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So far as i heard which is absolutely awful news for our faction. So wtf do we even do now? Are dark eldar going to be written off or combined into some eldar super faction like with elves in fantasy? I expect the latter but i don't really want that for my currently chosen faction.

I think they will stop sucking rules-wise thanks to the battletome overhaul.

Also the webway is vast, and cleaning Commoragh definitely isn't impossible.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
So far as i heard

Spoiler:

Commoragh was overrun by daemons

which is absolutely awful news for our faction. So wtf do we even do now? Are dark eldar going to be written off or combined into some eldar super faction like with elves in fantasy? I expect the latter but i don't really want that for my currently chosen faction.

Having the book, allow me to issue you a concillatory the whole thing was there to give craftworlders and comorrites alike a reason to hate the Ynnari.

From what I've heard Commarragh was invaded by Daemons, but it wasn't over run. Vect hightailed it outta there to his own private sub-realm, but while Commarragh was embattled by Daemons something happened.

Kheradruakh finally collected the last skull necessary to open the portal to the Mandrakes shadow realm, becoming the Mandrake King and leading the Mandrakes and their Cthulu-esque allies to seal off Khaines Gate and stop the Daemonic invasion with the help of the Haemonculi.

So now we have 3 types of Dark Eldar.

Vects Neo-Commarragh - Which is essentially what we have currently - Mandrakes.

Lady Malys Dark Eldar-y Quins and Leliths Ynnari reborn - Dark Eldar on a mission. Lady Malys and her Kabal work with the Harlequins and Lelith and her Cult fight with the Ynnari.

The Freakshow - The Mandrakes hold Commarragh now, as do the Haemonculi. I personally would LOVE to see this army expanded. A pure evil force, not chaos, not tyranids, just pure grimdark flay you for the fun of it evil.

Dark Eldar won't be written off, but they are likely to be split.

the_scotsman wrote:
the whole thing was there to give craftworlders and comorrites alike a reason to hate the Ynnari.

This, which I think is a stroke of genius on their part. The Eldar are more fractious, not less. Plus, it plays into the whole 'hit where they thought they were safe' vibe that The Gathering Storm has going on.

I'm also looking forwards to the Mandrakes getting expanded. They're a really cool little enigma, and it'd be nice to get a bit further into that particular mystery

Vect and Urien didn't take back Commoragh, the Decapitator did with his shadow army and some help from the Haemonculi, and at least a large chunk of Commoragh is his personal shadow realm now--and I have to say a literal shadow elf overlord sounds awfully familiar. My fear is while they haven't "officially" squatted Craftworlds and the traditional DE forces, they're still going to get an AoS treament and all we'll see going forward are Ynnari and Mandrake/Haemonculus factions--much like the Aelves and Sylvaneth. The Craftworlds and Kabals might still exist in lore (like there are still pockets of the traditional elf armies floating around in interdimensional bubbles) but model and storywise they'll be ignored in favor of these new factions with new aesthetics. I mean that's basically been the implication for Cadian and Biel-tan players, "don't worry, we've effectively knocked you out of the setting going forward, but we left wiggle room to justify why your army might still be around."

Hopefully that's just paranoia as a High/Wood Elf and Biel-tan player, but I've been burned by GW before and it's hard not to see the similarities.

Deris87 wrote:

Vect and Urien didn't take back Commoragh, the Decapitator did with his shadow army and some help from the Haemonculi, and at least a large chunk of Commoragh is his personal shadow realm now--and I have to say a literal shadow elf overlord sounds awfully familiar. My fear is while they haven't "officially" squatted Craftworlds and the traditional DE forces, they're still going to get an AoS treament and all we'll see going forward are Ynnari and Mandrake/Haemonculus factions--much like the Aelves and Sylvaneth. The Craftworlds and Kabals might still exist in lore (like there are still pockets of the traditional elf armies floating around in interdimensional bubbles) but model and storywise they'll be ignored in favor of these new factions with new aesthetics. I mean that's basically been the implication for Cadian and Biel-tan players, "don't worry, we've effectively knocked you out of the setting going forward, but we left wiggle room to justify why your army might still be around."

Hopefully that's just paranoia as a High/Wood Elf and Biel-tan player, but I've been burned by GW before and it's hard not to see the similarities.

Which shows how little you know of the AoS treatment. Aelfs are NOT a single faction, to begin with.

As an aside: Why do places like Commoragh, and apparently craftworlds, and even Terra have hell portals in their basements sealed by what amounts to plywood with a "Do Not Remove" sign?

I mean, it just seems a little odd. I guess it's an easy plot device.

Lord Kragan wrote:
Which shows how little you know of the AoS treatment. Aelfs are NOT a single faction, to begin with.

Sorry, I didn't realize you were allergic to brevity. It really doesn't affect my point, the "legacy" factions and models are still in there there haven't been any new aelf models of any stripe. Instead they spun off the Sylvaneth into their own faction with new models and a revamped aesthetic, much like the seem poised to do with the Mandrakes/Haemonculi--take the more beastial elements of an existing army and make them into their own thing.

Kap'n Krump wrote:As an aside: Why do places like Commoragh, and apparently craftworlds, and even Terra have hell portals in their basements sealed by what amounts to plywood with a "Do Not Remove" sign?

I'm sure it is mostly for narrative convenience, but at least these particular instances are all justified in-universe by the same cause--the shattered spars of the webway allow daemons to get in.

Deris87 wrote:

Lord Kragan wrote:
Which shows how little you know of the AoS treatment. Aelfs are NOT a single faction, to begin with.

Sorry, I didn't realize you were allergic to brevity. It really doesn't affect my point, the "legacy" factions and models are still in there there haven't been any new aelf models of any stripe. Instead they spun off the Sylvaneth into their own faction with new models and a revamped aesthetic, much like the seem poised to do with the Mandrakes/Haemonculi--take the more beastial elements of an existing army and make them into their own thing.

And again, it goes to show how wrong you're. A "proper" aelf faction is comming this summer. But yeah, it's a snail's pace in comparison to what the WHFB releases were, amirite? You always had new stuff every single year and spending two years without any releases (like vampire counts and... well, 5 out of very six factions in the game) was unthinkable. Hell, look at the flabbergasting rate of releases eldar and dark eldar releases have had in this two years. The sheer amount of new models they got in this 7th edition...

Lord Kragan wrote:
And again, it goes to show how wrong you're. A "proper" aelf faction is comming this summer.

You're just flailing at anything to be contrary here. You say I'm wrong and then in the very next sentence affirm what I said--which is the fact that they haven't actually released any new aelf models yet, and the only "aelf" models are the legacy ones. You also can't tell me that GW has definitely maintained the unique identity of each aelf faction before they've actually cover them in depth in a model release. If it turns out that these new models all still retain their unique identities and distinct army rules--and don't represent a unified single faction of aelves--then I'll rescind my criticism. I'm not holding my breath, however.

As far as release pace, I'm not sure who you're responding to but it isn't me. It's entirely irrelevant to whether or not the traditional Craftworld and Kabal structures of the Eldar get pushed to the background and their models get unceremoniously lumped into new Ynnari and Mandrake/Haemonculi factions, much like what's been done so far in AoS (as you already tacitly agreed was the case). Since we're getting into this though, it's weirdly disingenuous to bring up the accelerated release schedule as though that's some side-effect of the switch to AoS, rather than the result of GWs acquisitions over the last few years and their improved capacity for producing new plastic kits. Again though, the pace of new releases has no bearing on the fluff.

Deris87 wrote:
they haven't actually released any new aelf models yet,

Both the Tenebrael Shard and Mistweaver Saih are aelfs, right?

Deris87 wrote:

Lord Kragan wrote:
And again, it goes to show how wrong you're. A "proper" aelf faction is comming this summer.

You're just flailing at anything to be contrary here. You say I'm wrong and then in the very next sentence affirm what I said--which is the fact that they haven't actually released any new aelf models yet, and the only "aelf" models are the legacy ones. You also can't tell me that GW has definitely maintained the unique identity of each aelf faction before they've actually cover them in depth in a model release. If it turns out that these new models all still retain their unique identities and distinct army rules--and don't represent a unified single faction of aelves--then I'll rescind my criticism. I'm not holding my breath, however.

As far as release pace, I'm not sure who you're responding to but it isn't me. It's entirely irrelevant to whether or not the traditional Craftworld and Kabal structures of the Eldar get pushed to the background and their models get unceremoniously lumped into new Ynnari and Mandrake/Haemonculi factions, much like what's been done so far in AoS (as you already tacitly agreed was the case). Since we're getting into this though, it's weirdly disingenuous to bring up the accelerated release schedule as though that's some side-effect of the switch to AoS, rather than the result of GWs acquisitions over the last few years and their improved capacity for producing new plastic kits. Again though, the pace of new releases has no bearing on the fluff.

Seeing as you missed it so badly, it's called sarcasm. I was being sarcasting, but hey, thanks for missing and misrepresenting my comment. Others have already mentioned we have new aelfs but I didn't count them since they were just two heroes.

Captain Joystick wrote:Both the Tenebrael Shard and Mistweaver Saih are aelfs, right?

I hadn't looked that close at the contents of the Silver Tower before, so thanks for the heads up. Their warscrolls do both have them tagged as aelves, and both certainly have a Dark Elf look though neither has any other aelf subtags. That being the case I'm not sure how much we can really glean about future releases from them.

Lord Kragan wrote:Seeing as you missed it so badly, it's called sarcasm.

Sorry, you're not that subtle or clever. Even sarcastically, it's still an irrelevant deflection and had nothing to do with anything I had said til that point.

Deris87 wrote:

Captain Joystick wrote:Both the Tenebrael Shard and Mistweaver Saih are aelfs, right?

I hadn't looked that close at the contents of the Silver Tower before, so thanks for the heads up. Their warscrolls do both have them tagged as aelves, and both certainly have a Dark Elf look though neither has any other aelf subtags. That being the case I'm not sure how much we can really glean about future releases from them.

Because there's no such thing as "dark elf" keyword. Or High elf keyword. To begin with there's the exiles which are a mishmash of diffferent factions loosely related, but ultimately independent, factions that hail from Azyr. Those two are from Ulgu, so they are a different variant of aelf in the sense that they haven't been cuddled by the walls of Azyrheim. So it is safe to assume there will be aelfs non-related to the pre-existing factions, like fyreslayers to the stunties.

Yeah, the thing is that nothing that you've said is really relevant. FEC got zero new models and is an entirely different beast than its old counterpart of vampire counts. It is possible that they flesh out factions without releasing models, providing additional content in the form of formations, lore (which we've got), traits and relics or some new kit but not in abundance, as they have already material in them. Wanderers and Swifthawks already have more unit variety than Ironjaws and Sylvaneth.

Also, mind rule #1. Don't start flamebaiting.

THERE IS NO 40K END TIMES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Isengard wrote:
THERE IS NO 40K END TIMES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

There's only Gathering Storm. Then Age of Guilliman where all space marines will be ultramarines and thus be the greatests of them all as everything turns epic noblebright and no one does bad and mean things.

Deris87 wrote:

Vect and Urien didn't take back Commoragh, the Decapitator did with his shadow army and some help from the Haemonculi, and at least a large chunk of Commoragh is his personal shadow realm now--and I have to say a literal shadow elf overlord sounds awfully familiar. My fear is while they haven't "officially" squatted Craftworlds and the traditional DE forces, they're still going to get an AoS treament and all we'll see going forward are Ynnari and Mandrake/Haemonculus factions--much like the Aelves and Sylvaneth. The Craftworlds and Kabals might still exist in lore (like there are still pockets of the traditional elf armies floating around in interdimensional bubbles) but model and storywise they'll be ignored in favor of these new factions with new aesthetics. I mean that's basically been the implication for Cadian and Biel-tan players, "don't worry, we've effectively knocked you out of the setting going forward, but we left wiggle room to justify why your army might still be around."

Hopefully that's just paranoia as a High/Wood Elf and Biel-tan player, but I've been burned by GW before and it's hard not to see the similarities.

This is exactly the thought process I went though. To the letter. They've left the option to play 'legacy'' armies in the form of Vects Neo-Commarragh and anti-Ynnead Eldar while moving forward with the Ynnari Aelidari and possibly the Mandrakes. Anyone totally dismissing the parallels as possibilities are fools. However while I look forward to what a Mandrake and Haemonculi freakshow army will look like, I fear the ignominious death of Vect due to his poor showing in the book which will be disappointing.

And I too wish they'd come out with some ''propper'' Aelves instead of shoving more GW Golden Boys down our throats. There is no point buying any new Elves until I know what the new aesthetic will be like or if they're coming out with a new line or repurposing the old one.

Something I find amusing about the Mandrake thing is that Kheradruakh killed both of the previous mandrake kings a few centuries before all this happened.