How to counter Wraithguard?

[Warprat]

How about comming from another direction...

 

 

Instead of simply using a strenght vs. strength approch to overwhem your opponent, why not play to his weakness, neutralize his strenght?

 

 

Eldar Strategy:

* Place an Uber unit at the center, while other units attack from the outside.

 

Strategy strength:

* He is playing to the individual strength of each Eldar unit. Together, they are super powerfull.

 

Strategy weakness:

* He is using reserves, his army must arrive piecemeal. You have some time to work on the Uber unit, and prepare for his other forces.

* The standard Eldar weakness, average armor and morale.

 

 

 

Uber Unit

 

Strenght:

* High toughness.

* Rerolls.

* Increadable firepower within 18."

 

Weakness:

* Those Wraithcannons are nasy, fortunately, they only have a 12' range.

* The combined unit costs a lot, depleting the rest of the army.

* Eldrad is tied to the Wraiths.

* They are slow.

 

 

 

Marine Counter Strategy:

* Exploit his weakness.

* Neutralize his strength.

 

Exploit Weakness:

* His army depends on movement.- Thunderfire Cannons.

* He has no long range weapons.- Fire outside his range.

* His non Wraith armor is average.- His reserve units can be killed relatively fast. Hvy bolters, hvy flamers.

* Piecemeal reserves (and fewer units due to the Uber unit) They can be ganged up on. Break those you are able to, then fall back to the center (after the Wraithguard have been hammered.) to give yourself distance if necessaary.

 

Neutralize Strength:

* High toughness. -Scouts with sniper rifles and hvy bolter (poison Wraithguard, and AP4 others.) Plasma cannons, Orbital Bombardment (long shot, literally).

* Good mobility.- Counter mobility w/rhinos, Speeders (w/multimelta, hvy flamer), bikes, LS Storm.

* Great short range firepower.- Rhinos to protect against small arms, inital reserve attack surprises, and mobility to gang up on piecemeal reserves.

* Exarchs.- Telion

 

 

Warprat ;)

 

 

Minor spelling, punctuation..

[Mr Peon]

sure heavy weapons, powerfists and assault termies can kill them, but another cheaper option is sniper scouts. Hit on a 5,6 wound on a 4+. Sure there are saves if you dont roll the 6 to wound. But they are cheap and can be used against all heavy T MC's. Also with the heavy bolter 2+ to wound blast you can get in a few hits.

 

THere is always the sternguard 2+ wound rounds as well, but they are more expensive and have a shorter range.

 

I have had some success with both options.

[Grey Mage]

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. 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.

It IS eldar-zilla in a way lol. So the question becomes why are you playing his game? Dont assault it, shoot it. Throw in a unit of Devastators with four missile Launchers and youll wound on a 2+ from anywhere on the table eh? BTW his name is Prince Yriel. And gods, that unit is nearly 600pts by itself! Surely you can throw 200 some points into a Devastator squad to bring it down....

 

Warp Spiders and Scorpions giving you problems? Rapid fire/bolter the scorpions and assault the spiders. Unless he gave the spiders hit and run your in for a relatively easy fight.

 

As for War-walkers. Remember theyre only BS 3, and AV 10- so hit them with those same missile Launchers and watchem drop. Did they outflank? I dont care, your heavy weapon complement should be able to tackle this- your bolters can tackle this. They get one round of shooting off at you. Lets say they all have starcannons, worst case scenario for your infantry and bad for most tanks- thats 12 shots, 6 hit, 5 wound... you lost half a squad which say its sterngaurd even means youve lost 125pts, normally alot less *tacticals for instance would only be 80pts*. That squad... yeah it costs 240pts.

 

Harlequins- these guys are kinda scary Ill admit. 3 attacks, four chaging and a couple of them have rending, one might have a powerweapon. *shrugs* Theyve got a 5+ invulnerable.... so bolter them to death.

 

Really what you need is some devastators with missile launchers and maybe a whirlwind. Stay away from big tanks, and expect some things to die no matter what. It wont matter, keep the objectives in mind.

 

Oh, before I got- shameless plug:

http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/index.p...howtopic=165294

[Gornall]

Thanks for all the replies! Yeah... what I've been doing has been either trying to tarpit the Wraithguard or avoid them completely. I've found that most shooting is better spent elsewhere with my list. I just don't have the quality of fire to really dent them without letting the rest of his army run rampant. I'll keep trying to do the avoidance thing, and just do better about keeping myself positioned to deal with the outflankers. That and I'm boosting my Assault Termies up to 5 TH/SS and 2 LCs (not because of him... they're just great for anything), so if I need to, I can throw them at the Wraithguard and feel confident that they'll hold them for a few turns.

[Warprat]

Oh, before I got- shameless plug:

http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/index.p...howtopic=165294

 

 

One of the best tacticas I have ever read...

 

 

 

Thank you!

 

Warprat ;)

[Sethis]

If you don't need to kill it... don't. Focus on wiping out the rest of his army. You've already said that you're more maneuverable than him (meaning he doesn't know how to play Eldar) so staying outside 12" of 1 10 man squad shouldn't be too hard. Take Heavy flamers anywhere in your army list and just run around burning his infantry. From what you said he only has two scoring units in the first place, so just take out the Avengers and anything you think might try to contest.

[Cadarn]

One thing I'm surprised no-one has yet mentioned is a Librarian. If you're throwing assault terminators into the mix against character and Psyker heavy enemy then a Terminator Librarian can work wonders, if for no other reason than his psychic hood which can be used to counter the Farseer powers. It won't do much good against a warlock, as their powers are passive, and I don't believe they are affected. But it can counter fortune and anything else he tries.

 

On top of that, null zone can be very effective for negating that pesky rune armour and Yriel's force shield thing. Then you have Destructor or smite, as some good close support shooting prior to the charge, as well as the awesome Vortex of Doom which is death to high toughness units, especially if they're packed close together like that. Thanks to the Terminator armour he can cast that and then charge in.

 

If you really want to go to town you could take Tigurius, but the cost may be overkill and you would find yourself wishing for Terminator armour.

 

So for all he has going on there, I would say that Assault Terminators in a Redeemer (or even a standard LR TBH. You can then use the god hammer cannons to pop skimmers or take out some of the Wraithguard at range before getting stuck in), and a Terminator Librarian with your powers of choice, as all are effective to varying degrees here.

 

As someone else has already mentioned, you don't HAVE to kill them, especially in objective based games. Either slow them down so they don't reach the objective, or let them take it and then, assuming you have the last turn, fly in a nippy unit at the very end to contest it. In Kill Point games, you really do need to nail them, as Kill Points are hard to come by against a small elite forcce such as that.