Guardian Defenders had strong utility for being able to tank and be relatively difficult to shift board presence for their T3, 5+ profile – much of that hinged on buffing, stratagems, and allocating wounds appropriately. However, with the changes to wound allocation, this becomes much less effective, and the combined points increases, for both the platforms and Guardians, and the risks from Blast put these solidly in the loser category. Then there is the Storm Guardians – a unit that has never made sense to me from a fluff or gameplay standpoint. If you forgot about them don’t worry about it – now that they’re 9pts for a Guardsman defensive profile you can forget that I even mentioned them. Which leaves us with the Rangers – a super cool unit that under-performs mightily and received a staggering 25% increase. At various points in 8th they were cheap, utility objective sitters that were hard to shift due to their modifiers and cover advantages. As 8th wore on, changes to Dire Avengers shifted that role to them, and the proliferation of re-rolls negated much of their modifier advantage. Now that modifiers have been capped and the board space has been shrunk, I can’t see you wanting to bring these guys in your list but on the plus side, maybe GW will figure out how to fix the drooping or snapped off barrels by the time these guys are ready to hit the table again. Craftworlds have great units, but they’re expensive and awkward to get into lists. Most notably, the move of Dire Avengers from Troops to Elites is absolutely brutal to army construction – they’re now powerful enough that you’d be very happy filling a Battalion with them, and you want some in most builds, but making that work is now a challenge. This makes using a Harlequin Patrol as your Warlord detachment (plus to bring some good RND units) alongside an Asuryani Vanguard a genuine consideration, and other lists we’ve tried have ended up with pure Outriders. Wave Serpents are still good, and you still need some to keep your units alive if they’re not jumping out of either the Webway or a Falcon. The Serpent Shield has been changed up, no longer providing damage reduction and instead enabling perma-Transhuman and a 5+ invulnerable save against shooting, and while it’s morbidly hilarious that Serpents have lost damage reduction given how much it’s been handed out recently, the new version is way better in the metagame – Serpents conventionally died to melta and dark lances, and this does way more against those. At 160pts for one with a twin lance, the price tag is also appealing. Good stuff. These threads are not to discuss proposed changes to units or long complaints about poor behaviour. I would like to keep them constructive and focus on making the best use of the units as they stand. Inevitably, in a codex as large as ours, there is going to be some overlapping of battlefield roles. For this reason, I will allow comparisons against other units that fill similar roles provided the posts remain primarily focused on the unit under discussion.

Both flavours of Guardians get better stats, but have high minimum squad counts at 10 and aren’t cheap. Surprise Assault for Warp Spiders gives them an extra shot per gun the turn they come in from deep strike, which helps maximise the chance of them landing the kind of blow their hefty price tag demands. If you wish, you can then re-roll all of these dice, but if you do, roll one less D6. You can continue re-rolling all of the dice in this manner, rolling one less D6 each time you do, until you are satisfied with the results rolled (or until you only have a single D6 remaining). Like a lot of units in the new edition, Farseers do a much better job of fitting with their fluff- no longer are they suicidal summon-bots or bottom-tier spellcasters, but rather a powerful and flexible addition to the HQ slot in an army. If you want a unit that is extremely flexible, able to change the way they affect the army game-by-game, but without spending too many points or sacrificing too much else, the Farseer is a top-notch choice. Finally, Mind War is your “assassination” power. It targets an enemy character within 18″ and has both you and that player roll a die and add it the model’s Leadership, with the target suffering a mortal wound for every point by which your total exceeds theirs. Although it can only hit characters (unlike effects such as Purge Soul), Eldar have a variety of ways to manipulate Leadership values and can easily tilt the dice in their favor to snipe off a key support model or bring down a nasty combat character with ease.

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Using a small brush, carefully paint the Farseer’s helmet with White Scar, aiming for a bright and pure white color. Apply multiple thin layers if needed to achieve smooth and even coverage. If every model in an INFANTRY unit is on or in an Area Terrain feature with this trait, then it can either Hold Steady or it can Set to Defend (see below) when an enemy unit declares a charge against it. Before making a roll of any of the types shown above for a unit with the Strands of Fate ability, if any of your retained dice have a result corresponding with that type of roll (as shown above) and have not been used to manipulate a roll this battle round, you can manipulate that roll. If you do so:

Each week a different unit will appear, with the idea being that we discuss how best to use that model on the battlefield. This series will focus on Codex entries initially. If/when we exhaust those possibilities, we will start looking at Forgeworld and Legends if people are interested in those units. Using suitable colors, paint the additional details on the Farseer and the Skyrunner bike. For gold accents, use Retributor Armour, and for metallic parts, use Leadbelcher. Be precise and patient when painting small details. Mighty heroes fight at the forefront of battle.Some CHARACTER units have ‘Leader’ listed on their datasheets. Such CHARACTER units are known as Leaders, and the units they can lead – known as their Bodyguard units – are listed on their datasheet. Boon: It’s very good. Probably the biggest struggle Craftworlds will have in this extremely deadly meta is simply staying on the board – the Wave Serpent provides a huge boost there in terms of durability. The question a lot of players will need to ask themselves is how much they are willing to pay for this durability and what tradeoffs will they make. It’s not an easy answer given the relatively low output for the price.

I have been trying to use a Farseer on a foot as a discount but it's amazing the added advantage the range gets you. Literally to me this is like taking a Daemon Prince for Chaos... with wings as opposed to on foot. So much is gained it's just hard to ignore. I will admit that I was never big on Flyer spam. In fact, I hated it and never played it. Call me a snob, purist, or a hipster but I’ve never gravitated to the easy/abusive list to play and have always preferred to either find a certain niche in the meta or tried to make the best of a poor hand at the table (I never played busted Ynnari competitively either). All that said, I’ve used an Air Wing, I’ve used all of the Eldar jets, I haven’t thought they were good since October, and I don’t think they are good now. However, they ARE fun (in reasonable numbers). Well what’s to say about the Eldar troops that hasn’t already been said in 8th edition? Eldar troops have long felt like a tax – I have always personally been a fan of Dire Avengers and ran them throughout 8th, they got a real nice boost following Psychic Awakening and following the 9th ed changes, they’ve actually fared best of all the options. For that reason let’s call them a Winner – but let’s not kid ourselves, there are no winners in the Eldar troops slot. The Aeldari Farseers, revered for their unparalleled psychic prowess, possess a remarkable ability to meticulously strategize and execute plans that span vast stretches of time and space. Each of their actions, no matter how small, holds the potential to bring about monumental changes—a delicate butterfly’s wings with the force of a raging hurricane. Shredding Fire might get there as a second Dire Avenger option for a big unit – it isn’t cheap, but it lets their shurikens get extra AP on a 5 rather than a six, good if you’re planning to go wild with combos.