The 40k Lorecast - Episode 47 - Eldar pt 4 - Eldar Weapons, Vehicles, Wraithhosts, and a little bit of Ynnari

Episode Date: August 12, 2024

On today's episode we conclude (for now) our coverage of the Eldar. We dive into the weaponry and vehicles that the Eldar bring to bear on the battlefield. With some especial fan-boying about how broken and annoying they have been over the editions. We then jump into Wraithhosts who are both amazing and, in the case of the Wraith Knight, game breaking. Because we had some time left over, we decided it was a good time to tell the first part of the Ynnari story so as to set up some future casts about them.PatreonMerchandiseDiscord Link:Our WebsiteRetro RecallOur Sponsors:* Check out BetterHelp: https://www.betterhelp.com* Check out Pebl: https://hellopebl.com* Check out Pebl: https://hipebl.ai* Check out Shopify: https://shopify.com/loreAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Welcome to the 40K lore cast. Welcome to the 40K lore cast with me, John Varsati and Brad Chester. This guy. Today we're going to finish off our coverage of the Eldar. We tried to do it in three, but it's happened. We got all the way to four because they got long. And also we did it in five. Yeah, one got re-recorded because, again, John didn't press the record button.

And also, as usual, when we re-record something, I talk twice as much. It was actually better. We don't have the time to do all these twice, but man. Yeah. We should probably do that. Yeah. We should look into that. Yeah.

On today's cast, we're going to dive a bit more into the way that the Eldar wage war, and we're going to touch on the most important change of their lore that's been really ever. And it's the newest edition. So we'll get there in a bit. So before we go, as always,

please follow and comment in the cast. It's helping the metrics out quite a bit. We're getting well promoted right now. We're in the top five leisure casts in Australia and England. I don't know what that means. Don't know either. Every now and then you sweet. like to listen to us in batches because we'll be like number three most popular podcast in all of

Sweden and then we will just not exist in the list anymore for number one billion yeah and then the us we're still the top 20 most times that that's thanks to you all just listening and making good comments we also in the show notes you'll see a link to the patreon for those of you who've helped us out i cannot thank you enough it's really been great we have new microphones you've got new audio audio editing which hopefully you all like you don't let me know i'll change a different one i have money to do it So we'll make whatever changes you guys are want. And we're even using some of that money to remaster some of the old castes because our goal is to actually put this on YouTube in the future with a bunch of AI artwork, etc. Also in the show notes, you'll see a link to our Discord channel.

If you like the cast and you're looking for more information or just want to interact with us, we are very heavy in this Discord. It's free to join, obviously. And it's not just awesome. There's quite a lot of members in there. At that time of recording, we're over 650 members in the Discord. And it's very active. People are always asking questions about favorite literature or further literature they could read, gameplay advice, modeling advice, or just even stuff about the lore in general.

It's an incredible spot. And if you like 40K lore, we're hoping to really build this into more of a community. So people who like the lore can have a kind of a safe place to interact with each other, ask good questions, and kind of, you know, learn and enjoy themselves. I'm going to get edited out quickly on this. If you have a great starter, if you have something that you, you really want to be engaged with. Tag me. Don't tag John.

Tag me on it. John's going to respond anyways. I always respond. If you tag me, it's something that I will definitely look into, but I really like to be involved in fun conversations. We have a ton of those in the Discord. And I know I'm trying to pat myself in the back, but I still can because my arms are too short.

But like, I really do enjoy. You're selling yourself short. Your arms are too short and your back is too bad. Let's let's let my back. Let's make sure we set the table correctly. You can't pat yourself in the back because your arms are short and your spine won't twist. But besides that, I mean, that's the only problem I have. But one of my favorite things in the Discord is when we get a great thread going, just about whatever.

Hey, what's your favorite book? What's your favorite primer? What's your favorite battle? What's your favorite? Whatever. Here's my models that I've been working on. I love those threads. I'd like to be part of them.

I'd like you guys to be part of the Discord. That's my shameless promotion. Continue on. Now for the last shameless promotion for Brad, for those of you who want to play the game, Brad is available for coaching around the game. Brad is available for coaching as simple as like, how do I play the game at a basic level to,

I have an event coming up. Can you help me get ready for the event all the way to, hey, I actually just would like you better at this. Can we just get together every week and really dive into it? Just learn out and play the game. Yeah, period. Just play the game and get really good at the game. Brad's available for all that.

I don't give him enough credit on this because I'm around him a lot and giving him extra credit makes him like he glows a little bit and it's weird. But he is, I hit him with that as he took a civil owner. So what you're hearing is Brad choking. Anyway, but Brad actually is a top five player traditionally within globally and Warhammer. So when we say he's available for coaching, it's not a guy who thinks he knows what he's doing. Brad has proven it on the tabletop quite a few times and he really can't help you quite a bit. He's a very good person advancing your game. And you can find him at Old Man Something Something at Gmail.

God damn it. He stole my mojo. Yeah. It's just... Oh, you know, screw it. I'm still saying it. Old Man, Brad, 40K at Gmail.com. Or just go to www.

000. 000. Click the link. Click the link. He's there. Anyway, with that, let's dive back into our last little coverage of Eldar for now. We'll start with kind of how the Eldar wage war.

So a couple of casts ago, we covered, like, each Craftworld has their own system, like Sam Hine use a lot of bikes, Ulthway used psychers, Ayanden have raids, Al-A-Tac shoot you before the game begins. I'm not over it. I'm still proud of them. But at their core, as you said before, Eldar are famous for being glass cannons. They can hit you with all the power that exists, but they're still a rather frail when compared the races.

And although it doesn't really quite play out properly in the lore, they do have a limited number. Brad and I joke about this a lot where it's like they're a dying race of billions. Screw billions. Trillions. I mean, like, they're not dying. There's still a lot of... We got a lot. So this means that even the most robust of the Eldar units

are still, they're actually frail compared to other things. Like, even the AdMAC are more durable than the Eldar. Even the Tao, at a battle suit. And the thing is that they really do hold all Eldar life. anybody else's lives. But they hold Elnar life very sacred. And you think they'd be more heavily

army, but they're not because they rely on. Well, this use speed. And the truth is that years, this is millions of years, the Eldar have realized that speed is actually the greatest thing of the game. And let's call it out. Why do you play Eldon on the tabletop? They're faster than everybody. Yeah, that's the thing. The truth is actually a tabletop war game. They're really, really good because they are faster than everybody else. Well, they also get to move when they're not supposed to move, which is awesome. Oh, yeah. Well, we're going to cover. one reason for that later, that rule went away quick, didn't it? No, they've done it every edition.

Well, I'm talking about the Unari rule. Oh, yeah. Oh, no, that. Oh, Jesus. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Maybe the most broken thing GW ever introduced outside. You know, when we get to that, I'm going to give a good story of why. Invisible wolves.

Yeah, it's, we'll compare those two. Anyway, so the Eldar, the way that they wage war, the best word I can think out for it is just suddenly. The Eldar, they don't, they don't muster forces at the end. at the edge of you, they just appear, attack, hit you, and boogie the hell out. I'm going to let you decide whether you edit this or not, because as soon as you said suddenly, I thought Billy Ocean. So, oh, you can look that up. Yeah, that'd be an 80s pop guy.

Well done, Brad. Well done. Just sad. I'm just sad. You can let that be something that makes it or doesn't make it. Yeah. But what happens is the way they. Eldar wage this kind of sudden warfare where they're just appearing out of nowhere hitting and

disappearing, is it gives them like the illusion or the function of durability. It is a big deal on this because other races, other factions in the game feel like Eldar has more durability because they often are just not hit. Yeah. They're not hit. In the game, they're minus to hit. They rerow a save. They do things where in lore, in the actual fighting of the thing, they're just not there.

Again, pre-cogged. They're getting buffed. Yeah, and this is where I'm going to get yelled at for this. This is where I felt their eighth edition rules were actually good because the idea was that you could take a custod who's maybe one of the greatest warriors in the galaxy, incredibly accurate, incredibly capable. And he could be looking at an Eldar, staying in the middle of an old. open field. And miss. Because the Eldar was so with minus,

the game, I'd make it minus four to hit because I'm a dick. But that's, you know, but the reason, but it actually made sense because that's what the elder was so good at is that as that custode shoots at the Eldar,

the Eldar sees the custode, sees the weapon, knows that, can instantly recognize how fast that that shot comes in the direction of shots coming, the direction of the wind, if it's a projectile, and just shimmy a little bit to the side.

And a warlock also obfuscated the custode. told the Eldar warrior to move slightly faster, and the Farseer also nudged him over because he knew it was coming. And that's why the Eldar are able to avoid. That's what makes them so durable. That kind of combo, again, it got a little abused. But I played Elder almost exclusively in the 8th edition, too. I played Eldar and the Ork in the 8th edition, and that was it.

Anyway. You're a bad person. Yeah, they were fun. And the point being, the point I was making is that that's why the Eldar so durable is you just can't hit them. You just, they're so hard to hit. Well, let's talk about the wage war. There's, we've joked about this and we said why Eldar not the good guys is because

Eldor also dicks. Yeah. Because Eldar, they have no, I have to meet you at the field of battle at dawn. El Doran. Sam Hayne did. Well, yeah. But Eldar right now is very pragmatic about it. It may be overly so sometimes.

and they will just eliminate your ability to... Yeah, and this is... I think anyone listen to the cast knows. My primary is an orc player. That's my number one army that I like to play, but my number two is Eldar. And the reason I'm playing Eldar is tactically I like how they play.

The way the Eldar is supposed to wage war is they know ahead of time who their opponent is, and they know where their opponent can fight. The first round of battle, like if you were Alatoc in third edition, is you would go through and eliminate one key part. Right.

Class supply. Yeah. Well, leaders. Yeah. But on the battlefront, they would sit there and say, all right, we're going to bring a bunch of fast attack bikes and aircraft. So what are we going to do? Well, we're going to sit down and we're going to eliminate your ability to fight. That's our first.

This is what the German Blitzkrieg was. The first thing we're going to do is remove your ability to hit this one thing. And then we're going to use that thing to exploit the rest of you. And as you then counter the rest of the army is going to kill you. That's how Eldar wage war. It's this brutal, multi-phase, very quick. multi-phase battle that leaves you. The thing is, is that Eldar have

this is the Dix part, because they have Farsiers to look in the future, I can see all possible outcomes and they also cough-cough-calf-beel-Town don't really value other races. They'll often hit a hive world, of agro world,

or whatever, they'll lead high fleets into the imperial. They don't care at all. Yeah, but I'm saying they'll do what's necessary so that man, the High Fleet was going to definitely make contact with the craft world until we did a couple skirmish battles. The reason Gaddle hit Armageddon was Eldred.

Exactly. I'm just saying they do that shit kind of a lot. And they also cut off resources. And sometimes they do, I said the Revin thing, but they will actually snipe off certain worlds and basically go, you should get ready for battle because they know that chaos is going be coming. Yep. And you're like, yeah, man, but you just kill legitimately millions of people.

They're like, yeah, but now you're ready. Yeah, but now you're reinforced. Yeah. For round two. But that's a real thing that they do. And they actually feel super, we're doing the right thing. One thing I want to dive into actually on that note is about when we talk about the Eldar being a dying race and this and the other.

The one thing that I don't think we touched on the last three casts is the Eldar, they're really motivated to not die. And I say that it's more than other race because of what an Eldar death is. If you're a human being and you die, you just die. You're not 100% so you're sure what happens. Eldar know what happens.

And the way that's, we talk about Slenesh eating their soul. It doesn't mean that, oh, I'm not being reincarnated, which is what the Eldar were before the fall. It is a, I spend an eternity. under the, basically as a slave to Slanesh, turned into a demon, a puppet, whatever it is. Or a puppet that legitimately kills other Eldar, while you're conscious of the fact that you're killing other Eldar.

So Elder, this is when we talk about like the Eldar, not willing to sacrifice any of themselves for this. This is where it comes from. It is not just a, you know, we need to preserve our race. It is a, if I die, I as an Eldar die, the death I get is so horrifying that I need to not have that happen. And that's why we have so many spirit stones. That's why when you look at Eldar models, they have a lot of gems on them.

Yep, which I'm going to be honest, I first started painting Eldar. I didn't paint the spirit stone very well. You're like, I am letting all of my Eldar have a horrifying damage. I've had to go back and redo a few of those. So let's discuss a little bit about like the way that Eldar fight, some of the weapons they use. tactics they use because this stuff actually i like a lot so the last one we did we covered aspect warriors today i want to cover their weaponry and then some of their actual vehicle-esque things race aren't really vehicle so let's just talk about for weapons let's dive into the four big ones

shuriken prisms lance and d weapons all right you heard me sigh because the first three super awesome the last one is super awesome but was such bullshit you dened I will integrate de-weapons. I will kill you. They are the greatest. They have the greatest rules. Yes. They're...

Unless you played against them. The lore is fantastic. Playing them is the worst. Which edition? All of them. They auto killed. Yes. With no save, no role.

We're spoiling. We're spoiling. Let's get there. Okay. All right. So we'll start with the ones that I actually hate the absolute most. And that's shiriken, which once again is a Gauss weapon. So they could have called it

anything they wanted. GW. just got Gauss completely wrong. So a Shuriken is a, sorry. I love that Necron's. Let's back up everybody. We did the Necron cast. Necron do not have God's technology. Nope. The elder do. And we call this something else. And we call it Shuriken. We call it Shuriken, because if you Google the word shiriken, you get ninja throwing stars. So what this does is this is a gun that shoots ninja throwing stars out of it. Yes.

If you weren't aware Eldar were written in the late 80s and you're old enough to know what movies were like in the late 80s, you're now putting two and two together. This is the error. They're going to call it a gauze weapon because it is the definition of a gauze weapon. It's a definition of a goss weapon.

weapon combined with Tanger Mutin Ninja Turtles. Well, you know what? A gall's weapon doesn't have to not shoot a throwing star out of it. Yeah, but it should not shoot a throwing star. And we have, I know thanks to my Discord, I know we have businessists in our Discord who understand that you actually shoot a projectile, that's a shaped projectile, not a spinning flat disc. Look, the scene in Commando where he kills the guys with the rotary blades, is it amazing?

I mean, look, it's one of the best scenes. saying is like if I shoot my shirican and I shoot it around a corner, which basically die adventurers can do. Yeah. It bounces off a wall, comes back and kills someone in theory. They actually took this rule away for a good reason. They used to be able to shoot out of line of sight of Sherekin. They did some wanted shit and just threw them around. It was incredibly stupid. But the flip side is ninjas. Yeah, they're ninjas. But they are impossibly sharp and fired incredible speed. So the idea is that a shiriken, if you're unarmored, just cuts. you to pieces. If you are armored,

it's still sharp enough and fire it fast enough speed to actually cut through your armor. It would cut through it better if it was shaped like a projectile with a pointed tip to go through things, but apparently I'm shooting rotary blades at things. All I'm saying, John, is I feel like you

didn't hear when I said Ninja. Is it Doom? Which is the FPS where you get a gun? I say which, there's a thousand of them where you can shoot rotary blades at people. No, it's, no, it's dead space. Dead Space has this.

There we go. Now I'm back in. Actually, you can even hold that distance. If you haven't played the day of Dead Space Remake on PlayStation 5, by the way, very good. Well made remake. Anyway. But sometimes you don't want to shoot little ninja stars at people. I mean, when do you not want to shoot?

Yeah. So the Eldar also have Las Canns, which we covered in our Imperium Weaponry. But the Eldar, their last cans are just better. First off, they're called Brightlances. They used to be way way. Oh, there was some brand... Remember when they always used to treat armor as 12? Yeah, they would just go through armor.

Like, oh, you have an armored. The front of mine's armored. I don't care. I'm going to go, screw you. Seventh edition was dumb. You're not wrong. Yeah. So the Eldar made their own Las Canning called a Bright Lance.

And so what the Bright Lance is able to do is it's just like a regular Las Canaan. Bunch energy gets focused through a crystal, shoots to the crystal, and at impossible distances blows through it. What the Eldar do with their blast cannons, though, whereas the Imperian made a Las rifle with it and made less powerful versions, the Eldar made more powerful versions, like the pulse laser and the scatter laser,

which will wreck things. We have a bright lance, and we have a dark lance. You have had darklances. Bright lances, but yeah, so to Brad's point, bright lances through the additions have been... Disgusting. Magnific, is what...

It's a term I would use. They've always been good. And they've also, the thing is, is that they don't, they always put these on vehicles. Yeah. One way or another. They don't have, well, that's a lie. We back that up. They have put them on vehicles that they don't call vehicles.

Yeah. The support platform, but it's still a vehicle. You don't have troops carrying them. Correct. That's the thing. Only the dark, somebody was going to say, no, you could take bright lances in your guardian squad. And yes, you can.

They didn't move right. It was a pain of the yes. No, but they could. But it's because you had a vehicle, a support platform. You had a vehicle that it floated on. Very much so. Now, that being said, as cool as the last cannons are, we're moving to one of my more favorite ones,

which is the Prism canon. I really actually, I'm going to geek out on this just for a second. Please. Because I feel that Prism's, Prism technology is the Eldar technology. I feel like that should be way more than the Brightlands. aside. Yeah, oh, the prism's way, yeah, if you need to them, it's also way better. But I'm saying, it's their tech. It's also tabletop-wise, broken as all. Linking and all that shit.

This is crazy. Between linking and shadow specters. And so before we get into this, I do want to point out the ad mech are obsessed with this technology. They want it desperately. They want it so bad. And I'll tell you some fun stories about how many times they've blown planets up trying to build it. Oh, 100%. One of the biggest. One of the, one of the, one of the, the biggest things about the prism technology is you can harness different variations of brism technology in infantry-based, vehicle-based, heavy-based. Yeah, so what the prison cannon is, is it's basically a two-stage lascanon. So you have the

normal thing where we're going to agitate the energy and fire the energy through, but then it goes through two focusing crystals. The first one, like you'd have a normal lascanon, shoots it. But the second one then either focuses it down further or disperses it, which makes this weapon so powerful. Because one of the big challenges you run into with tanks, for example, is I bring a tank out with a big gun on it. But what happens if in front of the tank is a thousand hormagons? Well, with a prison technology, I just turn it to wide array. Instead of shooting out one powerful beam, it shoots out a first. It dispersed. It shoots out a thousand small beams and just shreds infantry. So prism technology is maybe the greatest thing.

think about Eldar because Eldar don't have the ability to bring lots of stuff to bear. So they are plans. They bring one tank and that tank can handle everything. It's a hybrid. But my favorite thing, this is why I feel that the prism technology should be more prevalent in the, on the board. Yeah. Because. Well, you could.

You just don't like fire prisms. It should be in more stuff than fire prisms. I don't. This is a person between Brad and I. And I don't dislike the fire prism. I dislike the fact that it costs a million. And it's also clunky comparatively. It's a great good.

I just like, Prism technology is Eldar technology, and I'd like to see more things. Not as much as what we're going to cover now. The greatest technology Eldar has. What the thing is that D-Canon, the weapons. Yeah, the D-weapons, mostly seen in the form of D-canons are, who, okay, so what this thing does. It's bananas. It creates a hole in the material at their target. When it does that, best-case scenario, the combat between the material,

than the imitarium. It's like sodium meeting water. It just fights, explodes, maybe crushes whatever is there. Yeah. In worst case scenario, wherever you just got shot, that part of your body...

Or all of your body... Goes to the warp. I mean, I don't know. I think I actually would prefer at least having a fighting chance with my whole body in the warp. I'm not super excited about you putting, I don't know, a manhole-sized hole in my torso.

That's not... It's not even just... You shot me. I'm bleeding. No, that part of my body is just magic trick. It doesn't exist in this realm of resistance anymore. Or if it's a big D-Canon, me and my buddies just appeared maybe next to Slenesh's Temple. Yeah. This could be better.

Armor and shields do nothing to stop a D-Weapon, by the way. It just hits and does this thing. Well, again, when you open up effectively a portal to the warp, in your tank, your shield doesn't do a great job of that. Yeah. The Eldar love this gun. They put it on platforms. They put it on walkers.

They put it on vehicles. They put it on spaceships. Yeah. They put it on spaceships even. These things hit hard. Before we dive into a couple of the funny rules they've had over the year, one of my favorite lore stories, I forget which codex this is from.

The ad mec finally got a hold of one after a while. And they took it, and they, you know, reverse engineered it and built their own D-Canon. We don't know what happened when they turned it on, but we do know that the Grey Knights got sent to that world because it was a full-scale demon invasion on the Forge World. Whoopsie. They went, we're supposed to shoot this. It's supposed to open up and take part of you.

And they just basically went, oh, we shot it. Oh, no, the portal's not going away. Yeah. And so since then, the Inquisition has had a lot of conversations with the ad mech about their experimentation with decanons and that they're not allowed to do it. They're like, no, but just a big no. Now, one of my favorite things about D-Weapons is their rules over the years. In their current version, they're not that bad.

They can close. They just hit hard. However, when I used to have things where I put a template on someone, I'm just going to give you guys a rule. So tell me how fun you think this is. I don't know. Say take a five. inch in diameter. Circle.

And I set it on top of your models. And if I roll a six, everything that my five inch circle touched goes away. You don't get a save. You don't get to do anything. Just gone. You just put your models back on your tray and just get annoyed. Yeah.

It's like 18% of the time. You lose whatever that is. So, no. Yeah. For actually a lot of additions, they had variations of that rule, too. where like on a six to wound, whatever they hit, just auto dies. Yep.

Yeah. Could be a tank. Yeah. The Lynx had a flamer that did that. Oh, I forgot about that. The big flamer too. Yeah. Oh.

I like D weapons. Of course you did. Probably put them in the air out of. I mean, there's a bunch of them in there. Actually, I did. I have a ton of D weapon. All my old are magnetized. And if you think I didn't magnetize out a bunch of D cannons, you're out of your mind.

All right. So with that, that's the weapon. Let's talk now into the vehicles. And we'll start with the bread, I would consider really the... Is it the bread and butter? Yeah, the jet bike. The jet bike is different.

The Imperium has grav technology. They don't have this level of graph technology. It's a combo of both. And so before we kind of dive in, we can talk about both. The Eldar jet bike, it's not just that it's fast,

it's maneuverable. Part of this has to do with Eldar technology and Eldar physiology. Because the G-forces don't matter to the Eldar. So whereas humans are advanced in the 41st millennia, obviously,

there are still some levels of laws of physics. It's... And Eldar laws of physics are basically roadrunner levels of physics. So an Eldar taking something up to Mach 4, taking into a full stop, making a left turn, and then taking off again, they're fine. Whereas a human being would just pass

out and shit themselves. They would just die. Probably you're right. The average jet bike rider is doing effectively impossible. Yeah, yeah, literally, literally, to quote Brad, impossible things.

These things are nuts. And so what that means is that the jet bike, not only, the LRJet bikes are built to go faster and make turns that no one else's bikes are able to do. This is, to go back

to the way they wage war, couples into the way they build them out. The jet bikes, they're not that well armed, actually. They're not very well armored, and they only carry like a shirican cannon

on it. So there's not a lot of stuff, but they're so quick. You're never going to hit them. Yeah. You're basically, they're getting to shoot you and you can't do anything about it. I mean, this is, again, why they're minus one to hit for most of the additions or worse. They were obscuring because of the idea is these jet bikes come. They move like, was it 14 inches?

They had one point. Or back in the time, they moved 16. And they could. 22. It was auto advanced 6. And then you could still shoot Hail of Doom. Yep. It was broken.

It was fine. These rules were fine. But they would come in and at, you forgot, Quicken was also double. Double move. So you move 40. four inches. Well, he couldn't advance and quicken. So, yes. Oh, yeah. That's 32 inches. It's a bummer. Yes. You can advance on the first one. That's true. You couldn't advance on the second. 38 inch movement on a board that was 44 by 60. What? It seems fine. This is fair.

So what they would do. Somebody's always been balanced. Just laughing at this. What makes the Lord a tabletop, Eldard nailed it. No one's ever nailed it as well as they have over and over and over again. But what the the jet bikes are designed to do is they do this. They jump out of nowhere. move in impossible speeds, just spray fire down on an enemy, and then they're gone. And this is the thing on the board that people hated. We'll be right back after a quick break. Because. Oh, God.

It's just getting worse. Eldar had the rule on the tabletop, which is very, very lower accurate. Oh, it's all fluff. So, like, Eldar used to be able, on the board, they would shoot something, and then they would get a six-inch move, well, D-6, whatever. Yeah. You get up to a six-inch move, and you could just get out of the way. So Eldar on the board in 40K could interact with you and then go behind cover so you could never see any of their models. And people would want to throw things at you.

I know because I was playing them at the time. But it is very, very accurate in the lore because this is how Eldar fight. They shoot. They get the hell out of the way. They don't want to receive your fire. Now that they don't have armor, they don't want to be shot. at all. Yeah, but they actually don't have armor. I mean, comparatively. Comparatively, because they'll need it. It's this piece of the Eldar, when they were crafting

out their weaponry in their vehicles, they were designed to not need armor. They were designed to need speed. And so they're built for them. Yeah. They're Imperial fights with, I'm just going to make thicker and thicker armor. Eldar fights with, I'll just be faster than you, and I won't be there anymore. And those are wildly different philosophies of how to wage war. And very successful, by the way, for the Eldar. And also probably the Imperium. I was just going to say, Imperium's just like, I'll just make two foot thick armor and you'll just do nothing.

In combat, when we talk about Eldar, like, lore battle style, what the jet bikes are really mostly designed to do is to kind of come out of nowhere and plink at the enemy. It's really to control the movement of the enemy. So they're not trying to break up. You're harassing. You're trying to break lines. You're trying to screw with communication.

you're also trying to make it seem this is one of the biggest things the elder do in combat is make my opponent think that there's more than there actually is and where is it coming from i can't figure out the big that's the thing is it's like they're one of their they're just harassing which is we're moving so fast and we're shooting you from all angles you're like there must be tens of thousands of elder coming to fight us because they've shot us from every single angle all over the place, and then you're like, no, that's actually two units. Yeah, and what this does is, so after the jet bikes have kind of had their, well, after while they're having their way with it, the jet bikes will then suddenly disappear,

and here comes round two. And round two is going to be your aspect warriors popping out of nowhere coming in, or we're going to cover some of the tanks or even the wraiths being deployed at this moment, and you're just grossly unprepared, because you're still trying to recover from the jet bike attack. And one of the biggest things about this to say, and we're spending a lot of some of the jet bikes, when we're saying the aspects. But one of the big things is, again, Eldar want to hit it and leave.

I was going to say, I didn't quit it. You can take that out. I'll take that out there. I saw you going. I'm like, yeah, I didn't want to go there, but I'm just like it's,

it fits so well. But they want a great turn of phrase. They want to strike and fate. They want to be gone. They want to, again, saving Eldar lives. That's what matters. They want to hit it.

And he asks, even the hand-to-hand warriors, want to kill everybody they hit, and then be, done. They're not looking to sit there and grind out of position. They're back flipping the hell out of there. And they look cool doing it because all their armor isn't

really armor. It just looks awesome. It just looks awesome. What also makes the jet bike. Keating about the jet bikes is that they're also used by warlocks and farseers and autarks. Because this is not like, oh, we've got the jet bike guys that go up there. No, they're fully supported. Yeah. And this is a big deal

from when they're fighting against people, especially the people that have fought against Seldar before, you don't know what you're getting into because they have shining spears, warlocks, autarks, they have people that have just went, oh, I shot you, and now I'm going to hit you at 100 miles an hour with a spear, with a psychic power, with a sword. Exactly. And or I'm just a jet bike rider. I just shoot you and I drive away. You're not 100% sure what you get. They also have the viper, which is a bigger version, but also just as fast that might carry a bright land sign. And also it just blew a hole in your tank.

Yeah. So you don't, and this is the thing is the elder fight with that hole. We're so fast. We're everywhere. Their thing is they don't want you to know what's happening. They want you to always be confused. And that's a big part of their warfare, though, is just being fast, being everywhere, not letting your opponent.

Because if the opponent can't figure out exactly what's going and where you're coming from, they can't really shoot back very well, which increases their survivability. But as we just said, That's only phase one of the combat. And phase two is oftentimes the grav tanks. And I wish I love Eldar Grav tanks. I'd like them more if they'd been updated ever because I've been building them for a lot of years. You've been building the exact same thing.

I can build an Eldar Grav tank in the dark. Like it's that's where we're at this point. Hold on a second. It's from 2000. Oh, yeah, it's the same thing. It's the same thing. It's just now they're pure plastic. Yeah, sure.

It's the same thing. It's the same chassis with the same dimensions, the same everything. Also, painting-wise, I think it's a really cool model of paint. It's incredibly easy to paint, and I'm going to get heat for that from people, and I understand it. So let me say that a little better. Grav tanks are one of the easiest things to paint at a basic level because it's just long, smooth, flat surfaces. The flip side, though, is it means you've got areas that if you know how to freehand, you can go to town. People have put murals on Eldar Grav tanks that are just...

Look at Nadin's stuff. Sean Naid's terrifying. He's got free hand everywhere. Yeah, it is, yeah, I do not because my handshakes. I've got painted. So kind of like the Imperium, the Eldar only use one chassis for all their vehicles. The Forgeable ones are a little bit separate, but screw them. And this chassis is called the, it's the Falcon Grav tanks, the main thing.

That's what's based off of. Now, Grav is short for anti-gravity. And I want to point out again where the Eldar are just so much better than the Imperium. Because this is a, this is, I'm about to bring out something that's going to bother some people who've been playing the game long enough. So the Eldar Grav tank uses anti-Grav technology, just like the impulsor does from the Imperium. Don't get me started. One of those two tanks has the fly keyword and can move 14 inches. Yeah, but one of those is a spaceship that can just fly.

because that's the real thing. They can fly away into outer space. Yeah. So whereas the Imperial Antigraphy... It floats. Yeah, it floats a bit of... It's a glorified hovercraft, right? EldarGrav technology drops from orbit.

Yeah. Slows as it comes down. Because there's spaceships. Yeah, and then hits. So they're a little bit better. Again, it's a spaceship versus something that slowly floats. Yeah. And Eldar Grav tanks are fess. They've pulled them down a little bit in the recent edition.

They still deep strength, though. They still do, but I'm talking about wave servants moving 14 inches. Oh, yeah. There was an era where... 16. That's what you were. That's right. It was 16 inch move.

Okay, it's fair enough. Yeah, they flew over everything. They were mildly strong. So let's dive into the types of the graft tanks that have. We'll cover the four most common. So the first is the most common and probably both in lore and currently the tabletop, which is the Falcon, which is the bread and butter. It's just, it's your general purpose.

grab tank. And one thing I really like about the Eldar weaponry is, as we said, when we say general purpose, it's meant to be take-all comeer. Eldar don't really have as much specialized weaponry in their heavy equipment. They have a volume of shots and they have a decently high strength in their shots. So they're meant to be able to kill anything that's in front of them. Be it tank, be it infantry, be it whatever. And the Falcon is a great vehicle for this because the Vulcan doesn't have a full troop capacity of some of their... Yeah, the big ones, but it can carry a squad of aspect warriors. It's like, shit.

It carries a squad of aspect warriors, and it still has anti-whatever guns. It has heavy guns, multiple heavy guns on it. And again, it can come from space. Yeah, it drops from... This is the way the Eldar wage war. They're either going to pop out of a webway if it's present, or they will just pop out of space and land next to you. And also, apparently, they just never, ever suffer re-entry because they just derped down.

Why would they suffer re-entry? That's something for the Imperium to do. This silly atmosphere stuff. The Falcon's really critical on the tabletop because it does that. The Eldar, as we said before, the jet bikes come in, they harassed. Then you might have some artillery coming in from like Dark Creepers or whatever. And then just as you think that couldn't get worse, these things drop out of space. And some of the greatest warriors in the galaxy jump out of it.

And it could be anything, too. Yeah, either close combat, shooting, whatever it's going to be, and they will wreck you. So the Falcon is critical and somewhat funny in that regard. From there, we'll move on to actually one of my favorites, which is the fire prism, because Brad hates it. I don't hate it. I've played them, but like... You played them because you know they're good. All right, so let's talk about...

First, we talked really about what prism technology is. The fire prism is the prism technology turned up to a nine or it's not at 11. It's 11, 11. Well, I don't tap it. Yeah. So what the prism does is so prism technology, we mentioned earlier, it shoots again the laser beam through a prism that then focuses it or disperses it. There's one more thing it can do. A different fire prism can shoot its energy into the fire into the prism of another one.

This is pretty cool. This is badass. So the best way for me to explain this is if you, if you haven't seen Star Wars, I don't know why you're listening. to this. But when the Death Star shoots and all the little laser beams come together and then the big laser beam shoots out the front, that's what this is. So a bunch of fire prisms. But it also shoots from the main tank. As long as the other tanks can see the main tank. They don't have to see their target because they're firing through. Hate this on the tabletop. Well, let's do, let's finish it out. So let's just say hypothetically you have three tanks and they all can see one. And they all can see

one tank, your enemy can't see the tank or can see the other tanks. If three tanks, one of these tanks can see the enemy tanks. The other two are hidden. But the other two can see the tank that can see the enemy tank. And they all fire through that tank they can see. And then because it's Eldar, the tank that you can see, then disappears and moves behind a building. Yeah.

So the Eldar would effectively just completely devastate enemy armor. in ninth edition, they had a fun rule where they would ignore invulms, which wouldn't be that big of a deal if they also weren't minus five AP. So effectively... It means nothing to have the people.

Yeah, well, the way the rules are written, we play with a six-sided dice. In ninth edition, if my fire prisms, if I use two of them are more to shoot at you, you could not stop it. If I hit you,

it did the full damage. And by the way, full damage was a lot. I liked fire prisms lot. Also, I think they look cool. It's a, it's a falcon with a giant gun with a big crystal. I was saying it's got a huge crystal. It's just cool. They look amazing.

And again, Prism technology, that is really, I don't even hate the fire prism. I just wish more things had prism technology. Because that feels super LDAR. What is it? It's the fire prism. It's the Shadow Specters. It's the something else Forge World that's got it. And I think there's very little things.

There's very little things that have Prism. You have, well, they can take it because the Sun cannons basically. Oh, Sun cannons are Brungan. You're right. Yeah, I'm afraid about that. Yeah. But the thing is, is that when I think that, I think Eldar, you know what I mean? Prism, like, I just feel they should have more of it.

Just kind of like the Protas has their weapons and Starcraft. Yeah, exactly. They have their signature weapons. I just think that they would like to see. There should be more Prism. You're right. I mean, believe me, people who play against Eldar do not. Yeah, that's true.

So the little vehicle, we thought John, is the Wave Serpent. So the Wave Serpent is the Wave Serpent is. the transport of the Eldar. Less heavy weaponry, even though it still has. Really? Less. Two bright lances if you want it to or two star cannons. The new version sucks. How about

this? Listed in lore and it does have one less gun. But the reason that they say that it has transport capacity is it has one less gun. Wave serpent spam was a thing. Yes. Also, the fact of the matter is, the wave serpent is

an upgrade because the wave serpent comes with a serpent shield. Yeah, this has been received very well by. So there's a lot of times when we talk about Eldar, where you play Eldar. In the modern era, we play much more of the game, I think, you know, we have an app. I think people are more aware of what things do.

Going even just back, like, five years ago, they didn't. And you had to hand your book over to somebody else because they wouldn't believe the rule you were telling them. And they would look at it, and they would look at you, and they would look at it. And I'd have to say, yeah, that's what it says. I'm sorry. And the Wave Serpent, Serpent Shield is one of those things.

The Serpent Shield has been holy shit busted for a long time. People hate this thing. The Serpent Shield in lore, which is what we're doing, the Serpent Shield and lore is a force field. It's a force field around the LDAR vehicle, and it deflects and disperses. It absorbs basically. By the way, just like every other army has, the TOWD. have force fields?

Imperial have force fields. Everyone has force fields. They have the same force fields in the lore that the Eldar have in the lore, but only one of them on the tabletop had it actually worked correctly. And remember, Eldar could also use their force fields to shoot people with. That was, yeah, that was a fun one. They could disperse it. And blow it up.

But, yeah, the Wave Serpent effectively made it so that you couldn't harm the Wave Serpent. Which makes sense in the fact of, in the lore, to be honest with you. it because they were supposed to have slightly less guns, and they use most of their energy instead of for guns for the torture. I think the idea of the servant shield was that I've got this tank that I'm going to shoot up the board and it's going to unload its cargo full of it. It's the Eldar version of a land rater. That's what it is, except it's got better guns. It's more accurate and moves it almost twice the distance and can fly.

A little bit better. The force field. Yeah, the serpent shield would be biggest. So when you try to shoot it, it would just basically tell you to go after yourself. And yeah, no. So the wave of serpent, I like the way of serpent. It's had its moment. But speaking of things that have had a moment in the game.

Jesus. This is... You guys don't get the joy of watching Brad's face as we go to each of these. And he just makes these faces as he realizes what we're about to discuss. The night spinner used to be... Actually, in lore, nightspinner, fantastic. It is an artillery platform that is based on a falcon. And I love this idea.

This is a rapid moving artillery. So every other piece of artillery, you know, has to set itself in the ground, deploy its pylons, you know, sight a distance and fire. The night spinner is rocketing around the battlefield, lobbying where we're about to talk about, you know, horrifying ordinance at its opponent and moving so quick that you actually don't, how do you, we say, it's not moving just in a linear path. It's all over the place, jumping in, jumping out.

It's flying. It's flying. Yeah. It moves super fast. Now, I'll just give you, you know, and I'll give you a broken story. Well, let's do what it shoots first. Then we'll talk with broken stories.

Because, well, what it shoots is horrific. Yeah, so what it shoots is we talked in the last episode about the Warp Spider's Death Spinner that's shooting monofilament webs, which monofilament is just, it's a wire that's almost like, it's basically microscopically thin. And so when it... It cuts through anything.

It's sharp. It cuts through everything. So it shoots these webs of the... these, it lobs them over the opponent. They come down, and these things are designed to be actually compact as they expand out as they hit. So obviously anything organic, they would shred, but even armor, it'll actually cut through armor. It'll cut the barrel off something, cut through the armor. So the death spinner is shooting these things and lobbing them at an opponent.

Yeah, but with giant versions of it. Yeah. And the Eldar used this as artillery. Now, to Brad's point, they've had some rules. they've had some good rules, they've had some bad rules. This vehicle got nerfed four times in 10th edition here so far. Yeah. Because, wow.

And in 9th edition, it got nerfed in 9th edition for being too powerful. Twice. 9th edition. Then they launched 10th edition and had to get it nerve 4 times. And you still see them on the board. It was just, I mean, you know what, I'm not even going to get it. We could do like 20 minutes on what the shit has. happen with the night spinner is has been one of the greatest weapons on the tabletop uh in the game

one i think it might be the most at least in tenth edition it was the most broken tank no oh tank okay i was a thing no thing no the elder also we're going to cover that one in a little bit elevator i've had a run so there's another so that's kind of that that covers all the tanks for us which i think helps for that. But there's another one that I love the aesthetic, but I'll be honest, I don't like the rules. We'll be right back after a quick break. Raith hosts. I love wraith hosts. Well, I love the aesthetic. I love the lore. The lore is fantastic. They're just on the tabletop. I just haven't. When Eldar die, because they're trying to avoid again being horribly bad Slanesh things happening to them,

they trap their life force in a waste stone, a spirit stone, and then use these spirit stones, and they effectively load their spirit consciousness. And I don't just say consciousness because they are not completely with it. Well, they are when they first get loaded in. So let's start. They have to have a warlock slash spirits here to guide them through what's happening. I think you're ahead. So let's go back a bit.

So an Eldar warrior is fighting and is slain in the battlefield. Their soul gets absorbed into the spirits on their chest. They already have on them. Yes. That stone is then after the battle, the Eldar come through and collect all the spirits. It's like, you know, soldiers do it with dog tag. Same concept. But they bring it back and then they load that spirit stone into the Infinity Circuit,

which depend, we can compare it to the thing in Ghostbusters Tower. Kind of, yeah. Or we could compare it to Final Fantasy 10. There's a bunch of examples we can use for this. But that's the soul thing goes in there. And the soul goes in the Infinity Circuit forever. Now, what Spirit hosts do is that, When the Eldar need them, they actually will take a spirit and shove it into the Infinity Circuit and load a soul into it.

Take it and go shove it into a vehicle. They don't know, though, before they do that, how long that soul has been in there. There is times, though, no, there is times though when they just take a straight, I ended, yeah, does this a lot where they just take a fallen soldier and immediately rares. He just died and popped them in. But at their core, the idea is this is what makes the race kind of almost a crazy. story is that you can have a wraith who was alive in a body

30 seconds ago and is now in a wraith host or 7,000 years ago they got killed in a mining accident. And the thing is, is that they are in a half and half world. They're almost a ghost because they're powering this construct

and they're guiding it, but they need guidance themselves because they are in a half and half world. Because they're not, because it's just deep and you take a guy who's been dead for 7,000 years, right? he's not sure. Is this even reality that I'm in right now? Is he living in a dream?

The physical world feels the exact same to him as the spirit world. Look at the size of that chicken. Exactly. It's a big deal. And they need a guide. Yeah. But that being said, the reason I love Raith hosts is at a certain point, the elder does kind of snap to and know the problem and has a very simple purpose.

I'm going to go kill something. now for the Eldar. And we're going to dive in a couple of the fun ones here. So the first one we'll start with is the Wraith Guard. So the Wraith Guard are about three meters high. The Wraith Lord is about seven meters, and the Wraith Knight can be anything. I mean, these can be building-sized.

Which we'll talk about that. Raith Knights are, can we go into the Red Knights? Let's with them last. Yeah, we'll do the Raith. I love Raith Knights. But again, these guys just kind of awakened. and attack. The example I used here is you can imagine waking up from a thousand-year dream and being a little bit out of it because the example that I thought of was I'd have a conoscopy like about

a year ago, in which case I was under anesthesia for like 20 minutes. And my wife still laughs about how completely out of it I was after a 20-minute nap, you know, 20-minute medical nap. These guys have been out for 7,000 years. So surprise, surprise, they're a little bit rough. So the They have to be shepherded up the battlefield originally by warlocks. Then they added in spirit seers because they actually can't, the breath of the way they can't even see the world. They actually see the world the same way demons do, where they actually view like spirit and energy.

It's a little bit goofy. They almost have life sight or anything. Yeah. But what I like by this is just so they wake up, the spirit seers there, the warlocks there, Ed, or whichever one it was, and they're just kind of coaxing them into reality. And all of a sudden, badass time happens where the raf kind of comes to it, realizes what needs to happen, and decides, I'm going that way to kick ass. And in the lore, holy shit, did these things do it?

They're also creepy in the battlefield because a dreadnought or a knight is manufactured. So we've got servos. We've got, you know, hydraulics. So there's noise. These are natural, again, sung into being wraithbone. These are part of Eldar. So they're quiet. That's what's so crazy about them.

I think it's the second edition talks about, like, the only sound they make is the sound of their wraith cannons booming. Also, when you're talking about wraith blades and stuff, these are fast. Yeah, the next one, which is my favorite they added, which was they added wraith blades in sixth edition. They gave us. So it used to be for five editions, or if I guess four editions, because there's no first edition Eldar Codex. So for four editions, the Eldar wraiths were just a tall Walker carrying a D-canon. Awesome, to say the least.

Then in sixth edition, they decided to turn this thing up a little bit, and they gave us wraith blades, which are my favorite version, not with a sword, just screw that stupid sword. They went from slow zombies to fast zombies. The fast zombies. So now they gave him a giant, axe and a shield that makes them invincible. And first off, aesthetically, cool as hell. Lore-wise, my favorite part about these, is that wraithblades, when they're awakened,

have to be kept away from everyone else. Because they're so full of rage and vengeance. For some reason, they don't explain why it does this, but putting them in this specific body... I think they choose those spirits, to be honest with you. Maybe, yeah. So that's the whole thing of the Warlock slash Spirits here is to find... The best one.

Well, they're supposed to find compatible. Yeah. They're supposed to guide them into... That would make me more sense. All I saw was that effect was that their spirit stone actually glows burning hot. And these things, they're basically sequestered away. And when it's time, they just open a door and they come running out... Fast.

Yeah, to go chop, chop, chop, chop. These are big constructs, too. They're moving silently and fast as shit. Yeah. I mean, since you're talking about, you know, six, seven meter, you know, not a full seven, probably, actually probably more five, four or five meters, so 15 to 20 foot, dead silent thing. Because, you know, no vocal cords, guys, they're just running at you with a giant axe to chop you up. Now, I wish they moved a lot fast on a tabletop because they're still pretty fast. Without quick and then not.

That's your story. Beyond that, the next level up are the wraith lords, which are just a larger version. And these are the ones that are like, you know. I love the wraithords. I know you think they're terrible. They are. But I've played them at different times over the years. I played them recently.

I know. I was at the event. You played it as a meme. Yes. You had a wraith lord and you had a spirit seer as a meme. Yep. They're in the closet. What?

I had to dust it off to give to. But I love the idea of the wraith lord. Oh, yeah. The lord's awesome. Giant. Giant. creatures that are superly heavily armed. Yeah.

With every, this is like... Well, yeah, they have a decadden on their shoulder. Both their arms have many guns on it. And they carry a giant sword or spear. Yeah, and they also have shoulder mounted. Yeah. And they would just...

They have so many guns. Oh, yeah. The coolest hell in theory, it's just, again, I've made a lot of, like, I've built... They used to come in a lot of kits, so I have, I think, five of them for some weird reason. I just, I love the idea of the Rayth floor. It's just this...

monstrously tall, powerful, just heavily, just every armament. They had everything. I mean, the standard loadout was a hand-to-hand weapon, two flamers. And a decadon. A decadon. Or two brights. Two brights. So you had just like a ton of guns, plus you had the ability to fight.

I just like the idea of this. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Raith Knight. So, the Raith Night, just before we dive into this, the Raith Night, was so. Raith Knight was so broken in 7th edition that he got a 8-year timeout of terrible rules. And then they got broken again.

He came into 10th edition and was so broken. It actually had to change. He changed the core rules of the game. These are... Oh. Okay, so they're aesthetically amazing. Well, one, the Raith Knight is a almost a Titan.

Yeah. It's gigantic. but unlike a Titan. It's a ninja. Yeah, it's a ninja. It's literally doing backflip kicks and it's fast as shit. And the weird part about it is it doesn't work like the other Raith constructs because of the fact that it, this is so odd because you're just like, how do they have any Raith Knights? The Raith Knight has a driver and a Spirit Stone.

A Spirit Stone. Who is his twin? Yeah. Okay, I'm going to go ahead and call him out. I like the first Pacific Rim, sort of. Like, it's, it's a shit film. They're drifting with each other. It's a shit film, but it's, it's very entertaining.

It's robots fighting monsters. I know, yeah, it's very entertaining. They stole this idea. So the Wraith Knight is, it's an Eldar twin where one of the twins is dead. And that twins is a spirit stone, because Eldar twins apparently can see and feel through each other. They're just normally. They're psychically linked period. Actually, just like Aramon was with his brother,

whose name I cannot remember without show notes. So sorry, guys. But it's a similar concept. So all of these things are powered by a living and dead Eldar who at one point were twins. And I just love the fact that every one of the other wraiths are going, either lumbering, wraith blades are kind of... They're a little bit quickly. No, this thing's a ninja.

Yeah, this thing is just doing Chuck Norris kicks. It'll cartwheel across the front of them. And also, the. model, even though it's an older, it's not an older kit, but it's a cool as hell kit. You can model them up in a bunch of different ways. It's if you, it means, it's basically a Gundam. It's badass. I mean, I will say, all right, were they worse than 10th or 7?

10th. Really? Not even close. Seven? No, 7th, they were really good, but everything else was broken in 7th. 10th edition, 8th edition, 8th night's by themselves would ruin the game. That's true. there was.

You just needed to take a rate that. You went, oh, you got a rate then? I guess she'll just win. Yeah, unless I have a wraith night. Who went first? Oh, okay. Exactly. Yeah.

It was just stupid. I like my rate. Again, Matt Shuckman did 112 mortal wounds to me in the first two turns and Nova. It feels like a lot. By the way, it was too many. I'm going to go ahead and admit that that feels like a lot of mortal wounds. That's a real number, by the way. Yeah, it feels like maybe more mortal wounds than it should have done.

It was not great. But the reason that I'm obsessed with the wraith nights and I like, Actually, we'll be honest, I barely ever played them because I was super excited to play them at start a 10th. And then one tournament happened. And I was like, oh, yeah, I can't be that guy. So I just wouldn't put it on a tabletop. But they are aesthetically really cool looking. Give them a giant sword.

And then a sun cannon and D cannons. Yeah, anyway. You could bring three of them at one point in time. Oh, God. They're kind of the ultimate weapon for the Eldar. And in the lore, what's funny about them is that there is no, like, defining size of them in the lore. because they're an ancient weapon. As we discussed, when Magnus went to the world

and discovered the webway for the first time, after he left and someone disturbed the mound, it was a race, it was like multiple wraith nights popped up. Yeah, they got out and beat the shit out of everyone. And everything died because they are no joke. They're so fast. They're, like, you can't deal with it fast.

You're like, oh, no, this lumbering construct, nope, it is on top of you. Yeah, Wraith Knight against an Imperial Knight should just run up on it and cut it in half and then move on. You can't do anything. They can't even turn fast enough to figure it out.

I love Wraith Knights. So, uh, anyway, with that, we just wanted to cover some weaponry and there wasn't enough time in the prior cast to do it, but we had some time left in this cast. So what we decided to write into this, so it feels a left turn. It is, but we wanted to spend a little bit time on something.

That's, The cliffhanger of cliffhangers. And we're going to cliffhanger it. So, ha ha, ha, suck at GW. I see where you are, and we're taking you one more. Yonari. So before we dive into Yonari, let's just discuss kind of what happened with Yonari in the tabletop and why we both think Yonari timeline has been halted.

Well, Yonari was broken. Yeah, so Yonari, yeah, all this happens at the very end of seventh in the beginning. Seventh edition, Gathering Storm Books. Fantastic books, by the way. It really is books. They come into, and this set up the launch of eighth edition. I recommend this a ton. The lore in those books, and there's a ton of stories in all of the other stories.

Very well written, too. The Yonari came under the tabletop and GW in all of the ways that they have broken, not broken, all the ways they've let Eldar play to their lore. Yonari is maybe the worst example of this. I'll just tell. quick, for people to know their game, you'll understand. The original rules for Yanari were

the most broken that anything's ever been broken. So, the original rules for Yanari were if something dies within seven inches of you, whether it be one of your units or your opponent's units, you got to activate and then shoot

and or attack. You could move shoot or attack. Move shoot or attack. Well, if you set up your units, you could go, you killed me, so I'll kill you. But then you have the little triangle formation. Yeah. So then I kill the thing that killed my buddy. And then I activate again. I tabled sparks on his bottom of one after I moved up to him. Yeah. It was a bananas broken mechanic and they nerfed it innumeral times. I'll tell a story a little bit differently, but similarly.

So effectively, there's a lot of Warhamers played in tournaments and very large events. Yonari were winning effectively every single tournament. Oh, those bananas. And by winning, I mean first place, second place, third place, fourth place, fifth place. It was just all you saw. We were like, the same list that we made was three of us at LVO, for instance. And at one point, GW just had enough. And this is after they effectively removed the Army.

Yeah, they just moved their army from the game. They were like, okay. It's, sorry. It's, people yelled us. It's still there, but it's not. Every rule that you have is now in the garbage. Here's a new one that's potentially worse than every other rule in the game. And it was legitimately for three, the end of seven, the beginning eighth and nine.

Yeah, it moved a little bit. The worst was, ninth you were fine. It was like the, it was maybe the second year of eighth. It was right, it was basically after they got rid of, after they put in rule of three, there was no stopping. it. Yeah. But anyway, that's that. So, but let's talk to what, so people talk about Unar. The reason we're telling that story, it might seem, to those of you who are lower people, like,

why do you care? We tell that story because the Yonari storyline was incredible, and it was developing as this kind of gameplay thing was happening. And at a certain point, there's such a bad taste in the mouth of players towards Yonari that my theory, I think Brad agrees with me, is that

GW just kind of stepped away from it a little bit. Yeah, they just mic dropped that they didn't finish it. Because they were just, they couldn't finish it because there was such a bad taste towards Yanari. It was a betties it was hatred. I mean, you know, it's all a matter of how you want to go at it. So let's talk about the Yanari came about. Now, Yanari, what it is.

First off, it's a conglomeration of all elves, dark elves, pirates, craft world Elvar. Harlequins. Harlequins. Any, basically any Eldar came together under one banner. So it's actually a huge deal for the Eldar because this has not happened in 10,000 years. But yes, let's start the origin. I mean, God, this story's really good. So, and we're going to give as much justice as we can without having to read a book to you all live. So during one of his, like, seances in the craft row of infinity circuit, Eldred

felt a heartbeat coming from inside the infinity circuit. And he recognized, and the heartbeat couldn't speak to him, but it was there. And Eldred, as we've discussed, is mildly intelligent, unless he has to see into the future something really important. He's going to screw this up in a minute. Eldred, you know, does that kind of that, you know, fantasy movie montage or starts reading a bunch of books and trying to learn all this stuff, figure what the hell it was. He realizes it's the birth of a god, that this is much like how Slanesh started as a whisper or the other chaos gods. They begin as a wist. They begin as a small thing and gain power. He realizes this is a god, and it's a new god. It's the god of the dead. And he also sees into the

future. And he sees what, again, Eldar don't just see a future. They see. possible, all the possible outcomes, and he saw what could be for this old, this new formed fledgling god of the Giddad for the Eldar, what it meant for the Eldar, what it meant for the galaxy. Yeah, and what it meant is the death of Slanesh, because the problem is the Eldar have this great idea of we're going to kill Slanesh. But how do you kill a god? But then they go, things to do, kill Slenesh, and then underneath it, it says, well,

how. Yeah, exactly. Step one. It's step three, kill Slanesh. Step two, figure out how to kill Slemesh. We're real stuck in that step right now. Yeah, step one, step one, want to kill Sleinesh. We're there.

So this is it. This is the solution. We're going to make our own God, but we're going to have to do this in a way. You know, Sleeneh ripped apart the gods we had before. So we have to make a God who's on par with Sleeneh. Well, also, we have to do this whole thing and not. have the followers of Slenesh ruin our plan. And also, we need to gather forces to stop that from happening, which means that we have

to have the greatest coalition of forces ever, ever, basically. So the first thing he has to figure out is a way to actually, how do I birth this God? And the Alatoc, you know, the world's greatest craft world, they let them know. They found something. And again, there's some serious heavy. This story is going to sound dumber as we tell it, because in the book, they build up better. It's really cool. It's really a book. When you tell it later, you're like, okay.

Anyway, the Alatoc have discovered a random moon. The forest moon of Endor. Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah. No, it's not a forest, but it's a crystal moon of Endor. So just on the edge of what used to be Eldar space, there's a world called de messiness, demencis, something like that. I wrote it down here, but I'm looking at out. I may have misspelled it in the show notes.

So anyway, it's an imperial world. So who cares? But just outside that imperial world is a moon. And the moon is covered in a psychoactive sand. What that means, they don't really explain it. It's just effectively that at the births. It's gross. You just got spoilt.

God damn it, what is Ghostbusters? You just got slined. Yeah, it's slined. Yeah, it's most likely the residue of El of Eldar dying when Slanesh was born and the Eye of Terror erupted. But they're going to collect it and they're going to use it as an alchemist concoction to basically power up a ritual. Yeah, they're going to focus the ritual through it.

So Eldraud decides to use this planet as a focal point. And they don't explain how. So I'm just going to tell you this. I don't care. Somehow they decide to focus all the craft world, all plural, craft world's infinity circuits toward this moon, and that by doing so, this channeling of all this death to this psychoactive moon will then create

the alchemic event of birthing you need. So, neat. However, there's a small problem, as Brad mentioned. Well, two problems. One, if Slanesh detects this, she's just trying to come kill it right now. And also, you're kind of opening up the infinity circuit. Yep.

To Slanesh. This is a big risk. Yeah. This is, oh, yeah. Eldrad, if you're wrong, you are killing all Eldar. To which Eldar went, yeah, I'm going out with that.

Look, Eldar went. He is very confident. He does not lack confidence. He's just a, like, why would that happen? This is going to work, shut up. So anyway, Eldrad and the Eldar traveled to the moon, and they begin this ritual. And luckily, it's a complete success.

Yes, you need is awakened and kills Slanesh. Or not that. Or it all goes completely sideways. You guys can guess which way it was. So reality is that the moon is orbiting an imperial planet. Eldred's got this great idea of like, well, look, if we're all on the moon doing a ritual, the imperials are going to notice, and then they could attack us. So what we should do is destroy that planet first, get the Imperium to counterattack.

Zero defenses on the planet. Yeah. Oh, you should just imagine. This isn't a high world. This isn't a forge world. It's basically a depot. It's not even, there's nothing of value there. It's just a planet.

So the Eldar attack it with absolute force. And they wreck the defenders who put out a distress call, which Eldraib plan. Eldred's idea was they'll put out a distress call, then the Imperium will come to defend the planet. fight him on the planet while we're doing our ritual up on the moon. And no one's the wiser. This is the biggest look over here of all time. Like, this is that, by the way, I love Eldrad.

This is a terrible. It's a terrible plant made worse by the fact that because it's an Eldar invasion, the Imperium sends the Death Watch, who understand the Eldar, and namely, they send watch Captain Artemis. Who's known for his ability to snipe out. Yeah, Eldar. This is his thing. He's not,

Artemis is not a fan of Elder anyway. Artemis gets there and just pretty quickly deduces that, like, hey, this is bullshit. This is weird. These guys are attacking this planet, but there's an absolute ass ton of them up on that moon doing nothing. Absolutely nothing. Yeah. I think this is a ruse.

Let's go to the moon. And in traditional GW writing, he just gets to the moon. That's like not a problem. Nobody intercedes him. Nobody stops him. Not a problem. This is just, we have the most. the most important thing the Eldar have ever done in the history of their race, effectively,

is going on this moon. They've got craft world forces from most craft worlds. Even Ulth Way, which was able to somehow leave the gravity wall of the eye of terror here, per the euse. There are harlequins there, everything. And Artemis and his dudes just kind of drive up. Just drive up like, oh. And land. No one's looking this way.

Yeah, lands on the moon and begin just wrecking shop on the moon. Again, I said it before. I'm going to say it again. The moon has harlequins on it. It has aspect war. It has everyone on it. And Artemis and the end is death watcher just like picking them off. As usual, though, does full of Perium stuff and just becomes a huge dick.

It doesn't listen to everything. Yeah. Okay. Let's tell the story. And I'll give my take on it. So as, so. Fine. There is a, we're going to cover harlequins in the near future.

There's a death jester, which is a big deal, who's kind of leading the forces on the moon for the Eldar. Artemis gets a hold of her. And the death starts pleading with Artemis just saying, look, if you just, we're here, we could kill a god of chaos. We're going to stop chaos. We're going to stop chaos.

And Artemis responds by shooting her in the head. Now, this is, I think, written. People read this, in my opinion. It's like, well, Artemis is a dick and won't listen to reason. I also want to point out, Artemis got called here because these same Eldar just killed, I don't know, a million imperial citizens. for no reason.

It was for the greater good. Yeah, well, you know what? We'll cover them pretty soon. Artemis is a little bit pissed. So this, of course, and then again, pure G.W. writing, of he kills the death jester just as the crescendo of the summoning is going to happen. And bloop. Eldred has to run away.

And the ritual is sort of a failure, except it's not. It's not because we get a chosen one of Unite. Yeah, so the Unid, which is the God, is formed. It's more formed, but then start shooting through the galaxy as a beam of energy looking for somewhere to land. It ends up going into the webway. And then we get the person with one of the most awesome resumes in Eldar. Oh, your brain. All right, let's go through your brain.

So now we're going to kind of jump the story. a little bit to Comera in the middle of a fighting pit in Comra. And in that is a woman, a former BL Tan warrior, which the best of the warriors. She was an aspect warrior. Yeah. And then she was a warlock. Yeah. And then she joined a corsair fleet.

Yep. And then she ended up being in a gladiator. In which case she's, and she's wrecking shop in the gladiator. She was in the, she was fighting as a witch in the gladiator pits. Well, she was the, the, the, the, the, leader of the witch. What are they called? Sucubus. She was a succubus, yeah.

She's been just going buckwild in every aspect of life. She's like, I'd like to do some other wild adventure. And she's actually being set up to fight Lilith. Lillith? Lillith. Lillith. But while fighting in this, these are fights to the death in hand-to-hand combat, she's fighting a priestess of Moray-Hig.

So from a few episodes again, Mori-Hagg is very. very dead, by the way. Slanesh ate her. But she was the Eldar God of fate. And while fighting her, you know, this is like, this is, I think Yovrain's like 50th battle in last 20 minutes. So, you know, these fighting pits are a little bit rough. The Morai Hague stabs her. And as Yvrain is about to die, that's when you need finds her and just effectively possesses her. She jumps up, mildly wrecks that priestess of Mariah. Then she just goes, I have a purpose in life. And the thing is,

she has the charisma of a god, a deity, you know what I mean? Yeah. A powerful, I guess at the time, it's a burgeoning god. You know what I mean?

It's a demigod. But she talks to people, and they can see the God power effectively inside of her. And she's not like, I am powerful. She's, I am birthing this. I'm birthing a god.

And so, Unite escapes Kamara, we'll cover this in a later cast, and then begins, goes on her galaxy-wide quest to further the birth of you need. Now, one other key thing that we didn't discuss because I didn't have to put in the notes,

I put it here, is when Eldred first discovers you need, he, the way that you need was supposed to kill Slanesh was once Every single Eldar died, all of them, and became part of the affinity circuit. Who loads the last one in?

I don't know. My problem. The idea is that's when you need would come to full power. And that just like we talked about the birth of chaos gods with enough death or enough whatever fuels you, you then would birth. Under this thing you need being the god of death would actually not be an Eldar god, which is almost a sub-god, but would be a full-blown,

like, chaos-level god would be born. So, anyway, that system kind of sucks. And so Yavrein says, well, we've got an option B. And it's full-blown dungeons and dragons here. She goes on a quest. To collect a bunch of swords.

She doesn't just, but she doesn't just collect swords of the crown swords, of course, but which ripped through time and space. But, and also her sword is a power sword. Don't get me started. Think about things that aren't lower specific. But Lorraine goes on an awesome D&D-style adventure. Yeah.

Because she gets people from every single Eldar walk of life and more because she... There's Droukari. Well, there's Jakari. There's Harlequins. There's Craft World Eldar. Oh, I don't know. Maybe there's Bobby G at some point in time here. It's possible.

It's possible certain members of the Imperium got resurrected by this. Yeah. By the god, the Eldar God of the Dead. and she gets a full D&D party. And if you guys don't know D&D, you're not as excited to me. But in this story, she gets a full D&D party together. She raises, she creates the Yen Karn, which she pulls out of the infinity circuit of the BL10.

Which, again, infinite circuit. Also get the model. It's freaking fantastic. It's the closing to Sigma models we get in 40K. It is this, the Unari Times. line gets nuts because they are. It's incredible adventure. She's interacting with most of the races in the galaxy and wrecking shop actually through

a lot of them. Yes, she's awesome. Bobby G. Bobby G. becomes way cooler Bobby G. And we're going to cover more of this later. We have to do some Drew Kari and Gilliman to really explain kind of what's going to do. We did want to drop it in here.

So we talked a lot about how we wanted to end today. And I wanted to touch on one of my favorite storylines and try. And also everybody's, a lot of times we get, hey, what should we read? You know, like what, what you should go? The Gathering Storm books and we have several novels. 100% should read them. And if you don't feel like reading that, just pull the codexes. I mean, you've got it.

Read the Gathering Storm books. Oh, no, I agree. But I'm saying, but you're Nari, but the, the, the, the, the, uh, the, the, uh, the, the, uh, the, uh, the, the, uh, the, uh, the edition, ninth edition, 10th edition. Oh, they're so good. And the, they just, this whole storyline is fantastic. And we're cutting it.

We're literally dropping it at. Well, we're cutting it. because the reason why we're going to cut it right now is I want to give you guys more, but in order to be more, I have to give you Dracari first. Because Asriel Vec is a key part of this. So is Dreazar. And without them, they're massive to this.

Gilliman, we can probably cover it quickly of like, Gilliman got stabbed, Gilliman died. Now Gilliman's alive. But with that, we're going to cut the Eldar coverage. Next week, we're going to do custodes. That's what we're going to do. We're going to jump into custodian. We need to.

They're move the story forward. We're trying to move quickly as quickly as we can to kind of get the basics so we can dive a bit more into some of the more deeper lore. And custodes are a critical element of the Imperium. And I think we've told enough about the Imperium where you can have a lot more fun. The only cool Lord of Terra? Yeah. And we can also discuss like, actually, it's a fun back-to-back from Eldar because we're going

from the only faction of the game whose tabletop rules have matched the lore. And we're going to jump into the faction of the game whose tabletop. rules. Are zero. Could not match the more or less. They're effectively like, but I thought they were perfect. Right.

Single heroes could take on entire companies. Yeah. They're actually worse than the Terminators. Like, by far. Yeah. Lorde. But with that, it's been John Barciadi and Bradchester.

Discast. See you guys next week.