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I've recently faced a seer council on jetbikes for the first time and damn are they hard to get rid of. What's more is I play Grey Knights and the farseer's wards really F up my day!

So tell me, how do you dispatch of those annoyances on the battlefield? I would like to hear input from all army types, not just how a grey knight player should do it (Or Orks as i play orks too.)

I play Eldar, but the way I get rid of units with all invulnerable saves is to get as much wounds as possible into the unit. There save is a 4+ invuln so for statics, half the wounds you send out are going to take out someone

GK stormraven with alphastrike mindstrike missiles. It wiped a seer council in my playtest games. Bring some rad grenades and wound on 2s and instant kill seers.

Daemon flamers. Wound on a 4+ and you can potentially get a lot. They can only save so many...and they don't get cover saves, no matter HOW fast they go

But they get invul saves + reroll right?

It's funny you brought up the seer council. I just played a game against an eldar player, running a big seer council.

I play necrons myself, and about the only consistent way I killed them was just dedicating a full two turns shooting all 3 units of my destroyers at them plus a unit of immortals.

my strategy was simply to pull them closer to the unit I wanted and as they got closer to my warriors and the core, I had killed about 7 of his 10 warlocks and dealt a wound on his farseer. Once they were where I wanted them to be, I actually assaulted into them with a destroyer squad. keeping them exactly where I wanted them for the turn then at the start of the third turn I pulled them with my monolith and unloaded until they were no more.

I was able to focus almost everything on them, by sidetracking the other side of the board with my deciever.

It might seem bad, but when you consider that the bike only makes them toughness 4 and that rolling a 3+ or a 4++ plus a second is only slightly worse then a 2+ armor save, but better then a 3+.

a 2+ armor save is an 83.33% chance of success.
a 4++ followed by a 4++ is about a 75% chance of of success.
a 3+ is an 66.666% chance of success.
finally a 3+ followed with a 3+ is about a 89.99% chance of success.

I know that I'm spouting mathhammer at this point but it does give you a bit to think about when you're shooting. It can help to know how many wounds it should usually take to kill a single model.

so it may seem daunting but not by any means impossible.

I'd take an Inquisitor (Xenos) with Rad and psychostroke grenades.
This will lower the effectiveness of a Seer Council in cc.
By the way, small arms fire can kill (or decimate) it.

In my experience as an IG player, the only way to kill them is MORE DAKKA. The more dice they have to roll the more likely they are to fail.

Edit: FRFSRF really works on them for me. Issue it to blob squads and your rolling anywhere from 50-100+ dice. With about 50% hitting, then an additional 33% wounding, and then only 50% killing its takes a lot. with 100 shots (about 30 lasguns) your only going to kill about 8. (someone double check my math please 100*.5*.33*.5)

ObliviousBlueCaboose wrote:In my experience as an IG player, the only way to kill them is MORE DAKKA. The more dice they have to roll the more likely they are to fail.

Edit: FRFSRF really works on them for me. Issue it to blob squads and your rolling anywhere from 50-100+ dice. With about 50% hitting, then an additional 33% wounding, and then only 50% killing its takes a lot. with 100 shots (about 30 lasguns) your only going to kill about 8. (someone double check my math please 100*.5*.33*.5)

Rerollable 3+ save. 1/2 hit, 1/3 wound, 1/9 fail save. One out of 54 shots results in an unsaved wound. If for some reason they aren't fortuned it becomes one out of 18.

Psychic Hood. Stop that fortune from going off and then pour as much fire into them as possible.

AlmightyWalrus wrote:Psychic Hood. Stop that fortune from going off and then pour as much fire into them as possible.

This, also, remember that S6 will ID his farseer, so any unit that torrents with S6 enough to force a save on the farseer can kill him.

I forgot about the Psychic Hood and Mindstrike Missiles. I will have to start running my librarian at the low point costs.

Thank you everyone for your advice. It was invaluable. The list I run is a Crowe purifier spam list and I simply don't have a lot of bullets (even with 2 psycannons in each squad). I wonder if Psylencer would be better? Heavy 6 but ap ---

Avoid the psylencer, its a heavy weapon, and not really a take all comers piece of gear either (glorified bolter most games).

Back up one question and first ask, "Is it necessary to kill the seer council?"

Yes you can get them with massed shooting, but it takes a ton of shooting--people in this thread are mentioning 2 and 3 turns of all their firepower--to completely wipe out the council. That gives the Eldar player 2 or 3 turns to do whatever he wants with the *rest* of his army without the threat of being shot at. Even if you do kill the council, it has already done its job by that point.

You can't ignore the council, but you can sometimes nerf its abilities without actually killing them. Bog them down with a large unit of models that have good armor saves (PAGKs are okay, terminators or paladins are better--paladins with an apothecary could hold a seer council forever). Or feed them small, cheap units of sacrificial guys or empty transports to hold them to only a few KPs or make them maneuver out of position to contest objectives/attack your vehicles, which is really what they do best.

He's got a lot of points sunk into that council. If you can bog/slow them with a cheap unit or two while fighting the rest of his army with the rest of yours, then you've got a huge advantage.

I recently played my mech marines in a KP tournament game against an Eldar player with a big council. I won by a big margin by using cheap units and maneuver to hold his seer council to only 2 KPs while the rest of my army fought the rest of his.

Dark Eldar:

Voidraven Bomber or Razorwing Jetfighter with 4 Shatterfield Missiles. That does the trick . 4 large blast one shot S7 missiles with rerolls to wound. Tasty.

Getting into assault with them is a pain in the ass, but don't forget that your psyk-out grenades will cripple them in CC. Mindstrike missiles are awesome, and delivering a librarian+Paladins via stormraven is very effective.

Vindicares are pretty good, and the ubiquitous psyfledread can reach them from most spots on the board. A dreadknight with PT or an interceptor squad can catch bikes in assault.

Worst, and I mean WORST case scenario, you can always hope to get lucky with the anti-psyker OSR, but I wouldn't reccomend wasting the 50 points on the OSR upgrade.

Psyk-out grenades reduce them to initiative 1, but since it's their armor/invul saves that are the real obstacle, that hardly cripples them. It just means you get to strike them ineffectively first, before they strike you.

With a small blast, a mindstrike missile is unlikely to hit more than one bike, still needs a 4 to wound it, and the model hit gets its invulnerable save (with no required reroll if fortune is up). A smart eldar player will put that one hit on the farseer who gets a 3+ save against perils in addition to his invul save, and if he fails he just takes a wound.

The vindicare's shield-breaker doesn't affect the Eldar invulnerable saves, since they're not provided by wargear (although this might be debatable). Even if you can knock off the farseer's invul, you still have to get past his 3+ rerollable armor save and 3 wounds.

Dreadknights would go down pretty quickly to massed seer council attacks that wound it on a 2+. The DK gets its armor save, but when they're scoring 7 or 8 wounds per round (and the council bike guys aren't dying because they get their 4+ rerollable against the dreadnight) the big guy will fail enough to fall in a couple of rounds usually.

The psyk-out bomb OSR has the same problem as the mind-strike missiles, only it's less accurate. If you do happen to catch a bike or two, they would only get their invul save (and the str6 means risking an instakill on the farseer if the Eldar player decides to allocate that way).

Paladins are the way (or even terminators). They won't win, but they won't die either. You don't need to be able to catch the bikes; just put the paladins where the bikes are going to have to go (or where you don't want them to go) and he'll come to you.

I think the shieldbreaker would work since the invulnerable save comes from their Rune Armour wargear. Farseers and warlocks have "Rune Armour (4+ invulnerable save)" listed under their wargear in their army list entries. I don't see how you could possibly conclude that the invulnerable save doesn't come from wargear. However, to kill the Farseer with a Vindicare you need to wound him twice on a 4+ (Shieldbreaker followed by turbopenetrator). That's going to take a while and the Eldar player has the tools at his disposal to stop you.

Witchblades use fixed rolls to wound so using dreadknights instead of normal terminators would be pretty silly, yes. Regular Terminator close combat should be plenty threatening if you can manage to catch a jetbike squad in close combat. It's all power weapons so the save goes from failing 1/9 of the time to 1/4 (more than doubling the chance of failure), and the Farseer is targeted individually.

As Flavius mentioned about Paladins and Terminators, the Seer Council has a tough time against 2+ saves with a lack of power weapons.

Psyriflemen dreads ring a bell? Vindicare ring a bell either?ll I think that assualt cannons would work too

Khorne Flakes wrote:Psyriflemen dreads ring a bell? Vindicare ring a bell either?ll I think that assualt cannons would work too

A psyfleman would get most likely 3 wounds, sometimes 4, sometimes 2, and the warlocks would get a 3+ rerollable save. So most likely the psyfleman would do nothing.

Those shots would be better used against the Eldar players AR12 grav tanks or AR10 vypers/warwalkers.

Snipe the farseer in cc. Charge them with any good cc unit.

Every 4 wounds you cause at ap3 kills 1 and every 9 wounds you cause kill one

Lol@greyknightsgettingownedbyeldar


honestly anything and everything in the gk codex counters the jetseer. Dredknights, terninators in stormraven, any of your overpowered shooting. You can kill the unit with concentrated fire easily and if you get into cc with a 2+ unit ur golden.

So... just small arms fire then?
An interceptor squad could conceivably chase them around for a while, 16 stormbolter shots and 4 assault 2 psycannon shots is hardly a torrent of fire, but following it up with an assault can net you an additional 21 attacks, 29 with falchions. Assuming you manage to get those 49 attacks off, you're going to net what, with hammerhand up and the eldar re-rolling saves, 2.5 wounds?

It looks like you'd have to devote multiple squads to dealing with them, which is really what the eldar player wants. An interceptor squad could hold them in assault until a paladin or purifier squad can join in, provided of course that you actually managed to set a good trap.

Flavius Infernus wrote:With a small blast, a mindstrike missile is unlikely to hit more than one bike, still needs a 4 to wound it, and the model hit gets its invulnerable save (with no required reroll if fortune is up). A smart eldar player will put that one hit on the farseer who gets a 3+ save against perils in addition to his invul save, and if he fails he just takes a wound.

Just thought I'd clarify that you don't need to wound with the Mindstrike in order to cause a PotW, you just need to cause a hit. And the model directly hit by it must suffer the Perils - you can't allocate it. Also, you actually are required to reroll the save.

somerandomdude wrote:

Flavius Infernus wrote:With a small blast, a mindstrike missile is unlikely to hit more than one bike, still needs a 4 to wound it, and the model hit gets its invulnerable save (with no required reroll if fortune is up). A smart eldar player will put that one hit on the farseer who gets a 3+ save against perils in addition to his invul save, and if he fails he just takes a wound.

Just thought I'd clarify that you don't need to wound with the Mindstrike in order to cause a PotW, you just need to cause a hit. And the model directly hit by it must suffer the Perils - you can't allocate it. Also, you actually are required to reroll the save.

Good call, a "model hit" by the missile suffers the perils attack. But I don't see any indication that the hit isn't allocated like any other hit from shooting (meaning that it's allocated by the owning player). Maybe this is one for YMDC.

Also to clarify the reroll thing: if you succeed on the invulnerable save versus perils, you have to reroll. If you fail the first time, with fortune up, you're allowed to reroll. So the rolls statistically cancel each other out. So you can either do the pro-forma thing of rolling, then rolling again and taking only the second result, or just skipping the first roll and rolling once.

With invul saves 4+, just try to spam hit/wounds. This is also why daemons are tricky, because a fistfull of dice can clean them out.

AlmightyWalrus wrote:Psychic Hood. Stop that fortune from going off and then pour as much fire into them as possible.

I would fo further and say ignore the seer council and shoot up the rest of the eldar army until you win a psychic hood test, then throw everything and the kitchen sink at them.

Codex marines have the best answer to seer council. Psychic hood+nullzone+sternguard=dead seer council.

HIT IT WITH A COMMAND SQUAD ON BIKES WITH KHAN AND A CHAPLAIN

Funny, I just posted this in a different thread.

I have had great results from an Ordo Xenos Inquisitor(Power Armor, Psyk-out, Rad, Psykotrope, Psyker w/Hammerhand), 5 DCA's and 4 Crusaders. They are either in a Stormraven or Land Raider. I normally have Coteaz and a duplicate unit in the list also. They have decimated pretty much everything I have pointed them at, including a 'fortuned' Jetbike Seer Council, which was survivable enough to let me wipe them on his turn(YAY!). They have taken out Termies, Blobs and MEQ. Yes sometimes they are too killy and you get shot up, but they have consistently made their points.

Against the Seer Council, due to Eldrad (Runes of Warding) being in the list, I didn't even use Hammerhand.

Great advice from all. I already have a paladin squad + librarian in a Stormraven in my 1850 list so I'll just have to incorporate that into 1000 points.

I have tried throwing lead at a severely diminished seer council and lead does not work. The Psyfleman was ineffective and the rounds would have been better elsewhere. The psycannons did nothing. I think I'll be trying the paladins + librarian.