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Flashman wrote:This is a long running joke on Dakka, we are well aware that these minis aren't being released, but the second there is a whisper of DE, somebody posts the photo for a laugh (for which he has been suitably punished).

Ironically, this way the DE Sculpts see more of the light of day then they would if I had been posting them.

Sidstyler wrote:

Kid_Kyoto wrote:The problem is we already have numerous evil skull/spike/kil!kil!kil! armies. Chaos marines, daemons, orks and to a lesser extent the Imperium, so throwing in another one, that's also a bad xerox of both the Space Elfs and the Dark Elfs just doesn't grab many people.

And yet when something truly different does come into the game (like Tau), people don't accept it because it isn't 40k enough, because it's not an evil skull/spike/kill,kill,kill army. *shrugs*

I've had this exchange with KK several times. I've learned to accept that he refuses to believe that an unpopular, ugly army with no fluff or background can be made into a popular, attractive army with extensive compelling fluff and background... Even though it's been done many times before with pretty much all the other armies.
He appears to harbor a deep hatred for the DE army in particular, which probably stems back to his early years when he was mugged by a Dark Eldar Warrior classmate on the way home from school.

I have this sneaking feeling that will not go away that the name will be changed to something other than "Dark Eldar". They may then say that "any reference to Dark Eldar applies to these guys".

The fluff MIGHT be more along the lines of nasty and nice pirates, with Yriel available as the nicest of the nice pirates and others introduced as nasty pirates.

I stopped playing in about '94/'95 before Dark Eldar existed and came back 6 months ago to find out something I had hoped for for ever has been done but completely ballsed up. I am desperately hoping for an awesome addition.

I'd be even more keen to see a GOOD exodite codex.

Variety is the spice of life, the more armies the better I say. Who gives a gak if Tau is a little out of place visually, it's a different army that requires a different tactic to beat, it changes the game up and makes it more interesting. Sure, Space Marines fit in perfect, but the game would be pretty fething boring with nothing but Space Marine vs. Space Marine battles (but much easier to balance I guess). Dark Eldar play differently from every other army, it's something different, even if the imagery or theme has been "done to death" in 40k (and you can't really say they don't "belong" then...). If the army looks like crap, then make new models for them. They do it for Space Marines, they do it for Orks, they do it for every other army to revive interest in them, they can do it for Dark Eldar. If the background sucks, rewrite it from the ground up, or add more to it. They've already proven they can do it easily, as can be seen with the daemons fluff...20 years of established fluff changed with a single codex release.

So there's really no excuse to Squat an army, not anymore. And in fact doing so with any army would be a death sentence for GW. No one wants to pour their heart and soul into little plastic toys, spend hundreds of dollars and years of their life on the hobby, just to watch their army phased out and all that time and effort go to waste. There's no excuse to be lazy anymore and just say "feth it", like they did with the Squats, especially in today's economy. If they want to be around for another 25 years they'll have to start caring and make their games worth buying into, and start showing support for all of their armies besides the top seller.


Anyway...as for the topic at hand, it bugs me mainly because it's obvious what they're trying to do: clear out their inventory of old DE models and try to sucker people into paying full price for the old, ugly crap before they come out with the new hotness. I don't see any other reason to waste time repackaging them.

G_Model101 wrote:Genius idea by GW....we all know it's all about securing the next generation of gamers, what's the best way of doing this?

Introduce a new army!
It doesn't matter that they've been out before or that everyone seems to think that the models suck.
They haven't been on the shelves for god knows how long so for all intensive purposes they are a new army.

Money making genius!

My thoughts exactly.

Also, the PG-13 style bondage b/g is ideal for the target market segment of 13-year-olds.

Is it too late to post the jetbikes?

Sidstyler wrote:

Kid_Kyoto wrote:The problem is we already have numerous evil skull/spike/kil!kil!kil! armies. Chaos marines, daemons, orks and to a lesser extent the Imperium, so throwing in another one, that's also a bad xerox of both the Space Elfs and the Dark Elfs just doesn't grab many people.

And yet when something truly different does come into the game (like Tau), people don't accept it because it isn't 40k enough, because it's not an evil skull/spike/kill,kill,kill army. *shrugs*

Sure there are haters for the Tau, just like there are marine haters and guard haters (they're just boring humans!) and so on. But based on the fact they've gotten 2 codexes, numerous new kits, tons of forgeworld and specialist games stuff and starred in a video game I would say the Tau are a hit. We don't have sales figures to look at but I think all signs are the vast majority of 40k players have embraced change, the 'anime fan' chanting idiots are a tiny minority.

Archonate wrote:I've had this exchange with KK several times. I've learned to accept that he refuses to believe that an unpopular, ugly army with no fluff or background can be made into a popular, attractive army with extensive compelling fluff and background... Even though it's been done many times before with pretty much all the other armies.
He appears to harbor a deep hatred for the DE army in particular, which probably stems back to his early years when he was mugged by a Dark Eldar Warrior classmate on the way home from school.

No it has more to do wtih the day a drunken Wraithlord on a jet bike ran over my dog spiffy.

I don't like to talk about it, it still hurts.

ANYWAY of course the DE can be made a hit, if you replace the models, and the fluff, and the rules and tinker with the basic concept.

But why throw good money after bad?

There are stronger concepts out there like Traitor Guard/Lost and Damned/Chaos Cults that people are going out and making anyway, rules or no. GW would be better off supporting them than trying to put lipstick on a Talos and get us to fall in love.

Hmmm some of the sculpts seem interesting. They might be fun to model and/or paint. I'm going to have to take a peek at my LGS to see if they're carrying anything.

I'm sure if redone in a better manner the Dark Eldar wont be terrible. I don't think they're a mistake that should be forgotten. They're just not as good as any other models GW makes...

I haven't seen them over at GW Amsterdam today.

There are stronger concepts out there like Traitor Guard/Lost and Damned/Chaos Cults that people are going out and making anyway, rules or no.

I agree that these should all have support too, but every army with a codex should be supported, DE included.

DEldar is a powerful list in 5th ed..what they need are more options so that the builds can be more varied.....

And I don't think DE will be dropped...in fantasy dark elves got a nice facelift (thankfully not too cheesy, unlike VC and daemons) which revitalized the army..hope GW doesn't drop the ball on dark eldar..which I don't think will happen..

JohnHwangDD wrote:

Grimaldi wrote:[Meh...is getting caught and tortured by Dark Eldar that much scarier than being eaten alive by Tyranids or ripped apart by Orks?

Yes, it is.

For this, we apply a sphincter test...

Getting eaten by Nids? I'd pucker. x

Ripped apart by Orks? I'd probably evacuate. o

Tortured by Chaos Eldar? An eternity of sodomyproduces a Goatse =(O)=

*facepalm* There's something I didn't need to think about.

Maybe GW should do an updated web-dex and use that and sales of reissued models to survey the appeal of the army.

GW won't do Web-dex, because BA showed that it didn't drive sales...

JohnHwangDD wrote:GW won't do Web-dex, because BA showed that it didn't drive sales...

Do you have a source of some sort to back that up? I'm just asking, I have no idea about the BA codex either way.

Hordini wrote:

JohnHwangDD wrote:GW won't do Web-dex, because BA showed that it didn't drive sales...

Do you have a source of some sort to back that up? I'm just asking, I have no idea about the BA codex either way.

John does that all the time.

@Brook: What? Remember what other people said? Yeah, I do that all the time.

@Hordini: It's paraphrased from some GW staffer, but there is no way I'm going to hunt back through every BA-related post over the past year or so to try and find the specific post. The feedback was that webcodex release was a failure because GW didn't sell appreciably more BA models than the would have without it. Assuming the post wasn't deleted, you're welcome to dig through the morass...

Maybe it wouldnt have been a failure if they put actual effort into it.. GW's circular logic that doesnt even address their own design failures is amusing

Or frustrating, depending on how you look at it. I'd love to see a new re-thought Dark Eldar army, but if the logic is that since current sets=low sales then new sets=loss we'd never see what we want.

I've been playing DE since I started 40K, 10 long years ago. I love the rules, I love playing them in 5th ed, I still love quite a few of the models. But new models and rules would be awesome. I would LOVE some new fluff, I would LOVE some new models, I would LOVE not to be the only person in the world to play DE . . . or so it seems sometimes =p . . . But just today I played my first Planetstrike game with DE . . . a draw against IE . . . but it played awesomely, the rules are still good . . . and the best thing is, that just by getting the army out and playing with it I sparked up interest about DE. As a member of staff it was great to get a crowd of people round the table watching my Wyches come in fromt he edge, and charge into squads of IE Vets and kill them all in 1 turn! DE still the true piratical raiders of the universe!

"IE"? Imperial Fists? Imperal Guard? Iron Warriors? What?

AAAH! I'm an idiot . . . been talking too much computer to people! Sorry I meant Imperial Guard, not Internet Explorer . . . that really famous 40K army we all know and love =p

They should just melt all of the DE models they have in stock and use that plastic and resin to make the new DE models.

Jacksonhighlander wrote:They should just melt all of the DE models they have in stock and use that plastic and resin to make the new DE models.

...have you seen DE jetbikes? Wyches? seriously. if they screw up the wyches like they did daemonettes... SMACK A BABY.

Jacksonhighlander wrote: if they screw up the wyches like they did daemonettes... SMACK A BABY.

They could screw up those models? The wyches are cool . . . but in now way, shape, or form, are they GOOD models . . . my philosophy on the new DE stuff is "The only way is up!"

That was my philosophy regarding the new Transformers movie, and I was proven wrong.

TBH considering the dark eldar sculpts are 10 years old they aren't that bad when you look at some of the other sculpts from that time. Some of them are still pretty good.

I hope they don't do them as eldar pirates, that would be a shame and honestly would cause the line to fail. It would just be an bland extension of codex eldar at that point and not a seperate army.

Considering the time frame a new dark eldar codex -might- be released in they are prolly just releasing the models to see what player appeal is like, remind players they exist, and get some model sales. The net has been abuzz on many sites about how the DE codex is getting revamped, so if you have a warehouse full of stuff for DE why not ship it?

And honestly considering every major game expansion for 40k thus far has had mention or special rules or new fluff for Dark Eldar (5th edition, Apoc, Planetstrike)and they were one of the armies supported in a not so long ago expasion for dawn of war, its pretty safe to say GW plans to support them. But then again when you have a company with its own on site bar sometimes things get drunk....

Honestly I see the majority of the model line being redone but not in a drastic way, just new sculpts, and rules changes more than I see units going to be invalidated, which is prolly why they are re-releasing the old models. Even if new models come out the old ones will still be viable in the rules, and chances are even if you were to walk out today and buy a new DE army, 12+ months from now you will replace a few units with the new models because the models will be....new

TBH, I'm seriously considering making a DE army.

TBH, I'm seriously considering starting a Squat army