6th Edition Eldar Confirmed - New War Machine Images Leaked

In yet another leak of information, it's all but been confirmed that the eldar are the next army to receive a major update. Appearing in a thread of Bell of Lost Souls, scanned images from an upcoming White Dwarf showed a gigantic humanoid war-machine labelled the Wraithknight. 

Appearing to be a smaller variant of the eldar titans, or an oversized Wraithlord, it seems to have been added to give the army some much needed firepower. Also confirming that this is yet another codex following the Riptide/Dreadknight mentality of adding huge mecha to boost sales. Though unlike the latter example we can at least be thankful it doesn't look like a parody of a warmachine Terry Gilliam would come up with while drunk. While it's hard to tell given the image quality, it seems to have similar armour mounts and interchangeable weapons as the previous examples. The main image here depicting the Wraithknight carrying what appears to be a shield of some sort, two shoulder mounted shuriken cannons, a bright lance, back mounted equipment of an unknown design and a gigantic wraithblade.

The article describes the machine as follows - "The Wraithknight is a towering construct, its psychically powered weapons able to tear apart battle tanks and infantry with ease. Yet deep within its chest an Eldar pilot weeps for the death of his twin, interred alongside him in one (of) the Wraithknight's spirit stones."

The description alone shows that whoever is behind this is actually sticking to the lore, and whoever makes an Evangelion joke will be sumarrily beaten to death with a copy of the sixth edition rulebook. It's keeping with the idea that soul stones are a vital part of the machine's operation and the experience of dead pilots help to guide its living occupant. The notation of the occupants of the soul stones and the pilot being related is also a call-back to older fluff involving the pilots of eldar titans being twins or triplets. It was something phased out for obvious reasons but bringing it back here in this manner is fitting in an odd way.

The other bonus of this leak of information is it shows that the creators of the next codex are already doing one thing right: including more advanced technology. On the 5 Changes 6th Edition Codex: Eldar Needs article one of the first points made was to introduce bigger and tougher machines we'd not seen before. While hopefully we'll also see new weapons mounted on it alongside the older ones, making use of the bigger weapons platform to fire them form.

The only downside here is that these aren't as outlandish or unique as the Eldar Knights mentioned previously. Going from what little information there is they seem to be far less vibrant or unique and their design seems to be fairly standard. It's limiting a possible involvement the Exodites might have had within the codex and feels to some degree like a big missed opportunity. Still, in spite of this it's a minor gripe and seems to show things will be done well, so let's hope the rest of the book will be handled similarly well.




What are your thoughts on its inclusion and the apparent direction the army seems to be going in?


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Warhammer 40,000 and all related characters and media are owned by Games Workshop.
Respective images were taken from the Armorcast Gallery.