Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

GW Teases Exodites all the time. Yinnari could indeed be a place to put Exodites, Corsairs and other sub-factions of Eldar in a united front along with a much more restricted roster of Craftworld and Dark.

I think the risk right now is Yinnari is basically two armies smushed together so most people end up just playing their core army and one or two other models from the other side. Plus Craftworld already has Corsairs and Harlequins inside it right now.

So we already have an in-game and lore friendly "this army takes everyone" in Craftworld and Yinnari is just doing that again.



Personally I think Yinnari is going to go the way of Harlies. A flavour for Craftworld, but not something that is being spun into its own thing.
It's a seed but its seed doesn't really have identity beyond the lore. The actual models aren't different ot what we have now.


Exodites is a big creative change for Eldar and introduces something we don't have visually in any other force on the table. (besides a possible large Kroot army).



Whilst it means more investment I think there's more actual potential return on investment interest and broadening of the game. Much in the same way that Genestealer Cults have proven more and more popular over time as they've gained their own army; rather than one or two models and the rest being Imperial Guard.

Considering the roadmap, Craftworld will get new codex around the same time as the presumed Emperors Children update. Would be cool if they tried to bring some new life to Ynnari in a classic slaanesh/eldar narrative.

MajorWesJanson wrote:

 tauist wrote:
Guess its just me, but that gun looks unconviniently long. Will this model fit inside single story buildings?

There is a reason that GW buildings have gone from 3" floors to 5"ish floors for 40K

You're telling me. I have a crap-load of the original Necromunda terrain. And 3/4ths of the new models won't fit between the floors.

Ynnri seemed like a way for them to consolidate Eldar into one reductive faction so they didn't have to put any more time into them.

I'm surprised they didn't follow through.

Although the way they package all non imperial armies as 'xenos' when they share nothing in common and are all factions fighting against one another is kind of similarly reductive.

It makes the game look like it only has 3 factions when it really has:

Imperial
Chaos
Eldar (Dark Eldar probably should be separate given their antagonistic relationship with the other Eldar, like chaos marines vs imperial)
Tyranids
Tau
Necrons
Votann
Orks

But putting them all under one heading is a good way to eventually condense them into one xenos army with all.of the factions stripped back to one or 2 unit types...

It would be slightly more accurate to group them like this:

"Reason" (imperial. Eldar. Tau)
Chaos (all chaos)
Destruction (Tyranids and necrons)
Mercenary (Orks, dark eldar and votann)


But that just shows how stupid grouping all xenos together is in the first place, because even this division looks weird.

Drastanta! Drastanta! Drastanta!

 Hellebore wrote:
Ynnri seemed like a way for them to consolidate Eldar into one reductive faction so they didn't have to put any more time into them.

I'm surprised they didn't follow through.

I'm not. Although we can't know for sure and it's only reasoned speculation, Gathering Storm and 8th ed looked a lot like the AoSification of 40k that GW backtracked on to a degree when AoS was received so poorly that it had repercussions all the way up to the board of directors. Original Space Marines were allowed to coexist with their replacements for a good while. Points values were retained alongside power levels. Stuff like that. We still got the Rift, Primarchs and Primaris, ramp up of the superhero soap opera narratives, and so forth. But GW didn't dare shake the foundations of 40k in the same way they did on the fantasy side.

We're only seeing the retirement of original Marines now. Same with dropping points in favor of power levels, or removal of equipment and unit organization options to move 40k closer to AoS in terms of simplicity. Notably this happens after GW managed to turn things around with AoS and make it successful, and after its finances soared for the better part of a decade.

While GW has moved away from Grand Alliances outside of super categories on the online store and I don't think we'll see an actual consolidation of Eldar, we might well be approaching the time where GW is confident about doing something with Ynnari again.

 Hellebore wrote:
Although the way they package all non imperial armies as 'xenos' when they share nothing in common and are all factions fighting against one another is kind of similarly reductive.

No idea how marketing folks at GW might feel about the names, but if they wanted to be accurate about it and still retain simplicity it would be dead easy to relabel the current super factions without changing anything around.

The Imperium of Man
The Enemy Within
The Enemy Without

That's Imperium and Chaos unchanged* and you no longer have to worry about how any of the Xenos relate to each other or why abhumans feature in the category. It's more accurate. It's also nice and Imperium-centric, just how GW likes it.


* You might take exception to Daemons not being the Enemy Beyond, but I think that can be excused. Especially if they're folded in as supporting models in god-specific mortal codices.

The fact that it's already imperium centric is the problem, they don't need anymore encouragement...

 Geifer wrote:


We're only seeing the retirement of original Marines now. Same with dropping points in favor of power levels, or removal of equipment and unit organization options to move 40k closer to AoS in terms of simplicity. Notably this happens after GW managed to turn things around with AoS and make it successful, and after its finances soared for the better part of a decade.

I would suspect the development of bringing Horus Heresy to plastic was also needed so "soften the blow" of going full Primaris. It dont feel like they abandoned "first born" when they got their own game and dedicated boxes for armour marks and ability to micro manage the points for gear and weapons.

 Hellebore wrote:
The fact that it's already imperium centric is the problem, they don't need anymore encouragement...

You're right, they don't need more encouragement. They're already so successful in their approach that it doesn't matter what we think or say.

 Fayric wrote:

 Geifer wrote:


We're only seeing the retirement of original Marines now. Same with dropping points in favor of power levels, or removal of equipment and unit organization options to move 40k closer to AoS in terms of simplicity. Notably this happens after GW managed to turn things around with AoS and make it successful, and after its finances soared for the better part of a decade.

I would suspect the development of bringing Horus Heresy to plastic was also needed so "soften the blow" of going full Primaris. It dont feel like they abandoned "first born" when they got their own game and dedicated boxes for armour marks and ability to micro manage the points for gear and weapons.

Possibly. Specialist Games is clearly set up to go for the nostalgia money.

 Hellebore wrote:
The fact that it's already imperium centric is the problem, they don't need anymore encouragement...

The issue is that when they're objectively the single largest empire in the galaxy (orks not withstanding, Necrons aren't fully emerged and are piecemeal), the galaxy does end up revolving around them. We see this in the real world whenever on nation becomes impotant enough. Do xenos need more focus? yes, but this framing of enemies with and without makes sense..

I don't think its a setting thing, its a product and management thing.

Sure humans are the biggest faction (within the galaxy); however its things like having a mandate that all BL books be about/from the viewpoint of Imperials that results in very very few Xenos books. It doesn't mean there's no interest, but when all you make is focused on one faction, then that's all you can sell.

Some of this is also chasing the highest. Marines/humans out sell other lines; which makes managers invest more into them because whatever you invest has more chance of a highest return on investment. Rinse and repeat that a few times and you've suddenly got under-invested Xenos that are drawing even less attention next to the Imperials.

Which when you look at the numbers alone, justifies your investment choices. I feel like this is a pathway GW went down for a long time and whilst I think its 100% sensible to follow the money as a company; it did lead to problems even for Imperials and the company growth. Because those marine players wanted things to play against; they got bored or drifted into other games when GW had other armies they could have drifted into instead.



Finally I think that certainly for Imperials there's an aspect that many people often go with what they identify with first with something new; and often as not that's the humans in a setting. Now granted Eldar are basically "pointy eared humans" so should also do really well and we can see that Elves in AoS have done really well on that front.

Eldar in 40K haven't done as well in latter years it seems; but I think part of that is just them sitting there with finecast and a model range that's almost 2nd generation for the most part whilst many other armies are many generations on. Heck Tyranids have gone through several massive redesigns in the span

 Hellebore wrote:
Looks fantastic. Now if only they'd actually have the rules that show their demigod of war status.

T3... In 2nd ed Karandras and Maugan were T6!

Yep. It's sad. They should be primarch-equivalents.

 Crimson wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:
Looks fantastic. Now if only they'd actually have the rules that show their demigod of war status.

T3... In 2nd ed Karandras and Maugan were T6!

Yep. It's sad. They should be primarch-equivalents.

So long as they’re costed appropriately, sure.

 ProfSrlojohn wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:
The fact that it's already imperium centric is the problem, they don't need anymore encouragement...

The issue is that when they're objectively the single largest empire in the galaxy (orks not withstanding, Necrons aren't fully emerged and are piecemeal), the galaxy does end up revolving around them. We see this in the real world whenever on nation becomes impotant enough. Do xenos need more focus? yes, but this framing of enemies with and without makes sense..

The galaxy has 100-400 billion stars in it and an estimated 100 billion planets. Of those, the estimate puts 10 billion terrestrial planets.

If we only consider colonisation of terrestrial planets and ignore gas giants and their moons, the galaxy is large enough to contain 10,000 Imperiums. Or there could be 9,999 alien empires of the same size as the imperium, or one that's 9,999X larger.

The point is the the size of the imperium is a mirage and the idea the galaxy has to revolve around them entirely artificial. there could be hundreds of empires with borders that overlap in space, because no one actually travels in realspace long distance, so the physical space you control only extends to the edge of the system your planets are in. the segmentae and sectors the imperium have carved out are aspirational lines on a map, not hard borders in deep space.

Every alien species could have their forces subdivided down into dozens of subfactions just like the imperium has with very little effort at all. That they don't has no baring on the capacity for it. The eldar have had several horus heresy level events in their history, they could easily get 60 book series about each one. The HH started as a few lines of text in outboxest, so the idea that its current scale required 60 books is also a mirage.


We see a new tau book coming out and I truly hope it sells well and is well received, and NOT a backdoor 'imperium and space marines always win even when they are antagonists' story. With the enemy being a secret Raptor my cynicism is bracing for the latter.






Automatically Appended Next Post:

 JNAProductions wrote:

 Crimson wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:
Looks fantastic. Now if only they'd actually have the rules that show their demigod of war status.

T3... In 2nd ed Karandras and Maugan were T6!

Yep. It's sad. They should be primarch-equivalents.

So long as they’re costed appropriately, sure.

Of course. I'm not sure why this ever comes up as a concern, like people are going to expect super stats for cheap or something? Costed appropriately is a default assumption for any unit in the game...

I did up something that makes them even slightly higher tier back when they released the indexes and expect that they cost ~200+pts each.

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/810197.page