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My mate has a really powerful unit. He takes six wraiths with the whips which reduce my initiative to 1; these have 3+ inv saves, rending and are jump infantry. But these are just very effective ablative wounds for his destroyer lord, whose prefered enemy and warscythe can dish out a huge amopunt of damage. I'am currently playing Nids in my campaign and I'am really having a tough time countering this. Just today I had that squad kill

1 Prime with bonesword LW n tox
3 Nid warriors with tox, LW n BS
8 genestealers
1 Trygon Prime with tox sacs (on the charge)

and got another Trygon prime down to one wound before he finally killed the last wraith and sliced the lord apart twice as it kept getting back up.

So the thing killed most of my army on its own even though I carved through the rest of the Necrons army.

Shoot them,it really is the best way, they are only toughness 4 so str 8 is instant death. They are hard to take down with 3+ invuln save but if you make it so each failure is a death they go fast, or just use massed shooting and they gone down fairly fast.

Dont shoot them, big squads of genestealers should win pretty easily

I concur, shoot them to bitz and otherwise avoid them. If necessary feed them free FNP termagants from the Tervagon.

The destroyer lord's an IC and he doesn't have an invulnerable save so if he's the big killer and you need a target for your power weapons some of your guys can attack him directly in close combat. Aside from that, the sort of defenses the wraiths have tends to favor massed normal attacks.

Uhhh, thats a toughie. How about shoot the crap out of it?

Nids don't have a lot of shooty stuff, stuff like fleshborer hives are very expensive. My DE could just splinter cannon them using venoms. Trouble is they're that quick that they can get into combat very easily. Massed stealers hasn't really worked. Going last really hurts them and since I'am losing a lot more wounds they win on combat resolution quite a lot.

I've heard Swarmlord w/ lash whip + genestealers are decent nid combo to take down Wraiths w/ whip coils + Destroyer Lord

just remember only those in base contact with a wraith will got at initiative 1 so massed troops works because they can only get so many in base to base with you. Large numbers is defiantly how you beat them though, with a lord with mss in the list you need to go large numbers as small will hurt you in the end.

TheAvengingKnee wrote:just remember only those in base contact with a wraith will got at initiative 1 so massed troops works because they can only get so many in base to base with you. Large numbers is defiantly how you beat them though, with a lord with mss in the list you need to go large numbers as small will hurt you in the end.

Alright. I'll take one of tyrannofexs out and add in twenty extra stealers. The things good at blowing his tanks up. Unfortunately its normally the first thing he sends those wraiths at and in combat that guns pretty useless.

TheAvengingKnee wrote:Shoot them,it really is the best way, they are only toughness 4 so str 8 is instant death. They are hard to take down with 3+ invuln save but if you make it so each failure is a death they go fast, or just use massed shooting and they gone down fairly fast.

Don't the wraiths have Ressurection Protocol? Even if I hit them with S8 weapons and they fail their 3+ invulnerable, they just get back up.

Grugknuckle wrote:

TheAvengingKnee wrote:Shoot them,it really is the best way, they are only toughness 4 so str 8 is instant death. They are hard to take down with 3+ invuln save but if you make it so each failure is a death they go fast, or just use massed shooting and they gone down fairly fast.

Don't the wraiths have Ressurection Protocol? Even if I hit them with S8 weapons and they fail their 3+ invulnerable, they just get back up.

Wraiths dont have RP.

Genestealers w/ toxinsacs, toss fnp on them from a tervigon, and wala - watch those metalbots go down! Wraiths are onlt T4 so rerolling wound stealers will put down a ton of wounds (wraiths main weakness)

Wraiths have a 3++ save so they are difficult to take down when you just use a few high strength attacks. Gene stealers with toxin sacs and FNP should have little trouble shredding them with just shear number of attacks. Focus as much as you can on the wraiths as the destroyer lord does have RP and toughness 6. the lord only has an initiative of 2 so if you can really pile on the wounds to the wraiths he should be easily swept after they all die.

TheAvengingKnee wrote:Wraiths have a 3++ save so they are difficult to take down when you just use a few high strength attacks. Gene stealers with toxin sacs and FNP should have little trouble shredding them with just shear number of attacks. Focus as much as you can on the wraiths as the destroyer lord does have RP and toughness 6. the lord only has an initiative of 2 so if you can really pile on the wounds to the wraiths he should be easily swept after they all die.

Bingo. Watch as they all diiiieeeee

Simply shoot them, that's all. Or toss a single unit of 30 hormagaunts with poison and furious charge at them (get the charge)

I don't deny wraiths with a destroyer lord is a powerful unit but as long as you make sure to throw something they can't deal with easily at them they will go down fast.

TheAvengingKnee wrote:Wraiths have a 3++ save so they are difficult to take down when you just use a few high strength attacks. Gene stealers with toxin sacs and FNP should have little trouble shredding them with just shear number of attacks. Focus as much as you can on the wraiths as the destroyer lord does have RP and toughness 6. the lord only has an initiative of 2 so if you can really pile on the wounds to the wraiths he should be easily swept after they all die.

The whips make me I1 so the lord gets to strike first. I assume FNP involves me taking a Tervigon with that power; does that work on non-TGaunt units?

pretty much all of the above
-any T4+ unit with FNP should be able to get them in CC with enough numbers.
They are rather fast, so getting the charge off is tricky

you seem kinda new, so remember the following:
-poison gives you rerolls to wound if your strength is = to or above their tougness, this is super nasty with stealers as it increases rends. this is why adrenals are really great for your S3 bugs, on the charge they reroll wounds, basically increasing the number of wounds you'll get my 25ish%, plus all those fearless casualties you won't be taking.

-S6 wraiths will bypass your little bugs feel no pain, sad :(
-tyranids rely on force multipliers, poison, adrenals, preferred enemy, feel no pain
-remember that if a unit is engaged with a single enemy unit in CC, it cannot swing at people joining the combat, so if you soak an assault with a wall of gaunts or something similiar, you have 1 solid round of kicking his ass before he can swing back
-also remember how synapse and fearless work, if you have a multi-combat going pulling your synapse creatures around so that one unit is out of CC will allow it to break and reduce casualties, and get your adrenal+poison rerolls back.

top contenders:
1. mass gargoyles w/ adernal + toxin, if they get off the charge the unit should pretty much evaporate, take wounds on models not in base to base first since they will be swinging first to maximize poison-wound-rerolling attacks.
2. stealers w/ poison+FNP should shred this unit pretty easily. If he isn't running mindhsackle scarabs a broodlord with implant attack can add insult to injury but IMHO is a waste.
3. the obvious, hive guard shooting can ID a few before they reach combat. Swarmlord if piling in, can avoid the ones with lashes (if he is trying to spread out wounds) and should be able to lay out a good portion of the unit solo. (many rerolling attacks that wound on 2's cause instant death and force him to reroll invulnerable saves? yeah that'll do it, lol)

Yeah, I was saying, if they are his main focal point threat, focus fire them with everything you got, and then follow it up with a genestealer charge. Honestly lots and lots of low strength (4-ish) shots would be preferable, because either way he's taking invulns.
Remember, if he has ALL of them with Whip Coils, he can't wound allocate, and thus every two wounds to the squad would drop a wraith unless he also gave some of them pistols/beamers.

Man, how do people get this good mileage out of their Wraiths? Mine have yet to do anything important in 3 games!

Having read the above suggestions, I say that my own experience as Orks has shown this to be the case. I have a Necron player in my group who likes to run six wraiths and in recent a broken alliance game I watched as a Necron lord attached to the squad tore down a Swarmlord. I sent my nobs mob, with FNP, T4, dozens of S5, S7, and S9 attacks, and despite the initiative issues they were able to rip them apart with only two wounds suffered in return. Massed genestealers with FNP should have a similar effect, and you'll still have plenty of guys left over to deal with the rest of his army. Let us know how it goes.

warboss_grimjaw wrote:Having read the above suggestions, I say that my own experience as Orks has shown this to be the case. I have a Necron player in my group who likes to run six wraiths and in recent a broken alliance game I watched as a Necron lord attached to the squad tore down a Swarmlord. I sent my nobs mob, with FNP, T4, dozens of S5, S7, and S9 attacks, and despite the initiative issues they were able to rip them apart with only two wounds suffered in return. Massed genestealers with FNP should have a similar effect, and you'll still have plenty of guys left over to deal with the rest of his army. Let us know how it goes.

You sound pretty lucky then. I was having units of ten genestealers lose 8 or so models before getting to strike. How do you give stealers FNP? If its a warp creature, well they're pretty expensive for a pure support role.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

iGuy91 wrote:

Man, how do people get this good mileage out of their Wraiths? Mine have yet to do anything important in 3 games!

I wish my mate had your luck then! I know two other mates who were so frightened by wraiths that in a multiplayer game they fired 3000pts worth of stuff to put down one large squad of the things on the first turn. He also annoys me by rolling the inv save one dice at a time. Whats annoying is that he rolls better that way. Fails like one in ten 3+ inv saves.

We're quite casual on wound shennanigans, so he takes whole models off. If he hadn't that one unit would have killed the rest of my army in all likelihood.

One thing that's key to remember and take advantage of is that only models in base contact with whip coil models have their Init reduced. If you get the charge and set up your charge correctly, you should only be getting a few of your models into contact with those jerks, so most of your guys still swing first. The key is to eyeball your pre-assault movement (movement phase and/or Run if you have Fleet) so that your leading models are inside 6", but your back models don't actually make contact.

Whenever I get the charge on Wraiths with my BA I tend to beat them down.

Grundz wrote:pretty much all of the above
-remember that if a unit is engaged with a single enemy unit in CC, it cannot swing at people joining the combat, so if you soak an assault with a wall of gaunts or something similiar, you have 1 solid round of kicking his ass before he can swing back

Just wanted to mention that this is not correct. You can swing at units that have just joined a combat.

See this thread for discussion

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/338981.page

Over all, your best bet would be to dakka them to death, which, to be honest, is the response to almost any dedicated CC unit. Genestealers, shoot 'em. Lychguard, shoot 'em. Asstermies, shoot 'em (with PCs, but still). The hard counter to any CC unit is lots of the right kind of firepower.

That said, since you're playing 'nids, that's far easier said than done. :/ I'd say going ham on Genestealers would be your best bet, since the whips that're giving you so much trouble only work base-to-base.

Totalwar1402 wrote:You sound pretty lucky then. I was having units of ten genestealers lose 8 or so models before getting to strike. How do you give stealers FNP? If its a warp creature, well they're pretty expensive for a pure support role.

I had seen someone mention the ability to give FNP to stealers; I will admit I have never seen such a thing myself, as I haven't played as Tyranids since 2nd edition. As for myself, my opponent had six wraiths in the squad, only three of which had whipcoils. Using positioning, I was able to ensure that only my two powerklaw nobs and one big choppa nob struck last, allowing two big choppa's and three regular choppa nobs to inflict enough wounds to kill three of them. With half dead, he couldn't put much of a dent in them before the powerklaws ID'd the last wraiths. Now that I think about it, you're right, I was pretty lucky on those failed saves. With the disparity in weapon skill and the extra attacks from the charge, luck still played a part.