40k: on Eldar Wraithguard in a Tau force
Shortly after 6th Edition rules were released, I saw a way to fix what I saw as one of the Tau's primary weaknesses: a lack of resilient scoring units. Since they are Battle Brothers with Eldar (and, might as well admit it, I like the Eldar), I decided to try for the scoring Wraithguard blob for an ally. Since I've never been thrilled with the official Wraithguard model, and I was even less excited about what the blasted things cost, I decided to build my own. I still haven't quite finished them, but the effect is recognizable. I'll have pictures eventually, but basically I took Bloodletter legs and put the torso on them backwards (which required a fair amount of Green Stuff and cutting off the part of it that keys into the legs) so they're standing erect rather than hunched over like a standard Bloodletter. Arms are mostly Kroot with the blades cut off the guns and the barrel shortened, then whatever cone-shaped bitz I could find attached to the end. The head is the inside portion of a Bloodletter head: the skull but not the horns or face. After a tedious amount of sanding off scales and spikes, the final product is within a millimeter or so of the dimensions of an actual Wraithguard model!
That is, an old Wraithguard model. With the new Eldar codex, the Wraithguard got a much-needed resculpt, making them a more appropriate size for as tough as they are. Of course, that means that my cleverly constructed stand-ins are no longer valid "counts as" if anybody wants to be a stickler about it. I put some of them on the right size bases at least, so they are probably valid in all but the strictest tournaments, but they're still noticeably too short.
Anyway, last Friday at Battlefront Games I had an opportunity to try the Wraithguard allies with my Tau primary detachment in a team game. I didn't take any notes or pictures (although I saw one of my opponents doing so, so a more detailed battle report might be forthcoming), but it was two teams of two, 1850 points per person, for 3700 points per side. That big a game on a standard table should have been absolute chaos, but it was merely crowded! My partner, Jason, had a drop pod heavy Space Marine force with a Storm Raven and a conversion beamer tech marine rounding things out. On the other side, Tony ran the classic Dark Eldar "flying boats" force, which puts out entirely too much lance and similar firepower until enough of them have been swatted down! I never did get rid of the two Ravagers. Jeff ran a Chaos alliance with a flying Nurgle prince, three Helldrakes (I despise those things!), four big gun IG tanks, and a couple of cultist squads.
My list had two teams of Fire Warriors in Devilfish, a Skyshark bomber, Longstrike in an ionhead, several crisis teams, and some Eldar allies. The most important unit in this list is usually the unit of a crisis suit commander with iridium armor, feel no pain, twin missile pods, 2 shield drones, and 6 (BS 5 because of his drone controller) marker drones. There was also a small squad with twin missile pods and interceptor, and a squad with plasma rifles and marker drones. The ally blob was six Wraithguard with D-scythes, a Spiritseer, and Commander Shadowsun.
The Spiritseer's job was to make the Wraithguard troops, and to make them even harder to kill by rolling the psychic power that gives them a +1 bonus to their armor save. Shadowsun is there mostly for the Stealth and Shrouding. If everything works, you have a scoring unit of 8 models that is toughness 6, has a 2+ armor save, a 4+ cover in the open or a 2+ in any terrain, and flamers that do 6d3 hits at strength 4 AP 2 in overwatch, causing instant death on a roll of 6. That should be extremely hard to kill, right? Well, as Tony proved, hard but not impossible. The first place where things went wrong is that I wasn't able to roll the armor save buff psychic power so they were not nearly as resilient as I would have preferred. The second problem is that Tony found two weaknesses of the plan that he was able to exploit: poison weapons and Fleshbane don't care about high toughness, and you can only overwatch once per turn. The mobility of Dark Eldar allowed him to get two units into charge range at the same time. I annihilated one of them with the Overwatching flame templates, but couldn't do anything about the other one! I guess the moral of the story is that while it's not a bad unit, it shouldn't be sent in completely unsupported. A little supporting fire from the Tau units would have been helpful and might have saved them.
Other lessons learned from the game:
That is, an old Wraithguard model. With the new Eldar codex, the Wraithguard got a much-needed resculpt, making them a more appropriate size for as tough as they are. Of course, that means that my cleverly constructed stand-ins are no longer valid "counts as" if anybody wants to be a stickler about it. I put some of them on the right size bases at least, so they are probably valid in all but the strictest tournaments, but they're still noticeably too short.
Anyway, last Friday at Battlefront Games I had an opportunity to try the Wraithguard allies with my Tau primary detachment in a team game. I didn't take any notes or pictures (although I saw one of my opponents doing so, so a more detailed battle report might be forthcoming), but it was two teams of two, 1850 points per person, for 3700 points per side. That big a game on a standard table should have been absolute chaos, but it was merely crowded! My partner, Jason, had a drop pod heavy Space Marine force with a Storm Raven and a conversion beamer tech marine rounding things out. On the other side, Tony ran the classic Dark Eldar "flying boats" force, which puts out entirely too much lance and similar firepower until enough of them have been swatted down! I never did get rid of the two Ravagers. Jeff ran a Chaos alliance with a flying Nurgle prince, three Helldrakes (I despise those things!), four big gun IG tanks, and a couple of cultist squads.
My list had two teams of Fire Warriors in Devilfish, a Skyshark bomber, Longstrike in an ionhead, several crisis teams, and some Eldar allies. The most important unit in this list is usually the unit of a crisis suit commander with iridium armor, feel no pain, twin missile pods, 2 shield drones, and 6 (BS 5 because of his drone controller) marker drones. There was also a small squad with twin missile pods and interceptor, and a squad with plasma rifles and marker drones. The ally blob was six Wraithguard with D-scythes, a Spiritseer, and Commander Shadowsun.
The Spiritseer's job was to make the Wraithguard troops, and to make them even harder to kill by rolling the psychic power that gives them a +1 bonus to their armor save. Shadowsun is there mostly for the Stealth and Shrouding. If everything works, you have a scoring unit of 8 models that is toughness 6, has a 2+ armor save, a 4+ cover in the open or a 2+ in any terrain, and flamers that do 6d3 hits at strength 4 AP 2 in overwatch, causing instant death on a roll of 6. That should be extremely hard to kill, right? Well, as Tony proved, hard but not impossible. The first place where things went wrong is that I wasn't able to roll the armor save buff psychic power so they were not nearly as resilient as I would have preferred. The second problem is that Tony found two weaknesses of the plan that he was able to exploit: poison weapons and Fleshbane don't care about high toughness, and you can only overwatch once per turn. The mobility of Dark Eldar allowed him to get two units into charge range at the same time. I annihilated one of them with the Overwatching flame templates, but couldn't do anything about the other one! I guess the moral of the story is that while it's not a bad unit, it shouldn't be sent in completely unsupported. A little supporting fire from the Tau units would have been helpful and might have saved them.
Other lessons learned from the game:
- When the Skyshark actually makes its reserve roll, it's a pretty good unit. While I didn't exactly sweep the skies clean of those "Hellducks" the interceptor drones and the Skyshark itself dropped one of them and might have softened up another.
- Longstrike got immobilized early on, which slowed him down quite a bit. Markerlights for ignoring cover and the long range of the gun made him still useful, but I was a lot more limited in my choice of targets than usual. As soon as his tank was towed to the nearest garage he started negotiating for the installation of an Automated Repair System!
- My nice, cheap, missile-pods-and-interceptor crisis team might be a good idea on paper, but it needs at least a couple of drones to soak up shots or it just attracts the attention of an opponent seeking First Blood.
- My main crisis suit team still doesn't quite work. A suit with drone controller, C&C node, and flamer makes everything twinlinked, and up to 8 plasma rifle shots plus 4 markerlight shots is a lot of firepower. Unfortunately, with only two shield drones a mobile opponent is going to make vital models the closest ones to a squad firing at them, and everything but the shield drones is a vital model in that squad! I need to run the numbers of 4 plasma rifles that are twin-linked versus 6 that aren't and maybe forget about the secondary markerlights.
- And finally, could somebody please explain to me why a Devilfish that has a top hatch, a door on either side, and a third one in the back STILL has no fire points?? Fire warriors are too slow and squishy to spend much time on foot, but they have to get out for any of them to fire. Even a single fire point would make a difference. A pathfinder with ion rifle, or a fire warrior squad leader with markerlight, would be useful from a devilfish parked in cover and lobbing smart missiles at the enemy.
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