Killing Seer Councils

I have been busy and have gotten behind, so it is time to catch up!



E-mail in! (I have always wanted to say that)

Magilla Gorilla wrote:

I have been following your batreps on Dakka for awhile, but I have never seen you having to deal with a mounted Seer Council. Mounted Seer Councils are the range where I play and there are no less than 2 Seer Council Eldar players at every local tourney the FLGS has....So, the question is this? How would you deal with them?



You are right! In all of the batreps I have posted, I have never posted a batrep with a Seer Council. There is one big reason why I have never done it is because I have never faced one.

The Seer Council has had a lot of popularity in the UK for a while now, and it seems like only in the last year that it has made its appearance on these shores. Since it is rearing its ugly head more and more, it would behoove people to learn how to take them out.

Now there are 2 kinds of Seer Councils, Jetbikes or Wave Serpents as mobility.

Jetbikes have a stat boost from the bikes as well as turbo-boosting, and serpents can fly across the table in one turn and they are both formidable.



The Seer council gets a ton of its durability from Fortune. Without it the Jetbikes have the same stats as Thousand Sons: Toughness 4, 3+ save. 4+ Inv save, and the walking variety just has a 4+ inv save. But what make them a pain is the re-roll. So whenever you catch them without Fortune, you must unleash hell upon them. There are a few ways to get them to drop the fortune.

#1. First strike!

If they start on the board and go second, they will not have Fortune up for the first turn and if you can get some fire on them, hit them with everything that you have. If they choose to be kept in reserve then the first turn that they come on the board they will not have fortune up either, then shoot them with as much as you can (though most of the time they will have turbo boosted, so they have a 3+ cover save so you need volume of fire).

#2. Cancel Fortune with Wargear

This will be harder that most people think because the Seer Council normally has a Warlock with Embolden in it meaning that they can re-roll failed Leadership Tests, so things like Shadow in the Warp and Stones of Warding will not help much, and not only that, there are so many races that do not have access to anti-psychic wargear. But there are a few codexes that have access to wargear like Psychic Hoods. Although the Hoods have less than 50% chance to shut it down, when you can stop it, all you need is one round to hit them with everything that you have. If you are a Marine Player you should also have Null Field to also cancel Fortune. You can also purchase an Inquisitor with a Null Rod will ignore Fortune, which is nice.

Remember, any round that they do not have Fortune up that is when they are vulnerable and hit them with everything that you have. You may not be able to stop them, but you will reduce them to more manageable numbers.

#3. Luck!

If they roll an 11 or 12 on three dice taking out the highest with a re-roll on their psychic test it will not go off. If you manage to do this, then the Dice Gods smile upon you and you must go out and by a lottery ticket because you have a better chance at winning that then having Fortune not go off do to a failed psychic check.



General Tactics

If they are in a Wave Serpent they will have to get close to assault. So what will happen is that they will cast Fortune on the Wave Serpent and fly across the board with Star Engines and get into your face. Since they are moving over 18" they get a 4+ obscured save, and with a re-roll for fortune, good luck taking that down, but if you can, try to destroy it, because a walking Seer Council is not much of a threat. If they do fly that close to your lines, and you have units near them (and you should have since they are planning on assaulting you), then you should have units close enough to assault the Wave Serpent. Now you are not planning on taking down the Wave Serpent, but all you want to do is block the back hatch. Since they only have one exit port, you can block it and they can't get out and assault, so that will buy you some time.



What can't Seer councils kill?

Elite infantry. If you have some throw it at them. Since they lack power weapons, they can't kill things with good saves. That means Terminators, Plague Marines, etc. Anything that has a good save they get tarpitted with. It they get in a fight with Marines they will have trouble killing them, because a 3+ save is your friend. Be careful of what you attack them with though, because a high toughness does not matter to them, only saves.



What kills Seer Councils?

A lots of firepower will take them down, especially if you can get it strength 6 and above. Lootas should be blasting them every chance they get. War Walkers with scatter lasers and even rapid fired bolters will help in a pinch. Remember that nothing really kills them, but you want to reduce them to a reasonable number so when they assault you they don't do much damage. Also try to keep your army together. They want to assault where they can't be counter attacked by large numbers, but when you hit them, you will need to throw a lot of units at them. Note: This is only good if you have a good save. If you have a poor save then they will kill a lot and you will have to take massive leadership checks on your army. If you have a bad save you want to spread out so they will slaughter a unit and them you can shoot them some more.


Here is a good example of a Seer Council in action. Lazarus's army at the Necro last year. When I saw it I thought it was a very formidible army, and wondered how I would beat it. Read his batreps and see what they can do. Yriel+Eldrad is a tough nut to crack.

Blood of Kittens Word Association

I do a project over at the Blood of Kittens blog were several of us write a quick column about various 40k topics.

The authors that contribute to it is Miggidy Mack from the Dice Like Thunder podcast, JWolf from BoLS and his own blog, and Nathan Fluger who is a
player from the Seattle area.

We get one word and have to write about it. Here are the topics and posts so far:

Eldrad

Balanced Lists

Comp Score

Thunder Wolf Cavalry

Black Friday

One of the reasons why I started with the pre-heresy Thousand Sons is that I thought it would be cheap since I have almost everything already.



Boy was I wrong! I just spent over $200 at the war store and I still have not bought any vehicles yet.

I did buy all of the bases though, and they should be here soon. I found a good tutorial on how to paint them here:

http://www.chestofcolors.com/cofc-postnuke/index.php?name=Sections&req=viewarticle&artid=45&page=1



One of the big stumbling blocks is the transfers. Here are the 2 decal prints that are already done for the Thousand Sons:


Thanks to Tubal over on the B&C for this




This is from BoLS

As everyone knows, home printers don't print white, so I have a couple of options. The first is to have them professionally done which will cost $50-$100. The other option is to print them on white decal paper, and cut each symbol out individually. This is the long and tedious option, but it will be a lot cheaper. I ordered some white decal paper to see if it will be feasible.

Some more about comp

When I was writing about comp I forgot my favorite saying back when comp was all the rage several years ago:


 
A fluffy army is Space Marines.

A cheesy army is anything that can beat Space Marines.

Thousand Sons update

I have been collecting bits and pieces of my Thousand Sons for a few years now and I am finally getting around to putting them all together.

I did an inventory and I was surprised with what I had. I thought I had everything that I needed, but when I laid them all out I saw just how much I was missing. I collected all of the rare pre-heresy parts that I needed like the chest pieces and the heads, but what I found out was that I am missing all of the backs of the chest, and all of the legs. So I need to start to order a bunch of bits so I have everything for a complete marine.



While I am waiting on the bitz/bases in the meantime I will throw a couple of spawn together incase Ahriman goes nuts with the Gift of Chaos.

What are the top tier armies?

There is an interesting post over on Dakka. http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/266407.page

That asks the question what are the top lists?


 
In the past I would put them into 3 tiers (good, bad, and ugly) and listed the most competitive builds. But after some thought, I no longer do this, and the reasons why is that I think you can win with any codex. The codexes that I thought were in the bottom of the tiered system were Necrons and Demonhunters and I think that I can win with both of them.


 
I will make the argument that what everyone thinks are top tier lists are just easier to play, and not necessarily better than the other codexes. And don't get me wrong by thinking that what I am saying is that you can win with any units, and that any 1500 points is the same and any other 1500 points, but each codex has enough good units that can work together well enough to where you can build a successful winning army.


 
Take for example, what everyone thinks are a top tier chaos list. You have tough demon princes, plague marines that just sit around and take damage, and oblits. It is a pretty easy army to play. You can also look at what people think are top tier Eldar builds of Mech and Seer council. Mech Eldar armies work under the principle of if your opponent does not have enough anti-tank you win, if they do then you are in trouble. The seer council just has a very durable unit that just heads to the opponents, and assaults. Not much brain power required. Both those builds are super easy to play.


 
Necrons vs. Imperial Guard.

A lot of people think that Necrons are one of the worst armies and at the bottom if the tiers. If you look at the results of the UK GT heat #2 Necrons did well with one person coming in at 8^th place (higher than any Space Marine player). Why was that possible? Because you can win with Necrons. The army plays similar to my Eldar do because they are able to shoot a lot of strength 6 shooting, and they are quite durable. Here is the problem with them, they are bad in assault, so what players have to do with them is think 2-3 turns ahead and plan accordingly. This is the same as the 4^th edition IG codex. You had to plan your moves and think ahead several turns to win with this army. Now that the 5^th edition IG codex is here, there is a lot less thinking that you have to do with Vendettas, Valkyries, and all of the different HS choices that the army is now on "easy mode" and requires much less thought.


 

I need to hurry on my Thousand Sons!

It looks like I need to get going on my Pre-Heresy Thousand Sons. I was planning on having it ready for Adepticon, but with the release of the new GT Tournament Circuit, I have to change my time table and get a move on!


 
ConQuest GT

The ConQuest GT is in only 2 months away and they have a lot of points for painting and conversions. You get 100 points max for battle, and 50 points for painting/conversions.

http://www.con-quest.com/

If I can get my army really, that would be a good way to score a lot of points, but I do not think I can make it in time. I am a slow painter already, and to make a full 2000 point army from scratch will take a good long time. I am on the fence about going to this event, so a lot will depend on how far along my army is to getting done.


 
Broadside Bash

It looks like it is the same thing with the Broadside Bash, where they have 100 battle points possible with 33 points coming from painting, 36 from player scored comp (argh!) and sportsmanship. So out of a possible 200 points, only 100 point will be battle points, and the rest are player judged. I told myself that I was not going to go to The Broadside Bash again, but I think I will give it another chance. The problems with it last year was that the area was really cramped together, it is a 2000 point tournament and they said that they had 2.5 hours a round, and it came out to be more like 1.5.

http://www.broadsidebash.com/rules.php


 

 
So I need to finish my Thousand Sons and fast so I can try to max out on the paint scores. I have been waiting on the War Store's Black Friday sale so I can pick up a lot of these bases:

http://www.thewarstore.com/MASTempleBases.html

I am off next week, so I will try to do some work on them.