Wraiths - Everyone's Favorite Unit to Hate

Go on nearly any forum, blog, or podcast nowadays and the unit that people are complaining the most about in the Necron book is Wraiths. Wraiths - supposedly an invincible unit that kills everything in the game without breaking a sweat. Even the sight of them will cause people to let out exasperated sighs.

But, are they really that good? Does the inclusion of Wraiths forebode an immediate loss? Let's think about it a little bit.



We have to start by accepting that the statline of Wraiths is pretty awesome. T5, S6, A3, W2, 3++, Beasts - that's the sort of statline that should give people fits. Big and scary, hard to take down and strong enough to wound most things on 2s if they don't just insta-death them anyway (Eldar/DEldar/IG).

Awesome, but not Perfect

But, as anything, they have downsides. Rending is great, but no flat AP on their attacks means that you're really relying on luck to hurt things with good saves. Even Marines can give them trouble with just 3+ saves. I've had many an experience where the Wraiths would run in and throw out a lot of wounds but only 1 or 2 Rends, only for them to save every armor save they were allowed.

Being a multiwound is great for the most part... until you hit S10, Force, or just general ID weaponry. Yeah, a 3++ is great, but any that you fail will take out an entire model. Each one suddenly feels like a huge loss, rather than your standard 1 wound down Wraith - because it is.

Their speed can also work against them. It's great for getting to where you need to go, but due to the DLord changing his move speed and the CCB being unable to attach to units, you can never add an Independent Character with them. Which means you can't give them fun bonuses like Preferred Enemy or rerolling saves of 1s unless you severely limit one of their biggest bonuses: their speed.

However, despite these downsides they're still a fantastic unit that finds their place in many an army.

Harvesting Your Enemies

Now, to the point where I disagree with lots of people. One of the things that people tend to cry OP over is the use of the Canoptek Harvest formation. In this formation, if you don't know, a Spyder can give the Wraiths either Reanimation Protocols, Fleet, or Shred. Shred is nice, but they're mostly wounding on 2s anyway (though rerolling 1s into 6s is great) and Fleet is pointless because they have it already. But the big thing that people get hung up on is Reanimation Protocols.

Giving Wraiths RP is a huge boon. Makes them as tough as Shieldguard, but much faster and with Rending instead of AP3. However, I don't think this is as big of a problem as people try to make it out to be. I rarely run mine as it is, since everyone figures out the very obvious "trick" is to just kill the Spyder.

Look, the thing is only T6 with 3 wounds and a 3+. That's not exactly unkillable, it's like half of a Tyranid MC. Once it dies, there's no more RP on the Wraiths, and they just act like regular Wraiths. Still tough, still fast, but more killable. And, since the Spyder can't take more than 1 in the unit (still up for debate, but most people rule it this way), it's a prime candidate for First Blood and kill points to boot.

Countering

Despite three attacks base, which is pretty good, the low model count of Wraiths opens them up to being tarpitted. Things with good saves can tie them up for quite some time, especially if you're very cold on your Rending rolls. Large numbers of fearless bodies will just hold them up pretty much indefinitely, since they're on average only getting 6 wounds against anything WS4 and T4 or lower.

And against similar models, they somewhat flounder. If a unit of Wraiths goes against a TWC star, they're horrendously outmatched. Oh sure, both sides have 3++ and multiwounds, but if they're toting Thunder Hammers the Wraiths are getting Instant Death'd and their Rending does nothing.

Volume of fire does them in as well. 3++ sounds scary, but that's still failing 1/3 of wounds if they don't have RP, and it only takes a handful of those for that big unit of Wraiths to turn into a much less scary small unit of ~3 Wraiths.

Armies with an abundance of high strength shots (like Tau), or Force weaponry (like GK), or any amount of S10 in general (Vindicators) will have no problem dropping Wraiths, even against armies that spam them heavily. I think this particular gripe about Necrons is going to fall by the wayside as people begin to realize that there is a lot more scary things in the book.