So, finally got to look at Lure of the Expanse for RT and yea...I might buy it for the Eldar section now. So many pretty things the Eldar have now from that one book.

So to date all the eldar are thus:

Creatures Anathema: Dire Avengers, Rangers, named Corsair.

Radical's Handbook: a guardian that is a tooled down version of a wraithguard.

Ascension: Dire Avenger Exarch

Lure of the Expanse: Farseer, Warlock, Pathfinders, Wraithguard, plus all weapons and ablities associated with them.

Plus for those who enjoy the darker side of them space elves: Dark Eldar in Purge the Unclean.

Yea, its time to run the group through Eldar machinations and tricksy plots.

Oh really?

Guess I had better give this a look soon. =)

Isha weeps not for your kind, Mon'kiegh!

That's very interesting! I need to get my greedy paws on Lure of the Expanse now. Just don't tell my Rogue Trader gamesmaster

DrgnScorpion said:

There are a couple of things to notice in regards to the comparison of the two.

• The Custodian has higher Armor, but lower overall Toughness than the Wraithguard.
• The Custodian is marginally more skilled at melee, while the Wraithguard hits harder.
• The Custodian is much more capable of independent actions without the presence of a Farseer to direct it.
• The Custodian's wrath-gun can hit harder than the Wraithguard's wraithcannon; but the wraithcannon can insta-gib a character no matter how many wounds they have.
• The Custodian is quicker on the move, but the Wraithguard is faster on the draw.

It's possible that the two are merely representative of some variation in the basic Wraithguard design; each variant perhaps being built to task. I must say, I've been digging the over all feel of things as they are being presented. Lure of the Expanse is a rather well pieced together book with a bevy of useful information for both DH and RT. One of these days, I may have to see about compiling the various Eldar stats into an easy to reference document for myself. I'll probably wait a bit for more stuff to get published for Eldar and Orks.

-=Brother Praetus=-

Wow. This sounds great. Eldar were always my favourite alien race in W40k and I was delighted with any part of them incorporated into RPGs. Well, although I don't play RT, I will have to glimpse at that book.

I dont play RT either, my group enjoys DH too much for me to spend the money. But they give great enemies for mid-ranked DH characters and all that jazz, Its going to be fun watching a psyker go toe to toe with a Farseer later.

It has been an awfully long wait, but at last with a UK release of 'Lure of the Expanse,' I will be able to see what all of the fuss is about. The Eldar make great villains / anti-heroes for any group of PCs - you always identify with them, in a way you couldn't really with Orks / Nids etc... as bad guys. The fact that there are now stats and info on these preeminent Eldar too will make them a superb addition - and with the chance they can be valuable allies too no doubt.

I for one wouldnt mind seeing edited Splat-Books on the various races taken from whats already published, saves having to go through all the books to find that one line i want..

DrgnScorpion - you missed one from your excellent list: there is an Eldar Corsair in the NPC section of the Rogue Trader core book.

DW

Brother Praetus said:

Given the fact that the Custodians appear to operate autonomously and not under Spiritseer supervision, that the Seedworld has no Infinity Circuit (the wraithguard are awakened from it only in emergency, not put into the shell indefinitely), and that the Ragged Oracle seems to be pre-Fall in origin, I'd wager that the Custodians aren't spirits of the dead but AI, last relics of the robot army that defended the old Eldar Empire. Just a thought, as I found them to fit precisely into how I'd imagined the Eldar robots to be.

What are the stats of the Eldar Farseer from Lure of the Expanse anyway? Must be a kick-ass psyker that puts any human wyrd to shame.

I did forget the corsair.

What I remember of the Farseer is this: Willpower - 55, Unnatural Willpower x2 so the bonus was 10, and Doom is extra damage in a radius from target equal to willpower bonus, and the damage is the willpower bonus. So 10 meters around the target all targets take 10 extra wounds from anything.

The Laughing God said:

Not so much, but they are pretty butch; comparing a Farseer to an Imperial Psyker is like comparing a hi-tech laser scalpel to a bone saw. Some basic basics: Farseer is Psy 8, with all Telepathy and Telekinesis Powers. Also has Doom, Guide, and Mind War; which are uniquely Eldar powers. Some of their gear makes up for the difference to varying degrees.

The Warlocks are neat to...

-=Brother Praetus=-

Yea, the joy of now saving up my money to pick up two books: Lure and Ascension just so I can have lots of fun.

I look very forward to seeing the Farseer writeup when my book arrives in the next few days. After flipping through DH, and it saying that Psy Rating 6 was about the maximum of human ability, just to then see Ascension's Burning Princess with her Psy Rating 14, with no good reason, I was wondering where an Eldar of Farseer skill would fall on the chart. I do hope that something in there explains why they won't have oodles of psychic problems in their stuff, preferably the ghosthelm shielding them from Perils, and protecting them from the worst of the mental instability humans often suffer. I figure Eldar know considerably more about psykers than most humans ever could, and use them considerably, without any thought of having a commissar follow them around, to gak them if the worst should happen, meaning the worst probably doesn't often.

Also hope that maybe, just maybe, one of the Eldar-referencing books mentions just a little bit about the Webway.

So much is still not covered about the Eldar in the DH version of things, and the way they translated things from the tabletop doesn't really jive well with me, and I love Eldar, been playing them forever...

The main couple things, it lists Witchblades as power weapons, all 40k Eldar players should remember when the rules changed and Witchblades adn Singing spears lost the Power weapon quality and became just really strong weapons. Now, this makes them more powerful than they should be, I like it but it's not really accurate anymore.

The second is Rune Armour. Rune Armour gives you a 4+ invulnerable save (used to be 3+), and nothing else, that's great for 99% of stuff out there, so thats basically a 50% chance to negate everything. The way they did it in Lure was that it is a ap6 armour that cancels out pen rating on weapons. WOW! that is way more powerful, why not do it as a basic ap4 armour with a 50% forcefield that can not overload?

Overall I like the way they came out, stats, and equipment, but honestly the writers of Lure and the other DH books I think were remembering the Hay Day of Eldar and wanted to create them like that again, which is actually ok with me but it leaves the game a little unbalanced in reguards to the Eldar.

Guess I'll be buy Lure of the Expanse soon then.

Artanyis said:

The mechanics used to describe the Eldar weaponry in the must-be-balanced-for-gameplay Tabletop game doesn't necessarily reflect the FLUFF involved with said weaponry. When I've heard it describe Witchblades, the fluff always mentions slicing through armor like butter.

Unusualsuspect said:

Most of that Fluff falls back to when Witchblades were power weapons, they are not now, which makes us Eldar players sad. But think about the mechanics of it. The old Witchblade was a 20pt upgrade for a Warlock or Farseer, it was a power weapon thet multiplied the strength of the unit by 3 (so a strength 3 warlock was now strength 9 and ignored armour) which is exactly how the witchblade works in DH. But with the 3rd Ed release of the Eldar Codex they made the Witchblade standard wargear for the Warlock and the Farseer and took away the power weapon quality. So basically you have a weapon that can EASILY punch through tanks and slice a man in half, but can be stopped by IG 5+ armour save. Lets think, Tank armour cant stop it, but a thin layer of flack can?

I'm not exactly sure why I'm complaining here, maybe I'm not? But basically the DH fluff is just like the old eldar from the Rogue Trader ttg or from 1st and 2nd Ed of WH40K ttg. Which honestly fits the fluff of the eldar better than the current stats in WH40K.

And as far as the TTG being balanced, that's a laugh, anyone who plays WH40k will have noticed that the balancing method is to make the newest Codex even more powerful than the last, so that whoever gets their codex next will be more powerful than any of the other armies, and since Space Marines are the babies of GW they get a new codex way more than the Xenos races, and Eldar is not likely to get a new codex for another 4 or 5 years.

Artanyis said:

Have you ever played the 40k computer games (Winter Assault/Dark Heresy/Soulstorm)? I always found it odd how that game did the same. Your heavy hitter guns could blow away a tank, but the infantry right in front of them, nope. You would think that a Flame Dragon Fusion Cannon would obliterate a guardsman, but he'll be fine.

I gotta say, overall, I like what I've gotten out of these books for the Eldar. I might've liked a write-up for some of the other Aspect Warriors, especially Fire Dragons and my personal favorite, the Dark Reapers, but I suppose they wouldn't be that hard to write up. The RT Farseer was AWESOME, and I was very pleased. Wraithguards were impressive, and rangers/pathfinders seemed cool. I don't care for Dire Avengers, and do wish they had given info for average Guardians, and maybe their support weapons, but again, probably not that hard to write up. Warlocks missing Conceal is a shame, but makeable, and their gear is fearsome.

If I take the time to write up Serennon in Dark Heresy/Ascension, from Rogue Trader/Lure, I think he could easily be a party killer, if I wanted one.

The thing about Dire Avengers is that they are the Eldar main professional soldiers, and should be present in most encounters with any Eldar military forces.

Sure, I know that Dire Avengers are important, it's just that they were my second least favorite Aspect in table-top, with Swooping Hawks taking the least spot, unless an Autarch is flying with them. Having the write-ups for a guardian squad could have been nice, unless the players constantly battle Biel-Tann. Also, it could get hairy using D. Avengers if their Exarch is supposed to be Ascension-level. I don't know how often they would be accompanied by one, in the RP (I always grabbed Exarchs in my AW squads, table-top), but dropping in an Exarch, who has combat skills in the 60s, paragon skills, and some potent weapons, could offset a "regular" group of characters. Maybe I'm overestimating the ability of one guy, but it's a thought that occurred to me, especially if a Howling banshee Exarch, or a Dark Reaper Exarch are supposed to also be Ascension-level characters, since a Reaper Exarch might have comparable skill to a Vindicare character, and snipe the players from a ways off.

Well, the baseline I came up with is as follows:

Eldar Guardian
WS: 35 | BS: 35 | S: 30 | T: 30 | Ag: 40(8) | Int: 35 | Per: 40 | WP: 30 | Fel: 30
Movement: 5/10/15/30
Wounds: 10
Skills: Acrobatics (Ag), Awareness (Per), Common Lore (War) (Int), Dodge, Forbidden Lore (Xenos) (Int), Speak Language (Eldar), Speak Language (High Gothic, Low Gothic, Eldar).
Talents: Basic Weapon Training (Las, Primitive), Exotic Weapons Training (Shuriken Catapault), Melee Weapon Training (Primitive), Pistol Training (Las), Quick Draw, Sprint.
Traits: Unnatural Agility x2
Armour: Xeno-Guard Flak Armour (All 4), Shuriken Pistol
Weapons: Xeno-manufacture mono knife, shuriken catapault (Creatures Anathema, p.85)
Gear: 2 clips of shuriken catapault ammunition, waystone gem.
Threat Rating: Xenos Minoris

Could easily give 2 in the group EWT (Brightlance, Eldar Missile Launcher, Scatter Laser, Shuriken Cannon, or Starcannon [figure out stats for all of these some other time]), and have them possess a support weapon (this has infinite ammo, so long as its power systems are undamaged) making a Guardian Defender squad. If some had training with the Shuriken Pistol and/or Fusion Gun, they could also easily form a Storm Guardian unit, instead, forgoing the slow cannon hover carriage.

What might anyone else think? If this looks good, I might try to tackle the other stuff I wanted (various Aspect Warriors, an Autarch, etc.)

I don't have the book yet, but but I've heard that Black Crusade has Dark Eldar.

Yes, kabalites, mandrakes and incubi - and the latter ones are justifiably badass. More importantly, it has the stats of Harlequins and Shadowseers... ohhhh yeah .