Against two of the shootiest armies in the game IG and Tau my Wraithblades (axes and shields) have had the most success. The IG army was especially brutal with 4+ units of Plasma Vets, Plasmacutioner, Pask in a Punisher and the whole nine yards. The one turn I left my Wraithblades exposed Pask unloaded everything the Punisher had and I lost one Wraithblade (I may even have the bat-rep in my project log to back it up
). I've run the Wraithblades about 4 times against the same IG list which features tons of Ap2/Ap3 via Basilisks, Plasma Vets, Plasmacutioners et. al and 3/4 times they have gotten into the enemy lines tearing apart infantry.
Same thing with Tau... against 2 different players in about 3 games they managed to get into the Firewarriors, Broadsides (never could reach the Riptide before the game ended), and tear them up.
In about 6-7 games of play testing them, they've only really fell on their faces twice, but made it into combat every time.
There is no denying that when left exposed the Wraithblades can be brought down, but in actual playing experience against some very competitive armies my Wraithblades have excelled. They are not a unit you can just run down the gut, but in a streamlined, high performance army they are very easy to fit in due to how cheap they are and can be invaluable tool.
Especially when you have high value shooting units like Laser Bikes, Wraithlords and even Wave Serpents garnering so much attention its easy for a cheap 5 man unit of Wraithblades to drop on the target priority list.
Anyway, you may not *like* them but for points efficiency at only 10 points more than a naked 10 man Space Marine tactical squad (!), they have a ton of wallop, versatility in terms of what targets they can handle, and have high value for a shooty army like Eldar.
Anyway I'll cease in my attempts to convince you of their value, as the thread's purpose is not to debate the merit of Wraithblades
but what close-combat units do you run Lyonic? Like I said in the opening post, I've had problems with high model count armies reaching my lines, and having no place for my shooty units to run due to my opponents saturation of the board. Or do you forgo close-combat all together, living and dying in the shooting phase?