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I just don’t get it. It’s such a fun concept and would expand the Aeldari in a very interesting and unique way. Plenty of opportunities to make big centrepiece kits. They would sell well because they’re dinosaurs.

If Space marines get 10+ codex’s with slight variations why can’t Aeldari? Exodites would be a solid expansion faction.

GW has two tiers of customer - space marines and everyone else.

The support marines get is a whole separate platinum level membership where you get endless releases across miniatures, units and fiction.

It is unfortunately not representative of other factions.

GW has taken 30 years to release every aspect unit in plastic, while the tactical squad has been released multiple times in plastic with multiple chapter specific plastic versions as well. That kind of says it all.


They may do exodites, but probably a single kill team squad or something.

 Hellebore wrote:
GW has two tiers of customer - space marines and everyone else.

And it's worth noting that the sales numbers justify that focus on Space Marines. They heavily outsell everyone else.

Eumerin wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:
GW has two tiers of customer - space marines and everyone else.

And it's worth noting that the sales numbers justify that focus on Space Marines. They heavily outsell everyone else.

It doesn't justify it at all when they don't advertise or sell their games that way. If you're selling a faction vs faction game, you don't favourite one and act like they're all all equal children, It's a ridiculous way to do business.

Imagine if magic the gathering printed 10x as many reds as every other colour but never told anyone, and just acted like you had an equal selection regardless of colour...



GW is more than free to offer platinum marine membership but they should put that on the box when they sell it. It's deceptive advertising at the very least.

 Hellebore wrote:

Eumerin wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:
GW has two tiers of customer - space marines and everyone else.

And it's worth noting that the sales numbers justify that focus on Space Marines. They heavily outsell everyone else.

It doesn't justify it at all when they don't advertise or sell their games that way. If you're selling a faction vs faction game, you don't favourite one and act like they're all all equal children, It's a ridiculous way to do business.

But apparently it works for them, so...

Eumerin wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:
GW has two tiers of customer - space marines and everyone else.

And it's worth noting that the sales numbers justify that focus on Space Marines. They heavily outsell everyone else.

How much of that is inertia and Marines getting more things that everyone else?

 Mistresspaige wrote:
I just don’t get it. It’s such a fun concept and would expand the Aeldari in a very interesting and unique way. Plenty of opportunities to make big centrepiece kits. They would sell well because they’re dinosaurs.

If Space marines get 10+ codex’s with slight variations why can’t Aeldari? Exodites would be a solid expansion faction.

At this point I think it's only a question of time. World Eaters, Thousand Sons, Emperor's Children, Votann, Talons all need their second wave to turn them to more complete factions, Dark Eldar need all the things back they lost in the last 10 years, Space Marines need even more Space Marines(Grey Knights) just because GW thinks so but after that (or even in between because they won't do 3 waves of CSM legions next to each other) Exodites have a good chance to be released as a faction as they're one of the last factions that heavily feature in the background (and don't need to be build from the ground up like Hrud or Zoats). For all things we grumble about GW but they made an effort during the last 8 years to bring all factions to the same standard and get rid of Failcast. And with the new plastic eldar they've finished that.

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
At this point I think it's only a question of time. World Eaters, Thousand Sons, Emperor's Children, Votann, Talons all need their second wave to turn them to more complete factions, Dark Eldar need all the things back they lost in the last 10 years, Space Marines need even more Space Marines(Grey Knights) just because GW thinks so but after that (or even in between because they won't do 3 waves of CSM legions next to each other) ...

You did see the roadmap from the LVO, right?

They might not get big waves of models (aside from the EC, though I do hope the WE get a proper wave 2), but we seem to be getting four CSM Legions in a row...

On balance?

Whilst it’s undeniably true Xenos haven’t received much love historically, 9th Ed and so far 10th Ed seem to be challenging that.

We’ve had major refreshes for Orks, Craftworlds, Necrons and Tyranids. Indeed, miracles of miracles, Craftworlds are soon to have no Aspects left in Resin/Plastic, something the community had been waiting decades for, ever since 3rd Ed heralded Mass plastification,

But, a whole new army is still quite the commitment. Not just in sculpting time, but starting from concepts, with enough to not just make an attractive array of units, but which occupies its own tactical niche.

Now, that is categorically not to say no such niche exists that Exodites might reliably fill. But it takes a fair amount of development time, as the concept needs to be more than Space Elves Riding Dinosaurs Are Cool. Which they are, of course.

For instance? If it’s an all Cavalry force? I can’t think of anything in 40K which really offers that right now. But in terms of rules, how is such an army going to punch its weight whilst still feeling that traditional Eldar fragility? And without giving them “so….why don’t other Eldar factions use these, they’re ace” weapons.

Again, this isn’t to pose the issues in bringing them to the tabletop as unresolvable. Just that it’s not a straight forward job.

 Dysartes wrote:

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
At this point I think it's only a question of time. World Eaters, Thousand Sons, Emperor's Children, Votann, Talons all need their second wave to turn them to more complete factions, Dark Eldar need all the things back they lost in the last 10 years, Space Marines need even more Space Marines(Grey Knights) just because GW thinks so but after that (or even in between because they won't do 3 waves of CSM legions next to each other) ...

You did see the roadmap from the LVO, right?

They might not get big waves of models (aside from the EC, though I do hope the WE get a proper wave 2), but we seem to be getting four CSM Legions in a row...

Yeah, but that's just Codizes, probably. I expect something for World Eaters, but TS will probably get a Char if anything. GW might as well try to tell us that we got a lot of stuff in the form of all the Daemons we swallow.

Eumerin wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:
GW has two tiers of customer - space marines and everyone else.

And it's worth noting that the sales numbers justify that focus on Space Marines. They heavily outsell everyone else.

I think it's worth noting that gw has never tried treating any other faction as an equal and therefore created a feedback loop.

There are more marines. So people buy more marines. Then GW has to make more marines. Rinse and repeat.

It LOOKS like marine's are everyones favourite, but by virtue of being in EVERY starter box ever made, they create a greater sunk cost fallacy than any other faction, and perhaps THAT is why they sell.

No one will every be able to prove or disprove this theory, because GW can't afford the risk to find out.

No models no rules, and no demand they feel for the models?

Fluff-wise, I have to imagine the Exodites keep to themselves and predominantly would only have a defensive army. Not much reason for "crusading" or exploring as an Exodite.

 Lord Clinto wrote:
Fluff-wise, I have to imagine the Exodites keep to themselves and predominantly would only have a defensive army. Not much reason for "crusading" or exploring as an Exodite.

This just needs a tiny lore advance. We already have lots of "hot blood" younger eldar shunning the more hide-defend-sneak tactics of their elders and pushing for combat and conquest. That's the foundation of Yinnari. Exodites don't even have to bind to her, just have the same social revolution happening which causes them to go off world and start pushing out. Plus even if you don't have that you could easily have a crusading Marine army or a Tyranid splinter fleet strike their worlds and have a series of major defensive battles. The Votaan aren't known for expansion either and they are in the game.

I think the key is GW having the internal resources; the staff wanting to do the project and the desire to invest. With plastics making bigger models possible and practical they could certainly do it and Lizardmen are popular enough to show that dinosaur models do sell.

I get the feeling Exodites are something GW wants to do on some level which is why they keep getting mentioned; but no one has had the gumption to put money behind it. IT might even just be that Craftworld hasn't sold as well as it should to justify another Eldar expansion and part of that might well be its legacy of older models. With this next update basically resolving that entire issue we could see a change coming.

 Lord Clinto wrote:
Fluff-wise, I have to imagine the Exodites keep to themselves and predominantly would only have a defensive army. Not much reason for "crusading" or exploring as an Exodite.

Plenty of people want their worlds, so trouble comes to them.
Also, with the Eldar habit of scrying the future and heading off big problems while they are still small ones, I could see their seers sending expeditionary forces to take out targets/objectives on other planets before they come to theirs.

The way GW mines nostalgia I think it’s just a mater of time until we get some exodites. It might just be a KT or a unit to splash in other Eldar armies, not a full codex. But I expect we’ll see a little something eventually.

The problem is you can't really do a Killteam of Exodites. The big thing about them is Eldar riding Dinosaurs (or basically giant beasts). You can't really do that in a killteam which is predominantly infantry.

Yes Exodites will have unique looking infantry, but the theme of them is the bigger models. At the very least you'd need eldar on raptors or similar as cavalry which basically count as bikers. Or on a larger creature as some kind of dreadnought/warlord equivalent.

So it can be done, but the theme really calls for a bigger proper release so that you can see their monsters. Then you can have the infantry alongside that fits into the theme.


Exodites aren't like a Space Marine chapter where 90% of the difference is in the shoulderpads; paint scheme and lore which you can get away with on a killteam to slow grow them.

Exodites are a fundamentally different Eldar grouping as different as Craftworld are to Dark Eldar. They are also not a niche elite group like Harlequins or a group predominantly shown in space (Corsairs)


IF you do Exodites and do them properly then they need a full release and possibly two to get the theme of their army out into the wild.



Of course GW loves teasing - they teased Codex Zoats openly for 2 years in a row at Christmas off the back of 1 model that was a limited release.

 PenitentJake wrote:

Eumerin wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:
GW has two tiers of customer - space marines and everyone else.

And it's worth noting that the sales numbers justify that focus on Space Marines. They heavily outsell everyone else.

I think it's worth noting that gw has never tried treating any other faction as an equal and therefore created a feedback loop.

There are more marines. So people buy more marines. Then GW has to make more marines. Rinse and repeat.

It LOOKS like marine's are everyones favourite, but by virtue of being in EVERY starter box ever made, they create a greater sunk cost fallacy than any other faction, and perhaps THAT is why they sell.

No one will every be able to prove or disprove this theory, because GW can't afford the risk to find out.

This is a nice bit of speculation, but I doubt it is true. Space Marines are the Coco-Cola of Warhammer 40,000 if not Games Workshop. It is the product customers buy, so it is the product GW makes. GW is in the business of selling the models its customers buy. They have the numbers on what sells, how fast it sells, and how often it goes out of stock due to production issues. They are making record after record profits. They know what they are doing.

No company is going to stop making their number 1 seller so that they can diversify. The Coca-Cola Corporation has many products in their soda line. Despite that, Coca-Cola (the soda) is the number 1 soda the vast majority of countries in the world. The number of countries it isn't is in the single digits. The number of countries it isn't in the Top 3 is 1. Should the Coca-Cola Corporation make less Coca-Cola to cater to other customers?

No. And neither should GW make less Space Marines. And before you accuse me of marine-bias, I own next to 0 Space Marines and have both a full-metal and full-plastic Sisters of Battle Army.

I think there's a few things that come into play

1) People associate with humans more readily than other forces. This is a given and has a quick bias in any fantasy/scifi game in that lots of people look for the human faction; identify with the human faction and want to play the human faction.

2) Because of part 1, many games make the human faction the tutorial faction. You see this in video games (RTS) through to RPG and Tabletop. The default human faction often has the least number of restrictions; the most simple basic builds and generally just "works". Space Marines are the same - they play very easily; have good saves and good damage and a wide variety of choices.
Basically they are an ideal starting point; compared to say Dark Eldar which might look cool but are a glass cannon army and thus much trickier to get started with.

3) Advertising feedback loop. Horus Heresy; BIG Space Marine statue at the factory; Space marines on ALL the marketing in the front etc... When you are bombarded by the biggest advertising; then the Space Marine is often the first thing people see with regard to Warhammer and thus is often the thing that helped draw them in in the first place. Which in turn makes them more popular by far.


There is certainly a justifiable argument that if Marines are advertised all the time it will also help drive their sales; whilst other factions might only share the limelight once during a new edition launch. Tyranids might get that once every 10 years; Marines get it every 3 - that's 3 times more major marketing signal boosting for one faction.



There most certainly is a bit of a positive feedback loop going on with Marines; however there's also other things that are more subtle because Stormcast get the same marketing but are in no way selling at the same volume. Other companies also often do similar with their human factions and, again, they are not selling out like Marines. Marines just hit some kind of magical marketing vibe that GW have built on and its become its own exception to a few of the norms.

IT does lead to Marines getting more and more attention and lets face it until around 8th edition GW often outright ignored other armies for whole editions. Dark Eldar and Sisters of Battle both skipped whole editions in the past; Sister of Battle then went on to skip so many model updates they were still running around with metal infantry and troop choices until very recently. Eldar are also another faction that got ignored for ages - the core of their army's theme (aspect warriors) being in first generation plastics and such.

GW are much more robust today at updating faster and keeping updates spread out. They've realised that going from no marketing for several years to a sudden big investment doesn't work as well as dripfeeding marketing for a faction and then doing a big release burst

Well, I don't think GW is in the business of spinning off a codex for every idea anymore thankfully. Long since the days of a Scions codex. If anything, trying to consolidate has been the norm.

I do think its high time Aeldari have a more marine style core with chapters kind of thing though. I'm rather surprised they didn't do that with Harlequins and Ynarri this time around honestly. They did all this work to limit Characters and they could have just given the ones they wanted to limit specific faction keywords. I could see that working with Exodites just fine.

We "just" got Eldar corsairs, which have been in the lore since the RT book. I would hope the exodite time is getting close, but who knows at this point.

This isn't the answer you're looking for, but you could proxy exodites as a few different armies that fit their general theme decently well. Just off the top of my head, light or dark eldar would be fine, there's plenty of large-ish entries in either codex that could be dino-ified. Similarly, Tau have plenty of big stuff that can fit, and the Kroot detachment could be filled with exodite-style models in a pinch. And Genestealer Cult could work, probably. Lots of bikes and cheapish vehicles could have dino stand-ins

It's not the same as having a proper Exodite army, but if you want one, make it. That's what this hobby is supposed to be about anyway.

 Hellebore wrote:

Eumerin wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:
GW has two tiers of customer - space marines and everyone else.

And it's worth noting that the sales numbers justify that focus on Space Marines. They heavily outsell everyone else.

It doesn't justify it at all when they don't advertise or sell their games that way. If you're selling a faction vs faction game, you don't favourite one and act like they're all all equal children, It's a ridiculous way to do business.

Imagine if magic the gathering printed 10x as many reds as every other colour but never told anyone, and just acted like you had an equal selection regardless of colour...



GW is more than free to offer platinum marine membership but they should put that on the box when they sell it. It's deceptive advertising at the very least.

Adverising cannot influence customers to that degree.

For a solid 30 years or so, GW gave exactly 50/50 equal attention, advertising, miniature-releases, lore, army/codex books to Warhammer Fantasy and to Warhammer 40K.

If advertising / miniature production / releases by the company in question would infuence what people buy, Warhammer Fantasy would've never tanked (why would any product ever tank for any company ever, btw? Just advertise it to create demand) and Fantasy Battles and 40K would have perfectly equal market shares to this day.

Actually GW didn't give 50-50 to fantasy - that was one of the issues that many armies weren't getting updated models. It was one of the things that End Times improved dramatically on was adding new models (which was then the double shock when GW destroyed old world right after)


Of course there is more too it than that - as I noted in my earlier post there are multiple elements that help marines along not just the marketing side.

Couldn't you just put Eldar on Dinosaurs and use them as Jetbikes?

It's a proxy stopgap, I know, but it's all I can come up with, for now.

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
Couldn't you just put Eldar on Dinosaurs and use them as Jetbikes?

It's a proxy stopgap, I know, but it's all I can come up with, for now.

Yes - that's basically what all the proxies that do this theme do. OF course there's not a huge number who do because people like to copy GW more directly and as GW don't make eldar on dinosaurs people don't copy the concept as much. If Dawn of War or another major 3rd party creative project did them it would likely spark more demand.

I was a little sad that the Exodite animation (done by a fan) didn't really show anything that really highlighted what made the Exodites unique - if anything it was more Tau fun/focused than Eldar - though we got some freaking cool scenes of stealth suits working and eldar knights charging into battle!

 Overread wrote:
eldar knights charging into battle!

Those were Phantoms. And yes, they looked gorgeous in action.

But speaking of Eldar knights...

Earlier posts have mentioned the problem of finding a reason for the Exodites to get involved. Would it surprise you to know that we once had actual Exodite figures, published by GW? Waaaaaay back when knights were first introduced into Epic, the Eldar knights (which included the amazing Bright Stallion) were described as Exodite units that were attached to a Craftworld's military force. So the Exodites do send troops off-world, and at least sometimes that's in support of a larger Craftworld force.

I think the Bright Stallion is the only Exodites model GW have ever made (except perhaps an infantry character).

But yeah they've appeared in few of the BL books here and there too.

The thing is there's nothing stopping them getting off-world. They can access the Webway; they can request a Craftworld send ships to transport them. There's nothing stopping them leaving.


Plus lets not forget most of Tau are in a tiny corner of the Galaxy - factions in 40K don't have to be spanning the whole Galaxy to be part of the main narrative and tabletop game

1. i think exodites could work as a kill team if they do it warcry style. have the elves, and then give them a dinosaur friend or two

2 i feel like space marines are as popular as they are because they're so easy to paint. eldar have complicated armour, orks have a lot of little details, IG has too many faces everywhere, etc etc

99% of the craft worlds are hands off as well. They don't conquer or stir trouble and only come out enmass rarely for serious things.

The exodites are no more or less bellicose than the craftworlders so I don't really see an issue with them coming out.

Hell, the custodes are a tiny force and can't physically fight as many wars as the entire Eldar race could simultaneously, so if they can be ab army so can the exodites.

I don't think GW will ever make an Exodites codex. The will and demand aren't there. Exodite models have never existed for 40k, so it's not comparable to bringing back Squats.

In the entire history of 40k, there have only ever been two supplements for the Eldar. Craftworld Eldar was a supplement for Codex Eldar in 3rd and there was an Iyanden supplement in 6th. Both would be superfluous today given the detachment system and lack of FOC. Even if they weren't, Eldar just aren't popular enough to justify a major investment in a subfaction. I think GW has learned not to overinvest in the space elves. They did a great job revamping Dark Eldar in 5th, but have been half assing them ever since. Ynnari were a weak attempt to add to the Eldar. They fell kind of flat and haven't been added to since. It would also appear that Harlequins were not as successful as imagined and have since been rolled back into the base codex.

At one time Necron, Tau and Dark Eldar models also did not exist in Rogue Trader as large factions (I think there might have been 1 robot that was the foundation of necron design and perhaps some dark eldar references).


I think Harliquins hit the issue that whoever designed them didn't know how to go beyond either copying what Eldar already did or taking what is basically a super-elite force and adding ot them. It's the same issue Inquisition hits - its designed to compliment an existing army not be an arm in itself.

Yinnari were a weak offering I agree; they were born of a time when GW management was making choices that were odd because they were disconnected from their own customers/games. It's the same era that instead of updating marines with new models released an entire mirror-line alongside the regular marines.