purposes, but giving them to an entire unit is a waste. In terms of effectiveness against vehicles the additional attack from the Witchblade is far more dangerous than the single Singing Spear shot as no matter what you always hit the rear armour (and you don't get chances to fire at rear armour that often). Mathhammer wise against most vehicles (i.e not a Land Raider) I think it works out pretty much the same chance of doing damage even if the Witchblade needs 6's to hit (as you are hitting AV10 rather than 11+), and being able to hit on 4+ or even auto hit massively swings the advantage towards the Witchblade. More importantly the Witchblade gives you an additional attack against infantry as well, and as you rely completely on forcing armour saves every attack helps. The only real advantage of a the Singing Spear is that it lets you destroy a transport and charge the contents, but that why you bring some ranged fire support with the rest of your army. The 12" range on the Spears is barely a factor as you are on Jetbikes so getting into assault range isn't much of an issue.

Powerguy wrote:What points level are you playing at? If you are building a JeCouncil based list for anything over 1500pts (below this Eldar really struggle no matter the build) then 8 + a Seer is the smallest sized unit I would run. While they are incredibly hard to kill (assuming you get Fortune up, still their biggest flaw but thats another issue and I won't get into that), without power weapons they relying completely on causing massive numbers of wounds to deal with infantry. Smaller units like the one you have been using are limited to smashing vehicles and high T monsters, you need more bodies in the unit if you expect to take on larger infantry units.

I would still classify a JetCouncil as a Deathstar, its just that they are totally outclassed by other Deathstar units like Nobz and TH/SS in terms of damage output and points effectiveness (their mobility is a non factor cause you get stuck in combat and can't fight your way out). Their strength lies in being able to multicharge a large chunk of an enemy army, even if you don't kill everything with 3+/4++ with re-rolls you aren't going to go anywhere very fast (and it should also mean you win combat most of the time, won't kill much but neither will they). You can make a mess of multiple vehicles in a single turn (while hopefully clipping an infantry unit to avoid return fire) or assault a weak unit and a strong unit, make a huge mess of the weak unit and win by heaps (as you won't lose many in return from the stronger unit) and try and sweep or cause heaps of Fearless wounds.

Spears on a Council are a terrible idea, maybe on one or two mostly for wound allocation purposes, but giving them to an entire unit is a waste. In terms of effectiveness against vehicles the additional attack from the Witchblade is far more dangerous than the single Singing Spear shot as no matter what you always hit the rear armour (and you don't get chances to fire at rear armour that often). Mathhammer wise against most vehicles (i.e not a Land Raider) I think it works out pretty much the same chance of doing damage even if the Witchblade needs 6's to hit (as you are hitting AV10 rather than 11+), and being able to hit on 4+ or even auto hit massively swings the advantage towards the Witchblade. More importantly the Witchblade gives you an additional attack against infantry as well, and as you rely completely on forcing armour saves every attack helps. The only real advantage of a the Singing Spear is that it lets you destroy a transport and charge the contents, but that why you bring some ranged fire support with the rest of your army. The 12" range on the Spears is barely a factor as you are on Jetbikes so getting into assault range isn't much of an issue.

This pretty much sums it up. I completely agree with Powerguy

I run the same size council with 3 spears and two witchblades. They have worked great for me in CC as a tarpit with an avatar following behind. They are the better tank busters, if I have to I will attack a killy unit with them to get stuck in combat long enough for the avatar to charge in. Works great for players that know the avatar and just want to avoid him. Can't avoid an a council and the avatar can make up the distance in one turn and get his charge in to the melee. With fortune on the council I don't lose that many and if they were to lose combat and run the fearless bubble of the avatar kicks in and they can run back in. Work best as tank busters. Spears hit on 2s and 3s and then rush in to finish it or tarpit the squad that spilled out. Also because they are they larger bases in a multi assault on a any parking lot you can string them out about a foot or wrap them around a single transport. On Tesday I wrecked three vehicles in a single combat. What other squad can do that? I considered adding a autarch to the council but with t3 the last thing to do is put him in a tarpit and let him get singled out. The rest of my list is mechdar 5 man squads in WS (1 FD,3 DA), 5 path,2 vypers, 2 FP and 1 NS.

Why take spears on the Destructor warlocks? I can see it on the enhance or embolden, but destructorlocks should be using their power rather than a spear against non-vehicles.

If you want to harrass, take the spears. Otherwise my experience is you need the extra attack a witchblade +pistol gets you to make them semi-effective in HTH.
Spears need to do their damage on the charge and then they drop to a 50+ model for 1 attack that wounds on a 2+ but still give the enemy its save.

Spears are great for small GJB units but leave them at home for councils. If you go at Farseer + 8 with enhance
you get 18 attacks hit 12 times and wound 10. Against marines that means 3+ kills. Make them all spears and that goes in half. Just not enough killiness. Your fortuned squad should be hard to kill but you need to be causing casualties to give it a chance to win combats not just be a 500 pt tar pit. For anti-infantry fire, let the bike's TL catapults do the work along with your destructor locks. If the unit has to do AT work just live with assault and witchblade the vehicle to death. Don't get sucked into the 1 S9 AT shot being situationally good. Keep your squads # of attacks as high as you can.

Take spears for wound allocation for warlocks, If you don't have alot of warlocks it's not going to be a deathstar. Small councils can still tankbust very well and those with witchlades can sit with hands in pocket for the shooting phase and then destroy the vehicle you immobilized with spears in hth. For me ten is 37.5 % of points spent for the army @ 2000 a person may need to pack up and leave when they get wiped off the table. At least at One Farseer and 4 warlocks I can bounce back if they get snuffed early on.

MellowYellow wrote: until they make their points back and die

There's your problem. No unit's goal is to 'make up their points'. This game is about objectives or KPs. Trying to think about 'making up your points' will only cause you to lose games you otherwise would have won.

The seer council will die nearly every game, and thats their job. Throw them at the enemy so they have to deal with it. If they absorb all the attacks of the enemy for 3 turns before they die, then they just saved the rest of your army 3 rounds of firing/assault.

During that time the rest of your army is fairly unmolested and able to do what the need to in order to win the game, ie take objectives get easy KPs, etc...

MellowYellow wrote:

Kirika wrote:Haven't took out my jet council in awhile but this is how I ran mine.

Farseer should just have bike fortune, runes of witnessing and runes of warding. You want to get off fortune. Second power that might make you get perils isn't that great. You wound on 2s with witchblades anyway.

council should have 8-10 warlocks and double up on enhance and embolden for durability and redundancy. You don't want too many destructors because you will kill too much and be outside of assault range. you don't want spears either because you get less attacks in assault.

After my fail-council... I think you should take all spears and use them as a 12" S9 bubble. And effectively 2 S9 attacks on the charge if you choose too. Having more attacks by holding witchblades instead of spears dedicates you to assault. Also I use doom not to reroll the 2s from witchblades, but to doom other units near by that will be under fire.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

scuddman wrote:Instead, think of them as a tarpit/contestor. Their job isn't to kill, their job is to take up space, annoy, harass, and take the killiest units on the other side of the table out of the game.

What you can't kill you avoid/tarpit. That's what these guys are for.

Often times the killiest unit will be termies, tyranids with poison/power weapon equivalent, dedicated assault unit (beserkers,etc) How do you take these killy units out without killing them?

Easy...you get them stuck in hth. Good ole termies with scary powerfists blah blah...whatever, 4+ rerollable I save. You can't effectively kill them, but they can't effectively kill you either. So now the deadly termies are out of the game, leaving the other eldar specialists free to do what they need to do.

You know how Tau fold over and die when you get into hth with them? Well, it doesn't work as well against eldar because you get stuck on the tarpits.

personally Ive stopped running my seer council in tournament setting games if favor of investing those points in further redundancy of units. What had really been the nail in the coffin as far as im concerned is the abundance of psychic defense. Ive had too many times where fortune has been blocked by a psychic hood and had all my bikes go down

just my 2cents

You should never use spears, as you lose valuable combat res if you swap out your blade. Also, if you want your council to be effective, it needs to be bigger. I'd say min 8 bikes.