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Ok well im actually having trouble of thinking what the weakness's of a bike council list are. How do you beat it? This is partially targeted at Stelek as he has put this forward on his blog as the ultimate killing army of doom. The "eldar Cheezmo" "full head of cheese" etc.

Firstly in my 1500pt list I will have:

x2 Fortune seers on bikes

x2 6 man warlock bike squads with x2 destructors each

x2 Fire prisms w/ stones

x2 6 man jetbike squads w/ 2 cannons + lock with embolden.

Obviously the lock + seer bikes are the core of the army.

Now with fortune they have a armour save that makes you do 9 wounds to kill 1 and with an invulnerable to do 4 wounds to kill 1.

So armour save %10 chance of dying, invulnerable %25.

Vehicle spam will not beat this as all squads can dance, the councils get 21 lascannon shots against you in combat and prisms kill you at range.

Orks will have trouble against x2 pie plates and x4 move 12" heavy flamers.

Ravenwing will again have trouble against all the heavy flamers and twin linked shuricats and lascannon attacks in combat against their vehicles

Nidzilla might pose slightly more of a prob especially with +2 saves on the MC's. However remember that the dakka fexes will only around 4 attacks in combat, 2 wounds on that and that is not enough on probabilities to kill a lock. I should on probabilities get one wound. Also the mobility of this list will hurt shooty nidzilla. You either come in range with your 36" guns and castle at which point I just shoot you with my prisms, OR you split up try and surround me and I gank you with dual councils. Note, given two turns I can assault at 42".

Finally psychic defences. This list does begin to have problems I think once you bring in things that stop the seer's fortune. Im not familiar with the DH/WH anti-psychic protection but im sure it can stop me. I know the hood has been nerfed to only 24" also. Once you start stopping fortune my saves go down to 66% with armour and 50% with invulnerable. Not a position I want to be in with 45 point + models.

Apart from that I can't really think of things to break this list. Anyone got any ideas? Im not trying to put this forward as an unbeatable list that will kill anything. I would like to hear about ideas that can actually beat what seems to be a very powerful army.

Then onto the more elusive, TACTICS that beat this list?

Objectives must be placed close together to limit the mobility of this list.

Units must not become unsupported as the mobility will ensure a swift gank if you do.


Well thats all I have. I would like to hear thoughts, and please no pro-stelek anti-stelek. With respect, I would like to hear reasonable and logical arguments. Nor do I really want to read any fanboying about the game between stelek and mark parker. I think that the destructors would have tipped it for Stelek, simply because he could have wiped out 30 man boy units in a turn of shooting + assault rather than getting bogged down.

oh and please no arguments against Mathhammer... its is the ONLY way of arguing with any certainty in a game based around chance.

Get them into hand to hand. Pin them than get them into hand to hand. Use low AP template weapons to deny them armor/turbo saves. Imperial armies can use a Callidus to take out a farseer/warlock combo when the eldar player is under the impression that they are invincible. Lashing would work well if the eldar player was foolish enough not to bring Runes of warding.

Bikes or other units like wraiths, scarabs, maybe jetpacks; that can match the speed of the bikes and chase them down and assault them. Fortuned or not jetbikes will lose in an assault with nearly everything that does not have an armor value. The farseers can only fortuned two units at a time shoot everything else.

Jetbikes have speed but are very restricted in range. If they want to shoot at something they are going to end their turn within 18” within their targeted unit. So bunch up your army so all the bikes loss the ability to pick apart isolated units. Have units that can chase them down ready to go when the bikes attack your phalanx. Keep vehicles behind troops so that the bikes would have to get into the assault range of basic infantry to hit them with the spears. With the changes to blast weapons the fire prisms are not as threating to vehicles they once were. Open topped vehicles with a disembarking crew could catch the bikes - goes double if the crew can fleet like orks and dark eldar.

A Basilisk could take apart a guardian squad that didn’t turbo or hit the prisms. Other guess range weapons could be effective as well for the guardians. Anti-psychics in the space marine and inquisitor forces would put a stop to the fortunes. Marine hoods are reduced to 24” – Inquisitor hoods are still unlimited.

Relatively cheap way to nerf this army for an imperial players is get an Inquisitor psychic hood ally with tag along Callidus date. This might also one of the few times that Daemonhost are a wise investment. 3 independent guys for the cost of one elite on the FOC, with a chance to teleport and assault them, or chase them down when they are 24” inches away.

It's hard, no doubt. I ran a big bike seer council in last year's Ardboyz tournament and wrecked everything I came up against.

That said, there are a few ways to beat it.

#1 Get into assault with attacks that ignore all saves. (e.g. Necron Lord w/ Warscythe) The problem with this approach is that whatever you throw into the assault has to be able to survive it - and that could be a problem.

#2 Quantity of Attacks. Marc Parker just proved that you can throw bodies at a problem. Overwhelm them with attacks. Yes, it takes 9 regular wounds or 4 power weapon wounds to drag down a single model... Does that matter if you have 100 attacks (excuse me, I need to roll this brick of dice 3 times)?

#3 Focus on the Farseers. Farseers are the lynchpin of this army. Take them out and the seer councils go buh-bye.

#4 Spam small units/have lots of shots. Tau excel at this. Spacing is imperative - you do not want him to be able to hit more than one unit at a time. This is the shooting version of #2. Shoot the crap out of him - it does work. He moves into assault range, then move up one of your squads to him and rapid-fire at point blank. He eats that squad on his turn, then you wash, rinse, repeat. He gets 4 or 5 assaults and that's it.

#5 Focus on the Troops. Seer council lists have weaker Troops selections. Get them dead. Once they're dead, the best he can hope for is a draw (in an objectives based mission).

That's what I can come up with off the top of my head.

I actually have a Necron army that looks like it was made to destroy this list.

2 lords: one veiling one destroyer bodied
3 large squads of necrons- that can be shuffled around into more smaller squads
2 squads of 10 flayed ones
2 large squads of scarabs
1 squad of 3 wraiths led by my flying lord.
1 small squad of pariahs
5 destroyers

The scarabs trap the bikes in hand to hand for what would likely be the to the end of the game. The wraiths with lord eat one of the seers’ bikes (rerollable invulnerable save meets Warscythe).

Flayed ones deep strike near bike units unit trapped by scarabs and join in next turn – this is done to free the scarabs and give a better chance to chase down a fleeing unit. Veiling lord puts a large squad of necron warriors within 12” of a guardian jetbike squad and take them out with mass gauss fire or he does this to one of the prisms (glancing hits add up). Destroyers trade fire with prisms until the vehicles are weaponless, immobilized, or destroyed.

Sure You can turbo boost away but I have 5 units (lord can go off on his own) that can turbo boost after you for the whole game while my necron foot troops claim objectives and veil attack prisms and fleeing guardians.

Edit- look into the cold dead eyes of your executioner:

stjohn70 wrote:

#3 Focus on the Farseers. Farseers are the lynchpin of this army. Take them out and the seer councils go buh-bye.

(this is not a quote. I have no idea why it looks like this)Well, my vindicare would have a fun time with that, and as for the rest,

Catachans+staying in cover+ lots of long range stuff like autocannons, Missile launchers, etc. = death for the armies that like to pick of the guys who go out on their own, and out maneuver their opponents

My army does pretty much the same thing that yours does garinator, and our armies do not like people who stay in cover and shoot at us.

As always, this is based on my very... very... limited understanding of the new eldar, and not so new imperial guard codex. But on the bright side, i now own a copy of the new rulebook

The reason the army is so dangerous is simple:

You can't realistically "think" about it as being in your face, because it's so out there.

The best way to defeat the seer council is to play defensively and encourage the council player to play too aggressively.

Oh and don't toss low save troops at the Seer Council, as stjohn70 recommended. If Marc had gotten his final unit of troops into my seer councils, it'd have cost him that game.

Fearless + easy to hit/kill + more fearless wounds + virtually no saves = alot of dead orks. Marc learned that a turn too late, but in the end it didn't matter. Without destructors or playing differently there was really no way for me to win unless Marc handed me the win. His dice succeeded at stopping him from doing so.

Usually only flamers cut down Orks the way I was cutting them down, so I'm sure it was a bit of a surprise for him to lose so many Orks so quickly. If it was any other kind of Ork army but a nob/painboy army...the Orks just can't deal with the seer council. I don't think my Orks can, but in a couple months I'll test it against stjohn70's council army and see for myself. I think I'm gonna get pwned. lol

However, one huge charge into the councils from everything in an army is more likely to DIFFUSE the attacks the council puts out; and that is how you minimize the damage it does.

Power weapons are the way to drop the council.

Shooting is the way to roll a lot of dice and do zip.

Stelek wrote:Oh and don't toss low save troops at the Seer Council, as stjohn70 recommended. If Marc had gotten his final unit of troops into my seer councils, it'd have cost him that game.

Fearless + easy to hit/kill + more fearless wounds + virtually no saves = alot of dead orks. Marc learned that a turn too late, but in the end it didn't matter. Without destructors or playing differently there was really no way for me to win unless Marc handed me the win. His dice succeeded at stopping him from doing so.

Yes, do throw lots of low save troops at the Seer Council, as stjohn70 recommended. Just don't do it in the way that Marc threw them at Stelek. If you charge 30 Shoota Boyz into a 10 man Seer Council (shooting first - which kills 1.11 guys), you can expect to: lose 8-9 guys first, then kill 2 with regular attacks and 1 with a power klaw - so you lose by 6... down to 15 guys - but he's down to 6. Next turn he'll beat you again, but you'll drag down another 1-2... and then it's your turn again. Yes, it took 30 guys just for you to get his squad under half - but your squad cost 225 pts, his costs 500. The key here is to either have enough charge range to get them all engaged, or for the bike squad to not be engaged, so their counter-assault movement brings nearly all your models into play. Do this twice, and his squad will be done, and you'll still have models left from your squad.
Also, always hit him with models of the same caliber - do not throw Mega Armored Nobz on at the same time as regular Boyz, because he'll just pick on the Boyz to make you lose combat.
Again, if you focus those Klaws onto the Farseer - his house of cards suddenly starts looking very fragile (since Warlocks do not have the Retinue rules).

Bonus pic fellas.

How NOT to run the Seer Council:



See, that council went and superspeeded right in front of a properly built blood angel army with:

Dante.
Corbulo.
70 jump pack marines.

And Council got charged.

Epic Failure, Pete ole buddy. Epic. lol

Crush it. Not that I have ever faced it.

1 Farseer and 6 Warlock bikes with upgrades is almost 500 points.

As mentioned, power weapons in general and Powerfist on the Farseer.

I would never attack it with any kind of low save. Anything T4 2+ w/ a Power Weapon. Good reason to include a Jumppack Chaplain + Assault Squad in every army list.

I don't know what Orks would do. Shoot it with AP3. Finish it off with Klaws. With turbo-boost it is almost guaranteed a good charge, but with the new Consolidation rule it cannot attack another squad.

30 Lootas getting 3 shots at Fortuned 3+ Cover Save are lucky if they kill 1. Better to shoot at softer targets. You can still charge on your own turn, getting +1 attack, denying them theirs (more important) and keeping in mind their I5. Orks are only I3 anyway.

The problem with any farseer council whether on bikes or on foot is the amount of points you are sinking into the units and all of it is really based around fortune. So as the opponent you know he has to use it to assault and take objectives. I played in the ard Boyz with the on foot version, not as pricey but almost as cheezey as the biker brigade. I ended up taking 3rd in the qualifier and it really got in trouble in 2nd round and died in the 3rd round game.

Problem in round 2 was more just a bad match up for my army. Daemons about an even mix of plaguebearers and daemonettes, 3 soulgrinders, a lord of change and the unique nurgle prince. This was more a problem of the scenario (no heavies on the board) for my army. So I had no good answer for the 3 large blast templates and my troops were getting decimated. The farseer and retinue was getting overwhelmed and out-initiatived by daemonettes and then the plaguebearers being almost unkillable. The sheer volume of attacks wore down the saves. If I were on bikes add what 220 points to the unit cost but the demonettes would have been less deadly. The plaguebearers with poison were being a real pain. (BTW how badly did they underprice nurgle stuff? Feel no pain and poison and supposedly worth less than a bloodletter - the most worthless of the 4 troopers)

The 3rd round was a nasty combo. A librarian so guess what... half the game with no psychic stuff working. I ended up killing the nasty thing in terminator armor but it took forever. He finished me off in the 6th turn with his one unit of allied grey knight terminators and their evil heavy flamer that ignores invulnerable saves. Then try to survive 20 S6 power weapon attacks.

So my choice for killing them would be Belial and the Deathwing, 1 Librarian in terminator armor and 1 unit of allied grey knight termies. It takes an amazing amount of time for the bikes to get through all that 2+ saves. The farseer will only be 67% successful on his fortune because of the psychic hood. If the bikes are ever not in HTH combat in a combat phase, the evil prometheum that ignores invulnerables will come down on you. It will take forever but I would suspect your Deathwing can outlast it and at a cost in the neighborhood of 700 points, you can usually end up with a protracted battle so meanwhile your unengaged termies can clear the rest of his stuff and garner the kill points or grab objectives.

the army list presented here is woefully low on troops. In fact it is a low model count army. I would focus first on killing the two guardian jetbike squads and the prisms first... Should not be hard to do. The seer councils have to get up close to enemy units to be effective and this could be a problem for them if you play your cards right. Once the guardian jetbikes are history the best the elder can do is play for a tie in the objective based missions. This force the prisms to come out so you can shoot them.

Obviously make the elder go first so you will have at least one turn to shoot whatever they have sitting objectives in the last couple of turns.

G

Green Blow Fly wrote:Once the guardian jetbikes are history the best the elder can do is play for a tie in the objective based missions.

And by the time youve done that the bike councils have spat out your army.

I am happy when people shoot the guardian bikes.

Tabling is an auto win.

Librarians with null zone might hurt. They have the hood and force you to re-roll successfull inv saves. Pair him with a termie squad and it'll prolly be bye bye council.

Hmm how would null zone work against fortune'd council. You roll your saves, re-rolling the fails, then you re-roll all the successfull. Would it just cancel each other out?

Couldn't the seer council be tarpitted with anything 3+ really? I mean if they're all armed with witchblades [and not spears, so not really able to range attack tanks] that's 14 attacks for the farseer + 6 warlock squad. Hitting on 3's and wounding on 2's but allowing saves averages in what, 3 dead marine-esque things per round of combat?

I guess in 5th that could easily send a squad running, but that's if they all had witchblades. Aren't most councils running spears, for only half the number of attacks?

Oh no! It's the seer council!

About the ONLY balance problem with 40K is not in the rules and the army list, its in our financial constraints, and the problems with time that mean we can't get enough games in. I think too many of us imagine we are great generals after beating half-ass lists of guys who are still learning the rules, or who haven't got models table ready to make a real army.

There are plenty of things that can give the Seer Council grief. The real question is whether we are going to have the tactical ability to put such a mobile unit where we want it.

The unit is killable, but it is so fast it allows its controller to dictate the game. And that is why it is great.

Every army fields the answer.

How about deepstriking Abaddon and eight terminators with combi flamers? The council get to reroll their saves, but that is gonna be a truckload of rolls!

How about Jain Zar, and some banshees in a wave serpent, insulted by the councils claim to supremacy, and keen to make a point? banshee masks, strike first, strength 7 power weapon at 11 Initiative vs toughness 3?????

How about 30 slugga boys with mad dok Grotsnik and a warboss, 3 power claws total, feel no pain, ferocious charge and fearless? The council actually have a pretty large surface area, the orks might even get like 130 attacks 4 at STR8, 10 at STR 10? This not working for you?

How about 3 Daemonhost, after one rolled 'Bloodboil', one rolled 'Timeshift' and one rolled "Warp Strength 'on 6s?

How about a direct hit by a Vindicator, or even better an Orbital Torpedo strike?

Broodlord and 10 genestealers anyone?

6 Fiends of Slaneesh and 2 Keepers of Secrets at the SAME time?

As I said, the council is a great unit because it has the ability to really ZOOM away from danger and set up the terms of battle. So it can beat any of those units as long as it can avoid them.

It is no sure thing though. Thus the council is a really cool unit, because every game is going to be a challenge.

Isn't that what makes 40K fun!!???

Seer council bikes have a woefully low output for the price. Yes they are survivable, but they dont deliver 400pts worth of smackdown for the investment.

Khornatedemon wrote:Librarians with null zone might hurt. They have the hood and force you to re-roll successfull inv saves. Pair him with a termie squad and it'll prolly be bye bye council.

Hmm how would null zone work against fortune'd council. You roll your saves, re-rolling the fails, then you re-roll all the successfull. Would it just cancel each other out?

By the letter of the rules, what would happen is you roll all your invulnerable saves, then pick up the dice and roll them again and use those results -- Fortune lets you reroll failures, Null Zone forces you to reroll successes. Net result is the first roll gets rerolled either way.

Charging their point value in Khornate Daemon units at em ought to sort em out.

40kenthusiast wrote:Charging their point value in Khornate Daemon units at em ought to sort em out.

It's all kinds of bad when Demons get to charge your Seer Council.

Not that Bloodletters do much to it.

Bloodcrushers can hurt it if you let it near.

ummm. A psychic hood?

Not that hard guys... (if you can have an allied inquisitor)

Lowinor wrote:

Khornatedemon wrote:Librarians with null zone might hurt. They have the hood and force you to re-roll successfull inv saves. Pair him with a termie squad and it'll prolly be bye bye council.

Hmm how would null zone work against fortune'd council. You roll your saves, re-rolling the fails, then you re-roll all the successfull. Would it just cancel each other out?

By the letter of the rules, what would happen is you roll all your invulnerable saves, then pick up the dice and roll them again and use those results -- Fortune lets you reroll failures, Null Zone forces you to reroll successes. Net result is the first roll gets rerolled either way.

We play at home that it just cancels itself out. Two intelligent people can deduce that rolling a set of dice, then re-rolling the same exact set of dice does the same thing. Just takes twice as long. Perils of the warp after a failed ghosthelm on a fortuned farseer was where we discovered it. When playing against a new space marine librarian I would just ask my opponent if its ok if we just skip the mindless re-rolling and call it a cancel. Be sure to discuss this BEFORE you roll 9 out of 10 passes, and then desperately try to explain to him that you shouldn't have to re-roll it

Shep wrote:We play at home that it just cancels itself out. Two intelligent people can deduce that rolling a set of dice, then re-rolling the same exact set of dice does the same thing. Just takes twice as long. Perils of the warp after a failed ghosthelm on a fortuned farseer was where we discovered it. When playing against a new space marine librarian I would just ask my opponent if its ok if we just skip the mindless re-rolling and call it a cancel. Be sure to discuss this BEFORE you roll 9 out of 10 passes, and then desperately try to explain to him that you shouldn't have to re-roll it

Oh, of course -- I'd kinda expect that reasonable folks could ignore the mindless rerolling part

There is, though, one potentially notable difference -- when the power cancel each other out, since a reroll does technically happen, that roll is under the effects of the "never reroll a reroll" rule, so it can't be rerolled again by some other effect.

A unit of Ork burna boys in a trukk/BW can really do a number on the council. Tank shock them to bunch up and flame away. Not many thing survive 60-70 S4 hit. Who cares what saves or rerolls they get.

Go orks

Yes, tank shock them...with the auto-hit S9 attack. Don't do it in Trukks. lol BW yes, Trukks no.

Seer Council can survive 30 wounds, by the by.

3+ shrugs off 20. Re-roll shrugs off 6-7 more.

You should care what saves and re-rolls and toughness they are.

I've emptied my entire Tau army into just one and didn't even force a morale check.

Which is LD10 with a re-roll...yeah, probably not going to make them run away.

Then, you're dead.

Last but not least, gonna need alot of trukks (like John's amount of Immolators) to really compress a seer council. I'm never closer than 1.5" and usually I'm at max coherency. Hard to tank shock that together into alot of flamer goodness. Not impossible, but not easy either.

As to the bike council in its most optimized form any real method of defeating it is going to have a lot to do with luck or will probably just be a very ugly attrition battle.

However, the proposed bike council at the top of this thread is pretty weak as far as bike councils go. It lacks an enhance lock to give it the improved WS and Initiative it needs to be effective as well as lacking the embolden lock to keep it from running if something goes awry. I would be pretty confident that a death company would wreak the councils in the OP's list. especially if they get the charge.

The primary weakness in a seer council as I see it is the farseer. If he dies or fails the fortune roll on a given turn, the council goes from being a wreaking crew to being a liability. Without fortune, a bike lock is basically a really expensive Marine with an invulnerable save. It is also a lot of eggs in a single basket. One turn of bad rolling on the council and you can lose around a third of your army's points. I really think the seer council is a 1750+ point army investment, below that number you have to gimp the rest of your army a lot and hope the dice don't hate you that day.

It also depends on what you're playing, and where you're playing.
As mentioned, if you don't get fortune off, this squad really isn't very impressive.

With the new marine codex, a lot of marine armies are going to have psychic hoods.
No sane eldar player would NOT have runes of warding.

Outside of that, if say lootas shoot the squad - it just takes one of those failed wounds to be on the farseer for it to suddenly be popped and be a liability. Yes, nothing is probably going to happen, but if the loota squad rolls a 3 for its shots, theres about a 20% chance of that happening. If they manage to drop one or two first, that chance goes even higher.

Right off the bat, that's some decent chances to neutralise the list, especially runes of warding. If you're hoping to get close to perfect battle, hoping you dont run into some bad luck against hoods/runes of warding probably isnt going to be as safe for that.

Most of the time, you're going to be fine, but it only takes 1 game to spoil the entire tournament. I found when playing with a bottom comp army that you have to play the perfect tournament. When you do, you get the win, but a single mistake is enough to cost you a podium finish. It leaves no room for error.

Finally, I'm assuming from our conversation over the weekend that you're looking at moving overseas? For now I really wouldn't recommend this army in the oceanic scene, As you saw in the weekend - comp has quite a substantial impact at the top of the field.

For the moment ive decided against the list. Simply because the amount of effort to build 14 robbed figures on jetbikes + proper runes for the carapace is just way to expensive and time consuming.

The parts I need for just the bikes = $300 NZ + ... flag

As for moving overseas, that really means overseas, not to aussie, which is essentially what is being referred to when one uses "oceanic" and Warhammer in the same sentence. Its really not to big of an area down here and its why im a bit reluctant to conform and play armies that are considered "balanced". Again read: 4 tac squads + any two of: vindicator/land raider/assault marines/terminators/bikes. Its not the best practice, although taking an army way over the top of that and beating them is not good practice either.

Sigh, what to do?

heh as for the comp, the biggest problem im going to have, even with a balanced list, is convincing people that its not awesome. That army I took really wasn't that hard in retrospect. You saw what happened to it once the council died. So did Hagan. So did the Salie player from Christchurch whom I played in my first game. Councils in serpents suck because you can neutralise 600pts+ with a single lascannon shot. Councils on bikes, you might kill one, if you're extremely lucky. Also it contained nothing to back up the council. The army seemed to play as completely independent units, no combos. If I had taken say a unit of banshees in the serpent and put the council in the falcon and then boosted 24" right next to an enemy, even if he did pop one transport, he wouldn't be able to shoot the council as you position so that the disembarking unit gets out behind the surviving transport. And yes this is possible if you put your tanks on proper (so not dave lewy style) length stands. THAT would have been deadly.

All you had to do was castle and kill the council. Really NOT hard.

I have played against seer council on foot twice. It kills in HtH, although very slowly.

I killed both times. First with alot of shots, like 3 tacticals rapid firing. Second time with DW terminators.

Council on bikes are much tougher than Council on Foot.