I have read through the Dark Eldar codex and it isn’t a bad read. I am glad they expanded on the history of this army, well how could they not? Look at the previous edition and laugh at how terrible it was when it came to Dark Eldar exposition. However, with the good of background comes the bad as well. The problems are small, and might only be problems to me.

The first is a Games Workshop problem. We have another codex put out and around half of the army has no models. Why do they do this? Sure you can take Venoms, Chronos Parasites, a bomber, fighter, cool beasts some neat-o independent characters, a weird non retinue retinue, Scourges and a Talos. Sure the Talos, I think, is still available online, but man it looks bad next to the new models and picture in the codex. So, yes behold the new codex and stuff there are no models for.

Yes, there might be models and yes you can convert units from existing models, but what about those who can’t? Not every player is a converter, nor should they be. So, put out the models with the codex, or at least within a month (two at the most). Please!

The second complaint is the lack of pretty pictures of the new models. Sure there are a lot of pictures of warriors, winches, readers, hellions, raiders and ravagers. Yet, there are no pictures of painted other units. BOO! Why is this? See previous point.

Last is the silliness of the Talos and Chronos entry. These are monstrous creatures. Monstrous creatures have special universal rules that are listed in the main rule book. However, they list Move Through Cover as a special rule. They already have it. It just seems silly to list it. I guess if you don’t know that monstrous creatures have Move Through Cover it is a nice reminder. I guess.

So is this the new face beating army? It probably won’t. Will it cause some problems? Yes it will, if you don’t know what does what. Is it a veteran player army? By the gods no!

This is no more a veteran army than any other low toughness and high armor save army. It is “veteran” in the sense that isn’t power armored. If you have played 40K for a while this army isn’t hard to wield. You just have to know the limitations of the units. Just like any other army you are playing.

If a new player picks it up, they might find it more difficult to use at first. Yet, this is no different than any other army a new player starts with. Seriously, who beat face the first few 40K games they ever played? Nobody did. This isn’t the hardest game to play, but it takes time to understand it. The Dark Eldar are no harder to use at first than any other army. They just fail as a beginning army, since they aren’t marines. That is just my opinion.

So the Dark Eldar are here. Now let us see what people do with them.