Eldar 6th Edition Codex Pdf
Beatrix Gerke
Hey all, thanks for reading my review. A short prelude to start with. I am a tournament player born and bred and am therefore looking at the book in a competitive context. I will try and discuss units in all aspects but that is my personal background.
"I seem to be having this tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle. As soon as I reach some kind of definite policy about what is my kind of music and my kind of restaurant and my kind of overdraft, people start blowing up my kind of planet and throwing me out of their kind of spaceships!" - The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy Radio Shows
Highly Competitive: these are units which are so point efficient for what they do its silly, take for example the Dark Eldar Venom, for less than 70points it fires 12 poisoned shots at BS4/ 36inch range.
I am not going to do it in traditional order, HQ, troops etc. Rather because of the synergy between units I will try and group them together, so Phoenix princes with their respective aspect warrior, this means I can try and avoid stealing my own entries thunder! On this note, I really liked that in the Blood Angel Codex they had the special character librarian next to the librarian entry etc. I personally would have put the phoenix lords next to their respective aspect warrior in the order of entries in the descriptive section on a nice double page, to save flicking between pages, but enough bickering from me.
Special equipment wise, he comes with the spear of twilight which is an ap3, flesh bane and armour bane weapon at ap3, but even with fleshbane his strength of three hurts. It is also cursed and so forces Yriel to reroll all saves of a 6 in combat. (sad face).
Stat wise, has had a boost to his WS and Wounds, Initiative and Attacks. I like that he has a massive cock because when you smash having an odd number attacks is always better as its rounded up! He gets the battle focus rule which means he can run and fire his melta weapon which is cool.
All phoenix lords have kept their rock hard profile with no changed. They've also kept eternal warrior! Equally, they seem to have lost their Cannot join non their aspect rule, meaning they could be a great source of special rules to confer to units.
The Fire Dragon boss, he comes with a fire pike which is an 18inch range melta. It feels slightly shortchanged that the standard melta in the last 40k codex is the prized weapon of the fire dragon lord but enough.
I have to add, with GW introducing more and more monstrous creatures, Wraithknight and Riptides etc. the addition to snipers into any army is a good move as they ignore the high toughness of such creatures. In the current metagame and for these prices they are the closest thing to a must have in the Eldar codex.
Again, no stat change but a slight increase in points. They however are the poster boys for battle focus, being able to run and shoot in a turn, and shuriken weapons got better. They now have a pseudo rending (being ap2 on a 6 to wound). They also have 18inch range which is a huge jump from guardians catapults which is range 12.
Right, hawks have kept their haywire grenades and have had a fairly large price break. Equally, their skyleap ability has changed slightly to prevent them yo-yoing the turn they come in. Their gun has got an extra shot, so 3 shots each but str 3, same range and ap.
The most generic of the phoenix lords he comes with the same stats, but brings a number of special rules including, stealth, infiltrate and move through cover. He brings the reroll to wound bubble warlord trait and has a str 6 extra auto hitting attack.
Scorpions have slightly increased in points, but for it have gained infiltrate and move through cover as standard without needing to take an exarch. They have also gained stealth which could previously only be gained by taking Karandras.
He does bring hatred chaos deamons though and I have to say I really get the feeling that the characters are off fighting on other sides of the galaxy with the different preferred enemies cropping up!
Mode one: a large blast, str 7 barrage large blast, a good source of anti-cover a rending large blast is okay. When was the last time you saw a heavy psycannonn on a dreadknight? There are better ways to ignore cover in the codex.
Anyway, your standard armament is monofilament (remember warp spiders) and is a str 6 barrage blast. Comparing it to the night spinner for similarish points do you prefer 3 small blasts or one large blasts? Hardly terrible and for less than a hundred points you can sit there barraging an aegis defence line which is often useful. Your tough enough to be difficult to shift too.
So a combat autarch with this? I think as a default he needs a jetbike. It gives him T4 to stop him being instant deathed no save versus heldrakes, and jinx + stealth + shrouded give you a 2+ rerollable just for moving.
If you really want, it can take for a sizable chunk of points on a already expensive flyer a exarch pilot taking it to BS5. This gives it precision shot and access to a few other abilities. It is a glass cannon flyer and is very very good at it. The problem is, it cannot take the protective vehicle gear and is going to have to dive vs. any intercept hits, cough cough quad gun. Unlike the Heldrake and Vendetta which are armour 12 and can reliably shrug of quad guns this flyer is made of paper and has no such luxury.
Additionally though it comes with 2 heavy D-scythes, terrify being a malediction you can cast it at a different target to your d-scythes which is useful! Heavy D-Sythes, str 4 blasts at ap2 which can instant death things on a 6 to wound. Ap2 blast sounds okay, wait when was the last time you saw a plasma cannon used? Yeah, the presence of cover and being able to spread out kinda kills blast weapons.
This flyer whilst interesting is less dangerous than the crimson hunter with the same drawbacks. Though I will add that having vector dancer on it is nice synergy because it has to get close with all of its weapons and vector dancer lets it stay on the board. (Even if it can be shot down by bolters).
For 200 points I can get in the same slot, approximately 10 warp spiders who are getting 14 str 6 rending hits, vypers for the same get 8 rending hits and 12 non rending also strength 6. The warp spiders are much tougher in their 3+ save but both are very fast. I can see both units seeing play. Their squishy nature and no ability to outflank or get the drop on the opponent is why I rate them lower than the spiders. Keeping them in normal reserve can be played around due to the relatively short range of the cannons.
The wraithguard seer, slightly weaker profile to the farseer but a good chunk of points less. The main differences are a wound less and ld 9. That said, they have access to runes of battle which as said are primarily stat buffs or maladictions.
He comes with two heavy wraith cannons, these are 36 inch versions of the wraith cannon. Not so far you can sit in a corner and take out what you please but long enough. He does come as a jump monstrous creature though so with his movement 12 he can cover 48 inches of the board.
The second option is to specialise for anti-infantry, by swopping his guns for a 3 shot ap2 str 6 blast weapon and the shield he becomes quite hard for infantry to deal with. This is however a lot of points. You can take a second or third weapon from the shoulder to compliment this, if you wish you could take a scatter laser to reroll your blasts to hit rolls which makes him quite reliable. This is however near 300 points which is way too much.
Right, having written more than was in my dissertation I am going to conclude that I have absolutely no idea what the new modern eldar army is going to look like! I suspect that at its worst the opponent will get very bored as the eldar player takes 3x as long to do everything, as they'll be rerolling a ton of stuff, and moving, running and shooting etc. It will for exactly this reason be a really cool army to play as nothing in it is boring. Every unit has special rules that while not overpowering makes them feel special and I believe it will make for a very fluid and elegant army (almost like eldar). I would add that Tau vs Eldar would be a very confusing game as they both do so much in the eldar players turn, with the amount of intercept and snap fire! I can imagine the Eldar turn 2 taking forever!!
I will add that I feel I have been harsh and labelled many fine units as Standard Price or Inefficient. They're all really cool and a lot of design work has gone into nearly everything. However, I set out to separate the competitive units from the less, I did that. However, I wouldn't be surprised to see any units in the book played.
I think Mech Eldar could be powerful but so could any other combination of units from them. They have access to reliable anti tank in about three different ways melta/distorn/haywire and have a decent amount of anti infantry. With strong troops they should be able to score easily too. All in all they're no catagories immediately jumping out as a weakness. The only concern I might have is anti air, whilst they have arguably the most powerful interceptor in the game I'd struggle to justify its inclusion in a competitive list - simply because if they have a quadgun in their list your easily 200pts down.
Thankyou for reading my mad musings and I'd be delighted to read others takes on the new entries. I apologise for grammatical inconsistencies it is written in a less serious style, I'm asking myself questions and brainstorming ideas outloud. As such its to an extent ad hoc. I will be re-reading again soon to clean up any blatant abuses of the English Language.
The overarching theme of the Aeldari will be the level of reliability with which they take to the table. Many of their army rules are geared towards the idea that when the Eldar commit their ever-waning forces to battle, that the game plan plays out exactly as the runes have foretold it would. This theme is carried out at each level, starting at the top with the Faction Rule.
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