Wraithknight thoughts

So my attention has recently been turned towards the Eldar Wraithknight.  One of my gaming group is consistently telling me I need to buy one.  With the considerable price tag attached to this unit in both money and points, you need to ask and answer yourself a number of questions first.

1.  Do my armies have 240-300+ points spare for a large monster with just two guns?
2.  Will it synergise with my existing Eldar force?
3.  Is it really better than taking two Wraithlords or Fire Prisms who cost half as much?

The first question is very important.  How cruicial to the running of your army is having one or more of these creatures?  I play a fairly wraith heavy eldar army and I have no spare points, never mind slots for this to take part.

Its firepower, while on the face of it impressive, is really not.  If you think about it, the Wraithcannons are just a pair of longer ranged Wraithguard guns.  So it has the firepower of two Wraithguard.  Fielding this naked is the most points efficient, but should only be done if you really need two more long ranged anti tank guns.   I am fairly certain Fireprisms work out a lot better choices, because they can fire blasts as well as a powerful lance shot from their main gun.  Absolutely noone ever looks at the standard Landraider and goes "Wow, two twinlinked lascannons, thats a very powerful battle tank".  They buy it for its dual nature as a heavily armoured transport with guns.  This version of Wraithknight has roughly the same firepower, although it isn't twinlinked, nor can it fire any shoulder weapons, and can't transport either.

I would ignore the Sword/Shield entirely.  Paying extra points, lose both my guns, gain a shield and a single rerolled miss in close combat.  Really?  I think not.  I think this is the only chassis that would ever use both staggeringly over priced shoulder mounts though.

The third option, Suncannon/shield initially looks pretty viable.  You get more or less 3 plasmacannon shots, without gets hot and at s6 not s7.  So far so good.  But the price is an eye wateringly high, when you buy the nigh on compulsary scatter laser.    You also lose anti tank for a bunch of anti infantry shots.  This is horribly inefficient compared to the Fire prism also.  Do you really need more anti infantry fire?  Eldar are full of them!  Also, two Wraithlords with paired starcannons would throw down 8 shots between them, and can also have the sword.

Next up you need to check if it will synergise.  It is a very unusual unit.  It has very little firepower and its combat ability, while strong vs s3 or s4 units, it will fold like a soggy cardboard box in combat against something like Thunder Hammer terminators or anything armed with poison.    It is reasonably tough against shooting, but even kitted out with a force field, its better to keep in cover than rely on that.  Otherwise you could find a mere 6 krak missiles ending your day prematurely.

Thirdly you need to consider if other units can do its job better.  First to consider is the Wraithlord.  It is half as much and comes with half as many wounds.  It doesn't however come with built in heavy weapons, so you will need to purchase them.  Wraithlords are characters, so can challenge characters, unlike the wraith knight.  Wraithlords are also considerably smaller and easier to hide in cover.  Wraithknights are faster due to jump jets and can in theory deep strike, provided you want to risk it mishapping.  It can't however be in two places at once, and its firepower is pretty much worse than a pair of Wraithlords who can have flamers and swords without penalty.

That is all well and good, but they seem to come out much the same as a pair of Wriathlords really.  I think I would prefer two models over one big one, especially given theres not all that much difference between a brightlance and a wraithcannon, but each to their own.

No the biggest problem is the Fire Prism.  This tank, for a lot less points, even with the compulsory holofields works out at least a hundred points cheaper and is faster, tough, and can engage both tanks and infantry with ease on the same chassis.

My conclusion from this piece is that the Wraithknight is not an ultra competitive choice.  It may be in some builds, specifically Taudar or Eldau or wraithwing lists, that fielding three of them works out just fine for you. My issue is that their armour save is not all that ultra fantastic considering most weapons being aimed at it will bypass it entirely, and invulnerable saves are not brilliant on the two chassis which can have them.  I mean how often do non stormshield terminators fail their saves?  A lot!

Asurman and Dire Avengers. Why my opinion has changed

Anyone reading this blog for a long time will no doubt be laughing at the amount of backtracks I have made on actually using units, as opposed to just reading about them.  This is another such article.

Despite much trepidation I have been using both Dire Avengers, and Asurman in my lists.  Both seem over priced for what they do, yet in using them, I have won more games.

In football management terms, sometimes you can have a player in your team, who doesn't appear to do a great deal, but his inclusion means you have more wins, so you keep including him without knowing why.

This is the case with my Dire Avengers.  Everything about them screams over priced to me.  Yet they consistently do a job and do it well.  Perhaps its because I don't waste points on Exarchs and just field units of 8 normal warriors.  At the moment I don't really know, but I am endeavouring to find out.

Asurman on the other hand is solid as a rock.  This is the reason he is my Warlord.  He has worse shooting than half the other Phoenix Lords, and worse combat than pretty much all of the Phoenix lords, but is one of the most expensive.

The key to using him is to understand his Warlord trait ability.  D3 Warlord traits.  What you are hoping to roll is number 4.  This allows him to reroll his armour save.  A 2+ rerollable save, with eternal warrior and a 4++ invulnerable save rerolling 1s is insanely strong.  Small arms fire will bounce off him 35/36 times he is wounded which makes killing him virtually impossible outside of ap2 fire.

Stand at the front of the unit he is in, and tank everything.  You can look out sir any Ap2 hits and even if you fail, you are eternal warrior so its not the end of the world if a railgun hits you in the face.   In the event you don't get the Warlord trait you want, you can always hope you get Fortune.  You do have a farseer right?

His shooting attacks are pretty lame.  A pair of catapults making them twinlinked isn't really all that, considering his high bs of 7 would have made it kind of twinlinked anyway.

Get him into combat however and he shines.  His special Diresword makes him S5 AP2 striking on initative with a boat load of attacks.  He can and will carve through anything without a decent save, and if they have poor leadership, he will do an even more damage when they fail their leadership tests.  This special ability even bypasses eternal warrior!