So trying to go with my initial rating system, I´d rate him a (B+) - and he only scraped into the B-category because of his degrading profile. Depending on your Craftworld trait, he´s a straight A (Alaitoc!). All in all it´s a great unit that combines mobility, damage output and a surprising resilience. Cutters and a hobby knife: Games Workshop’s versions are top-shelf quality, with premium prices. You can buy cheaper ones if you want. You hate to see it folks. Craftworlds are a bit of an odd case in that it’s hard to pinpoint a single factor for why they’re so bad in 9th Edition, but they are consistently one of the weaker factions in the stats, and playing them on the table feels like an uphill struggle.

Overview: The T'au are an optimistic Xeno race who's goal is to spread their 'enlightenment' throughout the universe. A seemingly intelligence-focused race who prefers to absorb planets and societies into their ranks by diplomacy, their technology is incredibly advanced and will help to coerce those who are reluctant to just agree. Each T'au soldier is like an individual Iron Man, displaying and deploying the latest technological advancement made by the race, often enhanced by scientific breakthroughs such as gravity fields, stealth fields or AI. Eldar have a very good set of stratagems that has held up surprisingly well considering how old they are. While there are some things that have become “standard” over time that they’re conspicuously missing, there’s some extremely strong stuff here and you’ll want to be familiar with them.

Wych Cult Obsessions

The rules: The basic ruleset is 100% free. But what about that hefty tome you may have stumbled across? It’s mostly stories, pictures, and flavor text. It does contain some more advanced rules, but they’re not required to start. Warding Runes: Ignore MWs on a 5+. I guess that theoretically a metagame could arise where this is good, but it hasn’t happened yet. D Superior Shurikens: +4″ range on Shuriken weapons. Lets Dire Avengers in particular reach surprisingly far with their guns, and on 9th’s small board gives lets you operate very effectively. B Eldrad Ulthran. A named character Farseer for Ulthwe who gets a bunch of extra stuff we’ll cover in a second.

Realistically, unless you’re doing something clever, Seer of the Shifting Vector is a massive standout, and if one of the others is right for you then it’ll probably be pretty obvious. RelicsFalcon’s Swiftness: +2 Move. Honestly kind of fine, and flips over to being actively good if you’re bringing the Avatar, as almost none of the other mobility options in the book work with him. C+ Those units are, generally speaking, always a great inclusion. Of course Eldrad only makes sense if you are playing a Detachment of Ulthwé - but if you do, he is - in my humble opinion - an Auto-Include. Other Units - like the flyers - can be brought both as single additions or as a list archetype. Shining Spears are always good but they shine brightest in an Ynnari list. Dark Reapers are great at killing practically everything. So when new players ask "what´s next?" they´re very likely to encounter one of these answers. But instead of just pointing you towards them, I want to try my best to explain to you what makes them great, what the downsides are and how to best use them. So with that introduction done, let´s begin with Eldrad.

Starting with their psychic might, the regular Farseers know two powers and get two casts and two denies each, and also have access to the Runes of the Farseer special rule, allowing them to re-roll one or both dice from a cast or deny each phase. This is an incredibly powerful boost, giving you a really good chance to land a key power and stop your opponent’s best one each phase. From a maths point of view with this, when you fail a cast you should (essentially) always keep a dice showing 4+ and re-roll a 3 or less. Denying can obviously be different – if you need to roll a double six then keeping a four isn’t going to help you! The other cool thing with this is that there’s no requirement to have failed the cast to re-roll – so if you roll a 1 and a 6 when casting a key power and your opponent has denies, it can be worth re-rolling the one, as you can’t possibly fail and it might make the deny harder. You can also use this to fish for a super smite if you’ve done all your key casts and have this still available.

Weight limits

Overview: What if Legolas, but in space? That’s the Aeldari, also known as Eldar and Asuryani. They’re elegant and immortal, and they have the most advanced technology in the 41st millennium. The Aeldari also enjoy a gamut of nasty psychic powers, which are 40K’s version of spells. Despite their superiority in firepower and speed, the average Aeldari unit is fragile.

Shard of Anaris : Eldar have no less than three relic power swords, all of which look a bit silly next to modern relic weapons, but this is definitely the least bad. It gets damage d3 and re-rolls wounds all the time, so while it won’t let your Wing Autarch do much to a tank, it does actually let him meaningfully engage with enemy characters or elite infantry. C+

Starting a Craftworlds Eldar Army

Mark of the Incomparable Hunter: Ignore Look Out Sir. Used to be powerful with missile-toting autarchs or Wraithseers, but updates over time have killed both those combos, leaving this with no real use case. D Embolden/Horrify (WC6): Embolden gives a friendly unit +2 Ld, while Horrify gives an enemy -1 Ld. Both effects are trash, and now that powers are fixed on your army list it isn’t even a comedy trash flex option with Mind War. D