Why Must we Consort With our Lesser Kin?

I have posted this elsewhere, but can someone please explain to me how it became so commonplace in the mindset of Archons everywhere that taking eldar battle brothers was an acceptable solution to the difficulties we face on the battlefield? I became an archon to command my dark brethren into battle with Raider's sails full of the wind of the webways our foes screaming in terror at our appearance only to be victims offor our insatiable need for violence.

I understand that everyone is excited about the new possiblities afforded us with the new rules to battle brothers. There are other forums for that. What I would like to hear from my fellow archons is how they came to accept that they needed eldar?

I agree with you we should not need the help of our craftworld cousins we should cause fear and terror by our own means. we need to teach them again there is a reason that people fear the dark  .

I take them because they look sweet.

All the "Eldar" units that I have are customized in someway to look like Dark Eldar who fill specialized roles, have different types of weapons that your typical Dark Eldar would have. My Archon is in self-placed exile and therefore I see both Eldar/Dark Eldar books as an extension of his unique way of doing things including him being a Psyker.

The meta-answer is, of course, because the addition of Eldar units to just about any army provides incredible buffs and advantages.

However...

I too severely question the "alliance" of Eldar and Dark Eldar in battle. Sure, we are branches of the same tree, but what do our Craftworld cousins do when their allies, in the midst of the battle, start peeling the skin from their victims, taking trophies, lopping off heads, binding up captives in barbed wire, drinking their vital juices, consuming their souls... you know, all the terrible things that they do.

Do the Craftworld Eldar simply put on blinders, or shake their heads and laughingly say, "Oh, you Kabalites. You so crazy....."

Braden Campbell wrote:

Do the Craftworld Eldar simply put on blinders, or shake their heads and laughingly say, "Oh, you Kabalites. You so crazy....."

I'm laughing so hard right now

Moved to a more appropriate forum as this topic did not belong in Announcements. - Baron T

We needn't must at all. If an archon, archite, or haemonculus is preparing to enter a galactic tournament then it is understandable to trick our blind monastic brethren into doing some of our dirty work for us, especially with their nice EVERYTHING.
But surely our degraded weapons, vehicles, and abilities will be regrown and reconstructed sooner than later. Possibly even within the next planet-cycle! And then... then, as our power waxes again, we shall storm real space in a blistering hail of gore, delectable screams, and agonizing death!

'Cause some of us DO want to field mono dark eldar.
Fo realz.

I've never played anything but exclusively dark eldar lists. And while I'm not wildly successful, at 19 games I'm 9:9:1. Considering the learning curve that comes with our army, and the size of my best friend and regular opponent's enormous tactically savvy brain, I'm ok with that.

I only field DE and whenever someone mentions I should add in Eldar it makes my neckbeard bristle and I launch into a rant about how anti fluff it is and how people who do it probably kick puppies and cheat on their spouses while burning down orphanages.  I really really dislike the idea of people mixing them and GW making them our battle brothers is probably the most annoying thing I have with the game atm.

I don't understand fluff problems with it. We were never chaos elves. Just space jerk elves and you know who else is jerk elves? Regular eldar. I mean biel-tan shares a common hatred of non eldar life. Saim-han, a savage warrior culture. Lyanden has twice fought beside dark eldar and their pirate Prince is an understandable figure to dark eldar society. If anything the eldar appear as weak minded fools with nice guns. And what archon wouldn't employ the biggest weapon he can (has Vect taught you nothing? ). As far as how craft kin would react to the dark eldar fight well, they wouldn't. Eldar fight under a "war-mask" wherein they are just as brutal and bloodthirsty and even perhaps cruel as a dark kin. Remember we all shattered from the same mind so to craftworlders dark eldar are basically on the path of khaine and they never drop their war masks. It's completely fluffy for two groups of "superior" races to coordinate attacks on the more numerous child races so as to minimize the loss of again "superior" life. A goal which both sides recognize though commoragh to a much lesser extent.

The problem with the Fluff is that the Dark Eldar would never be battle brothers with anyone. Its a stretch to say they are battle brothers with their own race. No one would trust the Dark Eldar and the Eldar least of all because they know how evil we are.

The Eldar hate the Eldar. We are the Great Satan to their religious fundamentalism. We hunt them down and take them as slaves. We crush their soul gems so they can be tortured by Slaanesh for giggles. Our street punks use their farseer's knuckle bones as an accessory. Sure we might help them from time to time because it gives us a laugh but it is a huge stretch to say they would view us as BFFs or we them.

At best we would be allies of convenience.

For the eldar The Planet of the Apes is a reality. Their race's goverment is shattered and they are seperated into roving bands and street gangs and monkeys rule the stars.. The bands (craft worlds) and the gangs (kabals) may not like each other, but at least they aren't monkeys.

There is no unifying body for either craftworld eldar or dark eldar. Because of this as a race they exist in a spectrum rather than pure "dark" and "light" eldar. There are craftworlds that are considered more wild like samhaim and craft worlds that are more war like like beiltan. It stands to reason that with all of the different kabals, cults, and covens cloging up the dark city that some of them would find common cause with their cousins.

I use the rules to reflect my own craftworld which make a dealwith the devil with a coven, slaves for (dark) eldar children so they wouldn't go extinct. This led to them becoming more and more like the dark eldar as tike went on.

The act of hunting an eldar is one of respect. They are worthy prey and fine prizes because of the respect for their abilities.

In a raid all treachery is suspended for the good of all (each individual dark eldar thinking only of his good of course) and they can trust in the same level of discipline and control in their eldar allies. After all, they aren't humans. And they may know we are evil but above that we are shrewd, pragmatic and self serving. Treachery against your allies with the big guns and psykers holding back demon summoning would be none of those things.

Okay, I know very little about our Craftworld Cousins, and I only know of the Dark Eldar from the Path of... books and the Codex, when it comes to fluff. However, in White Dwarf issue 18 it talks about the Allies Matrix and gives some examples of why some armies would fight alongside one another. Later in the same issue, Mat Ward(I know, but still...) talks a bit about the last year in the 41st millenia.

I'm paraphrasing, but the gist is that the Craftworld Eldar are on the brink of extinction and their only chance to survive is to enlist the aid of their Dark Kin. This is the probable reason that we are Battle Brothers, that the Eldar look to the ones they can trust, those that have the same goal- avoiding She Who Thirsts...

Just my $.02

I use certain eldar units because I enjoy using those units and creating my version with dark elder models and bits. I'm a wargamer first and foremost. Modeler second. Painter third. Then comes fluff, and my army writes it's own story I don't follow gw's. I play units because of the way they perform on the battlefield and how they fit my play style. I actually consider the two codices to be one for the purposes of game play. Just how I enjoy the game.

Why? Racism.

To the mindset of a Space Elf, there is nothing more low class than the mon-keigh. And while I, as a DE leader, would gladly strangle a dozen Craftworlders with my bare hands just to watch their eyes pop out, I would gladly risk my own life to defend them against one of the lesser species.

Not out of any sense of loyalty, you understand. But it's just THAT important that the mon-keigh don't EVER think that they can kill an Eldar (of ANY type) and get away with it. Preferably, they should be kept from thinking that they can ever kill an Eldar, period.

I would prefer that the Craftworlders escape into the void if the alternative would be to allow lesser species to defeat them, or even to witness their defeat.

And in the midst of combat, there are few things that I can trust. Neither man nor woman nor beast nor god. But this, this racism: this I can trust. Because at the end of the day, we're still Eldar. And that makes us better than everybody else.

First things first I don’t like having eldar ally’s I really don’t I think the whole battle brothers argument has some good points backing it up but when it comes down to it I don’t think that incubi running around with trophy gems on their foreheads won’t bother our “battle brothers” in the slightest

But as I am building my list I keep finding that fully mechanized lists give me too much trouble and in seeking a solution it appears that popping in some eldar buddies is the easiest one (I mean one of those damned wave serpents took down my razorwing with snap shots last night) so I can see why the majority of competitive lists choose to run them as ally’s
To counter the fluff anomaly I choose to think that my eldar ally’s (if I ever get any that is) are young craftworlders that while choosing to stray from their paths enamored by tales of corsairs living free and roaming as they please chanced upon Duke Sliscus

The duke greeted them as brothers and offered hospitality even though he was sorely disappointed they would not convert to the ways of the dark eldar and offered tutelage in the ways of space piracy but kept introducing them to a steady supply of drugs in very low dosages at all times in essentially making them very reluctant to give up the comforts provided by the duke time passed and the craft worlders became as addicted as the most common hellion gang member that roams the lowest streets of Commorragh and never left

The root of the DE/CWE Alliance comes from the old Eye of Terror summer campaign (http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Eye_of_Terror_Campaign). Back then the armies were divided into 'order' and 'disorder', with DE expected to help Ahriman's chaos marines in the webway against the CWE. The way the campaign worked is you would record your victories in games you played at GW stores and then decide which sector of the campaign you wanted to contribute to, so if Dark Eldar contributed victories to the webway it would mean Disorder (Chaos) triumphing over Order (in that case, the CWE).

What happened in reality was the online community of DE and CWE players got together and said "DE hate chaos, why would they help them in the webway?" So the DE players decided to focus on 2nd tier imperial worlds and the CWE players decided "Everyone plays space marines so no reason for us to fight for cadia, pour everything into the webway"

CWE stomped their way through the webway relatively unopposed (All the Chaos players poured everything into fighting for Cadia) and the DE just went christmas shopping over all these unprotected imperial worlds (all the space marines were fighting over cadia). The end result was fantastic for the CWE, they smashed Ahriman out of the webway and actually reclaimed 3 Crone Worlds. The DE got a ton of souls relatively unopposed. It showed that when Eldar aren't fighting Eldar, they benefit as a whole. Remember this is in the days of that 3rd edition pamphlet, so there just wasn't much background about DE, but in this campaign the players shaped their narrative.

*The orks, tau, tyranids, basically all xenos benefited from the campaign while the imperium and chaos were weakened fighting over cadia, gaining nothing.


After that event GW writers acknowledged their fans, and wrote in more stories showing cooperation between CWE and DE.

It is pretty lorewise for DE and CWE to be both the best allies as well as some of the worst enemies between each other.
Haven't ever fielded CWE (have maybe about 300 points worth of them), but once I do, they are going to include rangers. They make for great mercenaries hired from a corsair fleet.

I'm considering using a unit of Wraithguards for the battle-forged DE/E army. I can say that a few 'mad souls' are operating the Wraithguards who are devoted blindly to Khaine. Isn't it reasonable?

Given the psychic resonance of wraithbone, I think it only makes sense to have wraith-style units in an 'outcast' army. (I have a couple running around with my Duke Sliscus army.) I can't see them allowing wraithbone constructs into Commorragh.

Jimsolo wrote:

Given the psychic resonance of wraithbone, I think it only makes sense to have wraith-style units in an 'outcast' army.  (I have a couple running around with my Duke Sliscus army.)  I can't see them allowing wraithbone constructs into Commorragh.

In fact, that's exactly the same way that I rationalize Wraithbones in my army  

I think a lot of Craftworld/Dark Eldar alliances are brokered by the Harlequins (who seem to be about reuniting the species), especially if there's demonic nastiness going down (like in the 13th Black Crusade, as HokutoAndy described). If there's a mutual threat (e.g. Ahriman's assault on the webway), it's perfectly natural for them to combine forces. And it's perfectly in keeping with their species-wide superiority complex to sooner team up with their own kin (even their depraved cousins) and work better with them than any of the lesser races. Though I sincerely doubt the Craftworld Eldar would accompany any kabal on their usual slave-harvests (unless the CWE happened to have an objective thereabouts).

I recently added a Spiritseer council and some Wraithguard to my army, the idea being that they were a cabal of renegade 'seers who are quite intrigued by the Dark Eldar revival process and have made a shaky alliance with a Haemonculi coven (and, by extension, their Kabalite associates). Unseemly and horrific as it is, they think combining the haemonculi's revivification process with the spirit stones in some way could be one of the few remaining hopes for the dying Craftworld Eldar; they're twisted extremists seen as perverse by their ex-fellows (of course, this alliance is very under-the-table for the coven/kabalites, and make sure their 'allies' stay the hell out of Commoragh).

I have a full size army of both eldar and I fluff the dark eldar as a low powered kabal who still follow the "barbaric" worship of Khaine and the Eldar who likewise worship Khaine and give a wider level of their society over to the warrior path or path of khaine. For fluff I always bring the avatar or at least equip my autarch/farseer with the shard of Anaris war gear. And often the mantle of the laughing God to show the hand of cegorach in such a seemingly unlikely and fortuitous alliance of the fractured species.

With it seemingly possible to bring allies through the wwp I may start bringing them and maybe some wraith units through the portal. Maybe even my beloved fire dragons . Especially with the autarch now adding to all reserve rolls.

I think the turning point for me on the subject of allies happened when my Archon fought against "invisible" white scar bikes at WS1. That was infuriating and way too disrespectful to my primary beatstick.
Now, the addition of an actual psychic phase means we can either participate effectively or allow our opponents a WHOLE phase to get a leg up on us and get back into the game. That will not do, we cut OFF the legs! Due to the nature of DE, all resistance must be swept away in the storm.
Fluff wise, we can all make a justification for running a captured farseer or some sort of reluctant truce. Sometimes he works well for me, other times he's a lemon.
Generally, I only ever run pure DE, but I continue to dabble with psychic powers so that I can expand my understanding of the game parameters. It is nice to have twin-linked lances when everybody else seems to get twin-linking everything!