Codex Eldar: First Impression

I have gotten a hold of the new codex and after reading over it somewhat, I am a little surprised at what I found. This isn’t a review, just the first impression I got from the book. I may do a few reviews on the different force organisation slots in the future, but I’m not 100% sure yet. Anyway onto what I found...

When I first went over the codex the thing that I noticed was a lot of the units were given a price increase. Now this surprised the hell out of me, as in every other codex prices have been dropping everywhere. Codex dark angels: Marines dropped in price, Codex daemons: lesser daemons dropped in price, Codex eldar: Guardians go up a point. Now it’s not just the guardians that got an increase, its most of the aspect warriors (bar the fast attack ones, they were just horrifically over priced as it was) and all vehicles. An example, the humble war walker, it now comes with shuriken cannons as standard but it took a 50% price hike for it. But it’s not all doom and gloom, we do get something for the price increase.

Eldar special rules

Ancient doom: All eldar now hate slaanesh in all its forms, be it daemon or mark we just don’t like it. All of the eldar units now hate the followers of slaanesh but also fear them, meaning we have a reduced leadership if we have to take a fear test when faced with such a model. Its fluffy and I like it, it won’t really be all that handy unless I come across a Daemon of chaos player but apart from that it will most likely not be used (I don’t know any emperors children players).

Battle focus: A second ability that all eldar now get, battle focus, all eldar are so focused in battle they are able to either run and shoot, or shoot and run. Its a very cool little ability allowing you to either move forwards and catch your enemy off guard or hit and run away after shooting. I can see this having a lot of potential, especially after disembarking out of a transport. However I would have liked to have seen it go a little further and allow you to assault after running if you didn’t shoot your weapon, just so banshees could once again have a role in the army. Alas it Is not to be.

Major changes

Let’s start at the top with Hq’s, practically all Hq units have changed and gotten more expensive, but some have had improvements. I might as well go over all of them with you now.

The farseer is now basic 100 points but comes with psycher master level 3, which can’t be upgraded. He only has access to the runes of fate (more on that later) as well as the two rule book powers divination and telepathy.

We get a new hq called the spiritseer, who is a mini farseer that makes wraithguard and wraithblades troop choices. I wouldn’t say there is anything special about this guy that I noticed but he does use the runes of battle, and at level 2, that’s not all bad.

Warlock council, is the new name for a bunch of warlocks. Why they didn’t call it a seer council I will never know, granted it doesn’t have any seers, but that’s by the by. This is the new way we have warlocks, we have to buy them from the HQ (doesn’t take a slot) and divide them out like wolf guard. They are only allowed to join guardian units at the moment, but as the white dwarf battle report had one joining wraithblades, I'm expecting a FAQ adding wraith units in as well. Now the big change to warlocks in they are now level 1, and they have to cast their powers with leadership 8, instead of auto-on. This is a little concerning for me as it will drop their unfullness greatly. They have access to runes of battle.

An old time favourite, the Avatar of Khaine has changed a little bit this edition. He has gone up in price a fair bit but has also changed his stats. He now boasts 5 attacks, 5 wounds and initiative 10! That’s quite good, however he has lost his 4++ and only has a 5++ thanks to the daemon special rule. Well you can’t have everything I guess. He can buy exarch powers though, so you can upgrade him a tiny bit (nothing much worth shouting about though).

And finally we have the autarch who really hasn’t changed at all. Bar the new special rules he’s no different.

We gained an extra special character and changed the ones we already had but I will go over that in a separate post, but what I will say is I am very happy the rumour that we are getting a shining spear phoenix lord was wrong. I am disappointed we didn’t get a new rule set for Fireheart but I would rather have no rules for him than some butcher excuse as to turning him into a pheonix lord.

In the troops section the biggest change is with guardians, yes they may have gone up in price but their stats have gone up as well, they are for some unexplained reason WS and BS 4! Yer, that doesn’t sit right with me at all, but they are. Weapons platforms are now optional instead of mandatory so that gives them a few little options I guess. A big change to weapons platforms is that any model can fire it, not just the two crew, but it can be targeted and destroyed now. Storm guardians are the same story.

Aspect warriors have all had a little overhaul, most of the special rules you could gain with an exarch last edition you now have as standard. i.e scorpions have move through cover, dire avengers get counter attack and spiders get hit and run. It’s nice to see the special rules added but most have increased by about a point, bar fire dragons that are now 22 points a model, and have a 3+ save. 6 points for 1 extra armour save seems a little expensive to me.

Unfortunately the humble wave serpent has been given a points boost and lost the amazing force field ability, now it can down grade penetrating hits to glancing hits or use its shield to attack enemy units at strength 7. One good thing is that the price to upgrade its weapons is dropped considerably but I still feel it’s overpriced.

Wraith units have all lost wraithsight, no more unfortunate rolls, meaning your wraithlord can’t do anything for a turn. Speaking of which the wraithlord has changed too, while going up in price it has also seen a drop down to strength 8, a shame really but I should have seen that coming with the wraithknight being released. Now the wraithknight itself is a very odd model, it’s a jump monstrous creature, with 3 weapon layouts, either 2 strength 10 shots, 3 strength 6 blast shots, or a big ass sword. I honestly don’t know what I would do with it right now, it’s big, so it’s going to be hard to hide, its vulnerable to heavy weapons, and it’s a lot of points. But I will have to wait to see how I like it after a few games.

1 more thing you might be interested in, harlequins have gone back to the 4^th edition codexs rules, no more cover saves but the mini night fight 2D6 X 2 to see them, is now in effect, very interesting move. I wonder if the dark eldar codex will have an FAQ released today.

Weapon changes

In out arsenal a few rather important changes have been made, be it the humble shuriken weapons to the fancy prism cannon, a few changes has happened, all of which will be important when we go to battle, here are a few of the more interesting ones I have noticed.

Shuriken weapons: They now all have an ability called bladestorm, instead of the old codex giving an additional shot, this bladestorm lets us turn all of our to wound rolls of 6 into ap 2. Now that can be scary for marines.

Monofilament weapons: The humble warp spider and night spinner got a boost here, when shooting at a unit that is initiative 3 or less, or doesn’t even have one (I’m looking at you tanks) the weapons get +1 strength. This is amazing when you think how many shots a warp spider unit can put out, and now it can piss off even armour 13! Nice.

Scorpion’s claw: This i had to read over twice before I believed it, while once it was a power fist, no longer is it so. It still does the x2 strength, is still does the ap 2, but it no longer counts as unwieldy, so we can have striking scorpion exarchs attacking before everyone else with an ap 2 weapon. Now the exarch can take crushing blow (+1 strength) so does that get added to his profile before the multiplier or after?

6^th Edition codex and me

Now that I have gone over some of the bigger changes you probably want to know, I am going to be self indulgent and talk about what this codex means to me and my army.

First of all I would like to say that I don’t believe that the wraithstar list is dead, but rather a lot harder to pull off correctly. With the loss of guaranteed conceal (ld 8 won’t pass every turn) and the chance your level 3 farseer won’t even get fortune, it’s unlikely that the amount of points you are going to have to spend to make the death star unit will be worth it. Maybe I will try it in future, for fun, but as a competitive list I feel it’s less likely to work.

What I am drawn towards are eldar guardians, with the increased BS I don’t really see the need in dire avengers any more. Yes they have greater range, but if I put 10 guardians + weapons platform + warlock into a wave serpent and go flat out into the enemy turn 2 I can have 19 twin linked (scatter lasers twin link the other weapons in your squad) shuriken shots that pseudo rend. While it’s not a game breaker, if I do this with 3 serpents it has a chance to do damage. Granted it’s expensive so I might not do it. I’m just coming up with ideas.

Anyway that will do for now, I'm going to go away and try to write some army list ideas.