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feugan wrote:

 ImAGeek wrote:

 CMLR wrote:
I'm starting to think: what if the whip elf is a Umbraneth Shadowaelf?

If it is, then Malerions elves are going to be very disappointing, seeing as it looks just like a Daughters of Khaine model.

‘Gloomineth Edgelords’ or bust.

If they end up being called Umbraneth, it will have been a grievously missed opportunity.

Umbraneth is a established name already...

https://war-of-sigmar.herokuapp.com/bloggings/4941

 Ghaz wrote:

feugan wrote:

 ImAGeek wrote:

 CMLR wrote:
I'm starting to think: what if the whip elf is a Umbraneth Shadowaelf?

If it is, then Malerions elves are going to be very disappointing, seeing as it looks just like a Daughters of Khaine model.

‘Gloomineth Edgelords’ or bust.

If they end up being called Umbraneth, it will have been a grievously missed opportunity.

Umbraneth is a established name already...

https://war-of-sigmar.herokuapp.com/bloggings/4941

Spoiler:

Nah, that was fake. Other people have said that they saw that article when it went up and it didn’t have Umbraneth in it, and that specific photo is the only photo anywhere with Umbraneth in it, there are no corroborating screenshots, it’s just that one faked photo that did the rounds. And if I recall correctly someone on Reddit or 4chan or something admitted faking it, but I don’t even know where I’d start trying to find that.

Voss wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 DivineVisitor wrote:
Guardians are usually a little more than normal citizens though.

Aren't Guardians just another path than an Eldar can take, so you're just as likely to have a Guardian who used to be a Swooping Hawk as you are a Guardian who used to be a barista?

Well, yes to the second. But no to the first.

Sourcing back to the original Craftworlds write-up:
"we are not immediately concerned with these other Eldar [basically, non-Warrior or Seer paths] as their part on the battlefield is not directly linked to their place on the Eldar Path. Regardless of the their current vocation, all Eldar are trained to take their position in the Eldar armies when needed. The serve in the Guardians as combat troops, weapon crews, etc... If danger is sufficiently pressing, every Eldar on a Craftworld can pick up a gun and rally to his or her designated Guardian unit"

So ex-Aspect Warriors and baristas are both likely to turn up as Guardians. But everybody is taught 'shoot gun.'
The bit even GW tends to forget is Guardians aren't there to bulk out the Craftworld armies if they need to go out and murder some fools (because Farseer Bob found some important crux of fate), they're part of the of the Craftworld's defense.

Yup, Guaridans are technically only supposed to be used in an emergency. You don't want to lose civilians. There are, after all, not that many Eldar left. They were kinda the equivalent of the WH Fantasy High Elf citizen levy, just supposedly used very sparingly.

It's just that army composition rules don't care too much about that. I think Dire Avenger are supposed to be the most numerous Aspect Warriors and the ones who make up most of an actual army (that's why they were also a Troop option). All the special Craftworld armies (from 3rd edition onward) were more representative of actual Eldar armies than the actual generic army that could use so many Guardians.

A few more bits about the Warrior path: An Eldar who gets lost and stays on the Path of the Warrior (while being an Aspect Warrior) ends up as an Exarch. They can't change to another path ever again and become a permanent soldier, so to speak. Eldar Warlocks are psykers who did work a shift as an Aspect Warrior once. Phoenix Lords are technically just the longest lived Exarchs (the first Exarch of each warrior Path, with Karandras being the one exception). Over time their spirit settled into the armour and when they die the armour waits until it is picked up by another Eldar who puts it on and then kinda becomes possessed by that Phoenix Lord's spirit.

Man they really need to remake the rest of the Phoenix Lords. I was but a small boy when they were first introduced and spent most of my meagre income on marines, but I had a couple of Phoenix Lords and I absolutely loved the models for all of them, as well as the Gibbons art for each, and since they're recreating retro Gibbons art in miniature form this would be a great thing to see.

 Hellebore wrote:

 GaroRobe wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
The choice of an armored belly button for the female guardians is a bit odd...

It’s strange but certainly nothing new. Eldar armor has had belly buttons before. The new banshees have it too iirc

Boob and belly plates with button seem to be gws decision for female armour on Eldar going forward. Will be interesting to see if they continue onto the other plastic aspects.

What do you mean going forward? Eldar have had boob armor and belly plates since RT. They were present on the original Howling Banshee sculpts by Jes Goodwin. The belly button was even in his concept art for the them.

Mario wrote:

A few more bits about the Warrior path: An Eldar who gets lost and stays on the Path of the Warrior (while being an Aspect Warrior) ends up as an Exarch. They can't change to another path ever again and become a permanent soldier, so to speak. Eldar Warlocks are psykers who did work a shift as an Aspect Warrior once. Phoenix Lords are technically just the longest lived Exarchs (the first Exarch of each warrior Path, with Karandras being the one exception). Over time their spirit settled into the armour and when they die the armour waits until it is picked up by another Eldar who puts it on and then kinda becomes possessed by that Phoenix Lord's spirit.

One small correction: the suit doesn't wait if it has access to the webway. The suit will actively seek out a new Exarch to be its host.

Mario wrote:
Yup, Guaridans are technically only supposed to be used in an emergency. You don't want to lose civilians. There are, after all, not that many Eldar left. They were kinda the equivalent of the WH Fantasy High Elf citizen levy, just supposedly used very sparingly.

It's just that army composition rules don't care too much about that. I think Dire Avenger are supposed to be the most numerous Aspect Warriors and the ones who make up most of an actual army (that's why they were also a Troop option). All the special Craftworld armies (from 3rd edition onward) were more representative of actual Eldar armies than the actual generic army that could use so many Guardians.

All Eldar are technically only supposed to be used in an emergency. Guardians are still the mainstay unit for most craftworlds though. Dire Avenger are the most numerous Aspect Warriors, but they're still a minority compared to Guardians. This is from the 7E codex when DA were troops:

Among the ever-thinning ranks of the Eldar, Guardians remain the most numerous of a craftworld’s warriors. Yet they are not deployed idly, for every Eldar life is a precious thing, not to be squandered in pyrrhic victories or needless last stands.

Of course that varies by craftworld, so for somewhere like Iyanden you're more likely to see wraithguard than either guardians or DA. I think only Biel-Tan would justify more Dire Avengers than Guardians.

As a race Eldar are supposed to keep to the shadows, to make more surgical strikes rather than all out warfare and to try and manipulate a situation rather than get stuck in. So they are more likely to try and nudge a group of orks closer to an Imperial force so that the Imperials get caught up fighting Orks instead of striking deeper into territories that the Eldar don't want them in.



That said there are more than enough stories of them engaging in large scale full on combat and war on a galactic scale. They have titans and vast armies, they have mobile infantry forces and enough technology to engage in galactic warfare. They are a race of limited population growth, but they are still on the galactic scale of things so we are still talking VERY big numbers.

The real problem is that they reproduce at a slower rate so any loss is a much harder thing to recover from and compared to the other races they are limited in their ability to recover, to expand and to hold large swathes of territory. The only race in a similar position is Tau and they mostly get away with it only because they are out on the very fringe of the Imperium and basically got ignored for just long enough to establish themselves; but aren't a big enough thread compared ot the others that the Imperium can actually dedicate proper forces to them. If Chaos, Necrons, Orks and Tyranids took a holiday from waging war for a while, the Imperium would crush Tau in a moment.




What I find interesting at present is that Eldar might be due for a lore shift. They've been in the same "operating in the shadows" and "hiding/retreating/avoiding" kind of attitude for a long while. However with Necrons potentially reuniting, with the Imperium finding a Primarch; with Chaos cutting the Imperium almost in half; with Tyranids building a planet and eating their way into more and more of the Galaxy; with Tau expanding - basically everyone is on the rise (and mostly taking chunks out of abandoned systems or the Imperium) and I think Eldar will also start to shift to being more overt and more direct in combat.

That is a problem in general with 40k. The rules don't match the background, so playing a game doesn't feel much like something that could happen in the universe they've described.

I mean you can say that about most board games. It's always abstract. Warmachine never felt like real warmachine; infinity isn't real infinity; Risk is hardly like reality and chess is freaking heck a million miles from anything.

The lore will never appear on the tabletop when you're using a handful of models to represent VAST armies.

Well 40k games don't represent vast armies but tiny skirmish groups. Commando raids

tneva82 wrote:
Well 40k games don't represent vast armies but tiny skirmish groups. Commando raids

And that's why you can potentially have several Primarchs and a High Lord duking it out?

 Wha-Mu-077 wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
Well 40k games don't represent vast armies but tiny skirmish groups. Commando raids

And that's why you can potentially have several Primarchs and a High Lord duking it out?

The other way to picture games of 40k is as a snapshot of the pivotal point of a larger battle. Off to either side of the table battle-lines stretch, but what you play is the key moment of a larger picture.

 Wha-Mu-077 wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
Well 40k games don't represent vast armies but tiny skirmish groups. Commando raids

And that's why you can potentially have several Primarchs and a High Lord duking it out?

It depends. Imo, a 40K game can represent a few different things. It can be a skirmish of a small force doing a surgical operation, it could be a slice of a much bigger battle but focusing on the primary area (justifying Primarchs and the like), or a small battle happening to the side of other battles in the area, making up a larger battle in pockets, etc.

It can be whatever you want it to be, really. Just gotta be creative.

EDIT: Nevelon you ninja’d me

I don't think that's strictly true about Guardians. They are supposed to be the citizen militia similar to the High Elves but they are still trained warriors. The archers and spearmen that make up the bulk of High Elf armies are used in the exact same way. They are still the basic troop types for a force, in the same way that Guardians are used within the Craftworld forces. Dire Avengers are more specialised as they are aspect warriors and act as more highly trained bastions that the Guardians work around.

 Nevelon wrote:

 Wha-Mu-077 wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
Well 40k games don't represent vast armies but tiny skirmish groups. Commando raids

And that's why you can potentially have several Primarchs and a High Lord duking it out?

The other way to picture games of 40k is as a snapshot of the pivotal point of a larger battle. Off to either side of the table battle-lines stretch, but what you play is the key moment of a larger picture.

Eh that sill sort of fails because you've got aircraft and artillery and heroes and basic troops all lumped into a tiny space.

And that's before we even touch on armies like Tyranids who, in theory, should cover their whole deployment zone in models.


You can rationalise the game however you want because there's no set winning formula and between games what appears on the table might change how and what it could represent. A small skirmish, a little battle; a boarder war; a vast major clash; an insane world obliterating series of battles. However you imagine it fails.



You have to get into the feel. It's like how in RTS games on the PC you have barracks that train troops that are little bigger than the troops they spew out; yet in reality an infantry training centre would be huge; a tank manufactory big and comprised of multiple buildings; a mining site used to fun a war machine would be extensive etc.... Heck jump into Starcraft and you've got infantry and basic troops fighting alongside battleships

 Overread wrote:

 Nevelon wrote:

 Wha-Mu-077 wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
Well 40k games don't represent vast armies but tiny skirmish groups. Commando raids

And that's why you can potentially have several Primarchs and a High Lord duking it out?

The other way to picture games of 40k is as a snapshot of the pivotal point of a larger battle. Off to either side of the table battle-lines stretch, but what you play is the key moment of a larger picture.

Eh that sill sort of fails because you've got aircraft and artillery and heroes and basic troops all lumped into a tiny space.

And that's before we even touch on armies like Tyranids who, in theory, should cover their whole deployment zone in models.


You can rationalise the game however you want because there's no set winning formula and between games what appears on the table might change how and what it could represent. A small skirmish, a little battle; a boarder war; a vast major clash; an insane world obliterating series of battles. However you imagine it fails.



You have to get into the feel. It's like how in RTS games on the PC you have barracks that train troops that are little bigger than the troops they spew out; yet in reality an infantry training centre would be huge; a tank manufactory big and comprised of multiple buildings; a mining site used to fun a war machine would be extensive etc.... Heck jump into Starcraft and you've got infantry and basic troops fighting alongside battleships

My platoon of 20 dudes always had two aircraft flying overwatch and a artillery battery on call on every mission. Once we had a 2 star general tag along for funzies. We were just one small group operating as part of a much larger group over a fairly larger area. .

40k games are a pretty accurate representation of a snap shot of a larger operation, battle or war.

 Overread wrote:
I mean you can say that about most board games. It's always abstract. Warmachine never felt like real warmachine; infinity isn't real infinity; Risk is hardly like reality and chess is freaking heck a million miles from anything.

The lore will never appear on the tabletop when you're using a handful of models to represent VAST armies.

Well, it's not a board game though. Of course it's an abstraction, but I'm not sure the people making the game know what it's supposed to represent. Obviously the players don't, as can be seen by all the different opinions in the last few posts. But it's not like it's impossible. Lots of historical games manage to represent historical battles. Though I've never played the Lord of the Rings game, people say it feels like a good representation of the background. Warhammer 40k rules are just bad at representing the background.

The game Is just a glimpse of the universe and that is vastly different from one person to another. I mean how can a beer and pretzel game overbloated with rules be anything more than an attachment to the minis?

The minis represent the universe well and capture the grim dark feel most of the times and the game that goes with it is an extra but by no means represents the scale of interplanetary wars.

tneva82 wrote:
Well 40k games don't represent vast armies but tiny skirmish groups. Commando raids

I don't always skirmish but, when I do, I do it in multiple Titan-class vehicles.

 BrotherGecko wrote:

 Overread wrote:

 Nevelon wrote:

 Wha-Mu-077 wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
Well 40k games don't represent vast armies but tiny skirmish groups. Commando raids

And that's why you can potentially have several Primarchs and a High Lord duking it out?

The other way to picture games of 40k is as a snapshot of the pivotal point of a larger battle. Off to either side of the table battle-lines stretch, but what you play is the key moment of a larger picture.

Eh that sill sort of fails because you've got aircraft and artillery and heroes and basic troops all lumped into a tiny space.

And that's before we even touch on armies like Tyranids who, in theory, should cover their whole deployment zone in models.


You can rationalise the game however you want because there's no set winning formula and between games what appears on the table might change how and what it could represent. A small skirmish, a little battle; a boarder war; a vast major clash; an insane world obliterating series of battles. However you imagine it fails.



You have to get into the feel. It's like how in RTS games on the PC you have barracks that train troops that are little bigger than the troops they spew out; yet in reality an infantry training centre would be huge; a tank manufactory big and comprised of multiple buildings; a mining site used to fun a war machine would be extensive etc.... Heck jump into Starcraft and you've got infantry and basic troops fighting alongside battleships

My platoon of 20 dudes always had two aircraft flying overwatch and a artillery battery on call on every mission. Once we had a 2 star general tag along for funzies. We were just one small group operating as part of a much larger group over a fairly larger area. .

40k games are a pretty accurate representation of a snap shot of a larger operation, battle or war.

The official GW rationale behind Titans and Primarchs taking part in 40K games is that each game is only a tiny part of a grand battlefield and it may so happen, that your little force has simply been thrown at the position the Primarch is at this moment of battle. I don't remember exactly, but officially the whole 40K game is just few minutes of real time.

What doesn't make any sense though is if the above is true, then every battle played with SM has to represent an entire chapter fighting on said grand battlefield, because chapter numbers never made any sense at all.

I think in the end the scale of GW games tends to be whack and not really make any sense. 40k made more sense as a skirmish game back in the days before baby sized walkers and large aircraft floating around.

I think that is the best justification there is, assuming the game is the critical moment in a larger battle, or a hand-picked force sent to the crucial point at the crucial moment to turn the tide.

So, most 40K battles involving Space Marines represent an entire company at least engaging in a huge pitched battle, in which most of them are casualties. So ever game with Space Marines pretty much eliminates a company at least as an effective fighting force.

For what it’s worth, this article sort of made a compelling case for why we should re-evaluate how we view models, terrain, and think of the battles on the tabletop in a different way.

Basically, because of how unrealistic the proportions are between vertical and horizontal dimensions, we should consider each model in 28 mm scale to be more of a token and terrain to be more of a token as well rather than apply true line of sight and considering each model to be one infantry on the battle, or even one vehicle.

https://www.wargaminghobby.com/article/what-is-the-scale-of-wargames-60.html

The official GW rationale behind Titans and Primarchs taking part in 40K games is that each game is only a tiny part of a grand battlefield and it may so happen, that your little force has simply been thrown at the position the Primarch is at this moment of battle

I honestly don't remember the last time GW provided an 'official rationale' on the battle scale. Its been a while- they did it a few times in notes and appendices for WFB, but largely shied away from it in 40k (it came up in RT and I think 3rd or 4th). Last few editions, I don't think they addressed it at all (mostly because whatever argument they used was going to be transparently be nonsense)

@macluvin- Rogue Trader had a good overview on that. It basically boiled down to 'weapon ranges (and table distances) are what they are to make the game more fun, not realistic'

 silent25 wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:

 GaroRobe wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
The choice of an armored belly button for the female guardians is a bit odd...

It’s strange but certainly nothing new. Eldar armor has had belly buttons before. The new banshees have it too iirc

Boob and belly plates with button seem to be gws decision for female armour on Eldar going forward. Will be interesting to see if they continue onto the other plastic aspects.

What do you mean going forward? Eldar have had boob armor and belly plates since RT. They were present on the original Howling Banshee sculpts by Jes Goodwin. The belly button was even in his concept art for the them.

Spoiler:

I think what everyone is forgetting with the boob/belly button thing is that the eldar "armor" is basically a wetsuit. It then hardens when struck into armor, then goes back for maximum mobility. In theory one could give the male ones belly buttons too, but a thin gut is something generally more associated with females, and defined abs with men, which allows better differentiation on the tabletop.

 Overread wrote:

The real problem is that they reproduce at a slower rate so any loss is a much harder thing to recover from and compared to the other races they are limited in their ability to recover, to expand and to hold large swathes of territory.

With this in mind, is there a lore reason why Eldar don't make use of drones, automatons and other automated systems?

Even if they required some sort of supervision from living Eldar, these would surely allow for far fewer Eldar to risk their lives in a given battle?

Or, if that's off the table for some stupid reason, what about battlesuits? Machines that would enhance an individual Eldar's firepower whilst also protecting them. And don't mention bloody wraith-constructs because they don't count. Once an Eldar has been swept into a crystal matchbox, it's a little late to start protecting them.

I understand that an Eldar army sans actual Eldar would be a little odd, but (to me at least) it seems equally weird that the above don't seem to be used at all. Instead, Eldar continue to send militias with shotguns and paper mache armour into battle against armoured companies and wondering why they're a dying race.

The reason Eldar don't use robots and AI the way that, say Tau do, is because robot use was part of their social structure which led to their fall to Slaanesh. Once you can use a robot for war, why not also use it to mow the lawn, and do the dishes and all the work. Eldar 100% could automate everything, but that leads toward the hedonistic lifestyle that basically caused them to create Slaanesh.

So they avoid robot use. Even Wraiths, whilst being robotical, are controlled by the soulstones bound to them.


In that both Eldar and the Imperium are actually very similar. Both distrust thinking machines, but for different reasons. Eldar because they lead down a path of hedonistic lifestyle; Imperium because of the Men of Iron uprising.

I think part of the Guardian situation is the GrimDark paradox--If there's something that you only do in the most dire situations, like make your Guardians go out to war, because of the Grim Dark, you'll always be doing it.

The eldar still number in the billions if you factor in all the unnamed Craftworlds, exodite, harlis etc. So naturally they do everything in their power to avoid needing to dip into their "home guard" but there will always be situations where they've got no choice.

Every battle in 40k(tabletop) is worst case scenario. So inherently the game will skew towards that.

But the player also has some agency in list creation. If you don't want your CWE to use guardians, don't. If you want to have aspects & wraith constructs doin the dirty work, do it.