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

[Jye Nicolson]

...which is available only as 2021's Store Anniversary thing. (For local interested parties, Twitter tells me that our nearest WH store, Nanba in Osaka, has its anniversary on March 3rd. You may assume from the fact that I checked that I really think this model is extremely cool.)

Pity that's a Thursday! There is a *lot* of good food within an easy walk of that store, it'd be a fun excuse for a daytrip.

[The Other Dave]

...which is available only as 2021's Store Anniversary thing. (For local interested parties, Twitter tells me that our nearest WH store, Nanba in Osaka, has its anniversary on March 3rd. You may assume from the fact that I checked that I really think this model is extremely cool.)

Pity that's a Thursday! There is a *lot* of good food within an easy walk of that store, it'd be a fun excuse for a daytrip.

I think they said the anniversary models are available for the whole week following the actual anniversary, so a one-day weekend jaunt would be extremely doable. Really, Nanba is only a couple hours from Nagoya on Kintetsu. Not entirely sure a single model is worth it, but there's plenty to do in the city to make up for it.

[me_in_japan]

*sighs, and pinches bridge of his nose*

Ah, le GW. Either they're deliberately trolling the eldar players (which is, admittedly, not entirely outwith the bounds of possibility) or they genuinely have no idea what effect releasing new guardians before, literally, anything else in the range, will have on the eldar fans. To wit: We (more like "they" at this point, but anyhoo...) have been waiting...10? 15? years for new aspect warriors, and they give us...more guardians? Units which are as vanilla and uninteresting as can be seen in the whole codex? The units that every eldar player would rather not even use at all, but due to GW being unable (I'm assuming not "unwilling" because there's gold in them thar hills) to produce aspect warriors in plastic have been retconned into being the "mainstay" of craftworld forces, despite this being a massive contradiction to the lore? Those? Those are the models you lead your new releases with?

*goes full picard facepalm*

*le sigh*

To be fair, I do realise that once they made the shift from metal to plastic, they really were in a bind with the eldar army. Every unit is a unique sculpt (pretty much, although I'm almost sure that the approach they'll take is to multi-kit two or more aspects into one kit) and almost the entire army up to that point was in metal, aside from the vehicles and auxiliary units. Don't get me wrong - I understand why the aspect warriors got sidelined, but since the "every unit is different" thing is the whole selling point of the army (and I mean that literally - back in the day that was how the eldar were marketed. Pepperidge farm remembers...) it would have made a whole hella lot of sense to actually, y'know, lead with some variety? Rather than "you know those aspect warriors that your armies used to be made of, back in the day, before we made a financially driven decision to shift production to plastics, thereby necessitating a complete rejig of your army composition, which we then doubled down on over the course of 15 years? Yes, those? We made new ones. But we won't show them to you. Here's some more guardians. They look just like the old ones, but more poseable. Oh, and you can finally build storm guardians now. Yes, that unit that used to be unique to Ulthwe but we retconned because, well, we needed to sell guardians, and yeah, we couldnt make aspect warriors. Them."

I do realise that there will be more eldar coming, most likely very soon. I saw the trailer. It looks very nice. But by releasing the guardians first GW are essentially saying "wait just a liiiiiittle longer". To which I say: Nope. Sha'n't. Won't. Too Late. You lost me years ago. I was waiting. I waited. Then I gave up, buggered off and played Malifaux.

Too slow, GW. Too slow by about 5 years.

[Primarch]

I think at this point it is fair to say that GW lore is adapted to fit what they want to sell you rather than driving what they make. For a good while now the Eldar start collecting boxes have just been wraith constructs and/or guardians. The traditional Eldar force of a dozen brightly garbed Aspect Warriors units is what I always pictured the army as being, but hasn't been viable since the metal minis got replaced by finecast.
Hopefully this range update will include new Hawks, Dragons and Scorpions, (etc), and they will be mindblowing (and that's just their price. ). By showing the least demanded minis first, the hype should build up to the release. Showing the new guardians last would have been a bit of a downer just before the range went on sale.

[The Other Dave]

By showing the least demanded minis first, the hype should build up to the release. Showing the new guardians last would have been a bit of a downer just before the range went on sale.

This was my thinking on it as well. Leading with Guardians (well, not counting the battle box stuff at least) lets them basically go "hey, this is a pretty boring unit but just imagine what's in the pipeline!" If they'd come after the Avatar it'd be more like "and also there's Guardians, I guess?"

Someone on Twitter pointed out that with the Guardian refresh, the only 20th century plastic infantry left are Catachans and Berserkers. I'd be surprised if they revisit the former, but since it looks like it'll be a year for Chaos, who knows for Berserkers?

[Karantu]

I'm slightly upset that the female Eldar don't get sculpted abs but instead have that navel plate that sort of gives off "fertility goddess" vibes... Other than that the new sculpts look like a good refresh.

For the remaining "old enough to drink" models, I feel like Catachan might get a box, maybe for Kill Team, since they did do a few limited edition models and thus probably have some 3d models kicking around. I'm hopeful for plastic kroot in the not too far future for the same reason.
Berserkers are inevitably coming, but if I'm not mistaken the leaks seem to point to 2023 or later.

[me_in_japan]

On second look, while the bellybuttons on the lady guardians is silly, it pales in comparison to their G-string armour. Like...whut? I mean, sure, freedom of movement and all that, but there has got to be a better way to do things than that. Sigmarines, for example, are fine examples of how to do it right. I'm not suggesting guardians should look like stormcast - they're elves, and that comes with a certain need to be...delicate? refined? Whatever - but is there really a need to make the male and female armours so different? *

I await pictures of the new aspect warriors with...trepidation. but some optimism. It's kinda hard to really screw up eldar when Jes Goodwin works for you.

He is still involved, yes?

*Actually, on third look it's not unreasonable to describe the gents as wearing g-strings, too. So...that's ok then, I guess? *baffled shrug*

[Karantu]

Elves wearing G-string armour is no surprise but with the navel plate GW really can't win since if they make both male and female armour the same(e.g., Tau) people will complain, and if they go full on boob plate + navel plate people(i.e., me) will point out that this is why the Eldar fell to Slaanesh. I guess it's just personal preference in the end but I like the overall look of things either way. The guardians are probably the least affected by the update and I'm hoping more fancy units like the Warp Spiders have been updated to be on par with modern sculpts.

[The Other Dave]

We continue Eldar month with some plastic Dark Reapers:



They're Dark Reapers all right! TBF, there's not that much you can do with posing these particular models.

[Primarch]

The models look ok (paint job is kind of uninspired though), but those heads look like there is just something slightly off.