Dark Eldar: The next big thing (again)

Fig 1: She who thirsts

Most everyone in our group, with the exceptions of the Commissar and the Bear-Master, have considered collecting a small dark eldar force for use in games not in excess of 750 pts. In doing so we have all learned an important lesson about the Dark Eldar: That in order to use them correctly, you have to have an exceptional knack for grand strategy. Games Workshop themselves have admitted as much. Perhaps they would like to explain why then they elected to include the Dark Eldar in the 3rd Edition Starter Box, hmmm?

Fig 2: Games Workshop, proudly provides rules,

miniatures and background for Space Marines and

others

So Games Workshop releases a starter box set for a whole new system, which includes the obligatory space marines as well as a new army that is designed for use by those who have had years of practice with said system (I.E, nobody) Why? As we know, standard practice with 40K Starter sets is to keep one of the armies to build on yourself and to give/sell the other to a friend. How many people who bought the 3rd edition box set, do you think said "Billy, you can keep the space marines, I think this new army is great!"?

By now, I belive GWs motives for even including the Dark Eldar in this starter box, the most difficult to master army in the game, alongside space marines, the easiest to use, have become abundantly clear. Firstly, to unload the excess of plastic dark eldar models they over-manufactured while expecting them to be among the predominant armies of 3rd edition, and secondly, to masturbate the ego of the space marine player, bringing us full circle back to part one but I digress.

So what role have the Dark eldar played in the game since this time? To be honest, I'm torn.

I have seen professionally painted Dark Eldar armies intended only for display, and I have seen tabletop ready dark eldar who look like they have been dunked headfirst in Orange enamal paint and covered in flock. I have seen dark eldar players suffer humiliating defeat after humiliating defeat far more often than I have seen them achieve even relative success on the battlefield.

Until quite recently, I was certain that the dark eldar were on the way out, fated to be consumed by the same tyranid hive fleet that destroyed the Squats. However, since the range is purportedly going to be expanded upon by our masters at games workshop, I have come to a new set of conclusions.

Fig 3: Hearthguard Grunhag is not pleased

GW is merely rounding out the Dark Eldar range which they failed to complete the first time around in 1998, adding Mandrakes, Grotesques and the like and providing token new rules two editions after they were relevent. GW does not need to "Squat" the dark eldar. As some of us know, the squats played a major role in the 1st and 2nd edition fluff, serving as antagonists to the Orks and Eldar, occasionally falling to chaos, and participating in major events such as the 2nd armeggedon war, as well as crewing most of the Imperiums war machines in Epic 40k. When GW decided they were no longer relevent, they were written almost entirely out of the fluff, save for a throw away reference in the 3rd edition Ork codex.

Dark eldar, on the other hand, have no major role in the fluff, striking from the webway whenever the need arises. They do not conquer planets, Launch crusades against other races or have any greater motive than their own survival. This puts them in the same category as the Hrud and Jokearo. As long as Games Workshop doesn't overproduce the new miniatures (which I doubt they will, given their current financial situation), the Dark Eldar can be kept on as a "niche" army. One that exists in an official capacity for the forseeable future, but can be pulled out without consequence, avoiding the lengthy process of canonical revisionism that accompanied the demise of the Squat empire.