Dealing with Craftworld Wraithknights

Firstly im sorry if this has already been discussed as I must have missed it. Anyhow I am wondering how all of you would go about dealing with a Wraithknight. I am playing against craftworld eldar soon and have been pondering this. With Poison only wounding them on a 6 I feel that it would be best to rely on dark lances and blasters for range attacks. I thought that grotesques or Talos in close combat with it could be a good way of potentially knocking it out (especially with the corpsetheif formation). However i was wondering what others think and what they have learnt from their own experience playing against it, Thanks!

I play a Freakshow list, and I have zero concerns over Wraithknights. They will occupy probably a single turn of my time (where they will draw a considerable amount of my psychic resources) but will, unless reserve rolls go horribly, most likely not survive.

Mirror of Minds with a -5 modifier (easy to accomplish) will kill them with no possibility of survival. Psychic Shriek can also beat them senseless, as can Mind War or Laugh of Sorrows. Barring that, the lists are still filled with darklight, ossefactors, and massed venom fire.

I personally play a list that involves no allies from outside of DE codex and supplement.

I Currently own 4 venoms, around 25 warriors, two raiders, two ravagers, talos & cronos, Haemonculus, Succubus, Archon,  10 Scoruges, 6 reavers, 5 grotesques, 10 wyches, Razorwing. Thats what i have to work with.

I run the grotesqurie in most of my games, they managed to kill a knight because of the instant death on 6s and the high amount of attacks they produce. The problem is that I have to dedicate both units in the grotesqurie to kill them. The true born with 4 blasters I take also helps. Lately I have been taking more blasters and replacing my heatlances for them in my generalized list because all these eldar players have been poping out of no where.

I see you have the units for the dark artisan. I have had terrible luck with that formation againts knights because you cant take feel no pains against D. Reavers with cluster cal-trops is very useful if you can get them to the knight...

Personally I thought I had it figured out and I would win a good number of my games but then at the tournament at my local store I lost one game to a Eldar formation called the Wraith Host that had eldar allies. All the units in it can reroll there hits and it constists of a ton of D weapons and gives all the wraiths battle focus. After facing that I realize I need to use my Eldar/Harlequins.

I will suggest allying with a eldar formations and/or harlequin formations. I know its expensive but thats the best way I see dealing with them atm.

thanks for your insight, How do harlequins specifically assist with taking on wraithknights? Rending in CC?

Psychic spells (they have some of the best in game and two of them can potentially one shot him as long as you roll the right spells), be sure to take several shadowseers if you do so you can be sure to have lost of dice so your eldar opponent will have a hard time denying it and it increases the chance of rolling a spell you want, and some shuriken cannons are nice too.  The shadowseer spells work off leadership and work on all units that have wounds regardless if they are fearless or not.  

Also consider with the war gear you can get from the shadowseers and your archon with the armour of misery, plus the covens freakish spectile add up to -5 leadership to all units in their bubble.  I feared Eldrad and a full reaper squad off the board once and every game I fear/ make my opponent fail leadership tests almost every game 1-2 units off the board per turn after the first.  Phantasm/Torment grenade launchers work miricles on hordes/infintry that isnt fearless.  Some of my opponents got smart and started taking an Avatar but he tends to die in the first two turns.  After that use your fear shenanagens and watch the magic happen.

Idealbroom wrote:

thanks for your insight, How do harlequins specifically assist with taking on wraithknights? Rending in CC?

Everything I mentioned can be done with only harlies and DE.

Thanks for advice. Hopeing to find some solutions without having to buy anything new just yet.

You're really kind of spread thin, there is no one unit that's going to do it. You lack enough grots for a grotesquerie (although that's a fairly poor solution unless the WK is already severely injured). If it's a sword-and-board WK, all your melee stuff is going to get murdered by it. If it's a ranged one, then your Reavers, Grotesques, and Talos might eventually wear it down.

I would personally play the long game. Raiders, Ravagers, and Venoms from as far away (and as spread out) as you can manage. The Razorwing can also help, potentially. If you've got the bits, you can convert five of your warriors into a blasterborn squad as well. (If you have spare Dark Lances, you can cut the barrels off to make fat-barreled "blunderblasters," if you come up short on blasters.)

If you're willing to go the allies route, I'd convert your wyches into harlequins. Under the current rule set, wyches can only do two things: suck and die. Although they are actually quite good, given the choice between the two of them, I might consider converting your Reavers into a Skyrunner Farseer and a squad of Windriders.

Thankyou for your advice! I actually have blasterborn within the warriors i own. I will do what you said with the wytches and use them as harlequins in a raider if that works? Not sure on the allying rules with them. Would the corpsetheif claw squadren be a viable spearhead against such a target?

Idealbroom wrote:

thanks for your insight, How do harlequins specifically assist with taking on wraithknights? Rending in CC?

Neuro disruptors have Fleshbane and are AP 2, and every harlequin can take one. (Ozzy-factors are also Fleshbane and AP 2, but we're only allowed to take one, because we suck). In close combat, Harlequin's Caresses wound automatically at AP 2 if you roll a '6' to Hit, and again, every harlequin can take one. A troupe carrying both weapons gets very expensive, but it will take down a Wraithknight easy.

Also, 3 Talos with ichor injectors have a half-decent chance of killing one IF at least two of them survive being hit first.

There is a formation to take a shadowseer, death Jester, and a troupe. Barking made a good point, I equip half of my troupe with fleshbane guns just incase some die. There is also a weapon that wounds on 6's to hit at AP2 that is very good. Jim also made a good suggestion, using wyches as quin. That would be the only way I would field those models if I already didnt have 2k+ harlequins.

Poison isn't going to work .... It will take 240 shots to kill a WK with poison shooting.

Yet it's not uncommon to DE army to pump out 200+ poison shots. (In addition to some lances). One WK is not that bad. 2-3 WK with real support is.

I have a list with 13 Venoms. As far as I can work out, this is pretty much the maximum poison you can fit into a 1500 points list. This still only equates to 156 poison shots. This leaves me with zero AT. I think most lists are likely to have closer to 60 poison shots a turn.

Warriors shoot too. Always count them too. Troopslot itself has 120 poison shots.

DE cannot have any points spend on things that do not contribute to the outcome.

Instant death is the best way to beat a Wraithknight in this edition. While you can inflict alot of damage via psychic abilities, there are a whole lot of "ifs" that exist in the psychic options. You have to roll the right powers, you have you have your psychic in range, your psyker has to be alive and not focus fired to death (by scatter lasers, D-cannons, Scythes, etc.), you have to be able to harness enough charges to get the power off, you need to not have the power denied against an army that will most likely have more dice than you (I played a tournament against an Eldar player who began each psychic phase with 15 dice, good luck getting any powers off against that), and you will need the wraithknight to fail his leadership test. That is just so many ifs. I'm not saying it wont work, I am just saying that there are more sure fire options in my opinion.

A corpse thief claw with 4 or 5 ichor injectiors would be your best bet. That group has 25 attacks on the charge, hits on 3s, wounds on 2s, and insta kills on a 6 without any saves allowed by the wraith knight. If you don't get a 6, you will most likely get atleast 12 wounds though that would require the Eldar player to make atleast 7 5+ FnP rolls, which is unlikely.

A very large squad of Grotesques would also work if you are able to get them down the field to the knight.

shadowseercB wrote:

...using wyches as quin.  That would be the only way I would field those models ...

Don't say that!

It saddens me.

I do like the idea of using the corpse-thief claw but currently I don't own enough models to pull it off. I was thinking that i could try a archon with blaster & WWP in a raider full of trueborn with blasters. its 7 or so lance shots exactly where i want but it could be overkill. It would be used to try finish it off on the turn it enters after having hopefully already wounding it from my ravagers.

CTC with Ichor Injectors: problem sorted.

You know ID weapons don't actually kill Gargantuan's right? D3 wounds are applied for an unsaved ID wound.

Yup, still enough to do a number on WK. High volume fleshbane ID attacks hitting on 3+, pretty much the best answer to WK in the game because they can kill one before the stomps. Thundercav with fists do about the same but are more vulnerable to stomps.

Hellstrom wrote:

You know ID weapons don't actually kill Gargantuan's right?  D3 wounds are applied for an unsaved ID wound.

Great catch Hellstrom, that is very true.

However, most tournaments treat Gargantuans as you do Super Heavys in regards to this sort of damage result. So ID actually inflicts 1 + D3. With a Corpsethief, you are hitting on 3s ( 17 out of 25 hits on the charge), wounding on 2s (14 wounds with 2 being ID). Even with only 2 IDs, that is ATLEAST 4 wounds on the WK that are AP 2 and that he is unable to take FnP against. That leaves 12 wounds that he would need to pass a 5+ FnP on. So CTC with ichor injectors will usually = a very dead WK.

Sinister wrote:

Hellstrom wrote:

You know ID weapons don't actually kill Gargantuan's right?  D3 wounds are applied for an unsaved ID wound.

Great catch Hellstrom, that is very true.

However, most tournaments treat Gargantuans as you do Super Heavys in regards to this sort of damage result. So ID actually inflicts 1 + D3. With a Corpsethief, you are hitting on 3s ( 17 out of 25 hits on the charge), wounding on 2s (14 wounds with 2 being ID). Even with only 2 IDs, that is ATLEAST 4 wounds on the WK that are AP 2 and that he is unable to take FnP against. That leaves 12 wounds that he would need to pass a 5+ FnP on. So CTC with ichor injectors will usually = a very dead WK.  

And for the bargain price of 600+ points, so only twice the cost of the wraithknight, which they can't catch cos it moves twice as far as they do...