Topic: Weapons for Wraithguard in 8th

[Tweedz]

Against genestealer (or weaker) equivalents then they are less efficient then some options (say massed shuriken fire from guardians), but against MEQ and TEQ wraithscythes are actually among the most efficient out there. So it depends on the army you face. Also, even against genestealers and weaker, 5 wraithscythes do more damage in one volley than 10 guardians. You need two squads of guardians to do more, which means an extra transport or 10 more guardians who have to survive getting in range.

[Partninja]

Wraithguard are likely to be among my own next additions (avoided them when I was last playing because the 2nd Ed models were expensive and in my view not very attractive). As an old-schooler I'd favour giving them wraithcannon anyway - they also look best to me that way and I have a love of D-weapons even though they no longer do anything special.

To me the clincher is that D-scythes only deal 1 damage. One third of the time (since you roll number of attacks for the unit), they're just going to be worse than wraithcannon; conversely when it comes to damage wraithcannon will be, at worst, the same as D-scythes and 5 times out of 6 will do more damage.

Since I'm not sure why you want an S10, AP -4 weapon if you're mostly planning on shooting low-wound targets, wraithcannon seem a better option overall, especially with the 5pt point difference in their favour - but I'm willing to be persuaded otherwise, as the correct loadout will be good for me to know when I buy and assemble WG myself.

Keep in mind D-Scythes auto hit. On everything up to T5 they're also going to wound very easily. With their high armor piercing value this allows them to kill infantry very easily. I'd assume more effectively than say 10 guardians or Avengers while still being a large threat to tougher targets. You could take more than twice the number of guardians though.

Their wraith fists are also not bad in combat. They could shoot and charge to finish off a tactical squad or to tie up a target for a turn. They can then fall back from combat and shoot again.

They become very silly in a Ynarri force though...

[Rhyleth]

Wraithguard are likely to be among my own next additions (avoided them when I was last playing because the 2nd Ed models were expensive and in my view not very attractive). As an old-schooler I'd favour giving them wraithcannon anyway - they also look best to me that way and I have a love of D-weapons even though they no longer do anything special.

To me the clincher is that D-scythes only deal 1 damage. One third of the time (since you roll number of attacks for the unit), they're just going to be worse than wraithcannon; conversely when it comes to damage wraithcannon will be, at worst, the same as D-scythes and 5 times out of 6 will do more damage.

Since I'm not sure why you want an S10, AP -4 weapon if you're mostly planning on shooting low-wound targets, wraithcannon seem a better option overall, especially with the 5pt point difference in their favour - but I'm willing to be persuaded otherwise, as the correct loadout will be good for me to know when I buy and assemble WG myself.

Keep in mind D-Scythes auto hit. On everything up to T5 they're also going to wound very easily. With their high armor piercing value this allows them to kill infantry very easily. I'd assume more effectively than say 10 guardians or Avengers while still being a large threat to tougher targets. You could take more than twice the number of guardians though.

Their wraith fists are also not bad in combat. They could shoot and charge to finish off a tactical squad or to tie up a target for a turn. They can then fall back from combat and shoot again.

They become very silly in a Ynarri force though...

Maybe it's simply that my army construction, at least so far, appears to struggle with vehicles more than infantry (twice in my battle against Chaos today I had vehicle units survive a turn they shouldn't have on 1-2 wounds, even with much or all of the relevant parts of my army firing at them, and Ad Mech robots were simply game over by themselves, wiping out whole units per shot, while the associated army did very little), but my feeling is that the Eldar have plenty of weapons that deal with high-toughness infantry easily. Fewer than they used to that deal with high save infantry, it's true, but shuriken fire in sufficient quantity gets that job done.

Units that can harm vehicles quickly are harder to come by - and ones that can at least potentially survive to do it again even moreso. The Eldar used to be able to rely on tanks and Heavy 1 weapons like brightlances and EMLs for that, but that appears now to be very difficult since a single shot from any of those weapons is much less likely to deal severe damage than in the AP table days and will almost never destroy even light vehicles in a single attack.

[Partninja]

I'm actually struggling to fit in enough decent AT options in all of my armies. You need to bring quite a bit to bear in 8th edition in order to remove them from the table. This cuts into my other units needed for other roles.

[Rhyleth]

I'm actually struggling to fit in enough decent AT options in all of my armies. You need to bring quite a bit to bear in 8th edition in order to remove them from the table. This cuts into my other units needed for other roles.

Precisely what I'm getting at. I do think it's a more significant issue for Eldar than most due to the specialisation of the units - they don't have things like Land Raiders at the high end or conversely readily-available weapon platforms at low cost (as the main Eldar weapon platform is the Wave Serpent), and even most of their heavy weapons have poor AP and most have either low or variable damage. Only Reaper launchers and pulse lasers have fixed amounts of damage above 1 - I suspect it's one reason the Fire Prism appears to underperform fairly badly. Fire Dragons are a one-shot deal and Dark Reapers are a fire magnet, which seems to restrict the options to fliers, War Walkers, or Wraithguard.

With all that in mind, where the choice is between a weapon option that's good against vehicles and loses a little (but not much) against infantry, and one that's good against infantry and loses a little (but not much) against vehicles, I'm inclined to go for the AT option.

[Partninja]

For me, or at least the types of CWE lists I like to run, it's the reduced BS for moving and shooting heavy weapons that hurts.

In my LGS,I could get by fine with some lances on a pair of Serpents, and two squads of defenders on foot (EML or lances). I usually run with mixtures of Reapers, Hemlock, wraithguard etc. as well as moderate options such as Shining Spears and Warp Spiders (that help with lighter AT and MCs). So I would have a decent spread of AT options. However, the penalties for moving and shooting heavies makes this unreliable for my core force.

This makes for some very difficult list building at 1500 points. A unit of five D-Scythes are a good option here as they are quite threatening to vehicles, monsters and infantry. They won't vaporise mid-high toughness vehicles but they can still take a decent chunk off while still evaporating more elite infantry units (which is what I take them for).

[Rhyleth]

For me, or at least the types of CWE lists I like to run, it's the reduced BS for moving and shooting heavy weapons that hurts.

In my LGS,I could get by fine with some lances on a pair of Serpents, and two squads of defenders on foot (EML or lances). I usually run with mixtures of Reapers, Hemlock, wraithguard etc. as well as moderate options such as Shining Spears and Warp Spiders (that help with lighter AT and MCs). So I would have a decent spread of AT options. However, the penalties for moving and shooting heavies makes this unreliable for my core force.

This makes for some very difficult list building at 1500 points. A unit of five D-Scythes are a good option here as they are quite threatening to vehicles, monsters and infantry. They won't vaporise mid-high toughness vehicles but they can still take a decent chunk off while still evaporating more elite infantry units (which is what I take them for).

Why do the Eldar have heavy weapons again, anyway? Back in 3rd the bright lance was an assault weapon - that makes more sense still now that vehicles don't have specific rules about moving and firing heavy weapons. I agree that it's painful - in my vs. Chaos battle my Fire Prism was more or less out of the game after taking 6 wounds and going to BS 3 (sorry, 4+) - of course it wasn't helped by rolling 1 every time I used the anti-infantry mode... Making all Eldar weapons other than support weapons assault (potentially even things like pulse lasers and doom weavers, to reflect being grav-mounted - maybe keep the really heavy weapons like prism cannon and the Wraithknight weapons heavy) wouldn't exactly overpower them.

I'm waiting on most future purchases until the new range hits - I've noticed that all the 2nd Ed. models (save the Fire Prism, which uses a Falcon base - though the basic Falcon and WS seem to have been canned), plus the 3rd/4th Ed. Rangers and characters, have gone to 'Online only' and some are now out of stock. I suspect a big update to the range is coming - and the Shining Spears need it particularly, partly because their components were always fairly poor but mostly because they don't yet have the current jetbike models. The unit does look good these days, though.

Otherwise your list sounds similar to mine though the Hemlock's another unit I have yet to invest in.

From discussions in another thread I'm coming to think War Walkers are the way to go for AT, though I'm holding off on those until the codex in case that changes the optimal weapon loadout. There are still Fire Dragons, but they're still basically one-shot (and I'm still missing my firepike Exarch model. It's not actually the worst thing in the world to have a flamer because it's a good weapon and the Exarch can always use a meltabomb for his ranged AT attack, but he always dies before having any real chance to use it. I am thinking of just getting Fuegan - I broke my old Fuegan model many years ago). The problem with War Walkers is that a brightlance setup makes them worthless against anything other than vehicles - Dark Reapers and Fire Dragons are credible anti-infantry units as well as having an AT role. I've suggested an EML setup for Walkers as an option, but the Eldar heavy weapons need rebalancing and it could well be that another weapon is better in a few months.

Coming back round to the Wraithguard, the fact that the wraithcannon's an assault weapon seems a good point in their favour in that regard as well.

[Cavalier]

With automatic hits, potential for high volume of shots, high strength, great AP, D-Scythe Wraithguard I use them to flush out resilient high priority infantry. Centurions, Terminators, Ad-Mech Destroyers, or any high priority infantry you need dead no questions asked, send in the D-Scythe Wraithguard. It also frees up my other anti-infantry units like Jetbikes etc. to tackle less resilient units. Plus in my experience they generate Soul Bursts like nobodies business.

Same thing with the D-Cannon Wraithguard. Send them in to nuke vehicles. But I get my AT from other sources. Hornets with Lances, Scourge with Lances and the Warp Hunter have all been excellent. Also Corsair Bikes with Dark Lances are really appealing, though I've not run them yet.

[Rhyleth]

Same thing with the D-Cannon Wraithguard. Send them in to nuke vehicles. But I get my AT from other sources. Hornets with Lances, Scourge with Lances and the Warp Hunter have all been excellent. Also Corsair Bikes with Dark Lances are really appealing, though I've not run them yet.

Two of those are FW and one is a Dark Eldar unit my army won't be using for flavour reasons, which somewhat limits my options in that regard. While I'll likely pick up the Warp Hunter and maybe Hornets post-Codex, as the WH is a conversion kit and the Hornet seems especially popular, there seems a reasonable chance that GW will put out kits for one or both with the Codex release

[Dageran]

I've been running a few flavors of Wraith since 8th dropped. Lots of friendly games, and one moderately successful tournament.

So far in my experience:

• D-Scythes feel like the de-facto core troop. You'll want these if you're planning on running a dedicated Wraith-list. Implacable is awesome, auto-hitting means they can run across the board and threaten flyers, and S10 -4 means they can reliably wound anything. (Yvraine also has the best synergy with them.) As an Iyanden player- D-scythes are the core troop I felt like I was missing in 7th, and they're awesome.
  

• Wraithguard with Cannons, by contrast, now feel like fire-dragons for Wraiths. They're specialists, and not as spammable. Needing to hit/wound with only 5 shots, means you're looking at 2-3 d6 wounds. This makes their damage output way more swingy than the D-scythes, and I'm not quite sure the 25 pt difference is worth it. For I'm currently running 1x Cannon guard to 2x D-scythes, and that split feels about right.

• Wraithblade/Axes - Beautiful models, but just too expensive. I've tried running 5 in my wall list, but ended up cutting them on points alone. They're solid performers, but you can't afford to take them in a dedicated wraith list right now due to the already low model count. I'd say to go with dual-swords, but I think I'd recommend the D-scythes to the swords, anyway, because they perform well without support and in any situation.

[Partninja]

If we're also talking Wraithblades...

A unit of five with ghost swords, led by a Spiritseer in a Serpent is an excellent combat unit. They've performed very well each time I've taken them this edition. The five Wraithblades are very similar in cost to ten Banshees (with Exarch weapons) and get the job done much more reliably in my experience.