Are wracks any good?

Hey guys, I've been shifting my list to a more coven style. I was thinking about wracks. Do you think there is any use for these guys? Maybe with a grotesquerie and a cronos so the wracks provide some support for the grots and they all get 4+ FNP?

It is hard to justify the present of Wracks. Even when not comparing it with the obvious choice that are grots, all you got is an elite unit without any great offensive capabilities to speak of. In terms of wargear the Liquifiers and Hexrifles perform bad and are way overpriced.

Arguebly the best thing about Wracks is the Ossefactor, which is a very fine weapon indeed but that just doesn't cut it either. If Wracks would be Troops and consequently get ObjSec, they could have their niche as tough objective grabbers that can survive an exploding Venom.

But if you are really dire to use them, I would use them in a Scalpel Squadron as a form of null-deployment. Venoms are always good to have and if either a Venom or an Ossefactor (imo a must have) scores First Blood you do get D3 victory points.

Depending on your strategy and how many points you play with, the 2 x 50pts Wrack tax actually isn't that terrible. Either way, I would stay away from any upgrades other than the Ossefactor.


Also, I don't think the Grotesques need a lot of support, they can shake off heavy punishment quite well.

That's too bad. I'm starting to look at more assault units. Is the cronos FNP buff not as good as it sounds? no one seems to run them.

RedRegicide wrote:

That's too bad. I'm starting to look at more assault units. Is the cronos FNP buff not as good as it sounds? no one seems to run them.

Oh no, I think it is a strong option to have. The problem with the Cronos is simply that it is very slow and and a bit short ranged at 6". On top of that, the Cronos also costs a bit too much for my linking (others may disagree).
However, if you are interested you should check out the Dark Artisan formation.

It consists of a Cronos, Talos and a Haemonculus and is treated as one single unit.
It is an extremely durable unit if you make this Haemonculus your warlord as you automatically receive a warlord trait that lets you re-roll failed FNP rolls.


It used to be more common when the Covens supplement was newly released as the Grotesquerie and Corpsethief Claw formations are preferred, but the DA is a very good formation nonetheless.

Im going to run the grotesquerie, and i was warned not to run two formations because my points balance would be out of whack. But yeah a single cronos wouldnt be able to WW in and would be real slow.

RedRegicide wrote:

Im going to run the grotesquerie, and i was warned not to run two formations because my points balance would be out of whack. But yeah a single cronos wouldnt be able to WW in and would be real slow.

Oh yeah, another great boon of the Dark Artisan, teleport your Pain Engines directly into the face of your opponent
It works great as terror tactic, as your opponent never quite knows when this thing will make it onto the field.

But yeah, the costs are not insignificant. However, there are freakshow tactics that work with primarily coven, aided by some crazy allies which rely on leadership shenanigans and superior toughness.

Apart from that, I like to have an anvil and a scalpel in my army. The anvil being a Grotesquerie (or maybe a Dark Artisan) and several scalpels that are Venoms, Reavers, Scourges, Incubi etc.

Scalpel Squadrons (the formation) is very useful. Outside of that I wouldn't run wracks.

If you are running coven heavy you will probably find yourself leaning towards several small formations to fill out your army rather than the tree style detachment that they offer. We are a bit different from some of the traditional armies in that dark eldar tends to get more out of more detachments that are smaller in points. Largely because we don't have a detachment of formations like almost every other army has.

So in light of not having a decurion style detachment I don't see a problem with making a coven list who's backbone is multiple scalpel squadrons, a grotesquerie and a dark artisan. Need to fill in some non-coven stuff in your list? No problem add a CAD which you can fill the 2 troops and HQ requirement for less than 100 points then buy whatever you want to fill in your needs.

But be warned even though that would be perfectly legal and encouraged by GW, practically no tournament will let you use that style of coven list (even small local ones).

ITC says things like 3 detachment limit and then posts winning lists that have 8 formations but they are in detachments of formations, our formations are detachments.

Which is why (in my opinion) you will find most dark eldar lists focus on a CAD (or 2) and a formation. No one wants to build and fine tune a list that can never be brought to a tournament.

Yeah I try to keep to 3 detachments. I never realized how much of a disadvantage itc gave us but you're right, we are one f the few who just run CADs

With regard to the DA Haemi being your Warlord, his Warlord Trait only allows re-rolling FNP of 1's for the Talos/Chronos, not everyone. However, the Chronos FNP does benefit the Wracks.

TBH, if the Scalpel Squadrons was able to take Raiders over venoms (thus allowing 2 of the Ossifactors and 1 Hexrifle) it would be OK. As is, its only OK.

Yeah a Scalpel Squadron with Raiders sounds like a good thing.

Are Wracks one of the few things in the DE codex that are better to take in blobs than MSU?

Ynneadwraith wrote:

Yeah a Scalpel Squadron with Raiders sounds like a good thing.

Are Wracks one of the few things in the DE codex that are better to take in blobs than MSU?

Nope. Wrack are only T3. Meaning it's really easy to instant kill them, negating their FNP. If they were T4 (or if they had a special rule allowing them to keep their FNP even when instant death), they would be good.

Uh, wracks are T4, not T3. With the Coven PfP table, they get to be fearless turn 2. Combine their T4 and 5+ FNP and a nice Ruin Coversave of 3+, they are OK. The issue is that they are not very killy compared to other units.

Objective camping can be better done by mandrakes, but could wracks perhaps be better tarpits than wyches? They could back up a grotesquerie by tarpiting a riptide or some such, especially if the cronos is close enough to aid both combats

fisheyes wrote:

Uh, wracks are T4, not T3. With the Coven PfP table, they get to be fearless turn 2. Combine their T4 and 5+ FNP and a nice Ruin Coversave of 3+, they are OK. The issue is that they are not very killy compared to other units.

Damn. That shows how often I look at their stat. Hmm.. Maybe I should look at them again.

Not sure if they would be better than wyches as tarpitting. However the poison attacks probably do more damage, lol.

Wyches aren't good at tarpitting, they lose and run against anything better than a firewarrior.

EDIT: actually they can easily lose against firewarriors if outnumbered

I only have 1 unit of wracks so I haven't been able to use them yet, but Wyches/Bloodbrides on the other hand are quite useful for me. I played a game recently against Necrons where he charged my Reavers (which were in combat) with 3 of those large snake/cobra looking units. I had 10 blood brides in a Raider (no wych weapons, but a Siren with Agonizer) that were close by and were about to disembark on my turn and get the charge in. It was somewhere around 41 attacks on the charge, I hit with 35 of them, and did somewhere along the lines 20 wounds. That was a lot of dice saves and he failed quite a few of them, unit was wiped.

Wyches are a counter charge unit.

With all due respect, that is what is often referred to as a 'statistical outlier'. In other words it's a freak occurrence! 41 attacks, 4+ to hit, 6 to wound, 3+ invulnerable save and (potentially) Reanimation Protocols means that on average you should have caused ~1 unsaved wound (against a unit of 2 wound models). It's not helpful to use that as an example of how good Wyches are!

Ya, I have run a squad of 10 wyches into a Necron warrior squad, and even then I lost the squad (I didnt have any upgrades). However, under that condition I did tie it up for about 3 assault phases before some destroyers charged in with their hatred to kill them.

Necrons are terrible in CC (other than those wraith units you described), and still the wyches were not making much progress.

And those wraith units should have been in the Harvest formation to be T5, 2W, 3++ then a 5+++ (RP). Oh, and they are S6 rending. Nothing in our army can stand up to them (even the DA will fall to them after 3 turns in my experience). In my experience the only way to deal with them is to bait them out of position, then feed them units while you get to work on their other stuff.

Back on topic, I think the wracks would do better in CC against even the wraiths (4+ poison vs S3)

Grotesques with a void dreamer deal with wraiths just fine. You won't kill the wraiths before the spider dies, but they also probably aren't going to kill you either.

As for wrecks: they are the most points efficient option for a wound pool squad for a corsair void dreamer at 10points per wound at T4 (grotesques are 11.6) BUT being hard capped at only 10 bodies and therefore only 10 wounds, and being unable to start the game in the raider with a void dreamer takes a lot of wind out of that idea.

I haven't run wracks yet, but the Scarlet Epicurean formation looks pretty solid to me. I'm surprised I don't see it talked about more often.

Chaos players are excited about the Poxwalker Hive allowing them to turn cultists into something very similar to Wracks. I'm curious what folks here think about that.

What's the points cost for these poxwalker cultists?

Reading up about Scarlet Epicurean it sounds pretty good if you can webway portal somewhere nasty. Is there a min squad size for the Wracks?

The cultists are 6 pts/model with Mark of Nurgle.  The Hive is a 20 pt piece of wargear artifact that allows one unit within 7" to be upgraded to plague zombies per turn, which gives them FNP and fearless but takes away their ability to use ranged weapons or run.  They also regain 1d3 killed zombies per turn if still within 7" of the model with the hive.

Essentially, they're Wracks with a lower WS/BS, no ability to use ranged weapons, no poison, and no power from pain, but at a reduced point cost and with a much higher possible unit size.  Much better as tar pits, but with very low offensive potential.

There's the usual 5 Wrack min size for the Epicureans.  I didn't think about WWPing them since that separates them from the Cronos and spreads the formation out.  I was picturing foot slogging them so the opponent has to choose between trying to take out the Cronos first or having a much harder time whittling down the Wracks.

Could you go into some detail about what sort of role you envision for the Scarlet Epicureans?

Keep in mind that I haven't tried Wracks yet, so this is all hypothetical.

From the way the formation bonuses work, I would expect that you want to keep the unit close together so both Wrack units benefit from precision strikes, which you won't get when they're embarked. So I picture the Wracks + Haemi in front with the Cronos behind them to boost their FnP. I can't speak for the newer models, but I can get my old Talos model 25% obscured behind Wracks, giving my opponent a choice of shooting at the Cronos when it has a cover save or shooting at the Wracks when their FnP is boosted.

If nothing else, I would hope that they'd make a good distraction and soak up a lot of fire that would otherwise be directed at more fragile units. I would expect Ossefactors in particular to cause a SM opponent to freak out and try to burn them down to protect their termies and Centurions.

A friend of mine plays GKs, so Grots are a very bad idea. Wracks should be much better even if they don't get their FnP.