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Hi

I'm torn with which heavy units to take in a 1000 eldar army. Currently thinking 4 dark reapers (1 being an exarch) having picked them over a wraithlord. Should I be considering anything else? Tactically want them to hang back and provide covering fire while still able to objective grab.

Any thoughts?

Thanks

Reapers are fantastic. They are even better in the aspect host though so if you plan to take 2 more aspect units consider that. The starfire missiles are well worth the points and so is the exarch. I would however recommend something to help keep them alive as though they do great damage they are extremely fragile. A DE venom or raider does wonders but even a bunker or waveserpent can really help.

Vaul's wrath battery with weaver is a great value. It is barrage, cheap, and T7 against shooting. It is essentially the perfect unit to use in a null deployment list and gives you a tremendous amount of flexibility on how you play your list.

Vaul's wrath battery with D cannon is insane for it's value. It is only 24" range so it will rarely cause the frothing rage that other D weapons cause but for 55 pts the T7 against shooting, small blast, D strength, barrage weapon is a nasty piece of work. If you use this you should consider adopting one of the major GTs fixes for D weapons as when you roll a 6 and wipe your opponent's imperial knight with a 55 pts unit your friends are not going to be happy. Even with the ITC nerf this is still an amazing unit, just not rage inducing.

Warwalkers are still actually really good. They are an excellent source of starcannons or bright lances. The scatter laser option is pretty good as well but somewhat outclassed by the scatbikes which should have been +5 pts more per model. Still they are a very good unit and necessary to field some of the craftworld warhosts.

Finally the much aligned wraithlord. Ironically this is actually not a bad unit it just has bad synergy with the rest of the list and tends to be outclassed in every department and is pretty much the slowest unit in the army (at least the slowest one that wants to move). It is a generalist in an army where each unit maximizes an aspect (mostly extreme damage, lol). The one caveat is that the wraithlord within the wraith host is actually really good and necessary to unlock it, getting to move+run+shoot really helps the utility of this unit. I would recommend 2 flamers and 2 of the cheapest weapon upgrades (scatter lasers or shucannons).The sword can also be useful depending on how aggressive your list tends to be, less for the +1 strength and more for the reroll a miss as the wraithlord doesn't have a lot of attacks.

Falcon units are not bad when you DS 3 of them with something nasty inside but it is hard to land where you really want to. A single falcon is still pretty mediocre. Not bad but definitely not good. Again this is just a split purpose of gunboat vs transport and the cost of both abilities on the same vehicle creates a unit that does neither well.

Nightspinner squadrons actually became somewhat amazing now. Laying down a barrage of 3 large blasts with Str9 is actually very good. You can also do some pretty nasty work with the torrent option if things get too close.

Fireprisms pretty good taken alone but in the squad they are terrible. If you are going mech and need some extra long range flexible killing power then you should definitely consider them. Just try to get some sort of reroll to hit (usually guide) or you will tend to be disappointed.

If you are into forgeworld the phoenix bomber is also an excellent unit but I am hoping for new rules as the wraithfighter and crimson hunter are each better at the bombers jobs and so much cheaper you can almost take 1 each for the same pts. Great model though.

Finally the warp hunter will probably be ridiculous when it gets updated but as is just kind of meh. Does decent damage but doesn't really have a purpose.

Take the Wraith Knight.

That looks like quite a no brainer answer. But although it is 295pts, you still have points left for several other units, thanks to Eldar have quite low priced troops which can still do very well if properly supported and played. Jetbikes or Dire Avengers are both good.

If you don't take WK (now a LoW) for whatever the reason. I believe a Fire Prism is also good choice for heavy fire power. Imho It's 3 fire mode allow you deal with anything quite decently.

Neophyte2012 wrote:
Take the Wraith Knight.

That looks like quite a no brainer answer. But although it is 295pts, you still have points left for several other units, thanks to Eldar have quite low priced troops which can still do very well if properly supported and played. Jetbikes or Dire Avengers are both good.

If you don't take WK (now a LoW) for whatever the reason. I believe a Fire Prism is also good choice for heavy fire power. Imho It's 3 fire mode allow you deal with anything quite decently.

Since the WK isn't a heavy, I wouldn't call it a no brainer.
If you could only pick one, I'd go with reapers. They really do something that you can't do in the other slots. AP3 and no jink is significant, it solves a lot of problems.
Strength D, massed S6, Massed Meltaguns, and AP punch can all be filled with slots other than core. But if you need to take out skimmers, flyers, flying monsters and bikes, Reapers are the go to guys.

Thanks for all the replies. Great response! Especially to ansacs for your detailed review of all the heavy choices.

Think I'm all set to dark reaper it as they will be combined with fire dragons and warp spiders to make up the aspect host.

Will be adding a wraith knight once I go up to 1500 points. It's such a shame about the waithlord as in my opinion he is the best looking eldar model.

Depending on your meta, the Wraithlord could be fine. Do you usually go up against netlists, or more a smattering of collections?

Heavy is the one place there isn't much cheese in the eldar book, some of the units are pretty good (reapers, vauls) and my fav is scatter walkers. For top level competitive cheese though most lists get by on troops, elites and fast attack choices plus a knight.

I would avoid the prism (one shot a turn pfft) and the lord with everything else in between them and what I've mentioned.