Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Hello there!

I'm new to blood angels(necron player waiting for the new dex) and I frequently play a friend of mine who runs eldar. His list usually runs 1-3 wraithlords in addition to a harlequin squad with shadow seer. I have had almost no luck taking the wraithlords down with the melta guns in my assault squads, and the harlequins seem untouchable. What are the best tools we BA players have for dealing with these nasty eldar units?

Poke the wraithlords with som Drop Podding Dreadnoughts. You rip into him with some Blood Talons (Reroll to wound, every wound lets you attack again, and you yourself being AV13) gives you a decent chance to beat them up. I'd also try a Librarian with that Strength increasing ability... or Baal Predators with Assault Cannons for Volume of rending fire.

I play vanilla marines, but the concept is the same. High strength weaponry, or volume of medium strength weaponry. Plasma perhaps? Or better yet, snipers (always wound on a 4+)

Mephiston will rip it to shreads in one turn of assault

Mephiston is unreliable versus eldar due to Runes of Witnessing. The best way for BA to drop WLs is multiple shots from melta. WLs are slow and basically a fire support now. Use your speed to box them in and fire away at close range.

G

Blood Angels should be great against Eldar, especially if they are using Wraithlords.

I'd suggest running a Devastator squad or two with Missile Launchers. Personally I'm a fan of the min-sized squads with 4 Missile Launchers for 130 points. However, you could add more guys if you're worried about being shot up.

FNP Assault Terminators will also give the Eldar player fits.

FNP assault termies will do wonders against Eldar (trust me) There is a lack of cheap long range AP2 weapons for Eldar, we can get it cheap up-close but that's getting into dangerous territory when facing BA.

Against Wraithlords...
DO NOT charge them with dreads, you dread will most likely be damaged/killed AV13 or not as a WL is S10+2D6 for armor pen.
DO NOT charge them with Libby's S10 attacks are very good but so is Eldar psychic defence.
Instead charge them with assault termies, you may lose some, but S8(9) will rip it to pieces.
Alternatively go for the missile dev team and hope you get a clear shot.

Harliquins can be beaten fairly easily... cheapest way to do it is bolters.
Marines in rhino's performing drive by rapid-fires will negate the VoT power, then all they have is T3 and a 5+invun, just make sure you have a psychic hood to stop those fortunes.
Most harlequins i see tend to run on foot and sneak through terrain, possibly use a bait unit to draw them out.

On a wider Eldar note, consider the following.
Missile launcher instead of lascannons... LC would be reduced to S8 against WS
Heavy bolters = very very good... most Eldar having a T3 or 4+/5+ save
Massed bolters = very very good... T3 again, if you can get them out of their transports
plasma aswell, not just meltas... in case of avatars

In view of dayve's comment, I ran a vanilla SM force in an RTT and won it with 10 Assault Termies and 10 normal Termies (with 2 cyclones), 1500 pts.
My Eldar opponent played 6 War Walkers and Dark Reapers.
It was a KP mission and my Assault Termies moved forward running towards the enemy and breaking into their lines.
At the end, they got killed but the rest of the army was intact.
I.e., 1 KP for the enemy and several for me.

When you friend runs his eldar is he running a ground foot based army or does he run some wave serpents as well?

Next question would be is he running a Farseer / Eldrad or a Avatar or both?


Units that work well vs Wraithlords:

Baal Predators AssCan with Heavy Bolters ( this is pretty much the do it all unit vs Eldar )
Cheap 100 pt Scouts with Sniper Rifles and a Missile Launcher + Camo
Sternguard: Hellfire Rounds wounds the WL on a 2+ volume of fire will kill it despite its save.
Devestators with x4 Missile Launchers incredibly effective vs the entire Eldar Army
Assault Terminators with SS + Hammer
Land Speeders MM + Typhoon Missile or AssCan

Useful tips

Eldar at toughness 3 love Flamers! 5 Man Assault Squad with a Flamer and Srg with a Hand Flamer works incredibly well on the Deep Strike especially at 115 points.

Take at least one Librarian. While the Librarian wont be able to cast if his Farseer is alive but your psychic hood will make his abilities unreliable. Worth the trade off.

5 man Assault Squad with a Melta Gun and Infernus Pistol can deal with Serpents / Holo Falcons and Prisms, solid gold unit for its price and ability punish expensive vehicles.

Feel No Pain works incredibly well vs Eldar, more so since changes in editions to the Starcannon which is rarely seen any more.

If you want to run a melee HQ take Asteroth, he is incredible vs Eldar especially his ability to force rerolls on invuln saves which basically negates fortune. Also the ability to increase the chances of pretty much every unit in your army to be fearless and Furious Charge. Also more Death Company in your army pending on build could help.

Second melee character option is Dante. Dante with a tooled Honor Guard will eliminate one vehicle of your choice. This is pricy but the unit has very good survivability and has to be dealt with. I like to run the Honor Guard with x3 with both Melta and Flamers, x1 with duel lightning Claws which will set you back 240 points but this unit obliterates things. The feel no pain and Dante's reduced stats on a IC can be priceless. Another option would be to go with with Sanguinary Guard with Infernus Pistols on a few and a Sanguinary Priest but thats incredibly expensive. Correct Target priority is essential to making this combo work.

Avatar, Eldrad, Nightspinners and Fire Prisms should be your highest priority of dealing with. Wraith Lords are slow and used mainly as fire support and a deterent to come close and CC anything in 12" of it, thus they shouldnt be a priority in most situations. Since you know your opponent likes to take Wraith Lords and you can tool your army knowing who you play, you have quite a few options pending on the models you have available.

In fact, knowing the enemy is key for winning a game.

1st off you shouldn't tool your army to fight eldar, you should run an all comers list. Tooling your list for specific opponents will only weaken your tournament game play in the long run.

You don't need a deathstar unit to take out a wraithlord. Assault marines which often make up the heart of a BA army will do if properly used.
Assault marines work great against wraithlord as long as you don't engage a wraithlord in a fair fight. The purpose of fast assault units like assault marines is to use their superior speed to engage the enemy in unfair fights. If you're not using the superior speed of a fast unit to engage the opponent in unfair fights you are not using the fast unit correctly.

A wraithlord doesn't stand a chance against 2 assault marine squads, and it's a common tactic of eldar players to have a wraithlord break away from his infantry and head towards a squad of assault marines. 2 assault marine squads is far more than a wraithlord can handle. Here is the mathhammer breakdown.

Opening volley of 4 melta guns
4 shots 2/3 hit 1/2 wound=1+1/3 wound

The charge
50 str5 attacks
50 attacks 1/2 hit 1/6 wound 1/3 failed armor saves=1+1/3 wound

At this point the wraithlord has already taken an average of 2+2/3 wounds at I5 before it even gets a swing. With a little luck it could easily die before it gets a swing off.

Add to that
6 Str9 power fist attacks
6 attacks 1/2 hit 2/3 wound=2 wounds with no armor save.

Mathhammer grand total is an average of 4+2/3 wounds against a 3 wound model.

Wraithlords should fear large numbers of BA assault marines.

On the other hand if the wraithlord hangs back near friendly infantry it runs the risk of 2 or 3 assault squads multi charging both the wraithlord and the infantry resulting in the wraithlord being killed through combat resolution.

SiegeCommander wrote: His list usually runs 1-3 wraithlords in addition to a harlequin squad with shadow seer. I have had almost no luck taking the wraithlords down with the melta guns in my assault squads, and the harlequins seem untouchable. What are the best tools we BA players have for dealing with these nasty eldar units?

Its all about the right tool for the job. I happen to disagree with the people suggesting melta for killing wraithlords. Melta weapons are short ranged, and the last thing anyone needs to be doing is getting close to those scary wraithlords!

Baal predators are not ideal either. While AC's are one of my favorite weapons due to their versatility, trusting on them to wound T8 is just not a good bet, as they do so only on a 6! To make matters worse, they also suffer from needing to be close to the wrathlords.

The best solution is long range krak missiles. Str 8 AP 3 spells disaster for most eldar equipment, including wrathlords. They are wounded on a 4+ and do not get a save. These same weapons can also use frag vs. harlequins.
As an added bonus, the krak missles are also great against wave serpents. The energy field does not do anything against them, giving the ML a 7.39% of destroying the serpent per shot.

labmouse42 wrote:

SiegeCommander wrote: His list usually runs 1-3 wraithlords in addition to a harlequin squad with shadow seer. I have had almost no luck taking the wraithlords down with the melta guns in my assault squads, and the harlequins seem untouchable. What are the best tools we BA players have for dealing with these nasty eldar units?

Its all about the right tool for the job. I happen to disagree with the people suggesting melta for killing wraithlords. Melta weapons are short ranged, and the last thing anyone needs to be doing is getting close to those scary wraithlords!

Baal predators are not ideal either. While AC's are one of my favorite weapons due to their versatility, trusting on them to wound T8 is just not a good bet, as they do so only on a 6! To make matters worse, they also suffer from needing to be close to the wrathlords.

The best solution is long range krak missiles. Str 8 AP 3 spells disaster for most eldar equipment, including wrathlords. They are wounded on a 4+ and do not get a save. These same weapons can also use frag vs. harlequins.
As an added bonus, the krak missles are also great against wave serpents. The energy field does not do anything against them, giving the ML a 7.39% of destroying the serpent per shot.

Krak is the answer for most marine armies, but ba often don't play with devs, and somewtimes play with no hs choices in their army. Its not like space puppies where every list will have 15 long fangs with krak. At an average of 9 krak missles to drop a wraithlord ba dev squads with 4 ml each do about as well as assault marines.

Stormravens are also good at dropping Wraithlords -> 4x Bloodstrike missile (S8 AP1), TL lascannon & TL multi-melta. Side pocket shots & you never even have to engage in close combat.

G

Pvt. Jet wrote:Poke the wraithlords with som Drop Podding Dreadnoughts. You rip into him with some Blood Talons (Reroll to wound, every wound lets you attack again, and you yourself being AV13) gives you a decent chance to beat them up. I'd also try a Librarian with that Strength increasing ability... or Baal Predators with Assault Cannons for Volume of rending fire.

I play vanilla marines, but the concept is the same. High strength weaponry, or volume of medium strength weaponry. Plasma perhaps? Or better yet, snipers (always wound on a 4+)

Very bad idea, blood talons are str 6, they will have a hard time even scratching a wraithlord. Use a normal str 10 DN. And meph isnt unreliable either, he can easily kill 2 wraithlords at once, cast the STR 10 power and 2 force weapon attacks, dead. even if the force fails, he's still tank enough to kill them.

Meph isnt as unstopable as everyone thinks. take a well equiped dev squad or a vindicator.

I'd consider a full squad of Assault Termies and a full squad of Termies with cyclones, including a Sang. Priest to allow FNP.
Play defensively with some squads in Rhinos and a Librarian to counter the Farseer's powers.
Remember that heavy skimmers like Fire Prisms can be easily silenced by missile launchers and lascannons.
Repeat this each round.