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Ive been messing around with this themed list, and am trying to find out how viable it actually is. Played it in three games so far and its been incredibly fun. Won against a basic space marine army twice with heavy transports. Won against a footslogging orc army , as well as a flanking IG army.

HQ
Eldrad

Troops
9 Pathfinders
9 Pathfinders
8 Pathfinders
8 Pathfinders

Heavy Support
Wraithlord (Bright Lance and Rocket Launcher)
Wraithlord (Bright Lance and Rocket Launcher)
Wraithlord (Bright Lance and Rocket Launcher)

Total-1,491

My Thoughts-
Based on what I think is the MOST durable firepower in the game.
Pathfinders- In Cover have a 2+ cover safe.
Wraithlords- Toughness 8 with 3 wounds.

Eldrad is the center of the Army with Doom(Reroll to wound on an enemy doomed squad)/Guide(friendly squad re rolls to hit).

Any Squad caught out in the open dies. The 4 Ranger Squads are spread out in cover around a fire lane, and when a squad moves into the line of fire its gone. You cant shoot at the rangers sinply because of the 2+ cover save.

The Wraithlords do their job and serve as Anti-Mech and as a shield against anything that wants to play close combat with my rangers. They do a decent job as Anti Mech and can take alot of fire. Takes a few turns of focus fire to get a wraithlord down. The Double Flamers do amazing against any mass infantry that gets that close, especially if the squad is double doomed.

Pinning- Everything in the Army Pins. Wraithlord Rocket Launchers Pin. Snipers Pin. Eldrad and Eldrich storm pins. Pinning checks stack, so if a squad is pinned by all four of my sniper squads the enemy squad has to role 4 pinning checks.

Strengths-
-Durable
-Very High and Effective Damage Output.
-Can Hold an Objective easily.
-Pinning

Weaknesses
-If Eldrad gets caught its game over.
-If Its Nightshooting/Non Infiltrator deployment My Rangers cant get into a good position.
-If Something can drop in and Melee my rangers without my wraithlords support I loose.
-If there are many objectives I can only effectively hold two, and I must contest the others.
-Ordinance weapons bone me, as well as flamers.



Id Like to hear some Critisism/remarks about this build.
Would you enjoy Playing this Army/Would you find it a fun Challenge? How would you personally , (Be Specific), Counter this list? What do you see as its greatest weakness? How could you see this list being improved? What would you add to get this list to make it 2000 points?

Definitely a thumbs down sadly.

A drop pod heavy list, vehicle heavy list (SM... any), deepstrike/fast flamers list (Demons, Tau), or fast moving assault list (BA, speed freak orks, new DE) would rip the list to shreds. Pathfinders/rangers just have too many weak points and their guns being a 3+ to hit and 4+ to wound single shot heavy.. doesn't help their case much. BTW what have you been playing against that this actually wins?

BlueDagger wrote:Definitely a thumbs down sadly.

A drop pod heavy list, vehicle heavy list (SM... any), deepstrike/fast flamers list (Demons, Tau), or fast moving assault list (BA, speed freak orks, new DE) would rip the list to shreds. Pathfinders/rangers just have too many weak points and their guns being a 3+ to hit and 4+ to wound single shot heavy.. doesn't help their case much. BTW what have you been playing against that this actually wins?

Orcs/Nids/IG/Chaos/Marines

Vehicle Heavy runs into the Wraithlord Wall. Deepstrike hurts but If I get a turn to shoot at the deepstrike it usually dies with 2x doom. Usually anything that drops in has a turn to die before it can do damage, but yea thats defantly what counters this list

Smitty0305 wrote:
a turn to shoot at the deepstrike it usually dies with 2x doom.

You can CAST doom on a target more than once, but you can only re-roll your dice once. They don't stack.

Next thing, in terms of fun, I think playing this list will be alot of fun. If your opponent has the wrong kind of list it's going to be nightmare for him to face. On the other hand, if your opponnent has the right kind of list there will be no fun in it for you because you will be rip to shreds.

Just from my point of view, I believe fun lists should be fun for both players not just ther person playing it(or against it).

Let's start to look at what the list does:

First off, you get a total of 9 + 9 + 8 + 8 shooting attacks from your pathfinders. Let's be kind and say 70% hit AND wound(this is higher than it will be but it's just to prove a point).
with that statistic you can realistically kill 24 "models" a turn. In a an orc army that can field in excess of 100 models at 1500 points, I think you cannot shoot enough to kill a horde based army. Even the WL's EML and BL won't be killing enough against a horde for it to matter.

Your Wraithlords will be shot at with ALL the AT in your opponents army(in my list that's 2 Fireprisms, 4 EML's and 2 x 5 FD Squads). While my AT is killing your Wraithlords, I can just drive up to your pathfinders, unload a squad of storm guardians and flamer the squad away, or even charge them for CC since pathfinders suck at it.

I am not trying to insult the IDEA behind the list, because I must admit that I really like it. But practically, 50% of the time it will be fun for you, 50% of the time it will be fun for your opponent. It should be fun 100% of the time for both of you.

phyrephly wrote:

Smitty0305 wrote:
a turn to shoot at the deepstrike it usually dies with 2x doom.

You can CAST doom on a target more than once, but you can only re-roll your dice once. They don't stack.

Next thing, in terms of fun, I think playing this list will be alot of fun. If your opponent has the wrong kind of list it's going to be nightmare for him to face. On the other hand, if your opponnent has the right kind of list there will be no fun in it for you because you will be rip to shreds.

Just from my point of view, I believe fun lists should be fun for both players not just ther person playing it(or against it).

Let's start to look at what the list does:

First off, you get a total of 9 + 9 + 8 + 8 shooting attacks from your pathfinders. Let's be kind and say 70% hit AND wound(this is higher than it will be but it's just to prove a point).
with that statistic you can realistically kill 24 "models" a turn. In a an orc army that can field in excess of 100 models at 1500 points, I think you cannot shoot enough to kill a horde based army. Even the WL's EML and BL won't be killing enough against a horde for it to matter.

Your Wraithlords will be shot at with ALL the AT in your opponents army(in my list that's 2 Fireprisms, 4 EML's and 2 x 5 FD Squads). While my AT is killing your Wraithlords, I can just drive up to your pathfinders, unload a squad of storm guardians and flamer the squad away, or even charge them for CC since pathfinders suck at it.

I am not trying to insult the IDEA behind the list, because I must admit that I really like it. But practically, 50% of the time it will be fun for you, 50% of the time it will be fun for your opponent. It should be fun 100% of the time for both of you.

I didnt know Doom couldnt stack rofl. Thanks for telling me that.

Thanks for the post I agree with alot of what your saying.

Smitty0305 wrote:"...Ive been messing around with this list. Played it in three games so far and its been incredibly fun. Won against a basic space marine army twice with heavy transports. Won against a footslogging orc army , as well as a flanking IG army...

That's an awesome list = played three games and won four of them !

A Tau army would destroy this. The wraithlords would get destroyed by railguns, and once they're gone, 34 rangers even backed by Eldrad won't last long. Tougness 8 isn't that good when you see all the melta biker lists around. Why would would double doom a squad? You can only get one re-roll to wound anyway.

Rangers cannot kill any squad, even wounding on a 4+.

Terminators with TH with a HF deepstrike next to your rangers. They flame a unit straight away, ignoring cover and armour saves. The wraithlords charge in except they can't do much against a 3++ save. They then get owned by Str8 power weapons. A deepstriking army would have to be tremendously unlucky to loose against this imo. Or just plain bad

Well, its a themed list.
What is missing is Alaitoc's disruption table.
This would take out half of the enemy units from play in the first turns.

Sorry mate, but along with everyone else I think that this list might do alright against some sort of footslogging gunline type army, or some relatively elite footslogging assault army - but against mechanised opponents you're going to be relying on those 3 wraithlords to do all the lifting - your opponents just need to take them out, drive up and assault or flame the pathfinders. My experience with pathfinders is that they're fine if they have elite infantry or MCs to target, and your opponent has no way to get flamethrowers or assault troops close. If those caveats don't apply, the pathfinders are toast.

I-bounty-hunt-the-elderly wrote:"...but against mechanised opponents you're going to be relying on those 3 wraithlords to do all the lifting..."

Agree - and you'd almost be better ( and going with a SpecOps type theme ) by using War Walkers instead as your anti-tank. I'd also consider spreading those Pathfinders around - making multiple smaller units .. Lastly you could trim points and and field a more universal HQ

Well, you're not going to be very competitive and will get owned by someone who is. Just accept that now, or start fresh with a new list. But, I love the theme to this army and it could be really fun to play!

You'll obviously get owned by any mech or deep strike. I'm just imagining Daemons dropping down and flaming your Pathfinders, killing all of your troop choices by 2nd turn. It won't be pretty

You'll also struggle against fearless armies, as they won't care about pinning. An Orc footslogging army will ignore your pathfinder's shots, and wipe the floor with them in CC.

But, if you want to stick with this, I'd suggest running an Avatar in place of Eldrad. Eldrad is simply going to be way too vulnerable all on his own. You can stick him with a Pathfinder squad that is staying in your deployment zone, but that will be your opponent's first target, and you'll be stuck not moving him, so they'll catch him and he'll die. An Avatar would increase the number of MC you're fielding, so would force your opponent to worry about what targets they're shooting at a bit more.

if you vs any type of ork horde army with 180 ork boyz for around 1000pts cannot be pinner by sniper because of mob rule possible some mega nobz with strength 9 power klaws on the charge

I give your list to about turn 3 until theres no more eldar on the field

A ranger based army was my army of choice back in the day.
The ranger disruption table was amazing.
The minimum unit size of 3 was good to spread the pinning love.

Sadly, today, rangers are good for 2 things.
Sitting on a home objective, preferably in cover, on a second floor.
And giving out a pinning test now and then (which cannot be relied on)

I'd drop the rangers down to smaller units, and less of them. 3 units of 5 and your cutting out 19 of them (and thats what? 450ish points?)
With that, you could get 2 wave serpents, one with FD(5), one with scorpions(8).
It's not ideal, but it gives you some anti tank and anti horde, while giving you a durable combat unit.
Should be points left to give the WS something useful aswell.

I personally would advocate Harlequins for this type of list

One of the things you mentioned was how you were going for durability from shooting attacks, Harlequins with VoT would continue that theme being unable to be shot outside of 24" (and thats with rolling a double 6)

They would also act as a road bump or a way to cut a wraithlord out of CC that your opponent has tried to tarpit your lord.

With the ability to hug and assault out of cover thanks to their flip belts they could deploy in cover to counter charge anything bringing flamers to the party.

They also have the ability to give your pathfinders a cover save out in the open..

Say your opponent places an objective out in the open, which is realistic given you are reliant on cover, the Harlequins can create a shield for your rangers to hide behind even going to ground if necessary and the harlequins cant be shot long range thanks to VoT

Just my take on a unit I would add to this list, would take units of 6 ranges as well because the things that kill 6 will also kill 9 just as easily

I'd drop quite a few of the rangers into 3 smaller squads, then think about an Gvatar, some Guardians, maybe Wraithguard and maybe swapping a Wlord for some War Walkers. +1 Monstrous Creature, or if you swap lets say one Wlord for 3 Walkers - thats 3 big targets plus a squad of 3 big targets, you get the Avatar bubble, and keep the theme of being tough (except if you take a swarm of guardians, or 2 smaller squads). I think all the criticism so far has been pretty valid - Rangers and Wlords are good but they need other stuff in there.