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Preferred Enemy confers to the whole unit.
Which makes them way more killy...also a possible 2+ armour save and AP2 guaranteed.

It always amuses me when someone argues that wraiths are the main event and not the side show. Three wraiths are about as dangerous in melee as a 5 man veteran squad in terms of offensive power. Sure the wraiths have S6 and rending, but the veterans will have more attacks and at least one person with a power weapon. Would you change your entire offense if you saw a squad of veterans on the board, of course not.

The gap between the perceived threat and the reality of their capabilities comes not from a misunderstanding of the rules, but instead comes from how they are used. Used properly wraiths are a scalpel, a combination of speed, toughness, and the ability to ignore terrain means they can hit the enemy almost anywhere. Good necron players use this to hit where the wraiths can be most effective. So it can seem like they are hitting above their weight, because they are picking fights they can win. However the reality of their capabilities becomes clear when you see them in CC against a sticky unit like a 10 man tac squad, or see them get krumped in CC against otherwise unremarkable units like Khorne berserkers or Ork Boyz.

My advice on how to counter them is not to make a big deal of it, screen your expensive CC vulnerable units where you can and be ready to counter charge them. At 2,000 points you'll have much worse things to worry about than a few wraiths. My guess if he knows who he is facing, he'll bring a d-cult, 9 x heavy 2 str 5 ap 3 units can kick the crap out of marines, and they are nearly as tough as wraiths with two wounds apiece, T5, 3+ save, and RP. They have a grab bag of special rules including every ones favorite from the tau, shoot and then move again in the assault phase.

So, I played him last night.

He rocked up with 12, yes that's right, 12 Wraiths, and a bunch of other stuff, including a Tomb Stalker.

I had:

Chaplain with JP
Sanguinary Priest with JP

10 DC with JP
10 DC with drop pod
5 DC on foot
5 Tactical Terminators

10 Tactical Marines with Rhino and HF
5 Tactical marines with Razorback and HF

9 ASM, 1 melta, 1 hand flamer

2 Devastator squads: 4 ML & 4 PC

I deployed first (whoot!), mainly along just half of the board (left side). My Dev squads held the high ground in a pair of buildings, overlooking pretty much everything. To the left I had my Chaplain with the 10 JP DC. In the centre were my two vehicles carrying the two squads of tactical marines, with my ASM immediately behind them, using the vehicles as cover. And slightly behind them, to the right was my last DC squad, my mop up squad. My drop pod with the other 10 DC would obviously drop turn 1, and the Terminators would come in at some point during the game.

He deployed along 3/4 of the board directly opposite.

He failed to steal the initiative so I rolled out. My drop pod fell from the sky in the exact spot that I wanted it to, spilling its cargo of 10 Death Company marines, directly in the path of the main bulk of his force, including his Wraiths. It was my intention the DISTRACTION CARNIFEX the crap out of him, allowing everything else to steamroll into his force.

And it worked.

He concentrated on my Death Company trudging out of the pod, allowing my vehicles and ASM to charge up the centre without a shot being fired at them. Fortunately, and despite the overwhelming amount of weapons he could bring to bear on my dropped DC, only one died. On the left my Chaplain and DC advanced forward, fired, killing one, but fell short on their charge (balls!). That's where it started to go wrong for me. No, really.

With the advance stalling on the left, and the dropped DC now being charged by his wraiths (6 of them) it was up to them to hold out until my ASM reached the fray. They did, but despite adding to the weight of my attack, the result was quite disappointing. I killed a single wraith and lost two ASM and two DC marines.

By now I was well into his half of the table and he was struggling to get out of his deployment zone, which meant most of his army was stuck behind buildings and didn't have line of sight with my advancing army. The next two turns saw my Chaplain and DC get charged after their failed attempt, keeping them in place and stopping them from helping to keep the momentum going. My tactical marines jumped out and opened up on his squads, trying, like the rest of the army, to take out one squad at a time. But it wasn't working. My Devastator squads proved to be ineffective during this game, despite not scattering all that much. His RP proved to be a pain in the backside. Elsewhere, my other, much smaller DC squad advanced on the right and my Terminators teleported in to stem the flow of his other wraiths and squads that were threatening to break out on the right. In the process, all but one terminator fell in CC (what!) and my DC proved ineffective against his praetorians (WTF?) and then the rest of his wraiths charged in.

I'll save you the details, but despite making significant advances into his deployment zone, his resilient army simply managed to wait it out and eventually outlast mine. His Tomb Stalker wasn't a huge problem and didn't really get very far. My Dev squad managed to knock a few wounds off, and the tactical squad he charged failed their morale check and fell back to regroup and then go at it again. the ASM was reduced to a single marine and my dropped DC squad was eventually wiped out. The Chaplain and his DC squad eventually gained the upper hand and took out that squad (Praetorians I think) before being charged by his tomb stalker, preventing them from going anywhere.

His ability to apply a holding action was superb. In retrospect, I would have dropped a Dev squad in favour of a Furioso. I know, that sounds flying rodent gak crazy, but he couldn't have shot at it anyway, too much in the way, but it would have kept the momentum going, especially against his Tomb Stalker and Wraiths if charging.

Overall, it was a really enjoyable game and I deployed exactly in the way that I wanted, and he deployed in the way that I expected. I just ran out of steam and momentum.

The one good thing that I took from it was that he only managed to get around 6" out of his deployment zone. I picked up line breaker as a result and both warlords were very much alive by the end, even though he challenged my ASM veteran Sgt, who did a good job of keeping him occupied, but ultimately couldn't do very much with his power sword against the Necron Lord's 2+ save. But he got first blood when he took out the drop pod. I managed to kill 7 wraiths, but never wiped out a complete squad (5 from one and 2 from another).

In the end I lost 2-5 on VP. I only succeeded in taking out 1 entire squad and an assortment of other models.

Let me see if I got this straight.
DC got in there and immediately engaged the Wraiths (good so far).
Now, once they were tied up... did you try to throw anything else into that combat?

What missions are you playing? If he spent the entire game within his deployment zone, you should've won any good mission.

 skoffs wrote:
Let me see if I got this straight.
DC got in there and immediately engaged the Wraiths (good so far).
Now, once they were tied up... did you try to throw anything else into that combat?

Yes, assault marines and tacticals. My Terminators were wiped out before they could do anything.

Two harvest against space marines, that was probably not a great idea on his part. Wraiths aren't that great against units with good saves, and doubling down on his mistake gave you a lot of opportunities. Praetorians on the other hand will wreck marines, both in shooting and in melee.

Wraiths are tarpit and forget, prats on the other hand not so much, because there isn't a tarpit deep enough. They are fragile by Necron standards, one wound apiece and expensive, but s5 ap 2 gets a lot of work done. The poor termies never stood a chance with their powerfists, if they had lighting claws or ss/th they would have made short work of them.

The easiest way to drop a unit of his was to break them in melee and run them down. However your best CC units were stuck in CC with his fearless units, which played to his advantage. If your DC had got into melee with any other unit (say his warriors), you could have gotten yourself at least another Kill point. As for the Tac marines, they were in a rough spot, they are not really equipped to kill necrons. If your VS had a power weapon, it might have been more productive to have them charge and hope to break them in melee, small chance is better than no chance.

All in all though sounds like you gave as good as you got, Getting nearly two units and loosing three.

Lets be clear here - wraiths are good vs everything. They are the perfect assault unit. In the harvest they come stock with 2 quality irremovable saves vs everything but the destroyer table. They have more than enough damage in a 5 man unit to shred through any sort of chaff unit in a single player turn and vs quality assault units they tie down a unit that costs 2-3x more than them for 2-3 turns. They can't be ignored - they must be destroyed - first.

For a BA player? Almost no chance against an army consisting of 10+ wraiths. About the only thing you can do is bring a bunch of vindicators and hope he roles terrible on his 3+ 5+rp saves. Everything in the Necron arsenal can wreck a vindi though so...basically no chance like I said.

 Xenomancers wrote:
Lets be clear here - wraiths are good vs everything. They are the perfect assault unit. In the harvest they come stock with 2 quality irremovable saves vs everything but the destroyer table. They have more than enough damage in a 5 man unit to shred through any sort of chaff unit in a single player turn and vs quality assault units they tie down a unit that costs 2-3x more than them for 2-3 turns. They can't be ignored - they must be destroyed - first.

For a BA player? Almost no chance against an army consisting of 10+ wraiths. About the only thing you can do is bring a bunch of vindicators and hope he roles terrible on his 3+ 5+rp saves. Everything in the Necron arsenal can wreck a vindi though so...basically no chance like I said.

Just because your army has issues with them doesn't mean they're the "perfect assault unit". They have plenty of downsides. AP- Rending is nowhere near the same as having AP2 or AP3. No characters to challenge out the important characters. Any ICs you put with the unit slows them down a not-insignificant amount, which hurts when all they can do is assault. No Hit and Run means they can easily get bogged down by things like Flesh Hounds or the like. I2 means they rarely sweep anything. T5 is good, but it gets burned down by Bolters and there is enough S10 in the game (Knights, WKs, D, Thunder Hammers, Stormsurges, etc) that they get ID'd out by plenty of stuff. WS4 means they're mostly only hitting on 4s, with Daemon Princes forcing them to 5s. Very importantly, there are no Psychic powers to buff them, so they can't do anything about most of these downsides.

None of these things are insurmountable, of course, and some are relatively minor, but they're far from perfect. TWC with ICs is much closer, especially when you abuse Battle Brothers and Libby Conclave.

Wraiths: another reason Librarius discipline is the best for Mephiston.

But in general, 10 Wraiths is game over for a BA list.

However, there may be some builds that this is less true for. I have actually massacred Necrons twice with an archangel sanguine wing list. The core of the list is 20 vanguard vets with free power weapons and not-free stormshields backed up with a priest for WS 5 and FNP. 3++/5+++ with power mauls and axes is super unpleasant for most Necron units. This in addition to double drop fragnoughts and 10 sternguard with free multi-meltas in a raven. The fragnoughts aren't so great vs Necrons, but can still be a problem if dropped on the flanks.

I've also got a quadruple libby list in the works, with Mephy with librarius as well as a biomancy libby or two. Enfeeble is really unfortunate for Wraiths. As is Mephy swinging at Str 10 with possible null zone.

 Frozocrone wrote:
Preferred Enemy confers to the whole unit.
Which makes them way more killy...also a possible 2+ armour save and AP2 guaranteed.

It really doesnt do much. They wound MEQ on 2+ normally. Rerolling 1's doesnt make them "way more killy"

 Xenomancers wrote:
Lets be clear here - wraiths are good vs everything. They are the perfect assault unit. In the harvest they come stock with 2 quality irremovable saves vs everything but the destroyer table. They have more than enough damage in a 5 man unit to shred through any sort of chaff unit in a single player turn and vs quality assault units they tie down a unit that costs 2-3x more than them for 2-3 turns. They can't be ignored - they must be destroyed - first.

For a BA player? Almost no chance against an army consisting of 10+ wraiths. About the only thing you can do is bring a bunch of vindicators and hope he roles terrible on his 3+ 5+rp saves. Everything in the Necron arsenal can wreck a vindi though so...basically no chance like I said.

Care to back that claim up with math? Because the plural of anecdote isn't data. Against space marines wraiths have a 50/50 chance of hitting, 4 attacks on a charge, wound on a 2+, and then marines get saves on 4/5ths of the attacks. So lets say 6 wraiths charge your 10 man tac squad, how many turns will your 150 point tac squad buy you? 24 attacks on the charge, 12 hits, 8 wounds 2 rends, call it 3 failed saves, for a total of 5 marines dead. Next round it's 18 attacks, 9 hits, 1 rend 5 wounds one failed save since we rounded up last round, three marines left, which will get finished off on the necron players assault phase. That's 258 points of wraiths vs 150 pts of tac marines. Even points it takes three maybe four rounds to chew thru a tac squad. The numbers hardly sound like the invincible robot death star you seem to think they are. It's a classic case of the grass is always greener in someone else's yard. Besides the whole my army sucks and yours is OP feels really funny coming from a space marine player.

Fragile wrote:

 Frozocrone wrote:
Preferred Enemy confers to the whole unit.
Which makes them way more killy...also a possible 2+ armour save and AP2 guaranteed.

It really doesnt do much. They wound MEQ on 2+ normally. Rerolling 1's doesnt make them "way more killy"

To be fair, DLord giving out PE is basically the only way to buff the damage from assault units in the Necron codex. Without Psykers or Chaplains or the like, there's no way to modulate their hitting or wounding aside from just giving them PE. The only other one is Zahndrekh having Hatred as his set warlord trait, for what it's worth.

Are Wraiths Canoptek? I was under the impression that canoptek units did not get RP unless they were part of a formation that gave them that.

Forgive my ignorance, just figured I'd ask.

Thanks, take it easy.

-Red__Thirst-

 Red__Thirst wrote:
Are Wraiths Canoptek? I was under the impression that canoptek units did not get RP unless they were part of a formation that gave them that.

Forgive my ignorance, just figured I'd ask.

Thanks, take it easy.

-Red__Thirst-

That's exactly true, which is why everyone says kill the Spyder first. Without it, no RP.

Holy gak.
How many times do we have to say it?

STOP TRYING TO KILL WRAITHS.

 Flugel Meister wrote:

 skoffs wrote:
Let me see if I got this straight.
DC got in there and immediately engaged the Wraiths (good so far).
Now, once they were tied up... did you try to throw anything else into that combat?

Yes, assault marines and tacticals. My Terminators were wiped out before they could do anything.

We kept trying to tell OP, there are two rules to keep in mind when you see Wraiths:
-1 Don't bother trying to kill them.
-2 Just engage them as soon as you can to prevent them from doing whatever they want.

It seemed like he was off to a good start with rule #2 by sticking DC in with them right from the go,
but as soon as he decided to go against rule #1 by adding more units into that combat, I knew it wasn't going to end well for him...
(and yes, Praetorians are TEQ bane)

Fragile wrote:

 Frozocrone wrote:
Preferred Enemy confers to the whole unit.
Which makes them way more killy...also a possible 2+ armour save and AP2 guaranteed.

It really doesnt do much. They wound MEQ on 2+ normally. Rerolling 1's doesnt make them "way more killy"

"WAY more killy" might be an overstatement, but rerolling a 1 into a 6 certainly does make them a BIT more killy.
... but it's not the Wraiths that make that deathstar something to be careful of. It's the 4 S7 AP2 PE attacks the Destroyer Lord brings (the Wraith are there to give him Look Out Sir saves to keep him alive longer). THAT is a unit worthy of the title "killy".

 Xenomancers wrote:
Lets be clear here - wraiths are good vs everything. They are the perfect assault unit. In the harvest they come stock with 2 quality irremovable saves vs everything but the destroyer table. They have more than enough damage in a 5 man unit to shred through any sort of chaff unit in a single player turn and vs quality assault units they tie down a unit that costs 2-3x more than them for 2-3 turns. They can't be ignored - they must be destroyed - first.

For a BA player? Almost no chance against an army consisting of 10+ wraiths. About the only thing you can do is bring a bunch of vindicators and hope he roles terrible on his 3+ 5+rp saves. Everything in the Necron arsenal can wreck a vindi though so...basically no chance like I said.

...
At this point, I think this guy might just be trying to troll the thread.

Again, thanks for the comments.

Due to my concentrated deployment, the Necrons deployed in a similar manner, so his Wraiths were pretty much screening everything else, bar the Praetorian unit on the left that my Chaplain-led DC engaged. So in that respect There wasn't much else I could do.

I'm actually wondering if I should have simply let him come to me. And then when he's close enough counter his advance by charging. I would have had the attacks advantage. I've used this tactic against Grey Knights before. He was trying to take an objective held by a devastator squad, but I had 5 DC with JP behind the building my Devs were in. Once the Grey Knight terminators were close enough I advanced, fired, charged and wiped them out.

I think this tactic might have worked well in this instance.

I was probably over zealous in my eagerness to shove my Blood Angels down his throat, but what's a fan of CC to do? I'm going to be adding CC terminators to my army this weekend, after learning the lessons of my ineffective tactical terminators.

Anyway, I've amended my list, removing the tactical terminators in favour of CC ones: 7 of them. 3 TH & SS, and 4 LC. How'd you like those apples? I've also brought in a Furioso with Blood Talons. This guy will advance with the rest of the army, but as the DC will drop from a pod, my opponent should, should be somewhat occupied so he/she doesn't invest serious time in taking out anything other than DC.

I also dropped a Dev squad, leaving just the 4 PC. However, I can change these for a Predator depending on the opponent.

Next week we start a 6-player campaign, and the Necron player will be in it. I'm tempted to throw Mephiston in there along with my DC to make things more difficult. The final battle of the campaign will be a 3v3 battle: 2,500 points each, good vs evil (2 BA players and 1 DA player against Necrons, Chaos and Orks).

Enjoyed your Batrep Flugel. Way to take in those lessons and good luck in the next match.

 axisofentropy wrote:
What missions are you playing? If he spent the entire game within his deployment zone, you should've won any good mission.

Flugel Meister this is an important question

 Flugel Meister wrote:
Again, thanks for the comments.

Due to my concentrated deployment, the Necrons deployed in a similar manner, so his Wraiths were pretty much screening everything else, bar the Praetorian unit on the left that my Chaplain-led DC engaged. So in that respect There wasn't much else I could do.

I'm actually wondering if I should have simply let him come to me. And then when he's close enough counter his advance by charging. I would have had the attacks advantage. I've used this tactic against Grey Knights before. He was trying to take an objective held by a devastator squad, but I had 5 DC with JP behind the building my Devs were in. Once the Grey Knight terminators were close enough I advanced, fired, charged and wiped them out.

I think this tactic might have worked well in this instance.

I was probably over zealous in my eagerness to shove my Blood Angels down his throat, but what's a fan of CC to do? I'm going to be adding CC terminators to my army this weekend, after learning the lessons of my ineffective tactical terminators.

Anyway, I've amended my list, removing the tactical terminators in favour of CC ones: 7 of them. 3 TH & SS, and 4 LC. How'd you like those apples? I've also brought in a Furioso with Blood Talons. This guy will advance with the rest of the army, but as the DC will drop from a pod, my opponent should, should be somewhat occupied so he/she doesn't invest serious time in taking out anything other than DC.

I also dropped a Dev squad, leaving just the 4 PC. However, I can change these for a Predator depending on the opponent.

Next week we start a 6-player campaign, and the Necron player will be in it. I'm tempted to throw Mephiston in there along with my DC to make things more difficult. The final battle of the campaign will be a 3v3 battle: 2,500 points each, good vs evil (2 BA players and 1 DA player against Necrons, Chaos and Orks).

I like to pod dreads. I don't like to pod DC. Dev squads are one of the worst things in the BA codex. Try a list with no BA heavy support and see if that helps. Swarm the field with fast units and drop fragnoughts.

 axisofentropy wrote:

 axisofentropy wrote:
What missions are you playing? If he spent the entire game within his deployment zone, you should've won any good mission.

Flugel Meister this is an important question

Based on the score looks like kill points, He got line breaker + prats, his opponent got first blood, drop pod, and two units.

 Grimgold wrote:

 axisofentropy wrote:

 axisofentropy wrote:
What missions are you playing? If he spent the entire game within his deployment zone, you should've won any good mission.

Flugel Meister this is an important question

Based on the score looks like kill points, He got line breaker + prats, his opponent got first blood, drop pod, and two units.

Yeah, just kill points, and that's exactly what we scored.

I was wrong with the campaign final battle. It's not 2,500 points, it's 4,000 points each in a 3v3. That's 24,000 points. But we can't use Knights or Titans.

I'm certainly looking at expanding my Fragnaughts. I'm hoping to add another soon, so I'll have at least two.

I've got to say, I hate using bikes. But I may have to concede and get a few to improve mobility. Will also look at land speeders. But I'm already a fan of drop pods, so I'll be adding more when I can.

Agreed, Dev squads have very limited functionality and they aren't particularly versatile. However, I have used them to good effect before, including wiping out an entire Deathwing Termy squad and keeping a Grey Knight Dreadknight at bay. But in this instance they were almost complete useless. What I needed was CC power weapons instead of long range firepower.

The first game of our upcoming Campaign is a 2,000 point 1v1 Planet Strike game. Each of us will face off against someone from the opposing side.

I have no idea how Land speeders are in the current meta (last time I played against them was 5th edition), but they used to be absolutely DEVASTATING with meltas and heavy bolters, especially in squads of three.

Are they not used anymore?

AV 10 is very tissue papery. Also, heavy bolters are now awful weapons.

Martel732 wrote:
AV 10 is very tissue papery. Also, heavy bolters are now awful weapons.

They're bad, but they have their moments. They're tailor made to kill necron warriors, for example. They can do a lot of work if you catch necron infantry out of cover.

Yeah, but killing Necron Warriors is the least of most people's worries...