How to counter Wraithguard?

[Gornall]

One of my regular opponents has started running a full unit of Wraithguard with Spirtseer (or whatever maks it scoring with Conceal) escorted by Uriel (not sure on spelling, but the CC guy with Pie Plate) and Eldrad in 2000 point games. With them Fortuned constantly, I'm having a very hard time putting a dent in them and they pretty much play board denial while the rest of the army does the killing. The rest of his army consists of stuff like a Wraithguard, Harlies, Striking Scorpions, War-Walkers, Avengers, Reapers, and Warp Spiders. Sometimes he mixes it up with a Falcon with Fire Dragons to really pop tanks. I've been coping by outmanuevering them, but with Scorpions, Walkers, and Spiders coming from reserves it's tough to keep out of their reach. Any ideas on the best way to deal with them?

[Firedrake28]

With both of those nasty special characters in that unit, there's not a whole lot you can do to kill them. The only thing I can think of that might be able to take on that unit is a squad of Assault Terminators (perhaps with a Chaplain) in a Land Raider Redeemer. The flamestorm cannons will ignore the Wraithguard's armor and cover saves, so you won't have to deal with Fortune and with their high S, you'll wound the Wraiths easily enough as well. When combat comes around, charge in, weather Yriel's attacks by relying on your excellent Invulnerable save given to you by storm shields, then let rip with your thunder hammers. You should be able to put paid to the unit easily enough, especially if you manage to instant-kill Yriel (don't count on this too much, however. With a 4+ rerollable Invul, it'll be difficult at best). Mostly you're going to want to target the normal squad members and do as much damage as possible. If all goes well, you should win by a large margin. Unfortunately there's no way to sweeping advance and finish them off after they fall back. :(

 

In truth though, the above tactic relies on a very specific set of circumstances and too much can go wrong at any given time. If the Land Raider is destroyed before you get close, or even immobilized, you're pretty much out of luck, especially when sitting in front of an army with so many guns.

 

Overall, your best bet may be avoidance. Try to keep your army mobile with transports and other fast units and you should easily be able to outmanuver such a large, foot slogging unit. In objective games you'll want to essentially let them have whichever objective they're sitting on and focus on the others. When it comes to Annihilation, just point your guns elsewhere. The Eldar have plenty of soft, squishy units to earn kill points from.

[gil galed]

You could always ally in some GKT, Str 6 with I4 means they will be striking at the same time but with 3 attacks each on the charge and 4 from the BC you'll be laying down some hurt. The weapons are power weapons so you'll be ignoring saves and at str 6 wounding on a 4+ while WS5 vs 4 means you're hitting on a 3+.

 

For 199 points you get 1 brother captain and 3 GKT.

 

If you charge them out then:

 

13 attacks = 8.6 hits = 4.3W which isn't too bad really,

 

In return if you charged say 6 (which plus a warlock is like 250pts?), 6 attacks= 3 hits = 2 wounds = (with 2+ save) 0.3 dead

 

 

Just don't let him open up on you with those wraithcannons, they are nasty, 2+ wounding and ap2 means dead terminators, infact even on vehicles they are pretty good.

[Gornall]

You could always ally in some GKT, Str 6 with I4 means they will be striking at the same time but with 3 attacks each on the charge and 4 from the BC you'll be laying down some hurt. The weapons are power weapons so you'll be ignoring saves and at str 6 wounding on a 4+ while WS5 vs 4 means you're hitting on a 3+.

 

For 199 points you get 1 brother captain and 3 GKT.

 

If you charge them out then:

 

13 attacks = 8.6 hits = 4.3W which isn't too bad really,

 

In return if you charged say 6 (which plus a warlock is like 250pts?), 6 attacks= 3 hits = 2 wounds = (with 2+ save) 0.3 dead

 

 

Just don't let him open up on you with those wraithcannons, they are nasty, 2+ wounding and ap2 means dead terminators, infact even on vehicles they are pretty good.

 

I've thought about this, and I might try proxying it up. However, the Wraithguard act as melee tarpits (he runs whatever the max is) while the Characters are the ones that do the killing. To me, it's a very nasty (albeit expensive and slow) combo that works well at board denial. I think of it as a Eldzilla. :lol: They march down the middle, and either force me to throw my troops into the meat grinder, or push to the sides where his outflankers come in and chew me up.

[Giga]

A vindicator shot or two into the wraithguard+characters is apt to bust them open, I'd say. Not overly efficient, but surely worth a shot. :lol:

 

If they move down the table, than that means they won't be in cover all the time, which only makes them vindies more potent.

[gil galed]

I've thought about this, and I might try proxying it up. However, the Wraithguard act as melee tarpits (he runs whatever the max is) while the Characters are the ones that do the killing. To me, it's a very nasty (albeit expensive and slow) combo that works well at board denial. I think of it as a Eldzilla. :P They march down the middle, and either force me to throw my troops into the meat grinder, or push to the sides where his outflankers come in and chew me up.

 

Well max is 10 plus warlock

 

so its gonna take you 3 average turns to munch through them all with only 4 GKT.

 

But you've gotta remember

 

10 + a warlock with fortune is coming in at 395 points, which is almost double you're 199 points payed for those 4 GKT. Including Yriel you're looking at a 550pt unit.

 

I'll admit that Yriel will be nasty at I7, 4A will hit on 3's but then only wound on 5's being S3 and you have a 5+ inv so only .59W, the pie plate is ap3 so you're terminators need not worry to much about it.

 

 

in return your GKT are str6 so will instant kill Yriel, if you bulk it up to a 6 man squad with incenerator (301pts), you should score a few wounds in shooting (10 storm bolter shots and a str 5 ap4 template- about 1-2 wounds on wraithguard) then on the charge score about 7-8 wounds on the wraithguard, that means you should mop them up in about 2 turns providing you get the charge. If you have khan with them in the LR to give them furious charge you suddenly have S7 monsters who will be striking at I5 (so less the Yriel but before the wraithguard) and should bump you wounds up high enough to literal kill the entire squad on the charge, proxy it and see how it goes.

[Terminus]

Orbital Bombardment!

[Warprat]

Completely boneheaded post removed.

[gil galed]

Orbital Bombardment!

 

the other option,

[mega_marines]

Artillery in the forms of short and long both work well. These be the dreaded Demolisher Cannon residing in the Vindicator and the skyward Orbital Bombardment. If you do not have either of these, use Lascannons and Krak Missile to bust Wraithguard open. Other than that and Multi-Melta,s other options seem somewhat unattractive.

[gainesdp]

Just to echo previous comments, I would just charge in with a group of TH/SS terminators.

 

Charge w/ terminators.

 

Uriel, 4 attacks, a bit less than 1 TH/SS terminator dead on average.

Eldrad, 2 attacks (if staff is played as 1-handed), ~.5 TH/SS terminator dead on average.

Wraithguard, 10 attacks, ~.5 TH/SS terminator dead on average.

 

So, on average, you would have ~2 dead TH/SS terminators dead before they swing. 9 TH attacks back is ~4 wounds on average, which is either 4 dead wraithguard, or you were trying to tag Eldrad or Yriel.

 

Maybe that isn't as good as I thought; however throw a Chaplain in there, and the 9 TH attacks is ~6 wounds on average + ~1 wound from the chaplain. Regardless, that is enough to win combat and force fearless rolls, but more importantly, you've locked up Eldrad in CC. Sure, it is a battle of attrition you may not win as presented, but presumably you used a LR to get the terminator into combat, so you've popped a few on the way in. Additionally, from a points perspective you used ~300 points to combat ~700. Or ~550 to combat ~700 if you include the LR (although it will continue to be useful after dropping of the terminators, so not sure exactly how to figure that).

 

I realize after I typed this, I didn't account for the warlock; however, I don't really want to go back and edit. Regardless, my point stands, throw the TH/SS terminators plus a suitably nasty HQ or second unit into combat with them. The wraithguard are pretty much dead weight in CC, and Eldrad is more survivable than particularly nasty in CC. Yriel, I never played against before, but minus the AP 3 blast (that seems like it would kill as many Eldar as marines) doesn't seem like a beast necessarily.

[Terminus]

THSS terminators are the solution to pretty much everything nasty your opponent could throw at you. If only I didn't feel so guilty using them.. the new stormshield rules simply make no sense. They've always been described as small metal shields whose projected energy field wasn't big enough to protect from ranged attacks, but now they are far superior to the holy relics that protect Chapter Masters.

[Firedrake28]

THSS terminators are the solution to pretty much everything nasty your opponent could throw at you. If only I didn't feel so guilty using them.. the new stormshield rules simply make no sense. They've always been described as small metal shields whose projected energy field wasn't big enough to protect from ranged attacks, but now they are far superior to the holy relics that protect Chapter Masters.

 

Get the Forge World Black Templar ones and file off the Templar iconography. They're considerably larger than the normal ones - I'd say they could cover at least 3/5ths of the model, which is handy for protecting your body from incoming shots.

[Gornall]

Yeah... I'll try the Vindicator and Termies. I run one Vindicator, 1 TFC, and a LRC with 5 SS/TH Termies. I've had bad luck with the pieplates and my $50 LRC is cursed and pops like nothing. (Today I lost it with a 3+ cover save from a fortified building to a non-TL Railgun in a Tau game... 6, 6, 2 (my save), 6, BOOM) That and myTBH, I'm still getting the feel of my new army composition, so I should get better as I go. But it sounds like I have the basic pieces (going to add 2 more Termies though) and I just need to use them a little more surgically.

 

That and I'm going to bust out some purity seals/bling for the LRC, Vindicator, and TFC to boost their confidence so they perform well in future games...

[eyescrossed]

I'll admit that Yriel will be nasty at I7, 4A will hit on 3's but then only wound on 5's being S3 and you have a 5+ inv so only .59W, the pie plate is ap3 so you're terminators need not worry to much about it.

What? He has the Spear of Twilight, which always wounds on a 2+ and ignores armour saves, and is Str9 against vehicles.

He'll cause 1.48 wounds, not .59.

[Firedrake28]

Be careful with the Vindicator. It can cause a lot of damage to that unit, just remember that they'll have a cover save as long as the Warlock is still around and with Eldrad casting Fortune all the time, you likely won't be able to devastate the unit quite as easily as you'd like. Make sure you have a backup plan (like the Termies in a Land Raider ;) )

[gainesdp]

I'll admit that Yriel will be nasty at I7, 4A will hit on 3's but then only wound on 5's being S3 and you have a 5+ inv so only .59W, the pie plate is ap3 so you're terminators need not worry to much about it.

What? He has the Spear of Twilight, which always wounds on a 2+ and ignores armour saves, and is Str9 against vehicles.

He'll cause 1.48 wounds, not .59.

 

Just to be clear, he wasn't quoting me, but in my numbers I was accounting for the better invulnerable save of stormshields. Agreed though, he will cause on average, 2.22 wounds, and if you are using 5+ invulnerable saves, 1.48 wounds on average will be unsaved.

[Vissah]

Assault Terminators with TH and SS.

 

The answer to all your problems :(

[waaanial00]

Im sure that it has been discounted for a very good reason but 10 Stern with Lysander... Force a lot of wounds and hope that stuff gets through. Then when they charge in Lysander starts killing. Their armour save is only 3+ so you can expect them to die just like MEQ to a great hail of gunfire and Lysander stands up to at least 3 rounds of combat before succombing to massive number of wounds.

 

From Mathhammer:

 

20 shots at 12", 17.8 hit, 14.8 wound

 

4.9 get through their armour but with the reroll expect only 1.6 to get through on a 3+ armour.

 

This means that you wound at least every Wraithguard, the Warlock, Eldrad and Yuriel. More chance of putting some wounds on the characters but it will mean that each of the Wraithguard will have to take a save in addition to all of the other IC's.

 

Wan

[gil galed]

Im sure that it has been discounted for a very good reason but 10 Stern with Lysander... Force a lot of wounds and hope that stuff gets through. Then when they charge in Lysander starts killing. Their armour save is only 3+ so you can expect them to die just like MEQ to a great hail of gunfire and Lysander stands up to at least 3 rounds of combat before succombing to massive number of wounds.

 

From Mathhammer:

 

20 shots at 12", 17.8 hit, 14.8 wound

 

4.9 get through their armour but with the reroll expect only 1.6 to get through on a 3+ armour.

 

This means that you wound at least every Wraithguard, the Warlock, Eldrad and Yuriel. More chance of putting some wounds on the characters but it will mean that each of the Wraithguard will have to take a save in addition to all of the other IC's.

 

Wan

 

With armour save reroll you're technically better off using the ap3 rounds as you'll make on average 2.99W which can't be saved. Although of course you'll have to take some get hot saves.

 

however you should never try this... why? the wraith cannons are ap2 and strength x so always wound on a 2+ and in return will munch you, hit on 3's killed on 2's? i think not

[eyescrossed]

however you should never try this... why? the wraith cannons are ap2 and strength x so always wound on a 2+ and in return will munch you, hit on 3's killed on 2's? i think not

And on a roll of 6 to wound they cause Instant Death ;)

[Sternguard sergeant McColl]

Sternguard hellfire might be able to dent them, not as hard as the option aformentioned but still solid. Unless your opponent rolls good armor saves.

[eyescrossed]

Sternguard hellfire might be able to dent them, not as hard as the option aformentioned but still solid. Unless your opponent rolls good armor saves.

Or they're Fortuned and get rerolls.

[waaanial00]

Sternguard hellfire might be able to dent them, not as hard as the option aformentioned but still solid. Unless your opponent rolls good armor saves.

 

This was my example.

 

With the AP3 rounds you get the following with my example of Lysander and 10 Stern

 

17.8 hits, 3 wounds (1.5 if they are in cover assuming they cant reroll that)

 

Much better but as they are fearless it doesnt make that much of a difference.

 

I would ask though, why are you intent on killing this unit? Ok they are troops and are scoring but to be honest if you can kill the rest of the army and contest his objective then it is a completely pointless unit being so short ranged, it is also absorbing a massive amount of HQ assistance and 2 Eldar spells per turn.

 

Wan

[eyescrossed]

17.8 hits, 3 wounds (1.5 if they are in cover assuming they cant reroll that)

They can reroll ALL saves.