I feel that could be an insult in the Chaos Realms, 'I condemn you to Wib, the Chaos God of Bad Puns. May your ears bleed for eternity.' When they get to where Wib is the Warp it's just a Saturday night improv sess/stand-up open-mic night.
@@jrlinsin I did a REALLY crude and simple conversion way back when I was a kid, but just taking some Dark Elf cold ones and some High Elf Dragon Princes and combining them, then painting the Dragon Princes' lance and sword blades to look like crystal to make the Laser Lances. To my knowledge, even back in the day, GW has NEVER produced models for Exodite units of any kind and its only been in the last few years they have produced models for Eldar pirates and then only through Forge World
The sheer disapproval on Snipe's face when the Elf made his appearance is priceless. Also, ah, the 90s, when the strategy for Codex covers was "If there's a blank space on the picture, find something to put there"
Just a quick correction, the Eldar Pirates are precursors to the Eldar Corsairs, who are to the Dark Eldar what Blood Angels are to World Eaters. Fairly similar, but they'd probably not be very happy if you confused the two. The Corsairs actually got their own FW rules and models, but those were discontinued since FW really got hit hard by the passing of its CEO.
Yeah the Eldar are nice and all but that neon purple Old One Eye at the start demands more attention Also there’s a Trygon on the other shelf which means there may be an entire purple disco Tyranids army
Damn, as soon as you showed that 'mystery tank' from the cover I was like...thats a wave serpent. Then I despaired at the wasted space that fact is taking up in my old and addled brain.
This was the edition and codex which got me started on 40K, and I've been an eldar guy ever since. The marines and their lot can all bugger off, they never had dinosaur riding knights, so they're automatically inferior! Still a bit miffed GW never made any exodite knight minis. Still, the minis we did get at the time were quite good. The Striking Scorpion and Swooping Hawk minis were what sealed the deal for me when it came to picking my army. Oh, and it took another edition before we had any vehicle minis other than jetbikes. Also, Eldar psykers were a terror and a half on the field with the 2nd edition rules.
I'm so glad you went deep on the D-Cannon lore! I loved that part back then. Anyone remember Vortex missiles? Using the tables in the Waagh book, my pal rolled a Vortex Missile launcher combi weapon with FF for his Warboss. A fun game back then but balanced, it was not. Having 3 to 7 vortexes on my deployment zone (72" range!) every game until the end of that campaign.
I love the 2nd generation WH40K codex aesthetic, that contrast between the sprawling bright colours in the model displays and the colour art on one hand, as well as the dark imposing Mark Gibbons illustrations
I don't know what's funnier: Throne-bound Emperor in a Santa hat psychically manifesting gifts, Great Crusade Emperor in a power-sleigh, or the idea that the pre-Unification War Emperor was secretly Santa Claus.
Eldar Pirates are the precursors to the FW Eldar Corsairs army list from the Doom of Mymeara (First Edition in 5E and a Second Edition in 7E adding even more new Corsair units), they were mostly discontinued in 8E sadly. RIP discontinued FW armies like the Kroot Mercenaries/T'au Auxilaries, Elysian Drop Troops, Tallarn Desert Raiders, Renegades & Heretics and Eldar Corsairs :(
I saved up for this Codex for a month when I was 10, knowing nothing about 40k; when I finally got it I never read a word of it. Loved that book to bits.
The Dark Angles short story "The Black Pearl" was a really amazing story about Exodite Dragon Riders getting STARCHED by Dark Angel's Interrogator Chaplin and his search for the Sword of the Lion.
I remember it as BY FAR the most overpowered army book for any game ever published. People think we have issues in modern 40k, they know nothing compared to the literally silly power level of this book compared to every other list in 2nd ed.
Wow! Brings back memories! I ran a game store near San Francisco in the 90s and was all about Warhammer- I remember all these guys! This was my first Codex... and we used to sell the resin casts too and had regular visits from the sculptors. Talk about spending years waiting for the Eldar models- I had forgotten about the pirates- but we converted models :)
The flyer commented upon at 10:51 is the Night-wing interceptor (as it was released for Epic once upon a time), bearing no semblance to the current iteration available in 40k today.
Played Eldar for over 10 years and I had the third party resin casts from armor cast and epicast for the tanks etc. the old falcons were door stop/cheese wedges with fixed barrels lol. I was so glad in the late 90's when the plastic grav tanks came out. I converted/kit-bashed almost all my models. I made my own exodite dragon riders using the warhammer fantasy dark elf raptors and gave them all trench coats and lances. One of my cheesiest strats was to take 10 harlequin bikers and give them all smoke grenades. The smoke grenade used a huge template that made an area that blocked line of sight and if an enemy moved through them they had to roll scatter dice and move randomly while inside the template. Rush forward at 3 or 4 inches apart (I can't remember how far apart bikes were allowed to be back then) and throw a line of them across the center of the battlefield. No shooting through that huge screen and no trhying to charge through it was just comical with each model moving randomly. Also back then you could not fight hover vehicles in hand to hand. The smoke lasted for a while so I could just sit back behind the smoke screen over half or more of the table and just wait for enemy models to wander out of the smoke randomly not even in a unit anymore and then just gun them all down. This was almost a guaranteed win against tyranids.
@@gratuitouslurking8610 The Tau auxilia are pretty miserable at the moment. It feels like both the Kroot and Vespid get no love by both GW and the fans.
@@TheSmart-CasualGamer Kroot have never had incredible rules, but I think the current rules set is okay. It should be way better, but Carnivores are pretty good screens with their pre game move. They're competing with Stealth Suits who are a bit tougher and more points efficient, but they have a far bigger footprint and are far better in melee. Hounds are just... eh, Krootox is in the same weird position it's always been in, but the new strat it got has made it pretty good for the points. Also the other Carnivore strat in the PA supplement makes them -1 to hit and +1 to their save in cover, throw in an Ethereal and you have them at 4+/6+++ in cover with the enemy getting -1 to hit for shooting at them. All in all, there is some use for them, unlike the Hammerhead or Sniper Drones. What really makes Kroot unpopular are their dated models and lack of options. They just need new models and a new game design.
Hey. You're awesome! I'm a long time lurker first time poster. I'm a 46 year old plastic crackhead that giggles uncontrollably to your videos. Keep up the great work and happy holidays!
Cool stuff - Im still using some of these models in my army. And intersting to compare the codex to our 40k 8th edition now - as back in these days, there have not been many models available for all of the armies, there had to be many complicated "rules" to compensate for the lack of physical things on the tabletop. Now its vice versa, many models, many armies, terrain and stuff, so you need to speed up rules-wise.
0:01 And here I sit, crying in still not having an Exodite army list. 3:03 Fun fact: "world-ship" is literally the word for Craftworlds in the German translation of 40k. 9:25 Actually, since I'm very much in favour of a complete re-do of the Craftworld Aeldari for 9th edition, I'd be down to re-introducing exploding wraithguard (I completely forgot about them being able to do that in the Ancient Times, but it was fun as hell). 10:02 I would even be in favour of having Exarchs as independent characters again, in a roughly similar role to 9th edition Adepta Sororitas Preachers, buffing their respective aspect warrior units with aura abilities. Also, they should be much more powerful and versatile than they are now. 11:41 I whole-heartedly agree.
Last time i checked, in my 4th edition Eldar Codex, Exarch still could have special powers, but tide to their aspect temple (like shooting twice for the Avenger one an his squad) and the Avatar was still invulnerable to melta weapon.
Wib channeling his inner Mr Bean for the intro! Big fan. I think that the Eldar pirates became Eldar Corsairs, outcast emo Eldar, but distinct from Dark Eldar.
Another ruddy fantastic video! Man, I need this book especially since it details exodites! I wasn't an Eldar fan for ages but then I read a short story in the warhammer 40,000 compendium and it totally changed my opinion on them
This was the codex that got me playing 40k back in 95. Having returned last year after a 20 year absense, I cannot express the disappointment I felt on discovering that Exodites still did not have model support. Where's my damn space elves on space dinosaurs!
This was my first codex, a gift from a friend who was also into 40k. I loved, for whatever the exact reason, the eldar over chaos from a white dwarf issue 216, which introduced multi part chaos warriors, the eldar falcon grav tank and a build able eldar pyramid with scenario rules. Thank you snipe and wip for another fantastic video and merry Christmas!
The Eldar I think need to be pushed by GW more as a multi media thing. I think their strength versus nearly any other faction is their history and concept are simple and really compelling. An animated Netflix show in the style of Castlevania that opens on the Birth of Slaneesh and shows how existentially horrible that event was? Cut to tens of thousands of years later onto a craftworld where they spend time explaining how Craftworlds work before setting up they found more Soul Stones on a Nid inhabited world and then cut to a battle scene that shows off their incredibly badass tech, mechs and tanks as well as a Phoenix Warrior in action and what exactly a small group (relative to anybody else in 40K ) can do their extreme specialization. Have a few die to the Nids and show the process with which they preserve their culture and the toll even that takes on a Craftworld due to the lingering knowledge it's only prolonging the inevitable. It'd print money, it's easy to get the gist quickly and understand why the Craftworld does what it does. You could also have a nightmare fuel fest about the Dark Eldar later after subtly building them up for ppl who don't know. I really think they could print money with it, especially if they went all in on animating how the lore says they fight. I think it's way easier to just understand with little information compared to the Imperium which is by it's very design needlessly complex and has a lot of stuff goin on. I also just want GW to hire top class animators to make a Harlequin vs Daemons in the Warpay battle.
Weird I just started watching this and my missis has come in and told me that our son has managed to get our elf and is now cuddling it fast asleep, wish us luck guys. Merry Christmas to everyone.
The pirates were arguably the precursors to Forgeworld's Corsair/Anhrathe army list from DoM, rather than the Dark Eldar, sadly 'space elf ninja pirates with jetpacks' was too beautiful a thing for this world so James squatted them in the move to 8th. Not that I'm salty my army became illegal :P
Still have the 2e Eldar codex and all the core 2nd ed books in pristine condition. Good old days! Anyone still play 2e? Kinda gutted how you didn't mention just how kill'y the Avatar and the other Phoenix Lords were back then. The Avatar was monstrous. It's fascinating that formal Chaos Elves never made it out. To be honest, I find that concept a lot more terrifying (and believable) than the Dark Eldar narrative brought in from 3E onwards.
Guys, I was gonna start collecting Orks as an army, then you come out with this and tell me I can make Dinosaur riding space elves. Why must you make my decisions so much harder? Awesome video as always, comedic timing is on point this episode.
Epic scale wave serpents XD the sail looking thing was the shield generator, i have some somewhere! They were based on greek troop skiffs called Tri-reme that would cary 20 or so marines
rewatching this video now that the 9th edition codex is out, its cool that some of this stuff has made a comeback, exarch warrior powers and rangers on jetbikes for example
Just found your channel yesterday (corona-quarantine ftw) and today I know I need a Snipe with antlers in my life. That escalated quickly. Great review of the Codex. When skimming through I thought: hey those are the warp spider models still sold today! How about an update on those, eh? Edit: oh, one other thing. I was appalled by the pronunciation of the Phoenix Lords names. I mean the pronunciation was okay as in "sounds like proper english" but for my german-mother-tongue ears pronouncing the names more germany-ish fits them soooo much better.
Those exarch powers were great. The one where you can break from melee without sustaining any hits was great for Howling Banshees. Charge in your enemy gets no attacks. Jump out then charge back in.
Interestingly second edition Epic (Space Marine / Titan Legions) - the game those early flyers and Wave Serpents come from - did actually see some Exodites on dinosaurs released. Alas, they only saw release at games Day '95 (if memory serves) and never made it into stores. They do occasionally turn up on ebay, but command suitably crazy prices. I would know, as my Epic Eldar contains 1 very treasured unit of each type (Velociraptor riders, Pterandon riders, Stegosaur gun platforms and the mighty Carnosaur (Tyranosaurus Rex). I don't want to discuss what they cost me... it was a grim time.
There was a rule in there for the Death Jester's shuriken cannon toxins. It'd make the victim randomly stagger about the battlefield and then explode. That was a fun one to read when I was 10 years old :)
The exudites are fought directly in the salamanders novel "promethean sun". They're around still lore wise, just not on tabletop for some reason. Probably because they already have slaanesh armies, they dont need another useless army lol.
Ah my first ever Codex thanks to seeing the new warp spiders in White Dwarf and that sold me on the army. I too want expedites. Also weird that the dark reaper exarch has one of the shortest range weapon due to a weird sculpt.
Looking forward to your Codex Chaos 2nd edition review. It was a pretty strange mix of "new" canonized characters and OP TT experience, and was my favourite codex of all time. Highlights on the Table Top: Daemon Engines. Daemonically Possessed Slaneeshi Warp-amp Rhinos that can't be destroyed by normal weapons. There is no result on their damage tables that says "vehicle is destroyed", or maybe just the hull-damage 6 "vehicle explodes" roll, so pretty unlikely (it still survives until next turn anyway), and the daemon controlling it doesn't care about the rest that much. No crew, no problem, even if you managed to stop it moving or shooting. They still did -1 to -3 leadership to the enemy in a huge radius (18"/-1, 12"/-2, 6"/-3), and caused terror (coincidentally a short radius effect), for every other result. Nearly invincible, except against weird stuff like d-cannons, etc. They were like special characters, or chaos-icon-moving-fear-curse terrain pieces, but vehicles. They also happened to be worth under 100pts. Lowering half an army's Ld by -1 is worth quite a bit more than that, so kinda busted. But they really made the quick attack and the fear of a chaos raid come to life on the TT. So grab two of them, and add a combi-bolter to one, so it's totally different from the other one. The horror of chaos has cometh. Three-man CSM squads with two heavy bolters, or 3 mk1 plasma guns. 99pts of death, that you wouldn't score a single VP for unless you wiped them all out in standard points scoring (and were fine under VP100 scoring anyway). Imperial Devastator squads just weren't up to that kind of min/maxxing. It even felt like it was totally intended with the weapons options available and their costs, with 3 autocannons being your "actual heavy weapons" squads, that did give VPs. Chaos Cultists with shotguns. You like scatter dice? Try missing with 5+ shotguns using scatter shells with BS2. And having to scatter them all, and then still not causing a single kill. And *still* having it lock down movement brutally into squad-cohesion-conga-lines against the enemy with a single hit and a 4+ roll. 5-man squad? 30pts :) Oh, and if that model didn't get knocked back/down into cover? Guess what? Sustained fire dice let you do horrible things to that squad now. Veteran Squads that could infiltrate, with an Aspiring Champion with some silly wargear options, and daemonic summoning support waiting in the warp for out-of-normal turn sequence suprises. Close combat hits are a thing you can simply do. Or just burnination with plasma. Choose their poison, as an entire squad of infiltrated mini-champions. Objectives schmecktives.... Almost unkillable Bloodletters. Because two 4++ saves seems reasonable, with one being in the rally phase (are they really dead?). Especially as a support crew to screw-up ranged targeting as the veteran squad rampages through the backlines. Almost unkillable super-armoured Chaos Lords, that could powerfist Abaddon in places even Slaneesh wouldn't like. Just having the options to make your own "really quite Special" characters was good. It might have gone against the whole "this god hates that god" lore, but it was nice how you could really tailor your characters, squads and overall army to however you chose. To the point that they were better than these johnny-come-lately special characters/new-codexs at doing certain things (like actually being good on the TT). Vehicle upgrades that were way ahead of their time. Imperial Armour was soft in comparison. A few little funsie weapons like Doom Sirens, Blight Grenades and the chaos rewards. Even the army icons weren't bad (the Flesh Banner was a pretty brutal melee tool. D6 S5 -2armour hits, before melee combat even happens. 10pts. Lol) A stupid amount of plasma and flamer weapons available, because when blood & fire meant something, they leant heavily on the fire side. Even Khorne. I mean, no-one wants a bolter round or a gretchin slap to the face, even as a Space Marine, but that was the most likely outcome if a "real" plasma gun jammed. The Imperium got all soft and sucky for millennia for some reason, while Chaos stayed oldskool and rock hard. For about one edition. The Imperium only just got back to non-suck/more plasma'y death and decent armour recently, after 10,000 years of suck. All this is kind of vaguely supported in lore too, and it's nice when TT rules translates some "character" concepts well. With nice'ish art and minis and lore and stuff too. I mean, it wasn't Slaves to Chaos or TLatD, but it wasn't bad. And could still hold it's own against later books on the TT, all the way through 2nd edition, because it redefined busted early on. Actually, it may have been the most powerful book of that era. Chaos kinda went to poop after that for a very long time. Not a shotgun to be seen later-on either. Or an unkillable daemon engine of terrifying doom :( Not only that, the codex was *so much better* at helping you create your own chapter of loyalist marines, that nothing else compares. Not-Salamanders? Yeah, we've got meltaguns and flamers aplenty. Not-Space-Wolves? Yep, chargers and close combat weapons and veterans everywhere. Psychic unicorn legion? Yep, sure, have reskinned daemons and psykers and wonder weapons. Mega-vehicle+siege chapter? No wuckens, grab what you need and add combi-bolters to your vehicles and your chosen heavy weapons to your squads. Basically, whatever you wanted *your* chapter to be like, even if it included normal humans/mini-ogryns/weird doctrines with the appendix lists, Codex Chaos 2nd edition could probably do it. All in one book. A lot better than most actual codexes could, for years to come. (and if you really feel there's some troop types lacking, then by all means, grab some jump-packed Stormboyz Korps or actual Ogryns or Bad Moons or Deathskullz from Codex Orks in your 25% support allowance for light or tanky assault squads or for special weapons or heavy weapons stylization. Or whatever bizzare big Orky heavy weapons/awesome bikes/vehicles you might feel is appropriate to your chapter. It might help you flavour them a little better, so they're really yours. Chaos Cultists need your opponent's approval to take as allies, Orks don't :) Neither does poaching Ultramarine wargear at a 50% mark-up, but that'd just feed the beast that destroyed the Imperium's war fighting ability for 10,000 years, only to go "oh yeah, I got that Codex Astartes thing wrong, we really do need decent weapons and armour and flexible tactics and super-Space-Marines, sorriez. I was napping") Honestly, if you owned Codex Chaos, and Codex Orks, and Codex Ultramarines, you could probably make any faction ever designed by GW, before or after this point, with that army list and the rules within. Assassins, Inquisitors, Dark Eldar, Grey Knights, Sisters of Battle, funky Marine or CSM chapters, Adeptus Mechanicus, whatever. To a greater or lesser extent (hey, a Bloodaxe Commando "could be" an Eversor Assassin, so could any chaos character, kind of, with some amazing wargear and rolls). It had a seriously ridiculous amount of options available anyway. But even just internally as a stand-alone book, even without the appendix lists, it was pretty good.
Anyway, those Rhinos were terrifying. The -Ld shouldn't stack, but it was before the lands of rules-lawyering and neckbearding (hang on, no it wasn't. And crappy nerd beards made a comeback too!). And they'd just keep running things over, forever, while they all ran away. Or become free scenery. That does stuff :) It wasn't a thing that was talked about much. But Chaos could make even Space Wolves or pure Orks cry. It was a good time, a fun time, a time of broken rules.... And then 3rd edition came, with 2 codexes(!), and even Nurgle, with his hot wife and loving children, cried :(
This was my very first codex, way back in the day. I still have it, even. Wish i'd picked up some dragon knights at the time, but the fireprism had priority. I'm surprised you didn't make a gag about the Terrifying Slicing Orbs of Zandros, though.
The statement of how space elfs riding space dinosaurs are the coolest thing we don't have is wrong it is the dinosaur desk that the twin fists sub daddy of the ultra smurfs had
2:42 Whoa! Almost fell out of my chair, all of a sudden this guy knows what a comma is? Drops two commas in the first sentence and now he decides it's time?
i got into 40k around 3rd ed, and didn't really think much about eldar until some time after harlequins were basically removed from tabletop (but also long before they were put back in). i remember saving up all my stickers in the first "skullz" promotion just to get that "great harlequin" model (which wasn't even in mail order catalogues anymore). fuck knows where i put it, though
Not going to lie, "Space elves riding space dinosaurs into battle" was not a concept I thought of at all before this video. But now every now and again when I'm browsing 40k stuff, I sometimes find myself thinking, "You'd know what's cool? The idea of space elves riding space dinosaurs."
