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been juggling with whether or not too paint up a Saimhan or Ulthwe themed army. i know that the determining factor will be how i can best field my primary farseer and council.

I know that if i go saim han, i can field them all on a bunch of bikes, but if i go ulthwe, i can use eldrad.

my question to exp'd eldar players is, whats the best way to use a farseer with large-size seer council on foot?

the rest of my army looks like:

Dire Avengers w/ Wave serpent, second farseer
Guardians (on bikes or off, dunno yet) w/ warlock
Fire Dragons w? Wave serpent
Harlequins
Fire Prism
Night Spinner

Well for starters your colour scheme shouldn't decide the style of army you play. I have a very large Eldar collection which is all painted in an Ulthwe scheme, but that doesn't mean I only field Warlock/Farseer heavy lists (in fact I basically never field more than a 1 of each). Fluff wise craftworlds will use the best units to get the job done, so will field Wraith heavy or Jetbike heavy etc if they need to, the style isn't exclusive to one craftworld.

Anyway, from a competitive POV Councils on foot are pretty bad unfortunately, they are slow and really aren't that hard to kill even with 4+ re-rollable (as easy to torrent as Marines, since they get wounded on 3+). They also don't hit particularly hard (they hurt vehicles, but that's about it) and fall over VERY quickly if you fail Fortune (or have it stopped by psychic defence, which shows up all over the place). If you add a Serpent you somewhat get around the speed issue, but they aren't really much better off because assaulting out of a Serpent is a nightmare. Adding Eldrad and/or Yriel helps them hit harder, but then they are even slower and a massive points sink as well.

Really the only way to run a Council is on Bikes, where your survivability jumps above a TH/SS Terminator and you become fast enough to get places without a Serpent. You still don't hit amazingly hard and still rely on Fortune heavily, but its a usable unit. The only way I would use a Council on Foot (out of a Serpent obviously) is 3-4 strong with Destructors, purely to use as horde control and to get another Serpent. Its mostly an option for 2000+ point games, where you are running out of slots, but at least it doesn't rely on assault to do damage, you jump out, flame something to death and your job is done.

Powerguy has it covered on tactics (I am not qualified) but my take on the modelling side is this:


I have a biel tan army

I am going to collect one of each farseer and one of each warlock.

I need Eldrad, who I will paint in Biel Tan colours, and will also have a Chapter House jetseer squadron (I have the bikes, but not the riders). I have Yriel who I will paint in Biel Tan colours.



Tactical? No

Canon? No

But they are my models, I will paint them how I like.



My point is, to reinforce powerguy, you don't need to go with the fluff, just model your army and paint them however you choose.

I second that, just paint and model everything how you like and then just choose your army for matches. If you like the fluff you can just follow it in friendly games. Yes, it can be more fulfilling to choose an army for fluff and then win with it in a non-competitive friendly game than winning a tournament.

But, more important, has anyone ever used a council on foot efficiently? For me they just took too many turns to get into the fight if I had to walk or carry them into battle.

my question to exp'd eldar players is, whats the best way to use a farseer with large-size seer council on foot?

Well, I usually run a Council on foot. Its a bit harder to pull off than a Jetseer Council. But it also can be very rewarding. To keep pt costs low, I run a Fortuneseer with both runes, 8 to 10 Warlocks w/ embolden (x2), enhance in a Serpent w/ stones, scatterlaser or shuricannon.

wuestenfux wrote:

my question to exp'd eldar players is, whats the best way to use a farseer with large-size seer council on foot?

Well, I usually run a Council on foot. Its a bit harder to pull off than a Jetseer Council. But it also can be very rewarding. To keep pt costs low, I run a Fortuneseer with both runes, 8 to 10 Warlocks w/ embolden (x2), enhance in a Serpent w/ stones, scatterlaser or shuricannon.

This low cost is still as high as a Assult Termie squad with a LR...Its also a crap load worse than the JetSeer council. What you have there is no more resilient than a ~10 Man Tac squad, and that is assuming you get fortune off....

Councils are not great anymore. The JetSeer council can be ok tho.

tedurur wrote:

wuestenfux wrote:

my question to exp'd eldar players is, whats the best way to use a farseer with large-size seer council on foot?

Well, I usually run a Council on foot. Its a bit harder to pull off than a Jetseer Council. But it also can be very rewarding. To keep pt costs low, I run a Fortuneseer with both runes, 8 to 10 Warlocks w/ embolden (x2), enhance in a Serpent w/ stones, scatterlaser or shuricannon.

This low cost is still as high as a Assult Termie squad with a LR...Its also a crap load worse than the JetSeer council. What you have there is no more resilient than a ~10 Man Tac squad, and that is assuming you get fortune off....

Councils are not great anymore. The JetSeer council can be ok tho.

Well, as said, a footslogging Council is hard to pull off these days. But this will not prevent me from playing it.

As said in above posts the most competitive way to play a seer squad is on bike. The added toughness from the bike and the armor save gives the squad that added survivablity that makes their pts really worth it. I have also found that eldar jetbike 6' move in the assault phase has helped me out in many situations either getting them out of harms way or setting them up for my next turn.

I only use the foot councils for 1 purpose now a days. I bring 4 of them in a squad and give them all destructor. They are my anti-horde unit. Like all my other units, they never leave their serpents unless making a killing blow.

It really doesn't matter how you paint your army. My whole army isn't uniformly painted because i've bought most of it on ebay and through trades and such. I plan to do it one day, just not today, or tomorrow. Maybe some other time.

The point is I play any kind of army I have the models for. Don't let the craftworlds bound what type of army you play as, especially after the 3rd edition codex with the craftworld update.

Also, War walkers are better than wraithlord, they put out much more firepower.