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The intial idea of this thread was to try and suggest/query the efficacy of wraithguard in wave serpents, this lead me to think about thier direct damage cousin; the weaker fire dragon and how whilst point-for-point, the dragon will do more damage.
But if you want to use a dual autarch army with star-enginer reserve based mechdar army then you can reliably get most of your serpents out on turn two, deploying thier contents on turn 3.. this could be where the stronger fearless wraithguard could be more benificial.

But generally, what kind of contents work really well inside a wave serpent? As an idea, an ideal min-maxed mech force would consist of 30 dragons and 30 dire avengers, all inside serpents. Any other ideas out there you'd like to share?

Well, the Wraithguard would be better at destroying Monoliths. You'll want a spiritseer with them for sure, because if they get shot down after going allout and fail their wraithsight they are gone.

Well, I'd take Fire Dragons in Serpents since they are much cheaper than Wraithguard and meltas are the best shooting weapons in the game.
If you want to take down a Monolith, ram it with a Serpent. I did it in the GT final last year, it works.

I recently faced an opponent with 2 squads of Wraithguard and Eldrad. He had 2 War-walker things, some Harlequins, some Guardians, and some Rangers. Oh, and an Avatar, but it was the Wraithguard that made it impossible to take kill anything.

I had 2 Razorbacks with TL-LC, a Land Raider, 4 Wolf Guard in Terminator armor - Cyclone Missile Launcher and Assault Canon, and a Leman Russ Exterminator with hull-mounted Lascanon. I was only able to kill 3 of his fortuned Wraithguard. Very nearly got his avatar, but not nearly enough.

Well, Wolf Guard Termies can kill Wraithguard.
Armor ignoring weapons, especially power fists, kill them easily.

WG are a terrible investment, unfortunately. Their resilience is easily canceled in hand-to-hand by any kind of fist, and their offensive power is limited to one round of nasty shooting. I would not recommend them in a mounted force, nor on foot due to their limited range.

What does work well in Serpents is a mix of min-size Dragon units, Avengers (I like mine with all the fixin's, but just naked or Exarch with Bladestorm would probably be the best buy) and one CC unit (Banshees work well thanks to their masks, as enemy troops will otherwise always use cover versus the oh-so-obvious drive-up-sit-then-charge routine).

The two standard Mech templates that are out there (what I just described plus Prisms, or the Bike Council plus Avengers route) are really the only viable choices that I've seen in about a decade of experimenting with them.


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wuestenfux wrote:If you want to take down a Monolith, ram it with a Serpent. I did it in the GT final last year, it works.

Awesome!

I've really been loving ramming stuff with empty Serpents of late. It's had mixed results, but is generally so fun AND distracting to opponents that it makes the extra maneuvering worthwhile.

The two standard Mech templates that are out there (what I just described plus Prisms, or the Bike Council plus Avengers route) are really the only viable choices that I've seen in about a decade of experimenting with them.

I like the first of those, min Dragons, max avengers, a psyker and prisms.

I'm curious as to how you would set up the second one, if you could possibly PM me with a sample list I'd be most grateful

Min-squad fire dragons in wave serpents are pretty frightening. Turn 2 they pop out right next to your LR, BW, Leman Russ, etc. and pretty much guarantee a penentrating hit if they're close enough (and they usually are). Problem is that they're Eldar and if they get assaulted they are going to die. My main opponent runs serpents with fire dragons and avengers with bladestorm. He'll follow the fire dragons with the avengers, unload them both, let the dragons pop my BW, then bladestorm those 20 boyz into oblivion. It pretty effective but you have to be careful, if your opponent has a counter charge unit of any kind, those future-elves are going down.

However, if you can keep them alive during your opponents next turn, its really hard to catch the serpents.