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I don't play 40k and haven't played it seriously since 3rd edition. I'm interested in starting an Iyanden style ghost warriors army, however I noticed Wraithguard are not troops. Without buying all the rulebooks, is there a way of knowing if an army without dire avengers, rangers or guardians is possible?

Yes*

There are a lot more ways to build an army than the old Force Org Chart. You can built lists with nothing but HQs and elites. It might just not be the best way to go.

In 8th/9th you get a resource called Command Points, which can fuel stratagems, which let you pull some tricks during the game. Building a classic list, with a core of troops, will let you start with more. Using more skew lists costs you some CPs in the list building stage.

As for how well it performs, that depends a lot on your meta. I’ve honestly not looked at my Eldar a lot in 9th.

So legal? Yes. Viable? Maybe.

Thanks. My, uh, meta would be Imperial Fists and various flavors of chaos space marines. It's mostly going to be a modeling project, and I'm banking on the rest of the range getting an update sometime this decade, unlikely as it seems.

Is there a reason you haven't looked at your cwe much in ninth?

 Bloviator wrote:
Thanks. My, uh, meta would be Imperial Fists and various flavors of chaos space marines. It's mostly going to be a modeling project, and I'm banking on the rest of the range getting an update sometime this decade, unlikely as it seems.

Is there a reason you haven't looked at your cwe much in ninth?

Not for any real reasons, just personal stuff.

9th introduced a new campaign system - Crusade. My son and I started playing 9th that way, he with his Salamanders and I with my Ultramarines. As it’s a system that rewards playing the same list, and gaining XP and abilities, I was mostly just sticking with my Ultras. The last two games I did switch to Nids, as building up a swarm has been my quarantine project, and I wanted to get them to the table.

My Eldar have long been my secondary army, and while not “finished” are on a bit of a back burner now. Not a big fan of finecast/resin, so I’m waiting for more units to get replaced with plastic. That said, a squad of 5 banshees is my current painting project.

As said, yes you can make an army out of pretty much whatever you want these days.

The upside of a Wraith army is that its pretty resilient. T6 and W3 means your opponent really needs to pour it on.

The downside is you may not end up with terribly many units. And barring Wraithguard with the D-Scythe, you won’t get a great many shots yourself. However those you do get should count, being S10!

I suspect they’ll be getting some form of spit and polish when they get their Codex.

I play a wraith army against friends. It's fun and wraiths can dish out some pretty good damage once they get in range.

As long as your play group is not bringing tournament lists every time, you can have fun.

I love bringing some Wraith Lords with star cannons, and the Hemlock Wraith Fighter has also been doing great work for me.

Same, also like my wraith army. I don't use Iyanden though as I find the custom traits Wrath of the Dead and Hunters of Hidden Relics more effective.

Yeah I also have not used Iyanden yet. I usually use a custom craftworld or Ulthwe.

It’s definately possible and could run it in a detachment that focuses on elites - although at a cost of your CP.

That said, until the craft world codex comes out, you will likely face some not-fun games. There is a guy at the club who plays this kind of army and just gets crushed game after game.

I heard Dreadnought heavy Marine lists are a hard counter to them. You might want to avoid those

 Bloviator wrote:
Thanks. My, uh, meta would be Imperial Fists and various flavors of chaos space marines. It's mostly going to be a modeling project, and I'm banking on the rest of the range getting an update sometime this decade, unlikely as it seems.

Is there a reason you haven't looked at your cwe much in ninth?

Eldar have been at the back of queue for a while and it shows. The points changes for 9th and the 'common weapons' changes (heavy bolters, multimeltas, etc) largely didn't affect them (other than flamers and powerswords), and the 2W marines all served to put eldar on the back foot. The range has been in stasis since the ghost warriors were redone in plastic (with most of the aspect warriors basically tagging along as twenty-year old abandonware).

But, yes. You can do a Vanguard detachment with 1-2 HQ, 3-6 elites and 0-2 each of troops, fast attack and heavy support for 3 CP. May not win a lot, but you can focus on your ghost warriors and whatever odds and ends you like.

Possible ? Certainly

But desirable ? Not sure much

The Wealth units suffer like the rest of CWE in that the game has changed around them and whilst fine in a vacuum they will find the take and hold objectives nature of 9th a struggle due to lack of speed, numbers of models and very little in the way of objective secured

Note haven't played in a while but my theorycraft is fairly up to date