I think, Cheredanine, that you should test out the squad before you make up your mind. I have played the squad in question and it doesn't appear that you have unless I missed your saying that you have. I do have experience with them.
The seer council with or without bikes have always been resilent, that aint the issue, with bikes they are to all intents and purposes, marines with invulnerable saves, however, most of my own armies rely on volume of hits against marines to take them down, against that the inv save is pointless, again the squad is harder but no by much, than an SM tac squad
Well perhaps except they hit on 3's, reroll saves and leadership checks, move 24", have init 5, 4++/3+ saves and always wound on 2's, then yes I guess they are sort of like marines in that they are T4.
However, I see them more like termies except they are far better.
As for killing, we just did the maths hammer, it is a pretty neat indicator, and infact it is over exadurating the prowess of the seer council on bikes, bikes come with large flying bases, you will not get 10 in combat, you will be doing well to get even 8 of them engaged, you say you have killed stuff in 9 games, but was that stuff IG? Tau? if so you can kill more with 80 points of storm guardians
It was against mech tau, IG, Sisters, Marines and chaos. Thats a pretty fair samplng in my opinion. Mech Tau is by far the toughest because they had troops in fish and they simply shoot far better than eldar do with arrays and SMS.
if you are talking about MEQs then as above the fact you are lucky to get 2/3rds of your squad into combat, the fact you only hit half the time, the saves stopping 2 out of 3 wounds, if you are killing MEQs to any great degree you are either rolling very well or your opponent is rolling badly, either way not a sound basis to give advice on
First off, it can be disputed that you are required to use the same flying bases as a skimmer tanks use. My Reaver jet bikes came with small bases. If you look in the codex, you will see both guardian and spears pictured on small bases. They are not vehicles, they are similar to jump infantry.
However, I did the most conservative math hammer in that the squad is locked. As you are a vet player, you would agree that all of the unit would have been in combat from the pile in move.
yes as above, seers are far more resilient, but spears are not there to hold objectives, spears are there to wipe out your opponent, there resilience comes from the fact they kill three times as many as the warlocks do,
I thought that way too until I actually played the unit in question. I found that in the majority of my games, the council wiped out the squad in most cases one single combat. They shoot and charge and then the CC phase rarely lasted more than 1 or two phases.
yes however if you choose what to charge your spears at based on the fact you out manouver him hugely, then you can avoid invulnerable saves and in either case what are you talking about? temies? they wont survive the charge, their inv save is too light, I can only assume you are charging some huge squad all with pretty good inv saves?
Ever charge wyches locked in CC? Old chaos daemonettes? See below for a head to head encounter.
But they are not there to stay, mobilitiy armies can not be static, they can not hold territory, basics of fire and monouver warfare!
That seems fairly obvious. However, you miss the point. Your spears and council alike will both take fire on turns with which they charge and wipe out their targets. With a wealth of ap3 in 4ed, how do the spears fair? I'll take 4++ rerolled saves anyday.
The spears are only 6 strong the warlocks 10 but the spears kill three times aas many on average and the exarch and autarch vasty increase that proportion
Ah lets take the squads head to head. Spears charge council. Spears get 8 S6 attacks from the squad hitting on 4's. Thats 4 hits and 3 wounds. The exarch 3 attacks hitting on 4's also (WS5 on the council) will net 1.5 hits so lets call it 1 wound and it doesnt matter its S8. The autarch hits 5 attacks, and he hits on 3's. So 3 hits 2.5 wounds. All told we have 6-7 armor saves. Now the council will save half and then half again with 4++ rerollable saves. At most 2 casualties. Now keep in mind, the council has 17-18 attacks (as they are being charged), 12 hits, 9.96 wounds. You fail 3 which would equate out to 3 dead spears. You lost combat. Keep in mind the locks hit simo with the spears. Only the Autarch/exarch swing first.
Now lets charge the spears. Autarch gets 4 attacks if he is in BTB. I wouldn't give him the chance. The Exarch would get 2 attacks and possibly 1 wound. However its not a power weapon so the council would be making double +3 saves. The rest of the spears make 4 attacks at S3. They hit on 4's and wound on 5's. That equates to 2 hits and maybe 1 wound. The council would be making 28 attacks hitting on 3's (better ws than spears) that means 18 hits and 14 wounds. You would lose 4 spears. Unit no longer scores and you lose combat.
So just how are spears better? They would lose in head to head with the OP's squad.
that is hugely niaive, most armies can pur firepower out at the rapid fire range, forcing you to take and fail saves, for example, my good old war walker squad, 180 points, farseer with guide, bike spear, 108, only half the price of your lock squad, one round of shooting and you are well below half strength
You didnt read what I said. I told you that I thought the same thing until I played an extremely nasty mech tau list with 4 fish, 6 suits and 2 rail heads. Ive played this list 3 times now and even with concentrated firepower, the tau player was unable to take the council out of scoring.
Sigh, it is called tactics and skill, you use the manouverability of your army to isolate your opponents unti, then you swoop in and kill and pull back out of range or LOS, more commonly you get the parts of your army to opperate together, (not really a paradign shift, more like Eldar 101) and have a more resilient unit pin your opponent in combat, commonly scorpions or in your case you warlocks on bikes, you pile in with the spears, hit and pull back behind the combat, blocking LOS
I know tactics, I explained the concept of my original intention. How well do scorpians pin down mech eldar or Tau? Not so much in my experience. I know all about hit and run and hiding in combat. I use it to effect every time I use my Seraphim or my Spears. However, the fact is all it takes is a lucky round of shooting or CC and all of a sudden your spears are stuck out in the open and extremely vulnerable. That was my point. The council doesnt worry about that. Whats better, if the council consolidates into another enemy, they don't lose effectiveness. Spears do as they are just like rough riders, they only get the high strength power weapons on the charge.
Reaver jetbikes are an entirely different kettle of fish mainly due to their weapons options
Yes and no. They arent quite as good as spears on the charge but with an agonizer and combat drugs, they can do just fine. Or toss in an archon with PW, tormentor helm and drug dispensor they can get s6 powerweapons with rerollable hits.
my thoughts on destructora you are entirely at liberty to disagree with, they are after all only based on about 25 years of experiance with eldar as well as SOB drive by flamer squads, however, if you had actually read my thoughts on destructors you would see I wasnt saying they were useless but that more thanabout 3 were useless as by that point you wipe out everything in template range, you cant shoot anything else with the rest of them and you are left with nothing in charge range, I know you seem to think invulnerable sabes are, well, invulnerable, but they are not
Yes, I apologize. You did indeed say that and you are right. Over two templates are diminishing returns.
Look I am sorry if all that seems a bit harsh but you seem to be basing your army on one fulls sized unit that has 3+ inv saves, but to win games you wil loften find you have to kill stuff, and with the more than 500 points you have spent on this "uber unit" your opponent can buy enough guns to force you to take so many saves that you die.
No apology needed. I didnt take it as a nasty flame. I thought exactly the same until I tried them out. They really surprised me with their effectiveness. The paradigm shift wasn't about tactics, it was about me seeing that a 500 point squad can be worth every penny. Every time your enemy wastes a volley on the council, means other units are not taking fire.
Again, sorry if this sounds harsh but you are, IMHO giving terribly bad advice
Actually, I never gave any advice at all. You are giving advice. All I did was to correct Frozen core's statement ,"But seriously, they can't kill marines for crap because they have so few attacks and no power weapons. " He was wrong, the squad can kill marines just fine. Wounding on 2's makes the attacks as good as power weapon's if the volume is high enough. Whats more, you really dont care what the target's T value is. It doesn't matter to the council. In the new eldar list, volume of fire wins games. Scatter lasers and shur canons, warp spiders all work on this principal.
However, I never told anyone to go out and build this unit. I showed how it can kill marines and I told of my experiences using this unit. You are wrong saying I am giving advice. You are skeptical and thats fine. i was pretty skeptical too until I played the games and got the experience. I figured I would make the bikes into fancy guardian JB squads after trying out the council. Now I am thinking I want to dump the spears in favor of two 6 lock squads with GJB's backing them up using the tactics you mentioned above.