My Favorite Warhammer 40,000 Faction Is Finally Getting a Glow Up

If there’s one factor that retains Games Workshop shifting, it’s the brand new arrays of shiny mannequin kits for its Warhammer tabletop video games that maintain followers oohing, ahhing, and throwing out numerous cash on little plastic warriors. But their newest releases are going to be doing justice to considered one of Warhammer 40,000‘s most uncared for factions.

As the pandemic has thrust us all again into chasing previous hobbies out of consolation, one specific pleasure I’ve been capable of have previously few years is returning to my teenage love of tabletop wargames, and Warhammer specifically. But my return to Games Workshop’s miniature skirmishes up to now has largely been constrained to Age of Sigmar, the most recent iteration of its fantasy setting, as a substitute of the far-flung, ridiculously grim future worlds of Warhammer 40,000, the setting that first thrust me into the interest as a child the perfect a part of 20 years in the past.

The motive for that was primarily a little bit useless. My curiosity in 40K was hardly ever within the cumbersome armored brutes of the Space Marines or their chaotic foils, or monstrous alien factions just like the space-bug Tyranids or the mobs of area Orks. My first and ever-lasting love on the planet of 40K have been the Eldar: futuristic, melancholic, and extremely dramatic/assholish elves who traveled the galaxy aboard huge “craftworld” ships, carrying the remnants of their empire after a cataclysm of their very own damage doomed them millennia previously.

They’re, like most species in Warhammer’s grimdark world, comically horrible, however they’re additionally cool as hell… apart from the truth that the overwhelming majority of their fashions are the identical ones that Games Workshop have been promoting after I was nonetheless taking part in the sport as a 13-year-old, space-elf-loving nerd. Warhammer 40,000 has gone by a number of iterations within the years since I first left it behind, and lots of of its factions have had loads of extra dynamic, stunning fashions to go along with these modifications, leaving the Eldar behind within the course of. It’s not like they’re dangerous—there’s nonetheless a appeal to them. They’re simply previous, and unable to make the most of the leaps and bounds Games Workshop has made in sculpting and design within the years since they launched.

That’s lastly about to vary. After months of teasing, on the Las Vegas Open event going down this weekend Games Workshop lifted the lid on a sequence of recent mannequin upgrades for the Eldar—now named the Aeldari all these years later, since you actually do want one thing extra particular to copyright after you try to bully the world into considering you personal “Space Marines.” While there aren’t any solely new models on show, the up to date fashions characterize modifications to kits that Games Workshop has been promoting for years at this level. Some of the fashions revealed as a part of this wave are updating fashions that have been new after I was final taking part in 40K as a youngster. One of the biggest, the flaming, demonic-looking chap referred to as the Avatar of Khaine, is an replace on a sculpt the corporate began promoting in 1993, outdoors of a dear alternate first offered in 2006:

It’s fairly the overhaul. And what I really like about loads of these new fashions is that, on the floor, they’re not radical updates to the previous kits, aesthetically. They nonetheless have all these previous design emblems, and most of the time they’re nonetheless impressed by basic Warhammer idea artwork from legendary artists like Jes Goodwin, faithfully translating them right into a tiny miniature scale. They’re what I cherished in regards to the Eldar as a child, plucked out of my thoughts’s thought of what they may appear to be at their finest, rendered in trendy strategies to allow them to be posed and dynamically custom-made with extra granular choices. Finally, the Aeldari will be as dramatic and funky trying on the desk as they’ve been in Warhammer’s huge lore.

The updates are sufficient to heat my coronary heart as a life-long fan of those ethereal, aloof, and sometimes very evil pointy-eared jerks. Unfortunately, they’re additionally sufficient to have me feverishly anticipating them and their new guidelines’ launch—Games Workshop have stayed quiet about simply when that is likely to be—in order that, a long time later, I can return to the tabletop with the military that made me fall in love with that have within the first place.

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