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I haven't played much recently, but I'll be heading to a tournament in a couple of weeks (the BAO) so I'm working out what list I'm going to be bringing. One unit that I haven't used for quite awhile is my Wraithlord since, at least at the start of 6E, he just wasn't much of a threat since too many things are able to just burn him down. Given that my army is also a highly mobile one (the only units I field that aren't in a transport or capable of moving 12"+ on their own are some Rangers), a WL is also rather difficult to keep with the rest of the army.

I've not really paid attention to the current metagame, but has anything changed recently to make a single Wraithlord somewhat functional in the current environment? (This is sort of a separate question from a list that might run multiple WL's, since those sorts of lists are functionally quite different from what I'm running.) My impression is that, no, they're still too easy to bring down without having gotten any points back, and even as a fire magnet they don't offer very much.

If someone has had better luck or experiences with running one as a support element for a mobile army, I'd love to hear about it. My Wraithlord is still one of my favorite models, and I miss running with it, but it's also a chunk of points that is better spend on something that doesn't just get burned down.

Current state of Wraithlords: dead on Turn 1.

 DarknessEternal wrote:
Current state of Wraithlords: dead on Turn 1.

Heh.

Yeah, that's kind of what I was afraid of.

The problem with wraithlords is that they dont do anything well. With expensive heavy weapons they dont have the firepower to compete. With sword they are still pretty poor in melee. They are very cost effective and would be wonderful if you could squad them up (3x wraithlords with SCs and 2x flamers for 330 points, yes please), but 1 by 1 they arent a fortune target and often get a lot of the AT focus. Eldar shouldnt be heavy mech in this edition which means that the AT concentration has to go somewhere, and thats often to the Avatar or Wraithlords. Again, victim of power creep more than anything.

Meh... maybe because I just don't care...

But a wraith army (Lord + Guard) supported by pathfinders and/or harliquins... is an ultimate Eldar turtle list.

I also had Avatar+fuegen in the list too... recently play'ed against IG. I thought I'd be tabled by turn 3, but I ended up tabling him by turn 5.

However, Wraithlords in a non-wraithguard foot list doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

EDIT: they way I play this footdar list is practically the exact same way I play my orks... pedal-to-the-metal!

Depends on who/what you are fighting.

DE and Nids just devour Wraithlords due to their high volume of poisoned weapons which just ignore the models single greatest strength (the T8).

However, being a W3 model instead of a vehicle has many advantages.

As well, it is one of only a few Eldar models that can equip useful weapons and actually fire them competently. They are BS4, which is higher than the Eldar average, and as long as you do not give them two of the same weapon, they are very nice. I personally find that Any combination of the Scatter Laser / Star Cannon / Brightlance is very effective in their hands since it fires accurately from a secure model that is not likely to go down... as well it can move every turn, fire all it's weapons, and if it finds CC it can still wreck most things. (HoW w/S10 is mean, plus it's base 2 attacks at S10 and being a monstrous creature means that it's a force in CC even with all ranged weapon equipped).

I personally take 1 in almost every game, sometimes 2. I haven't ever used 3 that I recall because not having War Walkers is just too crippling for the Eldar

If you guys don't use WL, what do you use for AT? I just started playing Eldar, and aside from Fire Dragons in a Wave Serpent, I see no good (reliable) way to provide AT capabilities with my Eldar. The WL are expensive, but so far I use two of them armed with BL and EML, and they are strictly on AT duty, as well as babysitting my deployment zone. Thoughts?

heh, wraithlords are good in a MC spam list. Ie taking 3 and an avatar in 1k. Having vehicles to soak up enemy firepower is welcome in these type of lists

 Homeskillet wrote:
If you guys don't use WL, what do you use for AT? I just started playing Eldar, and aside from Fire Dragons in a Wave Serpent, I see no good (reliable) way to provide AT capabilities with my Eldar. The WL are expensive, but so far I use two of them armed with BL and EML, and they are strictly on AT duty, as well as babysitting my deployment zone. Thoughts?

I use allied Dark Eldar (a Raider and a Voidraven) to supplement Fire Dragons and a copious amount of extremely fast S6 weaponry shooting at side and rear armor.

I think that the conclusion for me is that, yeah, the Wraithlord just isn't going to work out with my list. Fielding it would basically give me this block of immobility that I don't want that is rather easy to kill for pretty much every army that I don't already have my own counters for. A unit of Pathfinders hiding in cover is one thing, but a WL would also require me to keep a Farseer (or a little squad of Warlocks) nearby, which would likely be rather wasteful. Too bad, since I really like mine.

This is a tactics thread. So lets talk tactics.

the reason he might get burned in turn 1 is, the enemy simply has too much to fire at him.

So reserve him. By doing so, you can modify that threat level. if he gets the LAST three turns to do his thing and never dies, isn't that better than having 1 turn of it and losing him?

and there are few models that are better guardians on an objective later in the game. The Wraithlord cannearly ignore many attacks against him. He can go where fate ends up having him needed and rtarely will he be necessary forward of the game board midline so his movement isn't an issue.

So reserve him and he will be the thing that the enemy must account for no matter where they go. The mere threat of him coming in will stop uber fast units from getting too far ahead of their fellows, and of course, there is the issue of the gun: The Wraithlord can actually knock a vehicle out if it gets close enough AND gobble the innards. So the Wraithlord does suffer if you deploy him... So dont.

The WL's main problem, I find, is speed.
It is too slow to get into hth, and cannot outflank or similar.

The guns are expensive, but a single Guide helps there.
And, having a farseer stood around helps with brain-lock.

But, holding it in cover, it is an amazing counter attack unit for the back-field.
I have given mine a single Starcannon and a wraithblade.
The sword allows rerolls to hit in hth, and usually wounds on 2s.
Being S10, it can crack any transport that goes for your objectives.
Fortune it, and throw it into combat when anything gets close.

Just be careful of melta-bombs and Krak grenades.

I like em - I use three shooty wraithlords, backed up by the FW wraithseer.

The wraithseer allows all of their guns to -1 on cover saves. This, combined with turtling ruins people's bike squads/transports (bar land raiders/fliers)

The wraithseer can also cast FNP4+ on one of them - so when one's taken a couple of wounds, cast it on that and then the enemy will probably shoot a different wraithlord. I've had games where they've all ended up on 1 wound.

1 Wraithlord on it's own is too easy to take down.

I dunno, they are at least better than 5E when everything was mech, they are capable of being quite shooty and still decent in combat, most importantly they are T8, the most common weapon in the game is the boltgun, which being S4 cannot hurt the wraithlord, additionally plasma and melta weapons cannot reliably hurt it.

In the game of shoothammer 40k, that is a really big deal since you just shrug off hits from virtually all but the most powerful anti-tank weapons (Lascannons and Railguns) which means that he is probably taking fire for your war walkers and wave serpents, mission accomplished if you ask me.

 DarknessEternal wrote:
Current state of Wraithlords: dead on Turn 1.

What the hell is killing them turn 1? The number of missiles and other long range anti tank weaponry has dropped away significantly in 6th, the only ones I tend to see are Autocannon and Tesla type weaponry which is higher volume of fire, but needs 5's to hurt Wraithlords so aren't that much of a threat. Really its only mass lascannon or missiles that cause them issues, Plasma doesn't exactly demolish them and Melta is relatively easy to avoid.

I have been getting very good results with my Wraithlords since I reworked my list from the ground up for 6th edition. I realised pretty quickly that mech Eldar is now painfully overcosted to the point of being unusable, which means Footdar in some shape or form is the only option. For your Heavy slots this leaves Walkers and Wraithlords as the two obvious choices. Walkers have more ranged firepower, but are significantly more fragile and rely significantly more on Farseer buffs, basically you need a Farseer per unit as non Guided Walkers aren't much better than Wraithlords. Wraithlords are self contained, aside from the Wraithsight issue they don't really need any help against anything, shooting wise they are BS4 so do well with 2 S8 weapons or in a torrent of fire S6 build, and in combat they do ok simply because people can't hurt them. Essentially you spread them through your lines combined with the Avatar wandering forward, they provide a solid counter assault unit (even if it just locks things there) which can provide fire support as it moves up. Depending on matchup you put them ahead or behind the Guardians, against aggressive lists with good assault units (Wraiths, stuff with Poison, Fast Deathstars etc) then the Guardians go in front to absorb the charges and die painful, if not then you can push them forwards faster. Currently I run 2 Wraithlords and 3 Walkers at 2k, and usually 3 Lords and 1750pts (mostly because the most obvious place to cut points is Eldrad down to a standard Seer, and then the Walkers are harder to support). The Wraithlords get Scatter Laser + Shuriken Cannon, which is the cheapest double gun version you can get and works better for their midfield/counterpunch role than the old EML/BL loadout. Yes they do get countered badly by Dark Eldar, but there are counters to most builds now and there is no way around it. At least if you go first you can probably drop a Venom, only 2 HP makes them stupidly easy to drop. If not then you probably reserve them unless you can find some nice LOS blockers to put them behind. In the 15 or so games with my list so far they have only died a couple of times, once against DE (which I still won on objectives) and once against Daemons (Flamer/Screamer list, lost but the game massively swung his way when he spawned my Avatar on Overwatch) I lost them all, against Orks, Nids and Daemons again (same list) I lost one and in every other game they were still going strong at the end.

Also remember that they are characters, which helps massively in assault. It means you can snipe out any Fists etc before they swing (or stop them swinging altogether if they decline) which means no ones basic infantry can hurt you, they need more than 1 S7+ AP3 or lower guy to damage you reliably (Krak does nothing to you). Unless they have Eternal Warrior not many characters want to fight you either, I have been seeing a large number of combat characters appearing which dump most of their defensive gear because they run in large and/or durable units which they can just LOS to (Chaos Lords being the main one, but D Lords to some extent as well), and Wraithlords can quite happily fight them. I haven't really had much of a chance to use it, but in theory being a character can be helpful with shooting as well. They also have S10 impact hits which are quite nice even if they don't ignore armour. 1/6 of the time they become very durable scoring units as well.

@ Skinnereal. I've found the issue isn't so much speed, its that they tend to get stuck in combat for longer than you want them to. If you need to they can zerg forwards and assault by turn 3, but once they do so they tend to just get stuck there. Against some units this is exactly what you want, but sometimes you need your Lord to chop down that 5 man Marine unit quickly and it just doesn't happen. I really hope they get 3 attacks base in the next codex (or 2 + 2 CC weapons).

@ Homeskillet. Dragons from a Serpent are still the only real answer in the codex to high AV (short of just punching them in assault with the Avatar), and even they have issues. More importantly the changes to the vehicle damage rules make them far less important. S6 spam has been the biggest thing going for Eldar for quite a while, and it works even better now since you can glance all medium and light armour to death and there tends to be less of it anyway. This just leaves you with Land Raiders etc which you can't deal with that easily, but realistically an EML/BL Lord isn't exactly going to deal with them reliably either. Often you can just ignore them but imo if you really feel you need to deal with them then you are probably better off looking at Allies imo (Tau with Railguns, Melta units which can score as well and don't have such massively overprices transports). I haven't really hit any true heavy armour lists (I saw a guy at the last tournament I was at running tri DA Land Raiders), but thus far my S6 shooting + S7 Psycannons + assault threat from the Avatar and Lords has dealt with any armour just fine.

I keep one in my deployment zone in a little firebase with pathfinders and a seer. BL/ML all the way because i am lacking a ravager (i know, i know) and the AT is just dandy.

Not to mention when GK drop down to try kill seer (in 2+ cover...) it means they are near the wraithlord. Lance, double flamer (my god i love the flamer) and charge really shows him. If he has a thunder hammer i carnt challenge i can hopefully presision strike him, and knock the teeth out the unit.

And if he goes down first turn, so what? My raiders/venoms just turboboasted into your DZ and are ready to jump out and slaugter things, you go ahead and shoot at my WL.

Monstrous creatures can only fire two guns can't they?

PredaKhaine wrote:
Monstrous creatures can only fire two guns can't they?

Yes, one of those weapons may be a gun emplacement.

I'm not disagreeing - it's just you can't fire all your weapons while charging in.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 ALEXisAWESOME wrote:
it means they are near the wraithlord. Lance, double flamer (my god i love the flamer) and charge

DarknessEternal wrote:Current state of Wraithlords: dead on Turn 1.

This is absolute nonsense. I played against an IG gunline and at the end of turn 7 I had 3 models left on the table. Those three models were wraithlords.

Dark Haemonculus wrote:heh, wraithlords are good in a MC spam list. Ie taking 3 and an avatar in 1k. Having vehicles to soak up enemy firepower is welcome in these type of lists

This is why a single lord is not very good. They work best with a buddy(2 lords and 1 ww squad is a decent heavy support build) or in a trio. Being slow as molasses, they also don't work well in a fast list.

That's one reason I take a starcannon and sword, with 2 flamers.
On the charge, I fire a flamer and starcannon.

En Excelsis wrote:
Depends on who/what you are fighting.

DE and Nids just devour Wraithlords due to their high volume of poisoned weapons which just ignore the models single greatest strength (the T8).

Nids don't get poison ranged weapons any more, have not since the 5e codex dropped. It is just on CC, and really with 6e it is better just to Smash.