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The Eldar at the moment don't make any sense in a warhammer universe of war. The Eldar don't reproduce at a rate anything like what can replenish their losses and we know that its been that way since the fall. We can accurately date the fall as 11k years ago due to the Eye of Terror. So for 11 thousand years the Eldar have been fighting with no way to replenish numbers and fighting large scale battles that often see them take severe losses. Over the time of 11k years even small losses would certainly add up and with no way to replenish numbers...you would think they would be extremely low on man power to the point they couldn't even field a proper defence force. This is not the case but after reading a bit about the Eldar they have taking a real pasting in just 40k and still seem to have plenty of military. Secondly the Eldar being a old race who used to be great and lost it all is fine...but that makes them basically already defeated, no matter what happens or what wins they get they will never get stronger as it stands...I don't know but that sort of takes some of the fun out of them for me. Thridly they have maiden worlds and they are almost always destroyed or taken! How many do they have?.

They are often written as arrogant and haughty...which they are supposed to be. However even the dumbest person knows when in diplomacy with people you don't really want to fight you shouldn't be condescending. It's written this way so they will cause a fight and the grim dark universe can go on as grim dark...but if they Eldar did this they would quickly run out of people, even the Romans knew not to provoke barbarians.

As it stands it seems the Eldar are already beaten, which is a shame because they are a great faction, I would love to see some sort of revival where the Eldar essentially get back on their feet.

What do you think? Pinning your hopes on the Ynnari?

I couldn't disagree more.

It's true that the Asuryani have some issues in the bedroom, but I assure you that isn't a problem for the True Kin.

Even if it were the case that the Aeldari will never get any stronger, is that really a problem? The Imperium isn't going to get any stronger either; 40K is a grimdark setting, everyone will ultimately get nommed by the Tyranids or something anyway.

What would kill the fun for me is if the Aeldari become battlebros with the Imperium

I tend to see the Ynnari fluff as a bit cringe, and the faction as abortive attempt to by GW fold all the Aeldari into a single codex, so that they have more time to spend on armies of Primaris Lieutenants. Unfounded personal opinions obvs.

Ynnari are generally awful to me. The actual detailed lore is either eh or outright bad, their "saving people" is the second worst way to end up for an Eldar and they weirdly take over every other Eldar storyline.

In terms of getting stronger the Eldar have as much chance of getting stronger as the Imperium. Plus considering pitched battles are the worst case their losses are generally minor.

Eldar repopulate slowly, but they still repopulate. They just can't match orks and humans in terms of breeding rate. This means that they cannot win with numbers like the Imperial Guard do - an army which basically operates on the premise of throwing so many bodies at the enemy that you choke the machineguns with bodies.

Eldar can't conduct war like that. However they have planetsized ships and whole worlds on the fringe which are populated; they still have significant armed forces, especially as most of their population goes through the army at some stage in their long lifespans. Indeed the long lifespan whilst also remaining physically capable means that even though their birth rate is low, their natural death rate is also very low.

So whilst an Imperial Guard regiment might only be a few generations spread between the oldest and the youngest, an Eldar Regiment could have hundreds of years or more between the oldest and the youngest.



They also recycle warriors through the Wraith systems, which further allows them to mitigate their losses.




Eldar still have large armies and can conduct major campaigns; they just cannot raise an empire crushing army that would allow them to take on the Imperium head on.



Also don't forget when they deal with the Imperium in diplomacy don't forget, the Eldar might be haughty and mysterious. The Imperium is mindlessly xenophobic. They are basically dealing with negotiations where both sides are well aware that no matter the outcome, the Imperium side is going to want to kill the Eldar at some stage. It might not be the specific humans they are dealing with, there's loads of branches of the Imperium that would sweep in and crush the Xenos and perhaps even the humans allied to them at any stage.

Eldar could be as placid as they'd like and the Imperium would still want to kill them - so might as well be haughty, superior and mysterious because heck being nice and kind and meek wont' get you any further.

Ymmari strike me as a bad joke with no punchline. They just dribbled off into inconsequence.

As far as pop problems go, the main thing that would make a big difference is ranged weapons (24+) on guardians. If they didn't look like suicide squads, it would be a better fit to the fluff.
They simply changed the wrong stat on shuriken cats back in the day.

Yinnari are just trapped because they were clearly a marketing idea pushed in to merge two armies into a third to make more sales by selling "the other side" to players of either force; but where craftworld still has a lot of older plastics and, worse, a lot of finecast sitting right on its most exciting and interesting infantry.

Its hard to get the army to take off when a large portion is held back like that.



Also I'd argue it fails because GW keeps teasing us every time they mention Eldar lore with Exodites

You're not wrong, Craftworlders do have a shrinking population but they rarely go into pitch battle, normally using their seers to deflect threats into other races. I'm sure they still suffer more losses than they replace but they have some of the most advanced weapons of way in the galaxy, that added to their wraith constructs will keep their losses to the minimum.
I don't hate the Ynarri, don't love them either but GW don't seem to be doing much with them at the moment. I'd love to see them as a means to get Exodites but there's no basis for that happening, just me wishing!
On a side note, aren't the Exodites supposed to be the most numerous of all the Aeldari?

 kingheff wrote:
On a side note, aren't the Exodites supposed to be the most numerous of all the Aeldari?

I've not heard that. I seem to recall that the Drukhari are the most numerous, by some margin. That said, I could be misremembering, or that could have been superceded by other fluff....

Exodites lore is rather outdated/old by now - its not helped that BL mostly focuses on marines as the story focus for 40K - its got better over the last few years, but 40K is still very marine dominant in story focus.

Meanwhile Exodites don't have codex so they've been sort of left to one side.


That said they are supposed to have settled worlds on the fringe of the Galaxy, so they don't rely on the Craftworld ships that the bulk of the Eldar Race relies upon. So I'd wager they've potential to have larger populations than the Craftworlders. In comparison to Dark Eldar is tricky because Dark Eldar also practice a lot of cloning.

Rebel4ever85 wrote:
The Eldar at the moment don't make any sense in a warhammer universe of war. The Eldar don't reproduce at a rate anything like what can replenish their losses and we know that its been that way since the fall. We can accurately date the fall as 11k years ago due to the Eye of Terror. So for 11 thousand years the Eldar have been fighting with no way to replenish numbers and fighting large scale battles that often see them take severe losses. Over the time of 11k years even small losses would certainly add up and with no way to replenish numbers...you would think they would be extremely low on man power to the point they couldn't even field a proper defence force. This is not the case but after reading a bit about the Eldar they have taking a real pasting in just 40k and still seem to have plenty of military. Secondly the Eldar being a old race who used to be great and lost it all is fine...but that makes them basically already defeated, no matter what happens or what wins they get they will never get stronger as it stands...I don't know but that sort of takes some of the fun out of them for me. Thridly they have maiden worlds and they are almost always destroyed or taken! How many do they have?.

Their numbers are slowly dwidling on the whole, sure, but you may be underestimating their ability to preserve and replenish those numbers. Because craftworlds generally avoid big, costly conflicts, they might go a long time between conflicts that put a major dent in their population. Craftworlds don't seem to have any trouble providing food, shelter, etc. for their population. Even though they reproduce more slowly than humans, they're still kind of in an ideal situation for increasing their population during their downtime.

Basically, eldar are pretty good at not dying in droves, and they have the resources to reproduce at a decent clip.

They are often written as arrogant and haughty...which they are supposed to be. However even the dumbest person knows when in diplomacy with people you don't really want to fight you shouldn't be condescending. It's written this way so they will cause a fight and the grim dark universe can go on as grim dark...but if they Eldar did this they would quickly run out of people, even the Romans knew not to provoke barbarians.

I... agree. And it can be annoying when craftworlders are written as rude to their own disadvantage. To play daemon's advocate, however, novels have made some pretty good cases for why it's so difficult to be especially polite to humans. For one thing, humans tend to be xenophobic in the extreme. If you're sitting down at the negotiating table, you are genuinely at risk of the humans trying to blow your head off just on principle. If you're a seer, you might even be aware of surface thoughts where the human is thinking about how much he hates you. You might even catch glimpses of futures where he draws a pistol and starts shooting at you.

Eldar also have superhumanly strong emotions and long lfiespans. The smog-choked pollution swamp these humans are living on used to be an absolutely beautiful maiden world, one of the last relics of your species' past. It's like turning the Tajmahal (spelling) into a garbage dump. You've lived long enough to have dozens of cousins and siblings, and you've lost a lot of them to human violence. You remember being a guardian on a mission where your craftworld's seers tried to warn the humans about a chaos threat, and the humans decided to ambush you rather than hear you out. You lost your girlfriend that day.

Plus, humans are just annoyingly slow and gross. Holding a conversation with one is like talking to a sloth from Zootopia. And while you're waiting for that sloth to finish spouting something about his corpse god, you're all too aware of the harsh electrical lighting on their ship, the stink of sweat and human digestion. The too-strong deoderant the human wears that doesn't really cover up his own BO.

Eldar should be more polite to their own benefit, but like, I kind of get it. XD

As it stands it seems the Eldar are already beaten, which is a shame because they are a great faction, I would love to see some sort of revival where the Eldar essentially get back on their feet.

What do you think? Pinning your hopes on the Ynnari?

This is a big part of why I love the ynnari. The aeldari have been fighting a losing battle for a long time. For a while there, I was getting kind of sour on the diabla ex machina that made every conflict feel pointless and hard to care about. The ynnari change the game. Even if they're tragically misguided and doomed in the end, I love the motivations behind them. I love the "disparate cultures coming together, desperately sacrificing themselves for a brighter future for their people," thing. The ynnari are basically sick of the fatalistic problem you've identified here and are turning that frustration into hope.

Rebel4ever85 wrote:
The Eldar at the moment don't make any sense in a warhammer universe of war. The Eldar don't reproduce at a rate anything like what can replenish their losses and we know that its been that way since the fall. We can accurately date the fall as 11k years ago due to the Eye of Terror. So for 11 thousand years the Eldar have been fighting with no way to replenish numbers and fighting large scale battles that often see them take severe losses. Over the time of 11k years even small losses would certainly add up and with no way to replenish numbers...you would think they would be extremely low on man power to the point they couldn't even field a proper defence force. This is not the case but after reading a bit about the Eldar they have taking a real pasting in just 40k and still seem to have plenty of military. Secondly the Eldar being a old race who used to be great and lost it all is fine...but that makes them basically already defeated, no matter what happens or what wins they get they will never get stronger as it stands...I don't know but that sort of takes some of the fun out of them for me. Thridly they have maiden worlds and they are almost always destroyed or taken! How many do they have?.

They are often written as arrogant and haughty...which they are supposed to be. However even the dumbest person knows when in diplomacy with people you don't really want to fight you shouldn't be condescending. It's written this way so they will cause a fight and the grim dark universe can go on as grim dark...but if they Eldar did this they would quickly run out of people, even the Romans knew not to provoke barbarians.

As it stands it seems the Eldar are already beaten, which is a shame because they are a great faction, I would love to see some sort of revival where the Eldar essentially get back on their feet.

What do you think? Pinning your hopes on the Ynnari?

Honestly, this is a far bigger issue for Space Marines.

Space Marines recruitment is famously vague, but it takes years and in some cases decades to make one, and but they die at astounding rates relative to their size. With a thousand marines per chapter, and only a thousand chapters, these guys really all should be extinct in a handful of years.

Ultimately however, 40k is Space Fantasy, based heavily on Tolkien (where the term Eldar is first used in relation to elves as far as I know). In Tolkien fantasy, the Elves are genuinely on their way out the door, they *are* leaving the scene and the world for all intents and purposes. 40k took that over, the Eldar are a race in decline, but just haven't quite reached that same point as the Tolkien elves yet, and the vastly expanded timelines make a little less sense.

In general however, nothing in 40k really works or makes sense when we really try to take a look at it. The Space Marines are so few as to be truly irrelevant and unnoticeable on any real galactic scale, the Eldar would have been long gone, etc. It's sword and board fantasy dressed up in all sorts of scifi/steampunk/industrial/etc skins.

So keep in mind that I only play casual escalation campaign style, so you've gotta take this with a grain of salt.

But I too like the Ynarri.

I think that GW has "done much with them" because they consciously want to grow the faction over a period of years. The Ynarri are a tool, and we're in that stage where our campaigns can tell the story. Right now Yvraine needs to ally to survive, so your game is the thing that determines which craftworlds, cults and Kabals get behind her. Or which Aspect temples. Once the story advances, and I believe it will, it's going to become harder to do that. If they released a Ynarri upgrade sprue that could be used with either CWE or DE to create a Ynarri "look" for troops, that might help a bit. Giving the Ynarri a bespoke unit or two would be even better.

I believe that the Eldar are the best place for growth right now. I am disappointed that because of other errors around Blood of the Phoenix, GW may assume there isn't enough player support.

I would like to see DE characters restored, and all Finecast in all 3 factions gone, replaced by new plastics. I want a few more Harlequin units; they used to have giant masks as jetbike canopies- I want that back. These canopies were also used in conversions for wraithlords, and those would be nice too. THEN the Ynarri can go to the Exodites or Corsairs; we get a Quin sized dex for one of those and models to support it. Pulling this faction into the game is the cred that creates the first bespoke Ynarri unit. Then they go after the remaining faction, and Ynarri grows one more time.

Now we've got lots of tools to facilitate this. Release a DE character as a Blackstone model; better yet, do a combo. There's a DE ship in BSF but no DE model. The story is that a DE character stole a ship from Vect. So what happens if Vect and his agents come to Blackstone to get it back?

We have Kill Team rules for Dire Avengers, Banshees and Scorpions, so Scorpions would make a good KT release; also a good venue for a bespoke Ynarri troop choice, and a few other of the DE characters if they don't all fit into BSF.

Warp spiders need a re-release and a phoenix lord, but as with Hawks and Shining Spears, and Dark Reapers, they aren't really suitable for anything but 40k.

Cross platform integration allows GW to really bump a range if they want to; just think about how BSF supported the Sisters release by giving us Thaddius, Pious and Gottfret.

 harlokin wrote:

 kingheff wrote:
On a side note, aren't the Exodites supposed to be the most numerous of all the Aeldari?

I've not heard that. I seem to recall that the Drukhari are the most numerous, by some margin. That said, I could be misremembering, or that could have been superceded by other fluff....

Dark Eldar are definitely at the top because they have the haemonculi. I think from there it goes Exodites across all their worlds, Craftworlders, Corsairs and Harlequins.

pm713 wrote:

 harlokin wrote:

 kingheff wrote:
On a side note, aren't the Exodites supposed to be the most numerous of all the Aeldari?

I've not heard that. I seem to recall that the Drukhari are the most numerous, by some margin. That said, I could be misremembering, or that could have been superceded by other fluff....

Dark Eldar are definitely at the top because they have the haemonculi. I think from there it goes Exodites across all their worlds, Craftworlders, Corsairs and Harlequins.

Dark Eldar are mainly vat grown with the trueborn rare and can also be regenerated from the odd finger or toe so have no population issues - quite the opposite.

The Path novels and other more recent sources limited the Craftworld Elfar population by having the only source of new soul stones being the Eye of Terror.

I think part of it has to do with aspects of Eldar background not covered by the tabletop.

1: reporting bias. To keep the theme of the dying race, the stories are always tragedies. But it's also possible that 100% of lost maiden world's are represented in the stories told, rather than being representative. As in, 5 maiden worlds have been lost and that's it which isn't that many comparatively.

2: Eldar medical technology. Of all the armies on the table, I think the Eldar are least likely to be representative of their casualties. Their suits are psycho active and morph to their bodies. I imagine they would be excellent at keeping injured Eldar Alive.

Their medicine is most likely psychic and they sing tissues back together. The result being that very few causalities in the game are actually fatal for the Eldar.

3: their strategic superiority. The Eldar almost never fight battles they didn't plan extensively for. They are almost always the attacker and have very specific goals in mind. They rarely fight protracted wars. They strike and fade.

Because of this, they also don't fight that often. They choose their battles and only fight them when they really need to.




Basically, the Eldar don't fight that often, generally have the upper hand when they do, and are technologically advanced enough that their soldiers are at a much lower risk of dying afterwards.


But the game itself isn't easily representative of this, and it's not 100% true all the time.

Good points Helelbore. My headcanon is that most 40k games that are meant to have a story attached represent rare, critical moments where the eldar were forced to fight a relatively even battle by circumstances they couldn't control. Whenever possible, Eldar show up to a Kill Team game with a 2,000 point army, and they kill 2,000 point armies by finding a third party to turn that threat into a 1,000 point army.

Wyldhunt wrote:
Good points Helelbore. My headcanon is that most 40k games that are meant to have a story attached represent rare, critical moments where the eldar were forced to fight a relatively even battle by circumstances they couldn't control. Whenever possible, Eldar show up to a Kill Team game with a 2,000 point army, and they kill 2,000 point armies by finding a third party to turn that threat into a 1,000 point army.

Or that Imperium vs Orks game? That there was the Eldar victory.

Firstly some good responses! There is a fair bit to think about. Honestly not a fan of dark Eldar so when i talk of Eldar i mostly mean craftworld Eldar.

 harlokin wrote:
I

I tend to see the Ynnari fluff as a bit cringe, and the faction as abortive attempt to by GW fold all the Aeldari into a single codex, so that they have more time to spend on armies of Primaris Lieutenants. Unfounded personal opinions obvs.

Ynnari are what seem to be the dues ex machina that GW have chosen, personally not that keen on how its been done, but i like the idea the Eldar regaining some strength.

Honestly, this is a far bigger issue for Space Marines.

No, Space Marines will never be allowed to get weak for obvious reasons and with the new Primaris marines....yeah they are fine.

Eldar repopulate slowly, but they still repopulate. They just can't match orks and humans in terms of breeding rate. This means that they cannot win with numbers like the Imperial Guard do - an army which basically operates on the premise of throwing so many bodies at the enemy that you choke the machineguns with bodies.

Extremely slowly to the point of not really making a difference they are avoiding it as much as possible. This is by design...they don't want to reproduce they want to finish the infinity circuit. They have choosen to die off because of Slaanesh devouring their souls and wish to stop it. This is where the Ynnari come in because they want to stop slaanesh without everyone having to die.

Even if it were the case that the Aeldari will never get any stronger, is that really a problem? The Imperium isn't going to get any stronger either; 40K is a grimdark setting, everyone will ultimately get nommed by the Tyranids or something anyway.

Honestly the Imperium is just fine. They are still taking new worlds, they have influx of new technology and new space marines. What makes you think they can't grow stronger...if anything the return of Guilliman is just that, a chance to grow stronger and to break the stagnation. Its funny how when you talk about a race that is literally dying out you compare it to the biggest and strongest force in the galaxy, who have numbers beyond counting. My main army is the Imperial guard and I have never felt that the Imperium would EVER run out of bodies to throw at a problem. Fact the Imperium is still the strongest force in the galaxy and for every world they lose they take one somewhere else.

3: their strategic superiority. The Eldar almost never fight battles they didn't plan extensively for. They are almost always the attacker and have very specific goals in mind. They rarely fight protracted wars. They strike and fade.

This is usually the case, however most of them have still taken a pounding. Iyanden and Biel- Tan are two major craft worlds that have had massive losses not sure on the numbers but from the way the events were written it was extremely bad for both craftworlds.

Hey! Sure they are the dying race... But of course they should give their citizenry the shortest range gun in the 41st milllenium and one of the worse armour values and send them off to battle.

No problem there I dont know what you are on about...

 Mr Morden wrote:

pm713 wrote:

 harlokin wrote:

 kingheff wrote:
On a side note, aren't the Exodites supposed to be the most numerous of all the Aeldari?

I've not heard that. I seem to recall that the Drukhari are the most numerous, by some margin. That said, I could be misremembering, or that could have been superceded by other fluff....

Dark Eldar are definitely at the top because they have the haemonculi. I think from there it goes Exodites across all their worlds, Craftworlders, Corsairs and Harlequins.

Dark Eldar are mainly vat grown with the trueborn rare and can also be regenerated from the odd finger or toe so have no population issues - quite the opposite.

The Path novels and other more recent sources limited the Craftworld Elfar population by having the only source of new soul stones being the Eye of Terror.

I think you've misunderstood me. I said that the DE are the most numerous, Exodites are the second most numerous and Craftworlds take the third most numerous spot.

 Mr Morden wrote:
The Path novels and other more recent sources limited the Craftworld Elfar population by having the only source of new soul stones being the Eye of Terror.

That's not new lore. It's been canon since 2nd edition.

Craftworlders limit their reproduction deliberately, because every new child born needs a fresh soul stone to attune to.

 Duskweaver wrote:

 Mr Morden wrote:
The Path novels and other more recent sources limited the Craftworld Elfar population by having the only source of new soul stones being the Eye of Terror.

That's not new lore. It's been canon since 2nd edition.

Not quite. In 2nd edition, it was in areas of warp and realspace overlap, with the Eye of Terror being given as an example. In other words, it implied that the Eye of Terror was one of but not the sole source.

It might be that whilst Chaos Corrupted worlds outside of the Eye of Terror might well be able to manifest the soulstones, but they are perhaps isolated worlds that are not always guaranteed to produce them. Plus they might be haphazard in access for the Eldar.

So the Eye might just prove to be the most reliable source of soulstones


So whilst the Eye might not be the sole potential source, its basically the sole reliable source that's worth questing toward to harvest.

I believe it's Crone Worlds that are the sole source so technically any Eldar world that was consumed by the Warp in the Fall would produce soul stones so places like the Maelstrom would have some.

I think the Screaming Vortex might have them too, it's been a while since I cracked open my Black Crusade RPG stuff.

 Overread wrote:
It might be that whilst Chaos Corrupted worlds outside of the Eye of Terror might well be able to manifest the soulstones, but they are perhaps isolated worlds that are not always guaranteed to produce them. Plus they might be haphazard in access for the Eldar. .

They also require an Eldar population during the Fall, which is much more likely in the Eye (as the center of their empire) than a random world that happened become a daemon world later on. A corrupted exodite world would do, but random human colony wouldn't.

The soulstones aren't a happenstance occurrence, they're available because of the eldar that died/trapped in Chaos.

The Jain-Zhar novel mentions spirit stones were made from every Eldar that was consumed by slaanesh when they eye of terror opened.

So the person who posted above is probably right.