Voidravens, Characters & Codices: Dark Eldar Week 2!

September 25, 2014 by crew

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Following on from my article last week about the first wave of Dark Eldar, I take a look at the new pre-orders and what is to potentially come this weekend, via the shadowy Dark Eldar corners of the internet.

Dark Eldar Art Incubi

Last Weeks Release

Last weekend we saw the release of a bundle kit, Horrors of the Dark City, a plastic Wrack kit and a new Haemonculi model.

Horrors of the Dark City

Sadly, no financial saving is to be made on the Horrors of Dark City bundle purchase but if rules stand from old codex to new codex, the taking of a Haemonculi allows Wracks to be troop choices, therefore in terms of potential expansion from this bundle, there is a lot of room to spread. Having two dedicated transport raiders is also a great part of the bundle as it gives different ways of playing the force - do you zoom around the board with the dark lance and the odd Haemonculi gun choices, do you deep strike to get the Haemonculi into combat range, or do you leave the wracks out of the raiders, and use the Pain Engine as a Parasite engine to dish out pain tokens and beef up your units. By old codex standards, with all potential upgrades, it comes in at a 500pt force. Great to start learning with or just to beef up the existing armies. I only have one unit of Wracks and one Pain Engine, so would totally go for this if I didn’t already have four raiders.

Wracks

The plastic Wrack kit is a great idea. Roughly the same cost as the old finecast box, high quality plastic as opposed to bendy finecast and interchangeable and customisable model options all mark up towards a decent box. You can make your Acothyst model stand out with the customisable heads and something called an Ossefactor which sounds like a new torturous piece of war gear. Having the ability to build the wracks into the raider pilot or gunner seems cool, but in doing so, you’re removing a body from the unit composition. For my raiders, I haven’t added the crew members and to signify which unit is in which raider I place one from the unit, usually the specialist weapon model or the Acothyst.

Haemonculus

I do like the look of the new Haemonculi model and overjoyed it is indeed plastic, but I have a soft spot for the old Haemonculi model so I hope they will still run with those too, even with my comments last week regarding the delicacies and flexibilities of the models.

A New Wave of Pain

The image I have seen the most floating about is the new Voidraven Bomber. I am very excited about this. I think it looks great, if a bit cumbersome for a Dark Eldar ship. I predict there will be some fabulous conversion jobs in the coming weeks with this model and they excite me even more. I haven’t yet fallen to shiny-ship-syndrome, but only time will tell.

Voidraven #1

Voidraven #2

The potential psychic cards I was so worried about appear to be Dark Eldar objective cards and combat drug cards. With so much extra information as a Dark Eldar player to hold in your head mid-game - which unit has this many pain tokens, which units carry combat drugs, has this pain token moved to another unit, I certainly predict a heavy sale on the Datacards.

Datacards

I have seen three images in relation to what could be new character models; whether they will arrive next week or in the last waves it is as yet to be seen.

Special Character #1

From one of the codex release, an image of a character called Khadys Abrahak, could well be a new type of Archon, a helmeted figure with a banner on it’s back and a figure donned in Incubi armour and wielding a double handed sword. I have no clue as to what the figure with the banner is; the helmet on the figure points me towards a character for Wyches but the armour suggests otherwise. Regardless of this fact, I think it looks awesome, has something of the Dark Elf Corsair about it. The Incubi-esque figure could be a model for Vect. The image could also suggest Vect with a retinue of Incubi.

Special Character #2

Finally, the new codex artwork is incredible. It is only right that an Archon adorns the front page and that the figure is in a lithe and agile combat stance, as opposed to the last edition where the Archon stood purveying his surroundings.

Limited Edition Codex

I am not one to go in for buying limited edition codices. I haven’t really seen the validity of them or got excited about them or even considered buying one since the Lizardman book (I was fortunate enough to hold the design teams copy under strict observation at Games Day 2013 after much discussion! - I don’t even own a single Lizardman figurine, that’s how amazing I thought it was) but the images of the limited edition codex are testing my wallet strings to breaking point. Additionally within this image are what like pull-out pain tokens to use, to signify which units have them. Obviously proxy tokens for any discerning gamer could be picked up pretty cheaply, but it’s a great extra thing to fold into the purchase of a limited edition set.

Dark Eldar Kabalite

Once again, I find myself tapping my foot impatiently for Friday Night. I hope my expectations are met with great aplomb from Games Workshop - last week we got a taster, this week we get the main course.

Dark Eldar Art by Niel Roberts

Thomas Brown

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