Uthwé Seer Council Conversion

When I decided to go Ulthwé, I knew I would have to take a Seer Council one day. The Seer Council features plenty of Farseers and Warlocks and can withstand a lot of punishment; its offensive capabilities are mainly through the casting of psychic powers. Any Eldar player should be careful not to go overboard with upgrades and psychic powers because the point cost of the unit can touch the sky.

I wanted to build my own Seer Council. I had plenty of Farseers and Warlocks at hand, but not exactly fitting the unit as I wanted it to be. Fortunately I also had Dire Avenger Exarch arms left from my Storm Guardian conversions. Since in my opinion Witchblades and Singing Spears are too expensive point-wise for their game effect, I wanted my Seer Council members to hold just close-combat weapons and Shuriken Pistols; but it was more an excuse for doing some conversions.

Custom Warlocks

I converted Warlocks to gain more variety and to save some Witchblades for my Farseers. Some models's poses required filing because arms and weapons were too tightly entangled. On the left, the Warlock's right arm has been filed to extract his original Witchblade, replacing it with a Shuriken Pistol of a Dire Avenger Exarch Arm. You can see the original Warlock here.
Since it was the right arms and I wanted him to carry a sword as well, I had to make him carry a blade in his left hand. To this purpose I filed the sleeve to have the Witchblade's guard reach the fist. I filed and modelled a little bit the sleeve on the rear to have the end of the pommel come out from the hand. The pommel was modelled with a pin head. All those modifications are better shown on the finished model.

The second Warlock already had a Witchblade but I needed to recover it for a Farseer, and that was quite difficult. I could have just switched blades but since the replacement one was not as detailed, it would just have given the impression of a watered down weapon for an existing Warlock model. Then I had the idea of considering the Witchblade as some bastard sword which could be wielded with one or both hands. With a blade pointing to the ground, I could use a Shuriken Pistol for the upper hand which would hold some, but not all, of the pommel. The finished model is not too realistic: in reality the Shuriken Pistol's grip more than fills a hand, and the sharp-pointed end of the blade ends up on a level lower than the Warlock's feet and would be underground save for the stand. Nonetheless I am quite pleased with the attitude he has.

Farseers

I wanted my Farseers to hold Witchblades and Shuriken Pistols. Since the usual Farseer features a Singing Spear as a separate piece, having him carry a Witchblade in the same hand was child's play. I did so for two Farseers. For a third one, pictured on the right, I had no more warlock's Witchblade available and used the one wielded by Eldrad Ulthran himself. As usual the Shuriken Pistol in the left hand comes from a Dire Avenger Exarch arm.
I could have used more variety in my Farseer models, but I wasn't very fond of the old ones and I already owned too many of them to spend more on the Seer Council box. Since the Seer Council is a fighting unit in which Farseers are not independent characters, it somehow makes sense that they roughly share the same appearance.

Eldrad

Eldrad Ulthran is a special Farseer character of Codex:Eldar. He's of little interest on the tabletop, so I wanted to turn him into a regular Farseer. The original Eldrad model brandishes a Witchblade and holds the Staff of Ulthamar; turning it into a regular Farseer required a weapon swap. Naturally, the easiest oucome would have been to turn the staff into a singing spear but this should have been quite an unnatural weapon selection - Singing Spear and Witchblade - which is not allowed in the rules. You are not supposed to field a Farseer with both a two-handed close combat weapon and a single-handed close combat weapon, let alone a Shuriken Pistol on top of it. As I wanted him to feature the usual Witchblade / Shuriken Pistol combination, so I had more work ahead.

I carefully cut the left hand at the wrist level - one easy Witchblade recovered! - and replaced it with a pointing index hand from my bitz box (if you really want to go into details, I think it comes from Swooping Hawk Exarch metal sprue). I had to drill holes in both part of the join to insert a strengthening wire. Eldrad had a holster on his belt, so this left arm could count as holding a pistol anyway. The pistol issue was solved.
I still had to change the staff of Ulthamar into a Witchblade! Replacing it was not easy. I had to tool it for hours (or so it seemed) with my Dremel tool to leave sufficient room in the folds of his cloak to have a Witchblade fit in. It required a lot of drilling and I couldn't have achieved it without a Dremel tool. The other option would have been to file the cloak completely in this area, then to resculpt some of it using green stuff after having set the Witchblade into position.

The Seer Council of Ulthwé

A horde of Psykers!

As you can see, it's quite a numerous unit. In fact, it's rarely so crowded since some of the Warlocks pictured here are dispatched in Guardian squads. I also never field that many Farseers - it would be too expensive - but I use some or others depending if I expect them to get into hand-to-hand with their Witchblades or throw a Singing Spear from afar.
One of my favorite tactic is the mobile flamer force already discussed in the Storm Guardians conversion article. With a Seer Council, it can only be better - some Farseers with several Mind Wars, and some Warlocks with Destructor. The latters roast whatever they can when disembarking from their Falcon, then the formers wipe out the mind of any dangerous threat in the vicinity.
published on 10 May 2004