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.

Hellebore wrote:
They just did a huge kroot release with exactly that and kroot aren't more popular than Eldar.

Kroot and Knarlocs were part of the original release for the Tau. This Kroot release didn't really add a lot new to the mix. Carnivores have always been plastic. Krootox and hounds were metal originally, while the various Knarlocs were FW resin. I don't think it makes for a good comparison to making a new army from scratch.

Dysartes wrote:
While you're correct that this is only the second kit for Warp Spiders, we are on the third for Hawks - I can't remember whether it was 3rd or 4th, but they did get a new kit in one of those two editions.

Original Swooping Hawks

Updated Swooping Hawks - somewhere between 2001 & 2006

The really insulting things for the Spiders is that Shining Spears have had two iterations before the Spiders got their second - or that we're on Dark Reaper version #4...

Yeah, my bad. Original Hawks were from RT. Got updated in 3rd.

I'd also say there's a reasonable argument that we need a second flavour of Dwarves in Space! before we get to flavour #6 of Elves in Space, please and thank you.

But the dwarfs already are on their second iteration...

I'm not a fan of Votaan - they do nothing wrong they are just not for me - but I do agree on giving them a nice big second wave of models before another army gets added to the game.


Age of Sigmar suffers from this and the problem is the new factions also need second waves. Ossiarchs could do with a doubling of their range; yet before that you've got armies like Fyreslayers who have 2 non-hero models - both of which are troops and that's it. Every other model in their army is a hero model. Even though you can take magmadroths as beasts its still a hero sculpt at its core.

To be fair to AoS, I would argue that the only army that truly suffers from lack of choice is Fyreslayers.

Without going through all of them, at this point, most will have a solid selection of "units" (around 8 or more) and while it may look like character options are equal to or sometimes outnumber the "units" the vast majority are essentially variations of the same theme.

If we look at Lumineth, there are four Scinari options which in WHFB would likely all have come under the one profile with an option to choose which Wind of Magic to harness
The same thing applies to mounted versions of Heroes that get full profiles instead of just additional rules.

Votaan do need a wave 2 with maybe some sort of mining robot unit or something.

Lumineth are a good choice to compare as they did get a second wave of models very early on. Meanwhile armies like Daughters of Khaine and Ossiarchs are running around with single primary waves and a few heroes added after.


Fyreslayers are the worst off by far, but even so many others lack the diversity that larger armies bring. Heck there are 4 unit types in the game - heroes, troops, monsters and artillery and a good many factions have nothing in the artillery slot.

 Overread wrote:
I'm not a fan of Votaan - they do nothing wrong they are just not for me - but I do agree on giving them a nice big second wave of models before another army gets added to the game.


Age of Sigmar suffers from this and the problem is the new factions also need second waves. Ossiarchs could do with a doubling of their range; yet before that you've got armies like Fyreslayers who have 2 non-hero models - both of which are troops and that's it. Every other model in their army is a hero model. Even though you can take magmadroths as beasts its still a hero sculpt at its core.

That is not true. The Fyreslayers also have a terrain piece!

And then there's Malekith and his elves. But instead of giving us an update on him after however many years and AOS editions it's been now, the sole representative of his faction is a single character in one of the Warhammer Quest games.


Getting back to 40K...

 Arschbombe wrote:
[
GWs history with Eldar is weird. Warp Spiders and Hawks were unchanged from 1994 til now, while Fire Dragons, Banshees, and Reapers got resculpts in both 3rd and 4th. It took 13 years after the 4th edition refresh to get the first aspects in plastic (if you don't count the Dire Avengers that came out in 4th).

There's also the plastic Craftworld jetbike that was shown off... and then languished with players asking, "When's the new jetbike coming out?" for years on end until GW finally released it.

 Arschbombe wrote:

Hellebore wrote:
They just did a huge kroot release with exactly that and kroot aren't more popular than Eldar.

Kroot and Knarlocs were part of the original release for the Tau. This Kroot release didn't really add a lot new to the mix. Carnivores have always been plastic. Krootox and hounds were metal originally, while the various Knarlocs were FW resin. I don't think it makes for a good comparison to making a new army from scratch.

Kroot are more of a new army than exodites are, they have nothing in common with the tau and are effectively their own army. The exodites leverage eldar popularity with a new flavour and allow for the use of existing eldar sprues to bulk out their army list, in the same way marine chapters do.

The fact that they put lots of time and money into the kroot line of models, when they could have just done more tau battlesuits which are the more popular part of the faction, is what I am referring to. They didn't need to expand the kroot and creating whole new plastic sprues for an existing unit, or resin units, is still just as much design as doing a new unit that has no antecedent.

GW no longer uses FW to make new armies, so the only channel is through their core plastic lines. So using 'they had old FW units' as a justification effectively means no new armies ever because there are no resin armies to draw from. 'GW can't make armies without preexisting armies' leaves them going nowhere.

The kroot got 2 infantry squads, 1 cavalry squad, 1 beast squad, 3 foot characters and a monster character. Quite a lot of investment for an auxiliary force of the tau. If that is considered fine for a subsection of an existing codex, then doing even just half that of exodites for the craftworld book is entirely feasible - 1 monster character, 1 infantry squad, 1 cavalry squad, 1 foot character... although i see no reason why they couldn't do exactly the same number of releases for the exodites given the above.

Personally I would argue that Eldar Exodites are to Craftworld what Dark Eldar are to Craftworld or what Genestealer Cults are to Tyranids.

A member of hteir faction/race that's so entirely different to the "core" that they stand fully on their own. Both in gameplay/military terms and in design aesthetics and language. Yes they will share things, but ultimately they are so different that they are better served apart than together - or at least have the potential to stand apart.

Kroot I've long argued could do the same and that GW should use them to form a new faction for Tau comprised of a larger Kroot core and then loads of other Xeno races

 Overread wrote:
Personally I would argue that Eldar Exodites are to Craftworld what Dark Eldar are to Craftworld or what Genestealer Cults are to Tyranids.

A member of hteir faction/race that's so entirely different to the "core" that they stand fully on their own. Both in gameplay/military terms and in design aesthetics and language. Yes they will share things, but ultimately they are so different that they are better served apart than together - or at least have the potential to stand apart.

Kroot I've long argued could do the same and that GW should use them to form a new faction for Tau comprised of a larger Kroot core and then loads of other Xeno races

Ultimately I agree, but in terms of feasibly releasing them at all, I would expect them to lean on other things until their army is fully produced. It comes back to whether you want condensed codexes or a wide spread.


If every faction got the same consideration and support as space marines you can easily have:

Craftworlds
Ynnari
Dark Eldar
Harlequins
Corsairs
Exodites

All as separate distinct armies with their own model ranges. The ynnari should be an actual army with a new culture and look as it seeks to reunite the eldar into a pre-fall pro ynnead force.

Similarly the tau can easily have:

Tau cadres
Kroot warbands
gue vesa cohorts
Vespid flights
Tallerian packs
Vorgh Knight killers (an army of giants that can fight knights is pretty cool)


In the current 40k paradigm though, it's pretty clear you won't get that treatment so new units to use as part of an existing codex is your best bet.


EDIT

I'd also love to see genestealer cults for all the races, and not just another imperial army with funny faces.

Chaos should also have cult armies that are not just human as well - eldar cultists, tau, orks etc all fall to chaos in distinct ways that would make really interesting armies and not just more regurgitated marines.

 Hellebore wrote:


Chaos should also have cult armies that are not just human as well - eldar cultists, tau, orks etc all fall to chaos in distinct ways that would make really interesting armies and not just more regurgitated marines.

Uh... no. Not for the Eldar.

Eldar of any type who slip too far toward the worship of Chaos get soul-sucked by Slaanesh. All of the known Eldar cultures quite literally revolve around how to keep this from happening. There are a few very powerful and very dangerous Eldar who are able to resist this. But they are *very* old (since before The Fall), and live in the Eye of Terror.

I'd also love to see genestealer cults for all the races,

A GSC would likely have trouble taking root in an Eldar society, given how pretty much everyone there has psychic powers. If an Eldar returned to his or her home after being infected by a Purestrain Genestealer, the neighbors would almost certainly detect it very quickly. Also, Eldar reproduce very slowly, which doesn't work well with the "four generations to produce new purestrains" biology of the genestealers.

Orks are fungus that reproduce via spores. So they're not compatible with genestealer biology. Back when orks still reproduced in a more "normal" fashion, there was mention in WAAAAGH! The Orks! of GSC Orks. But it was noted to be a dead end for any genestealer that tried to build up a cult in an Ork community.

Eumerin wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:


Chaos should also have cult armies that are not just human as well - eldar cultists, tau, orks etc all fall to chaos in distinct ways that would make really interesting armies and not just more regurgitated marines.

Uh... no. Not for the Eldar.

Eldar of any type who slip too far toward the worship of Chaos get soul-sucked by Slaanesh. All of the known Eldar cultures quite literally revolve around how to keep this from happening. There are a few very powerful and very dangerous Eldar who are able to resist this. But they are *very* old (since before The Fall), and live in the Eye of Terror.

I'd also love to see genestealer cults for all the races,

A GSC would likely have trouble taking root in an Eldar society, given how pretty much everyone there has psychic powers. If an Eldar returned to his or her home after being infected by a Purestrain Genestealer, the neighbors would almost certainly detect it very quickly. Also, Eldar reproduce very slowly, which doesn't work well with the "four generations to produce new purestrains" biology of the genestealers.

Orks are fungus that reproduce via spores. So they're not compatible with genestealer biology. Back when orks still reproduced in a more "normal" fashion, there was mention in WAAAAGH! The Orks! of GSC Orks. But it was noted to be a dead end for any genestealer that tried to build up a cult in an Ork community.

There are eldar chaos followers and always have been. the daemon primarchs used to only hang out in the eye as well. There's nothing stopping them leaving and going a pillaging. The eldar champions are considered some of the most powerful of all chaos followers and the gods love stealing each others champions so there are undoubtedly non slanneshi chaos eldar out there. The chaos gods were sustained by the eldar for millions of years before humans came along, the idea that there are no chaos followers to pour from the eye is just unrealistic.

Genetics is not really an argument against anything - aliens shouldn't be compatible fullstop, having them work with humans is just as unrealistic. So there's no reason they can't work with orks. They insert their genome into the host to have its progeny grow, so a host ork just sheds genestealer infected spores that grow hybrids. Nothing wrong with that at all. Eldar have plenty of opportunities to become cults - the dark eldar don't have psychic abilities, the pirates don't cultivate them, the exodites are isolated. Craftworld eldar reproduction is slow, but no one else's is as slow. And a genestealer DE cult would have access to cloning technology that could create a perfect cult from scratch instantly which is pretty terrifying. They've already written about an eldar craftworld that got infected, so it happens. But we don't get models for them or rules.

I find it odd in the land of anything is possible, nothing is true, everything is canon 40k, that it's always the aliens that have people dig their heels in to prevent things like this, so conveniently everything focuses on humans. Human models, human army rules. 40k has always been a case of 'yes and!' except where we might see something non human get the limelight.

It doesn't have to be spelled out for it to be possible - orks think they're unorky, so the genestealer targets the warboss and so the biggest rightest toughest boss is the one that says what is unorky and you've bypassed the whole thing. A farseer infected dominates the minds of his fellows, taking them by surprise and leading them to infection before they realise what's happened. an entire corsair squad gets infected on a space hulk with no one to help them. An infected mekboy that runs a stompa mob where everyone is clamouring to get wired into deff dreads and morkanaughts puts a stealer ovipositor injector into the system, so everyone that gets wired in also gets infected. Soon the whole warband is infected because they all want to be the pilots. It's not hard to think of these scenarios.

If a 1000 blood angels get models and rules, then the comparatively rare example of freeboota genestealers, exodite genestealers or slanneshi speedfreaks are entirely fine and should have models and rules too. Chaos has never been a human exclusive exercise (1/4 of it is pure eldar but that is always ignored and we see no slanneshi eldar champions ever despite literally being the originators).

It's not even a case of retconning, it's just a case of actually exploring these things more than a one liner in a book with yet more human variants.

 Hellebore wrote:
There are eldar chaos followers and always have been. the daemon primarchs used to only hang out in the eye as well. There's nothing stopping them leaving and going a pillaging. The eldar champions are considered some of the most powerful of all chaos followers and the gods love stealing each others champions so there are undoubtedly non slanneshi chaos eldar out there. The chaos gods were sustained by the eldar for millions of years before humans came along, the idea that there are no chaos followers to pour from the eye is just unrealistic.

I explicitly mentioned the Chaos Eldar in my post. As I said, they're very old, and very powerful. New ones, on the other hand, get their souls slurped by Slaanesh. That's not my lore. That's literally what the Drukhari deal with to a small degree even though they don't directly follow Chaos. Evidently the old worshippers that are still alive figured out a way to resist this. Would they go pillaging? Maybe. But they are the single smallest Eldar faction, and are almost certainly "hunted down with a vengeance" (literally to a degree that nothing else in the galaxy is) by any other Eldar faction gets wind of the fact that Chaos Eldar have come out of the Eye. And they probably haven't lived as long as they have by being reckless, especially in a galaxy that's filled with psychic fortune-tellers that would love nothing more than to see them gutted alive (or worse).

Genetics is not really an argument against anything - aliens shouldn't be compatible fullstop, having them work with humans is just as unrealistic. So there's no reason they can't work with orks. They insert their genome into the host to have its progeny grow, so a host ork just sheds genestealer infected spores that grow hybrids.

Again, this was possible back before Orks were spores, but GW explicitly stated that it was a dead end for any purestrain genestealer that tried it. If you want the details, you can go find the old text from WAAAAAGH! The Orks! Or find someone who still has access to it (I lost my copy long ago).

Nothing wrong with that at all. Eldar have plenty of opportunities to become cults - the dark eldar don't have psychic abilities, the pirates don't cultivate them, the exodites are isolated.

Exodite communities might be isolated, but there is still a community. Any single member of the community who gets taken over will be identified when he's out in public. Additionally, Exodite worlds have their own seers (as well as the world spirit), which would be able to spot that a potential problem is taking root on the planet. Drukhari? They probably have known what genestealers are for a long time, conduct experiments on them, and have sophisticated systems set up to check and see what sort of genetic modifications everyone's sporting. Given how much flesh manipulation the drukhari themselves perform, there's probably easy access to scanners that look at genetic code of people in the area so that when you interact with someone you know exactly what sort of surprises they might spring on you if things go hostile.

I find it odd in the land of anything is possible, nothing is true, everything is canon 40k, that it's always the aliens that have people dig their heels in to prevent things like this, so conveniently everything focuses on humans. Human models, human army rules. 40k has always been a case of 'yes and!' except where we might see something non human get the limelight.

I don't rule out all of the aliens. I only ruled out the Orks and Eldar. I didn't note any reasons why Genestealer Cults couldn't turn up among the Tau.

To be fair, GW can change the lore at any moment.

Remember when Custodes stuck to Terra?
Or when they were shirtless dudes in loincloths?

I do think Eldar and Orks being resilient to Genestealers is apt though. The explanations make sense for why they are, not some bodged-together rationale that folds at any examination.

fwiw, GW has confirmed genestealer orks as recently as a few years ago in WD

 StudentOfEtherium wrote:
fwiw, GW has confirmed genestealer orks as recently as a few years ago in WD

Oh really? Details? (Perhaps in another thread, to avoid getting too off-topic.)

Eumerin wrote:


I don't rule out all of the aliens. I only ruled out the Orks and Eldar. I didn't note any reasons why Genestealer Cults couldn't turn up among the Tau.

I have to play it out and see how the cult grows, but one of my possible futures is that the cult splits prior to the arrival of the Nids- so most remain loyal, and when the Nids arrive most are devoured but some of the vanguard organisms are reinserted (purestrains and patriar- Ahem! Broodlords). But a small faction within the Cult become self aware and decide to GTFO.

And then make a deal with the Tau, whereby they provide intelligence and support for the Tau Empire to "steer" Tyranids by controlling GSC activity in exchange for Tau support on extractions for other self aware cultists who wish to flee the Tyranids and join the cause.

It likely won't happen. There's no guarantee the cult will even survive its first brood cycle, and aside from the Magus, the other hybrid characters will only arrive starting in the second brood cycle, and only a Primus is guaranteed.

As for Tau forces in the campaign, so far its Kroot only... So it's a real stretch, but it was a fun little piece of headcannon.

It's technically possible for Aeldari to be infected with the Genestealer Curse but they have such low birth rates that it's rendered worthless.

Craftworlders also have the added layer of a very strong psychic community that would sense even a burgeoning Cult.

And Drukhari are largely not naturally conceived so unless the Cult was specifically propagated by something like an infected Haemonculus, again it would be extremely difficult to take root.

There has been at least one short story about Genestealers infection a T'au research station and Kroot becoming infected after consuming Genestealer DNA.

Humans are, at least so far as we can see, the perfect host species.

We breed pretty regularly, ensuring you get the Hybrids needed, and those specialists. We’re also a widespread species, with interplanetary shipping being a fact of everyday life.

We’ve formal militaries with little to no restrictions on recruitment, so getting that infiltrated isn’t difficult. We also have natural psychic potential I can’t imagine hurts the appeal.

Tau? The caste system is a bugger, as so far as we can tell? There’s no interbreeding. So, if you infect a Water Caste diplomat, the chances of you spreading that to the other Castes is greatly reduced.

Eldar? As said, birth rate is too low.

Orks recognise Hybrids as Not-Orky, and shun them at best.

Good old humanity. We’ll get you where you need to get to. And potentially even further than that.

"Why won’t GW make an Aeldari Exodite codex?"
Because GW cannot trademark dinosaurs.

 Skinnereal wrote:
"Why won’t GW make an Aeldari Exodite codex?"
Because GW cannot trademark dinosaurs.

Works pretty well for the Lizardmen and their dinosaurs.

Yeah, my comment was a bit flippant.
But AoS doesn't have the exposure they want 40k to get. They can get away with a lot more there.

 PenitentJake wrote:
The short answer is no. We would have to lose even more flavour than we've already lost, and at that point, the game might as well be checkers.

The fact that your army retains its own codex is no guarantee whatsoever that it will retain any of its flavour. Trust me.

 vipoid wrote:

 PenitentJake wrote:
The short answer is no. We would have to lose even more flavour than we've already lost, and at that point, the game might as well be checkers.

The fact that your army retains its own codex is no guarantee whatsoever that it will retain any of its flavour. Trust me.

Or you might just have it completely overhauled as with Necrons. Having a Codex and having good flavour and thematic armies is not correlated. Deathwatch have a single Index and it's pretty damn flavourful, IMO. I'd rather have one or two actually thematic detachments than an entire Codex that doesn't reflect that background of the army or pushes one particular strand over another.

Dark Angels are a good example of an army with a Codex but whose detachments are just not good. They try to reflect some of the army's background but fail to represent it well on the tabletop, leading to nothing but Gladius DA armies. So effectively the DA datasheets could just have been included in the SM Codex and it wouldn't have made much difference to anyone.

 Lathe Biosas wrote:

 Skinnereal wrote:
"Why won’t GW make an Aeldari Exodite codex?"
Because GW cannot trademark dinosaurs.

Works pretty well for the Lizardmen and their dinosaurs.

notably, in AOS, it's not "lizardmen", but "Seraphon"; likewise, for Exodites, GW could just come up with some almost-irish sounding name that is the eldar name for "dinosaur" or whatever. there's no real barrier on this issue

 Hellebore wrote:

Kroot are more of a new army than exodites are, they have nothing in common with the tau and are effectively their own army.

But they aren't their own army. They are part of the Tau codex. The OPs question was about getting an Exodite codex, not just some datasheets in the Eldar codex.

The fact that they put lots of time and money into the kroot line of models, when they could have just done more tau battlesuits which are the more popular part of the faction, is what I am referring to. They didn't need to expand the kroot and creating whole new plastic sprues for an existing unit, or resin units, is still just as much design as doing a new unit that has no antecedent.

Kroot have had models since 2001. There have never been 40k models for Exodites. Kroot have a stable design language since 2001. Most of the release was bringing old models into plastic, not making new units from scratch. Exodites have nothing to work with or from outside of an entry in the 2nd edition codex.

The kroot got 2 infantry squads, 1 cavalry squad, 1 beast squad, 3 foot characters and a monster character. Quite a lot of investment for an auxiliary force of the tau. If that is considered fine for a subsection of an existing codex, then doing even just half that of exodites for the craftworld book is entirely feasible - 1 monster character, 1 infantry squad, 1 cavalry squad, 1 foot character... although i see no reason why they couldn't do exactly the same number of releases for the exodites given the above.

Why do you think that a subfaction with a theoretical half of the entires of the Kroot deserves its own codex, when Kroot don't have their own? Wouldn't it make more sense to spin off the Kroot into their own book and make Exodites a detachment that features a couple of unique units?

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Humans are, at least so far as we can see, the perfect host species.

We breed pretty regularly, ensuring you get the Hybrids needed, and those specialists. We’re also a widespread species, with interplanetary shipping being a fact of everyday life.

We’ve formal militaries with little to no restrictions on recruitment, so getting that infiltrated isn’t difficult. We also have natural psychic potential I can’t imagine hurts the appeal.

Tau? The caste system is a bugger, as so far as we can tell? There’s no interbreeding. So, if you infect a Water Caste diplomat, the chances of you spreading that to the other Castes is greatly reduced.

Eldar? As said, birth rate is too low.

Orks recognise Hybrids as Not-Orky, and shun them at best.

Good old humanity. We’ll get you where you need to get to. And potentially even further than that.

You're all oversimplifying each faction to justify this. There are plenty of human planets where cults wouldn't form because of the nature of the society. The rooting out of heresy is a deliberate activity of humanity, no other races have an internal police literally looking for cults to squash.

The argument isn't 'a race must be 100% susceptible to cult infestation or they shouldn't exist', it's simply a race CAN be infested therefore it should have models and an army. It should show the options. You talk like every human world has a cult, when it's a TINY proportion because even humans stop that sort of thing from happening. A tiny proportion of eldar and orks can be infected and that's fine too. It's just a weird position to take in the infinite possibility of 40k. These are canon, they are just uncommon. I am saying that the cult range should offer more options than just rebellious imperials.

Rarity has never been a limiting factor in whether something is added to 40k or not.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Arschbombe wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:

Kroot are more of a new army than exodites are, they have nothing in common with the tau and are effectively their own army.

But they aren't their own army. They are part of the Tau codex. The OPs question was about getting an Exodite codex, not just some datasheets in the Eldar codex.

Kroot have had models since 2001. There have never been 40k models for Exodites. Kroot have a stable design language since 2001. Most of the release was bringing old models into plastic, not making new units from scratch. Exodites have nothing to work with or from outside of an entry in the 2nd edition codex.

Why do you think that a subfaction with a theoretical half of the entires of the Kroot deserves its own codex, when Kroot don't have their own? Wouldn't it make more sense to spin off the Kroot into their own book and make Exodites a detachment that features a couple of unique units?

The votann, berserkers, and coming soon emperor's children got a codex with a tiny range as well.

Your argument from models is fallacious - GW has run out of existing ranges to plunder so you're saying they can't make anything new because they have nothing old? Exodites have a pedigree older than many armies in 40k, whether they had models or not. That's more 'official' using your metric than the tau or kroot who never had anything.

What the kroot deserve is not relevant to the conversation, only what GW was willing to SPEND on them despite their niche position in the game and its reflection on the practicality of them making exodites. I am all for Kroot getting their own codex - for many alien armies to get expanded with supplements and new units, but in this instance they are an example of what GW will do for the least popular part of an army and how that shows encouraging things about their capacity to make exodites.

I think its less that Kroot can't be their own faction and more that GW wants to take Tau in the direction of "The Covenant" or a similar collective of alien species. It gives them a place to expand ideas without needing to develop an entire faction.

 Hellebore wrote:


The votann, berserkers, and coming soon emperor's children got a codex with a tiny range as well.

OK. But these factions were at least based on something that previously existed. Votann are a reimagining of our dearly departed Squats. World Eaters and Emperor's Children have had models and rules going back to Rogue Trader. People have wanted legion specific codices ever since the revered 3.5 codex was replaced by the reviled 4th edition "renegades" book.

Your argument from models is fallacious - GW has run out of existing ranges to plunder so you're saying they can't make anything new because they have nothing old?

I'm not saying they can't. I'm saying they won't. Someday we may see Exodite datasheets and models added to the Eldar book. That it hasn't happened yet is for reasons. We are 8 editions removed from when Exodites got 2 pages of fluff, 1 codex entry, and 0 models. The current book contains 3 lines about Exodites and 0 datasheets. We have a new Eldar book coming in a week that contains no datasheets for Exodites because, you guessed it, there are no models. I'm curious to see how much fluff coverage the Exodites get this time around. Probably not a lot.

Exodites have a pedigree older than many armies in 40k, whether they had models or not. That's more 'official' using your metric than the tau or kroot who never had anything.

What's that pedigree? 2 pages of fluff 30 years ago? Tau has had 7 codices and 3 supplements since 2001. And you think Exodites are more deserving of GW's effort?

What the kroot deserve is not relevant to the conversation, only what GW was willing to SPEND on them despite their niche position in the game and its reflection on the practicality of them making exodites. I am all for Kroot getting their own codex - for many alien armies to get expanded with supplements and new units, but in this instance they are an example of what GW will do for the least popular part of an army and how that shows encouraging things about their capacity to make exodites.

GW may have the production capacity to make a bunch of Exodite kits. I don't think they have the will. If Exodites get a bunch of love in the 11th edition Eldar book, then maybe that will herald a separate Exodite book in 12th or later.

 LunarSol wrote:
I think its less that Kroot can't be their own faction and more that GW wants to take Tau in the direction of "The Covenant" or a similar collective of alien species. It gives them a place to expand ideas without needing to develop an entire faction.

My view is the original Tau plan was for them to be a creative outlet with loads of subfaction xenos squeezed into them alongside a core of the Tau in mech suits. What happened was the mech suits became insanely popular and GW doubledown on it to the point where there really isn't "room" tactically speaking, for many more options. Esp when Kroot already take a good chunk of the close combat and support positions.

This is why I feel a Tau Auxiliaries type army which is comprised of the various allied races in a single fighting force, would be a great way to expand the concept of the Tau drawing other races into their faction; but without the risk that the faction ends up being bloated. In exactly the same way that Genestealer Cults works better separate from Tyranids and Imperial Guard rather than being mashed into one or the other as a sub-faction.

Of course new factions cost and come with a long term commitment to support.

 Overread wrote:


This is why I feel a Tau Auxiliaries type army which is comprised of the various allied races in a single fighting force, would be a great way to expand the concept of the Tau drawing other races into their faction; but without the risk that the faction ends up being bloated.

This is a cool idea. It would take care; one or two units per Xenos Auxilia team; but the hard part is the temptation/ likelihood of overloading the basic infantry role, since it's sort of the default unit. You'd need to make sure vehicles, monsters and support units still had a presence.

I miss multi-detachment armies that facilitated alliances more easily than the current rules, but that's a product of narrative campaign focus- I understand why it probably doesn't work as well for the 2k competitive pick-up scene. That could allow integration of the Xenos Merc dex back to Tau for those who want to use it that way without trying cram all the Merc units into the Tau book and worrying about balance and even greater potential for role/ niche duplication.