Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

why are double Jetlock armies so competitive? From what I see you are simply playing with 2 deathstars, hardly seems competitive to me....I'd love to be proven wrong tho...

The unit are incredibly hard to kill and put out a lot of damage.

But yes, it is two deathstars.

It is not an uber army by any means but it is strong in KP denial, fast, hard hitting, great for taking out small, elite armies and did I mention hard to kill?

An army with powerful anti-pyker units can really hamstring it though as it heavily depends on getting fortune off consistently, and if the initiative gets stolen against a shooty army then they can really get their ass handed to them, but that is true of most lists.

Really? All I ever read about them is how awesome they are and how everyone should be taking them to tournaments. I just don't see it. Aside from the 2 AT squads (the jetlocks) there isn't much room for AT in a list like that(and if you use em as AT, there is no anti-troop that turn, especially concerned about the troops coming out of that tank...), at least as far as I can tell under 2k... Maybe I'm missing the tactics/point of em, but I don't see a way for them to even be overly good, let alone this awesome list that everyone is saying...

it really depends on the size of the list...when you get to 2k on up it gets easy to do a dual council list with good to excellent AT. which is usually fire dragons and fire prisms...while both units are fairly cheap. usually about 180 pts max. with the non council units costing that much it is easy to cram in alot

Alright, so I played a 2k game against Gwar tonight with a alpha testing dual jetlock list. And I must say, very interesting stuff. Yes I lost (woulda tied if I hadn't made the WORLDS LARGEST MISTAKE in my assault move at the bottom of 5...), but it was a good game. I learned a few things I need to change, and a few other tactic things that I need to alter (I really shouldn't tight surround a squad with my destructor locks...). Only thing that I didn't really get a chance to test was its AT capabilities. Gwar ran a butload of DE transport skimmers with armor 10/10/10 so I really can't say how the AT works just yet. My troops also seemed a little flimsy(4 squads of 6 guardian jetbikes with 2 cannons apiece). Overall I do see the potential in this list in certain games vs. certain armies/races, but I will definitely have to play games vs armies other than DE to fully test the options available to this list.

Indeed, double council is only just viable at 2000pts, 2500 its easy to fit but less than that and you really cut it thin on your support units.

Their main strength is not so much their damage output, its the damage output compared to the amount of firepower it takes to put them down. 3+/4++ with re-rolls is one of the hardest units in the game and while you won't cut your way through really powerful units very quickly, you will be putting out a decent number of wounds every round and won't be taking many casualties back.

However the short answer is that they aren't really a truely competitive unit. Like most lists built around hammer units they crush noobs and players who don't know how to deal with them, but when they come up against a truely competitive list controlled by a decent player they tend to fall over. The Council has too many easily exploitable weaknesses, it is completely reliant on Fortune (otherwise its massively overpriced) which means running in to any psychic defence is going to end badly. Throw in Null Zone as well and things go downhill very quickly. Also as a unit which relies on combat to do damage you can't really keep the Farseer safe, he is very vulnerable to being singled out and smacked over the head with a power fist etc. When you combine that with the fact that they don't put out that much damage they really don't cut it against decent lists imo.

Powerguy wrote:Indeed, double council is only just viable at 2000pts, 2500 its easy to fit but less than that and you really cut it thin on your support units.

Their main strength is not so much their damage output, its the damage output compared to the amount of firepower it takes to put them down. 3+/4++ with re-rolls is one of the hardest units in the game and while you won't cut your way through really powerful units very quickly, you will be putting out a decent number of wounds every round and won't be taking many casualties back.

However the short answer is that they aren't really a truely competitive unit. Like most lists built around hammer units they crush noobs and players who don't know how to deal with them, but when they come up against a truely competitive list controlled by a decent player they tend to fall over. The Council has too many easily exploitable weaknesses, it is completely reliant on Fortune (otherwise its massively overpriced) which means running in to any psychic defence is going to end badly. Throw in Null Zone as well and things go downhill very quickly. Also as a unit which relies on combat to do damage you can't really keep the Farseer safe, he is very vulnerable to being singled out and smacked over the head with a power fist etc. When you combine that with the fact that they don't put out that much damage they really don't cut it against decent lists imo.

They are good because everybody is tooled to drop mech and MEQ. Lascannons and melta guns are pretty worthless against them. Units that dump massive amounts of low str hits like dakka boys and IG blobs will shred a seer council with or without fortune, but they are out of favor in the current meta game because they don't work well against mech.

Jetbike seer council has a chance as long as they face lists that are well tooled to fight mechanized BA/SW and they don't get too badly hosed by psychic defense, and it doesn't run into the wrong lists.

When you say two squads of jetlocks, how many are in each squad? What is the optimal squad size?

I've run 2 at max capacity, two farseers obviously.
It's only competitive if you have fortune up.

Otherwise, it's kinda lame.

Seriously, fortune is everything to them, if you can prevent it from going up or they fail a psy check, you can kiss them goodbye.