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Any suggestions on this? Neither unit can be ignored as their damage output can be brutal. On the other hand both can absorb serious amounts of firepower which is also not good. Wave Serpents have the utility of protecting and moving troops around as well so they are really are key.

Grav guns on bikes to the wraithknights? I kinda feel grav is a bit situational but if it works and there is nothing else...

As for Wave serpents. Lascannon fire from my backfield does not seem to take them down in a timely manner thanks to the shield. I have taken Wave serpents down with assault squads using Krak grenades/melta bombs stripping hull points, however when the unit inside spills out things turn bad next turn for my assaulting unit. Does the holo protective shield thingy work on rear armor?

Melta, I think, could be the ticket. If you're using bikes, you have the mobility, and if you use pods, more the better - rear armour on those Serpents.

I wish my Tyranids had Meltaweapons.

Grav-bikers work well, especially if you can get the alpha-strike on him. The trick is in the target priority. Kill those serpents first if you can. Wraithknights are much easier to take down with grav-weaponry.

Close combat for Serpents. Unit inside is probably 5 Dire Avengers, which should kill about 1.5 marines in a shoot out. Plus, if you bring a PF in there, you can explode the Serpent, taking a few Avengers with it. The Shield doesn't work on the rear.

Wraithknights are trickier. Snipers, Lascannons, meltas, high S low AP weaponry or high ROF mid-strength guns like Assault Cannons. He's mostly scary to vehicles, so you should be able to avoid him a few turns by driving away. If you have enough firepower to down a Knight in 1-2 turns, focus him down. Just don't ever split your fire on Serpents and the Knights at the same time. That way, neither will go down and will hit you full force next turn.

2 units I have found highly efficient against wave serpents:

-Veiltek + 3 stormteks.

-6 imperial fist devestators in a bunker with ammo dump and quad gun. 3 lascannon shots at (almost) bs5, 1 lascannon shot at bs10 and 4 tl autocannon shots. All with tank hunter. Takes down a serpent a turn. (That was with their 4+ in 6th, might not be as efficient with a 3+ in 7th)

An anni barge spam is good too, especially when combined with the tesla destructors of supporting night scythes.

Another reasonably effective unit is a stormraven, fires a tl mm, 2 missiles and a tl ac on arrival (doing a couple of hps hopefully), zooming right up to 1 or 2, next turn drops into hover, does a 180 then nails 2 in the rear armour with the same shots (potms)... then proceeds to crash and burn due to the reprisal. Opponents wise to this tactic will not allow you to easily make such a move.

Orks should be suprisingly effective at taking on wraithknights now with the insane amount of bs3 and tl bs2 st8 ap3 shots they can bring to the table now.

Hidden powerfists in my BA units are very good at taking down wraithknights and wraithlords too.

My Dark Eldar laugh at Wraithknights but... Wave Serpents... I don't really have any good answers except maybe DS Blasterborn in Venoms and hope for butt shots... Actually Scourges would be good, except for the huge flaw that they are so points-costly that you gimp the rest of your army to take them.

Even other Eldar have trouble with Wave Serpents. Max Dark Reapers fully kitted out or Max 2x BL War Walkers are the only units I can think of that can reliably HP strip a Serpent a turn.

Every Marine under the sun comes with krak grenades. Apply whatever means to speed them up as is your style, Rhino, Drop Pod, bike, jump pack, etc, and just get them close.

They'll be close enough in Maelstrom anyway.

I've seen more Wave Serpents destroyed by getting punched out of the sky by Marines than every other method combined.

As someone who plays wraithknights and serpents... I'd recommend tar-pitting the knights. They have only a few attacks and even a full tac squad will take a while to chew through. More often than not, my knights survive, but savvy players are able to make them useless due to tarpitting and speed-bumping.

Other than that - If you can get something with Str 7+ and monster hunter.... or instant death... then the knights can go down quick.

Bike-sander works well too...

Well, Grav Weapons are a great start, since they're pretty effective at stopping both.

As for Wave Serpents specifically, I'd go with 5-man Legion of the Damned squads with Multi-melta, Meltagun, and a Sarge with Combi-Melta. They're cheap enough to be worth the risk of being shot off the board afterward, and deadly enough to take out a Serpent, and badly wound a WraithKnight. Screw the Serpent's Jinking Holofields, these ghoulish dudes ignore cover. Happy 'splosions!

 Homeskillet wrote:
Well, Grav Weapons are a great start, since they're pretty effective at stopping both.

As for Wave Serpents specifically, I'd go with 5-man Legion of the Damned squads with Multi-melta, Meltagun, and a Sarge with Combi-Melta. They're cheap enough to be worth the risk of being shot off the board afterward, and deadly enough to take out a Serpent, and badly wound a WraithKnight. Screw the Serpent's Jinking Holofields, these ghoulish dudes ignore cover. Happy 'splosions!

Yeah, infiltrating Grav works really well on Wraithknight and Riptides, ehh Homeskillet!?

 Zagman wrote:

 Homeskillet wrote:
Well, Grav Weapons are a great start, since they're pretty effective at stopping both.

As for Wave Serpents specifically, I'd go with 5-man Legion of the Damned squads with Multi-melta, Meltagun, and a Sarge with Combi-Melta. They're cheap enough to be worth the risk of being shot off the board afterward, and deadly enough to take out a Serpent, and badly wound a WraithKnight. Screw the Serpent's Jinking Holofields, these ghoulish dudes ignore cover. Happy 'splosions!

Yeah, infiltrating Grav works really well on Wraithknight and Riptides, ehh Homeskillet!?

Plenty more where that came from, brah!

 Homeskillet wrote:

 Zagman wrote:

 Homeskillet wrote:
Well, Grav Weapons are a great start, since they're pretty effective at stopping both.

As for Wave Serpents specifically, I'd go with 5-man Legion of the Damned squads with Multi-melta, Meltagun, and a Sarge with Combi-Melta. They're cheap enough to be worth the risk of being shot off the board afterward, and deadly enough to take out a Serpent, and badly wound a WraithKnight. Screw the Serpent's Jinking Holofields, these ghoulish dudes ignore cover. Happy 'splosions!

Yeah, infiltrating Grav works really well on Wraithknight and Riptides, ehh Homeskillet!?

Plenty more where that came from, brah!

Lol, bring it! You won't get Infiltrate or 1st turn every game, and when you don't, you'll pay!

Serpents die to strength 5+ melee attacks. You need about 10 to 12 of them to strip a serpent (the math gets really complex there). Roughly that's a small khorne dog pack, 5 berzerkers, 10 tac Marines, 4 grotesques, etc with adjustment for different strength. You can do it at str 4 but it's a lot more painful. Other serpents kill serpents pretty well too. Drop pods are no longer as strong because movement isn't required for jink now, and a good player is going to guard his rear on deployment, so you have to burn through a 4+ cover with glances.

Knights are vulnerable to tar pits as previously noted. Otherwise anything with high strength gets the job done, as they are almost universally AP 3 or less. Really, they aren't much worse than 2 Leman Russ's which are about the same point cost.

The best thing for taking out serpents, is other serpents. And tau markerlights

A Crisis Suit unit with 2x MP/Target each and a Buffmander giving them Tank Hunters and Ignores Cover makes short work of Serpents. Switching over to Monster Hunter can help put some wounds on the Wraith Knights as well but this unit set-up would probably be a good ally for any other army needing some anti-air or Serpent in a pinch.

Ultimately, other serpents and wraithknights are a big concern for me as I play Eldar lol...IG have some good answers with some Ignores Cover orders going around too.

I've had a lot of luck with scarabs vs WS - and it doesn't take many like one or two tops. An overlord with a scythe on a command barge can really do a number on one as well.

I've killed off WKs with my GK dreadknights before. Great sword makes him strength 10 and he gets to reroll hits and wounds. Cause a wound and force weapon the WKs butt.

Ive found serpents absolutely butcher scarabs with all their ID attacks. They can reliably take out 6-7 bases a turn so your looking at 105pts there.

That's why you start out with 10 and up with 2. But that also means they aren't shooting at the wraiths, destroyer lord or lord on a barge that's gonna slice them up as well

Don't try Melta or Lascannons against serpents. Plasma guns should outperform Melta in most cases.

That and rear armor. Punching it in the face with high-S low-AP weapons is playing to it's strengths. Massed s7 is usually best.

At the end of the day, though, Serpents are very OP, and Wraithknights are strong too.