Let's have a GW rumors and sneak peeks thread!

[me_in_japan]

I suspect if we were actually playing KT in any kind of competitive manner these added supplements would be starting to become an issue, buuuut, as a casual player I'm pretty happy with extra gubbins to play with. Not sure that a wraithguard was the best choice for the eldar, mind you, seeing as how they're basically blind and dumb as dirt without a psyker telling them where to aim, but hey ho, it's not like there were any other options for elite combat specialists in the eldar army*...

Regardless of fluff inconsistencies, though, I do like the idea of more choices for players. Looking forward to trying out my (blind, stoopid) wraithguard in the near future

*seriously though, the more I think about this the more I "eeeeh?" at it. Who looked at the eldar army list and went "hmmn. I need to add a somewhat more powerful yet game-appropriate model to the eldar KT roster. Avatar of Khaine? Nah - bit much. Jetbikers? Fun, but nope. Dark Reaper? Better, but could get old real fast. Striking Scorpion. Hmmn. An elite close combat expert who specialises in infiltration and assasination missions....

Nah, let's use the zombie robot terminator equivalent. Cos that's the most eldar-y choice."

[The Other Dave]

Yeah, I'm kind of wondering what the AdMech will get - probably the tracked battle servitors? They have the same fluff issues that wraithguard do, though, in terms of not actually being autonomous fighters that would be appropriate for special forces.

Man, though, the lack of plastic aspect warriors just gets more and more glaring as 8th edition moves forward, doesn't it? I guess we can start to hope that, since they seem to have abandoned the "dual-build boxes" paradigm, they won't have to figure out how to build, say, scorpions and banshees out of the same base sprues.

[Primarch]

I'm looking forward to the Primaris Aspect Warriors they will inevitably release.
I think the Wraithguard thing is 100% down to a lack of Eldar plastic kits. I do wonder how many of the aspects will be remade and how many will join the regular space marines in the slowly going extinct pile.

[me_in_japan]

I reckon you could totally dual-build the aspects, and short of a full 6-8 box upgrade for the eldar range, that’s probably what you’d need.

Banshees/hawks (light armour, dynamic poses, same bodies/legs, different arms/heads, wings)
Reapers/Spiders (heavy armour, braced/solid poses, same bodies/legs/arms, different heads/weapons, spiderpack)
Scorpions/dragons (mid armour, some movement to the pose (this is probably the trickiest pairing for this), same legs/body, different arms/heads)

Alternatively, they could make the spiders more sneaky and stalky and share them and the scorps, putting reapers and dragons on the same sprue. The reaper legs would be a problem, but otherwise they could share arms, bodies and generally solid firing poses.

[Primarch]

Or they could just release a bunch of new models that they shoehorn into the setting? Nah, they'd never do that.
I think a lot of Eldar players say they want plastic aspect warriors, but I also wonder how many Eldar players would actually need them. Given that they have been around in metal and finecast for a good long while, I imagine that a lot of players already have most of what they need. If they are redone in plastic, I'd expect them to look different enough to justify people buying them. E.g. The new CSM minis in Shadowspire, I mean Shadespear, er.. Shadowspear all look very different to their previous versions. Same goes for the new Death Guard and 1K Sons.

[me_in_japan]

Well, sure I’d expect a pretty serious redesign of the minis, but a CSM is a CSM, regardless of the specific aesthetic a model may have. The battlefield roles of the aspects are baked into not only their fluff but the whole army-construction side of the Eldar. A nu-banshee needn’t look the same as an old banshee, but it’d have to look springy and choppy and suchlike. You couldn’t have a dark reaper and a banshee share the same body as their battlefield role is completely different. It’d be like putting a SM scout in termi armour but still calling it an infiltration unit.

Also, there’s no motivation for them to retire aspect warriors en masse. Sure, we may never see shining spears again, but then, who would care? And for sure they could (and likely will) introduce a new aspect, but that’s to be expected.

[The Other Dave]

A bit more Blackstone / Kill Team / 40K stuff - at the same trade show linked a few posts ago they've also announced the second Blackstone expansion, "Traitor Command," which includes... let's say Khornissar Yarrick and, er, Nork... Death-dog? I dunno.



They do look cool though! Like the Ambull, the set comes with a mini quest line involving these two, and you can also just add them to the hostiles deck for the core campaign. I'm actually a bit more interested in them than the Ambull, as I really like the look of the traitor guard in the core set, and the ambull frankly looks like a terrifying party-blender that I don't want to face in-game. They (hopefully) could also expand on the options in using the Servants of the Abyss for kill team as well. 40K datasheets are confirmed, although they'll probably just slot into the SotA "army" from the core box, which is a sort of an odd mixed bag probably not useful for much beyond narrative play.

[The Other Dave]

Also in the new Vigilus book is apparently the Lord Discordant:



Which is one of those 40K things that's so ridiculous it goes around to awesome again. (He also debuffs nearby enemy vehicles and buffs his own daemon engines, so that's cool.)

[Primarch]

That is actually pretty awesome.

[me_in_japan]

Wheee! That thing is awesome, in the silliest way. I mean, there are all kinds of things to mention, but the poison dripping off the fang-syringes at the front kinda wins it for me. Cos, obviously, it needed those drips sculpted on to make it look dangerous and intimidating and stuff

*edit* and the reins Because of course one would steer a nightmare daemon mechanical behemoth using a couple of leather straps aaaaah, fabulous. One million internet points to that sculptor.