Goatboy’s Warhammer 40K Hot Mess – Aeldari Wraithknight
Goatboy here again with today’s Hot Mess trash can unit. The once mighty Craftworld Aeldari Wraithknight!
The Aeldari Wraithknight used to be the king of Lords of War. It would stride out on the field, cannon the crap out or your Imperial Knight, and then stomp on all of your toy soldiers. It was a total jerk, and I hated seeing it across the table because I like to play big stompy things and this guy was the best of the big stompy stuff.
It could move fast, it hit hard, and had super lasers that burned through all my armor. I watched a game where 3 Wraithknights slowly took down all my Chaos Knights as I looked on with a tear slowly rolling down my cheek. Why would this giant frail Wraith Bone jerk do so much damage to me? What did I do to deserve such terrible treatment? Why can’t I have all the fun? Why would the Chaos Gods do this to me?
Anyway – let’s spice up the Wraithknight a bit with some cool ideas. I like the thought of just giving it more worthwhile options or at the very least making it a central model for your army. Of course, if you make it too good then you get 3 in an army and watch as they dance around the table kicking you in the face.
Make the Wraithknight Interesting
I always like the idea of cool upgrades to create unique models. The Chaos Knights have awesome upgrades based on the Chaos Gods and I think you could do something like that with Wraithknights utilizing the idea that there are two spirits, one living and one dead in the giant Knight. What if you could give it different types of spirits that would represent different aspects or other powers?
What if one of the dead ghost bodies was a Warlock? You could create a Warpstone like effect where your Farseer could cast some spells thru the Wraithknight. Or the Spirit Seer? These would be unique Wraithknight-only powers and not just – let the giant war bone robot cast Farseer spells.
How about you put in a dead Swooping Hawk and this model moves faster? Or a Striking Scorpion and it punches like a boss? Or a Warp Spyder and it can teleport around the table once. The idea of making it unique by using a different spirit stones sounds pretty dang cool to me.
Make the Wraithknight Important to Your Army
How about letting it be a cool focal point for leadership, scoring, or other fun things for your pile of Space Elves. Maybe it is infused with the Spirit of one of their gods? Perhaps make it actually like a weird Ynarri altar of death? A lot of the time I think 40K could use more non-combat army-supporting options. Finding ways to make the Wraithknight not just a murder machine can be a lot of fun.
Like this – but Trinity is a Wraithknight, and the cop is everyone else.
Also, About That Murder Machine…
We could amp up its guns but let’s shift it from being only a shooting platform. Instead, add viable close combat murder death monster options. It’s Aeldari, and it’s fast, and nimble. Imagine a Wraithknight coming in hard with a charge, stabbing someone, somersault, and then doing a roundhouse kick to your Leman Russ. Give it a ton of weird combat stuff and you can make it match up to what kind of spirit stone you housed in it.
I think most armies should have access to a cool Lord of War with some neat options and upgrades to allow it to be uniquely important to your army. These type of War Altar units seem like simple ideas that could make 40K a bit more unique. Just let cool models be important and well… cool.
