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I have 10 beautiful Eldar warlocks, how have you been using them effectively?

1) They are fragile. 2W and Conclave loses Character Rule.

2) They are unreliable. Runes of Battle are awesome but at WC6/7 still presents a rather unacceptable probability that it would fail w/o having to spend precious CP to re-roll.

3) They have poor damage output. 1D smite and D3 with no AP.

I think I must be missing out on something here, their Spritseer counterpart is just way superior for just 10 more points.

I usually do this thing where I tell my opponent "All warlocks are spiritseers."

The universal response so far has been "K".

Yeah, I guess the official model has a blank face, instead of the standard mask. I'm not sure most people could really tell the difference, especially since in practical terms it's basically only a difference in points and wounds.

One has a staff, the other has a sword or spear. Wysiwyg, that is a difference. Although staff vs spear isn't much of a difference.

Use them as what they are: relatively cheap buffbots that occasionally achieve something of note with a singing spear, and keep up with your guardians/aspects/etc.

you're correct that the Runes of Battle powers are generally unreliable, so when you make a game plan, assume that only one of your powers will succeed and set aside a CP re-roll for that if needed. the rest are simply "nice to have"

The biggest reason besides wysiwyg to run warlocks is that the singing spear can actually be pretty scary against things that don't have a spectacular armor save, since its hit and wound potential is good and there's usually only the save stopping the application of D3 wounds.

ultimately warlock vs spiritseer becomes: "do I want to use them as smite bots? or spear-throwing buffbots" I nearly always lean to the latter because of how much of a multiplier RoB powers are when you do get them.

The conclave stratagem is powerful in that it can be used to cast a power like Jinx from out of deny range.

Use it to easily nuke a big bad daemon primarch turn 1.

You don't.

I usually run 1 warlock with my farseer for the stratagem, but even that is usually a jetbike warlock. The rest are all spiritseers. The option of a full smite and twice the wounds is a steal for 10 pts imo, this means I don't have to fear them blowing themselves up. Besides, I never achieve anything useful with singing spears anyway.

I always run a conclave of 2. Save the Jinx as mentioned above for that long range need about once a game and then choose Conceal or some other buff you can do while hiding in some terrain outside of los. The enemy wont usually waste their no-los stuff on the conclave til late game....by they you either won or lost the game.

Warlock conclave of 4 with protect /jinx and quicken /restrain and a Farseer with Doom and Executioner have been my mvp in most games.
Stratagem for +1 cast on 4 spells and a jinxed + doomed enemy is a dead one. Even your standard shuriken weaponry becomes extremely deadly. Use the double range strat to reach 36" if necessary. Remember : you only have to use it after a successfull cast.
Quicken can bei switched out but protect /Jinx is just way too good.
You have to be smart with your positioning, but it's worth the trouble.
Be sure to play with enough terrain, this game needs LOS blocking stuff to be fun anyway.

With beta rule for Smite people take something like Farseer, 2-3 SS & 2 warlocks. Warlocks act as cheap buffers for squad of Shining spears while seers/spiritseers smite, since if you tried to manifest smite 3-4 times already you don't want any more. There's also +1 to rolls stratagem (meaning smite at +1 for farseer maybe while Warlock casts his buff stuff).

I do

Supreme command Biel-tann:

Farseer On bike
2x warlock on bike
Spirit seer W/ Biel-tan relic (reroll fail spells).

The warlocks usualy bring enhance/Empower or Protect depending on opponent.

The reroll on quicken gives you pretty good odds of getting you 7 cast spell off on the spirit seer, also you only really care to cast quicken once, and so from there you usualy just throw smites, and the reroll isn't to bad on your smites.

Then you use the +1 on one of your warlocks, most likely on ehance as it's a bigger swing in your chances to get it off, and enchance combos with supreme disdain.

A single one to quicken my shining spears since he doesn't really need to live past turn 2.

Our psychic powers are awesome and using the seer council stratagem is really good.

Also, I have used a warlock conclave to take advantage of the Concordance of Power stratagem to get JINX on an enemy unit outside of deny range.

New points (+20 for warlocks) killed them for me. I own three and put them to some good use, also as cheap hqs for spearhead and outrider detachments, but it seems i'll have to get a biker one for quicken and a hemlock for jinx -.-

Blunt instruments like spears, serpents, hemlocks are fine yet eldar mages die gruesome death as their cheeky -2 to enemy leadership which never have been used before would never be used before now too.

Kek.

I've always run 2 bike warlocks <.< that won't change?? so meh.

Each one now costs a quarter of a Hemlock each...

RIP Warlocks