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I've been designing a craftworld recently as a backstory to my own paint scheme and the like for my Eldar army which runs typically heavy on the Wraith units (not wrathknight spam though) And always wondered why there were no Autarchs that synergized especially for or with the Wraith units and instead fit the role as a typical "put stuff on him and put him in a unit that shares his loadout" kind of unit and with the exception of Prince Yriel none seem to have any interaction of Wraith units directly in their lore; and obviously Yriel is Iyanden so I can't exactly use him with my personal Craftworld. So, after recently designing a profile dataslate for another character I decided to whip up a test profile for my own Autarch. So, after that preamble, here's my Autarch Ilidan Ghosthand.

ilidan's gaze fell to his hands. No, he couldn't really call them that anymore. Now they were simply Wraithbone constructs bound to him in both mind and body. From shoulder to the fingertips a pair of arms were fashioned to replace his lost limbs in the battle that only seemed a distant nightmare now. The already fading pain from the surgery felt muted from the aching loss he felt inside. His soldier's had to pull his unconscious body from the battlefield and rushed to a healer as both of his arms and been severed where the shoulder meets his biceps. His army had clashed with a force of the genetic mutant soldiers known as Space Marines. The war between his craftworld, Land'riel, against the humans over the planet had been long. Only recently had the native population received reinforcements from a nearby Chapter, which was enough to turn the tables against the Eldar forces on the planet. Ilidan's last battle was the final straw and forced his craftworld's hand to cal he and his forces back and leave the planet.
Upon his return to the craftship, An attending Spiritseer had recited the events that unfolded after he lost consciousness. His life partner Alesha, A powerful Spiritseer that led the Wraith units during the battle he fell. She saw him fall and as the marine captain standing over him readied his power sword to finish him she mustered her entire psychic might and shattered his mind and soul to imbue a group of ghost warriors with her own will, these warriors ran to Ilidan's defense and slew the captain and surrounded Ilidan until he could be rescued by his now retreating soldiers. upon hearing the Seer's tale, his heart and mind burned with agony as his own heightened sense surged with dispair from her loss. He instinctively reached out mentally for her psychic presence in desperation and was taken aback when he found that he saw not one source of Alesha's mind but many. They were weak and faded, and they seemed tainted somehow by another's soul. He sprang from his bed despite his still recovering body screaming out in protest to rush to the hallway outside his door. What met his gaze were a group of ghost warriors that turned to meet him. In typical fashion they moved their body's in a slow but purposeful motion to salute him. Other Eldar passing the Wraith constructs saw them mentally for what they were and gazed in hesitant awe and fear. Tears burst freely once again from Ilidan's face as the sacrifice of Alesha struck him once again.
As Ilidan recovered he found that despite any action of the Seers, the ghost warriors possessed by Alesha's spirit refused to return to dormancy like their fellows, instead they insisted on remaining by Ilidan's side. As homage to his lover's sacrifice, he decided against the advanced bionics commonly used and instead chose to have Wraithbone arms constructed for himself and attached. Since then, Ilidan has been accompanied by his ghost warriors in battle and are rarely seen far from his side. The remnant psyche of Alesha had infused into the warriors a unfaltering loyalty to Ilidan and would go so far as to put themselves into harms way to protect him at any cost.

Autarch Ilidan - 160 points

WS - 6
BS - 6
S - 4
T - 4
W - 3
I - 5
A - 4
Ld - 10
Sv - 3+/4++

::Wargear::
Shuriken Pistol
Heavy Aspect Armor
Haywire Grenades
Plasma Grenades
Forceshield
Wraithbone Augments
Blade of Alundra

::Special Rules::
Ancient Doom
Battle Focus
Fleet
Independant Character
The Path of Strategy
Alesha's Bodyguard



::Wraithbone Augments::
Ilidan's arms have been replaced with limbs crafted of Wraithbone, granting him +1 to his Strength and Toughness but -1 to his Initiative. these bonuses are already implemented into Ilidans's Profile.

::Blade of Alundra::
The blade of Alundra was gifted to Ilidan by Alesha on the day they became life partners. The sword was an heirlooms from her family and was a symbol signifying the combining of the two bloodlines. He has brought it with him into battle ever since.
The Blade of Alundra is a Diresword that allows Ilidan to reroll to Hit and to Wound rolls of 1 in close combat.

::Alesha's Bodyguard::
Alesha's sacrifice to save Ilidan left him with a bodyguard that protects him at all times from all threats and have served by his side for the batter part of a century.
After deployment, nominate a single unit of Wraithguard or Wraithblades, the unit becomes "Alesha's Knights" and gains the Battle Focus and Fleet special rules. In addition, any Look out Sir made by the unit rolls from Illidan automatically pass. In addition once the unit is nominated as a bodyguard, Ilidan is required to be fielded with the unit and cannot leave, also no other Independent character can join the unit so long as Ilidan is alive.


Well there we go, any comment and suggestions are welcomed. I'd like to play this character in a friendly game to playtest his rules for balancing puroses. If anyone sees something that could possibly exploited or a unforeseen combo that could make him ridiculously overpowered or w/e let me know so I can change it. Fluff is the main important thing here for me, but I don;t want some uber model or unfair advantage.

Lore-wise the Autarchs are the generals and run the battles; the Wraith units are led by the Spiritseers and the Autarchs interact with them. I don't think this unit makes much sense lore-wise; an Autarch isn't an individual, personal commander that leads a ground unit, he's a senior officer that manages the war. I don't have a lot of time for analysis at this exact moment but the only problem I'm seeing rules-wise is auto-passing Look Out, Sir! in a unit of Wraithguard makes this guy way too tough.

well so far what I've seen an autarch is just as "in the battle" as the rest of the forces he commands no different than a space captain or w/e you want to replace. And yes, i know that the spiritseers are the guiders of the wraith units and the autarch orders them through the seers, which is why he had a spirit seer guiding his own wraith units during the battle above. The only ones that defy that point are the bodyguard who stay with him pretty much at all times and are even looked at as a strange anomaly by the other eldar. So, really it isn't "suppossed" to make sense really, it's a strange situation out of the norm, same as his choice to have wraithbone arms instead of the advanced bionics other eldar have for replacement limbs.

on the note about the rules, I wanted a in game mechanic to represent the protective nature of the bodyguard. Auto-pass LoS didnt seem to powerful at the time as the tau bodyguard have the exact same rule except they work for any IC, while these bodyguard only work for Ilidan. One thing I am thinking of adding is a restriction rule that denies any other IC joining the unit other than Ilidan himself and Ilidan himself is required to deploy with this unit. Not to mention his point cost is 20 points more than any of the other IC autarchs minus the Pheonix Lords (90 more than a base autarch) and the decided lack of ranged firepower (other than a pistol) hurts him alot being a singularly focused on cc model. With the 6th edition ruleset hurting cc at most hes a cc deterrent for a wraithguard unit or a much needed boost in killing potential for the Blades. I'm not one for match hammer so I don't know how much tankier he would be compared to someone like a phoenix lord or another named IC.



Automatically Appended Next Post:
went ahead and put in the IC restriction while I had it in my head, just to restrict any potential shenanigans with the unit.

Personally, I like it. The background brings home the tragedy of the eldar race in a pronounced way and also shows their dedication to their race's survival.

The rules seem fine but with the auto LOS it might be wise to limit the unit size of his bodyguards to 5 or say they are never a scoring unit (even with a Spiritseer) as they are too focused on protecting Ilidan to worry about battlefield concerns like objectives.

Also, I don't know if this is a typo or not, but does he have plasma grenades?

Is he prepared, though?

The rules seem fine but with the auto LOS it might be wise to limit the unit size of his bodyguards to 5 or say they are never a scoring unit (even with a Spiritseer) as they are too focused on protecting Ilidan to worry about battlefield concerns like objectives.

Also, I don't know if this is a typo or not, but does he have plasma grenades?

Whoops, my paper I wrote the rough draft on has it on there and its standard Autrach gear, i guess i just didn't write it in the post . Good point on the Scoring thing, ill have to playtest if it needs more restriction based on having auto LoS. Is auto Los to one wound models with the same stat line as his that bad? Tau bodyguards have it for no downside at all, and I haven't heard complaints from it at all. Is T6 that much different than T4 and 2W?

Is he prepared, though?

HA, his name is spelled with two Ls mines only one! COME AT ME BLIZZARD!!! Seriously though...it didn't even occur to me at the time they had pretty much the same name. Haven't played WoW since WotLK...

Its good, if you wanted to show protective nature, make the wraith guard characters for challanges to show them going off and taking the heavy hitters for your autarch.

I think the auto-pass LoS! is fine. The Iyanden supplement's "guardian helm of xellethon" lets (makes?) wraithnouns in the same squad auto pass LoS! and able to accept challenges. 35ish point remnant of glory equivalent.