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Sup Dakka -

Do you wraithguard?

I'm trying to work them into my Ulthwe list because I love their fluffyness but I don't think I'm dong it right.

I run an 8-man group with Eldrad and hope for some good powers (Invisibility is some broken gak) but that seems myopic.

What are people doing with them? I don't like Wave Serpents because, since they took them away from me in my Strike Force list years ago, I like the feel of a foot list.

If you can spare the points to up them to 10 Wraithguard and a Spiritseer (suggest Conceal power) then they go from a slow-moving short-ranged Denial unit to a slow-moving short-ranged Scoring unit, which will alter how useful they are in Objective-based missions (5 out of 6), and Conceal + Invisibility = 2+ cover save. (Muahahaha!)

Ideally, they should be a 10 man unit, like Quanar said. T6 troops with farseer support is nasty. Expensive (400+farseer), but nasty.

Does the cover save from Conceal stack with Invisibility? I thought if something didnt explicitly say "Add +2..." ala Shrouded, you just took whichever save was better?

Normally you can only take your best save, and if you had 2 cover saves (for example) only one could be used.
The exceptions to this are Stealth and Shrouded (which are what Invisibility gives you), which specifically state that they are 'cumulative' with existing cover saves (to a maximum of a 2+ save, Pages 41 & 42).

Oh snap! You are completely correct. I was thinking about it from the other direction - that Invisibility was a fixed 4+ and that Conceal wouldn't add to it. Forgot Invis. was Stealth+Shrouded. Cool!

Well, as said, 10 Wraithguard led by Spiritseer w/ conceal and backed up by the Fortuneseer if needed would be the way to go.
But this unit is increditably slow and thus hard to pull off.

I see three ways to use (and that I have used) Wraithguard:

1) Large (normally 10 man so they count as scoring) units accompanied by a Spiritseer. These units are good for dropping on a point and holding it: they're hardy, they don't break, and even in assault (which they rather suck at) they still take forever to kill. It's a very expensive but also very hard to kill way to secure objectives. This takes advantage of Toughness 6, 3+ save but, due to their weapon's 12" range, doesn't make good use of their guns as most opponents will try to stay out of range and pelt them with heavy weapons.

2) Smaller (either 5 man with a spiritseer or 6 man, I prefer the former) units in a wave serpent. This gives you mobility, and allows you to get the wraithguard within range of a juicy target, deploy, and blow it apart. When done, you take a few steps or get back in and move to the next target. They're not firing every turn, but they wouldn't be doing that anyway. Their guns are good against expensive, high toughness/armor units or vehicles: the guns don't care about toughness or AV, and they ignore all armor saves. A five man squad is pretty small to guarantee a kill, though, even against a single monstrous creature or vehicle, and even against terminators they tend to kill a few and leave a few walking, so assisting them with fire from another source is good. This takes advantage of their guns.

Weaknesses are if your opponent fields a fair number of heavy weapons, especially missiles or lascannons or their equivalents. A wraithguard dies just as easy to one of these as anyone else (wounding on 2s, no armor save). If you don't give those heavy weapons other targets to shoot at, they'll chew through the wraithguard fast, and their short weapon range means they can't retaliate. This being said:

3) if you can get them a good cover save, wraithguard can make a good distraction or bullet magnet, pulling your opponent out of formation or pulling fire from the rest of your army. Using the 5 wraithguard + spiritseer in a wave serpent, I've flanked them around the enemy forces, dropped them in a building (normally close to an objective or juicy target) and made them as threatening as possible. The building makes them live longer, even against heavy weapons, and now those weapons aren't firing at my vehicles or heavy infantry. This takes advantage of their toughness, and a little bit of their guns.

I suggest anyone wanting to run Wraithguard to watch some of Eldar Corsair's battle reports with his eldar foot army. Wraithguard + Eldrad + Avatar is pretty awesome. And it just looks soo cool and is not as OP as the Invisy Couicil/Invisy Wraithguard/Invisi Harlie stuff floating around.

http://www.youtube.com/user/EldarCorsair

First off, IMO, your totally wasting Eldrad for rolls on the Telepathy table. Yes, you get 5 rolls, but Eldrad is only a lvl 3 mastry, thus 3 Warp charges. He can only use Invisibility /once/ a turn (if you do get it) and one other power. And to be frank the Telepathy powers are otherwise kinda of dogs. Your paying his cost so he can throw two of the same power a turn and then a 3rd power... not 1-2 powers a turn that are not the same. Also, Invisibility, while 'neat', is not the power you want. TH/SS Terminators (or even PF Terminators and other dedicated CC will still get in combat with you and still hit you... not as often, but 5+ is 33% with no save what-so-ever. There are also plenty of things that ignore Cover saves as well (Colosus for one off the top of my head).

Invisibility cast by Eldrad nerfs Eldrad and only gets you within range, but after that does little else.

What you want is Eldrad doing the Eldar powers (FORTUNE) twice a turn and then Guiding/Dooming for his off power. You want a SECOND Farseer in your HQ slot that has 4 power (with all the gear + 4 cheapest powers should be 185pts) and you want to use those 4 rolls on the Divination table and your shooting for Forewaring (4++ Invulnerable) that your using Fortune on so it is a re-rollable 4++ save. And since it is only a 1 warp charge power, he can cast a second single warp charge power off of the table since all of Divination are 1 warp charge. And those powers are pretty freaking good in comparison to Telepathy to boot. Such as his unit being able to ignore cover saves (Perfect Timing), having full BS foe Overwatch and the Counter-attack special rule (Foreboding), forcing your opponet to re-roll successful saves (Misfortune)? Yes please! And the last two are not terrible, including one that lets you roll 3 dice and /choose/ the results you want for Reserves, Outflank, and Mysterious Terrian (Scrier's Gaze). The last one keeps the Farseer alive and allows you to re-roll all failed to-Hit, Wound, and saves made by the Psyker (Precognition).

Man, those powers whip the snot out of Telepathy... because after Pupput Master and Invisibility... there is nothing else I can see anyone really wanting out of it for a all-comers list.

Re-cap...
10 man Wraithguard with Warlock
Eldrad straight up for Fortune
2nd Farseer with Divination shooting for Forewarning.

If you can see yourself only casting Fortune once, use Eldrad to go Divination and the Farseer with the stick Eldar powers. Just hope you don't fail on your roll and understand your /really/ focusing everything on Eldrad and one unit. I just can not see this as really being effective beyond your single super deathstar.

I suggest anyone wanting to run Wraithguard to watch some of Eldar Corsair's battle reports with his eldar foot army. Wraithguard + Eldrad + Avatar is pretty awesome. And it just looks soo cool and is not as OP as the Invisy Couicil/Invisy Wraithguard/Invisi Harlie stuff floating around.

http://www.youtube.com/user/EldarCorsair

This guy is awesome! Thanks for posting this!

First off, IMO, your totally wasting Eldrad for rolls on the Telepathy table

I agreed with this statement 100% last Saturday, when I first ran the Wraithguard after opening up this post (I ran a 10-man+Spiritseer+Eldrad and my other HQ was an Avatar). Then I rolled once on the Telepathy table (I was thinking I would just take the primaris power, which is guide but better) and then roll 4x divination. Welp, rolled Hallucination, and won the game because of it. Was able to FREEZE his fearless, fast, nasty chaos units (he had a squad of Khorne Raptors and a squad of Nurgle Bikers). Now, this is anecdotal - 1) because the first D3 choice is to pin a unit, which the fearless guys don't care about and 2) because I rolled 1 of 6 Telepathy powers. What it does illustrate however is that taking the one roll on Telepathy gives you an amazing power at best and Guide But Better at worst.

I completely agree that Divination is the more nasty of the table choices. Eldrad was able to make himself re-roll all things and beat the snot out of an upgraded Chaos Sorceror in combat (one painful attack at a time...), and his giving his Wraithguard unit a 4+ invulnerable save and making the enemy Possessed re-roll successful saves really punished him in combat against my Enhanced T6 Wraithguard. And my Spiritseer killed a Hellbrute with what I thought had become a useless Witchblade! It took five rounds of combat but he eventually rolled enough glacing hits to kill it. This was all after my Wraithguard successfully roasted the Land Raider the Possessed were riding in and then assaulted them for the (very slow combat) win.

Assuming I want to run the Avatar for a combat anchor, I'm then left with the choice of Codex or Book powers? Fortune is nice, but without a save to re-roll (ala Telepathy) it's not very useful. Guide is good, but the Telepathy Primaris power is better. Doom is great for the re-roll on the front end, but if he has a squad of terminators or a squad of possessed (2+ or 3+ and 5++) forcing him to re-roll the armour saves or the lucky invul saves is better than wounding two or three more times - Misfortune on the Div. table.

My feeling is that I'd rather run book powers assuming an Eldrad-only scenario.

Loving the Wraithguard unit though! Thinking about replacing my nearly-useless Harlequins with a second small unit of them... Anyone gotten those to do something besides die horribly?

The other guy on YouTube to watch is...

http://www.youtube.com/user/WayOfSaimHann

Both of these guys are AWESOME! And they both play Eldar & Necrons primarily. WayOfSaimHann(or Fritz) has exceptional in depth strategy vids for almost all of the Eldar and Necron units, and most of those are written with 6th edition in mind.

I like Eldar Corsair for the Battle reports and "Army" strategey vids,and Fritz for the individual unit vids and his General 6th Edition Strategy vids(work on winning the secondary objectives, and kill all of your opponents troops).

There's very few ways to spend points on an Eldar army worse than Wraithguard.

They're monstrously overpriced, will kill next to nothing worthwhile, easily negated, and must be baby sat.

 DarknessEternal wrote:
There's very few ways to spend points on an Eldar army worse than Wraithguard.

They're monstrously overpriced, will kill next to nothing worthwhile, easily negated, and must be baby sat.

Really? I have found them great at destroying my enemies fire bases because I march them straight up the table towards whatever objective I want to take and go to town on the enemy units in my way. I use the farseer method described above with the 4+ invulnerable save and fortune on them as well as a Wraithseer to give them feel no pain (but then I always play above 2000 points too).

I have found that having my Warlord get the outflank ability has really helped them become lethal and that is where they tend to do the most damage. I don't see how they are a waste of points in most games as long as you don't go overboard and buy nothing but wraithguard.