To Forge World, from The Dark City

Following on from Sorrowshard's report from the FW Open Day, a lot of his report suggested that any feedback from Dark Eldar players will really help. Talima Fox has suggested using the FB page to gauge interest, Simon Egan seems eager to work on DE while Will Hayes is enthusiastic to make a super heavy barge.

Let's plot and compile our ideas and 'wants' to help Forge World realise that a lot of Dark Eldar players really are eager for them to release more play things for the denizens of Commorragh.

What we need you to do is say what you think they should make, whether you would buy it or not; use this thread to discuss ways to fix the Tantalus and Reaper. Once we have solid ideas that we all agree on we can take this post directly to them.

I'm going to stay out of the rules discussion but I know that I want a

SUPER HEAVY BARGE OF AWESOME!

I already have £300 set aside for the day this appears. I'd like to see a big arena beastie, Trueborn conversion kits and going by the work on the Reaper, vehicle upgrade kits.

Let's get this ball rolling!

um, how about all of the above?

An arena champion style bike/upgrade could be cool. I still probably wouldn't use bikes but I would buy it just cause bikes are cool ( and they should be troops!) A new Dais model would be sweet as well, though the tantalus kinda covers it. Maybe a ravager upgrade to Dais kit?

I'm game for any sort of vehicle upgrade kits(an advanced aether sail would be particularly boss), Trueborn/Bloodbride conversion kits, a Haemonculus Ancient(I'd buy it in a heartbeat, never would field it as an ancient), alternate poses or new models for the Court of the Archon, any new special characters, and last, but not least: a Klaivex for the Incubi!

I would drain my wallet for ALL of these

+ 1 To everything that has been mentioned thuse far!

For lulz (and honestly if these were made I would be buying them in a heartbeat) make both a Female Archon and Male Succubus models, designed to work like GW's ones with the plastic kit.

I think that this is a great idea, especially since we have such a great codex that will stand the test of time and a solid player base. Just look at the continued growth of our membership. The tone of our response will be key.

My initial thoughts on a few possibilities:

First, regarding the existing range:

- Both the Tantalus and the Reaper are good platforms with great weapons as they are. However, they have zero secondary weapons and thus can be neutered quite quickly. The potential points-sink is huge. Their cousins have the Fire Storm and Warp Hunter with not dissimilar capabilities and they both come with Shuriken Catapults that can be upgraded to Cannons. For no additional points, we need a base secondary armament, and not just a single Splinter Rifle on each side, with options. Two beam, pintle-mounted Splinter Cannon that can be changed to Haywire Cannon or Blasters. Or something else (see Shadow Spectres below).
- I would also question the Tantalus’ Pulse Disintegrator’s range, the smaller Fire Storm with 6 Heavy shots at a higher Strength has almost double the range.
- New Raven fighter – I mean look at it and then at the CWE Hornet. C’mon! We know FW’s got the talent to do much better, and several staff probably have amazing concepts in their heads already that they are chomping at the bit to bring to life. Also, rethink the points. In terms of volume of fire, it’s not quite a 65-point Venom with two Splinter Cannon, with two DL’s added. Methinks 100-110 points, max.


Wishlisting, in order from perhaps the more plausible to the lesser business-wise:

- Haemie Ancient – you know FW would nail this!
- Trueborn/Bloodbrides – ditto!
- Female Archon/Male Succubus – yes please.
- Vehicle upgrade kit – yes please.
- A unit of arena champion bikes, like FW’s Nob bikers. Yes please.
- A monstrous creature for Beastmasters to employ, something like a Spined Chaos Beast. Hell yes!
- Some über Scourges similar to Shadow Spectres – FW set the bar, time to follow through. Would also provide some alternative weaponry.
- Alternate Corsair leader – yes please.
- Decapitator – you know FW would nail this! (seriously, is GW gunna do him since he is so popular?)
- Dais – thinking about this, who would use this without a significant re-write? A modded Tantalus would be a good option.
- Battle barge – as much as we all lust after this, me included, we have to think through what it would be used for. Battleship vs. Battlecruiser. DE are a light-weight, highly-mobile force, so a battle barge is not their thing. But a very fragile, heavily-armed cruiser, or a heavily-armed large transport for their loot or other precious cargo (which is my personal, ultimate project for this army) might just fit.

In regards to how they could fix the Tantalus/Reaper. I think most Dark Eldar players have been spoilt by the fact that our most common shooting vehicles all have more than one weapon, ie venom with 2, Ravager with 3. Therefore when we look at a vehicle like the Reaper we automatically balk because it goes against the grain of our play style. So instead maybe they could give it the option to put side sponsons on it, kinda like a predator. Maybe a heavy 2 version of a Haywire Blaster?

I can second everything that has been said above however most of all I would love to see a Dark Eldar apocalypse unit. In fact I'm dying to see one. Specially a super heavy barge, anything! I love apocalypse so I just cant wait for forge world to make us one...

100% hit cash cow for Forgeworld will be Succubus SC with rules and bodyguards, to be used as bloodbrides, same with Dracon and Trueborns.

Well with Tantalus and Reaper there got some of Kabal specific units covered, there might be a point to make some really huge and expensive Coven monster (with Invul and Eternal), like some sort of guardian which covens let out only when Commoragh plunge into chaos to instil fear on everything and everyone.
Coven could really use a centerpice for Apoc games.

I would like to see some rules for formations, and a titan - which to me would fit the playstyle of the DE (something similar to the Eldar titans)... they're fast and heavily armed, and can bite the bullet really (really) easily (for a titan... no void shields but an invul save), that would make sense to me... other than that...

- Haemie Ancient
- Trueborn/Bloodbrides
- A monstrous creature for Beastmasters
- Dais
- some really huge and expensive Coven monster

(I was feeling lazy)

how about.. the first super heavy tank for the dark eldar, with a void lance on steroids.

I want a skimmer or a flyer with a Portal Gun. It shoots a blast template that becomes a Webway Portal. Maybe units can even move between active portals, or if it hits an enemy squad they can get sucked if they don't dodge- say, take an Initiative test. Wouldn't that be a great pice of Commorragh technology?

A skimmer that had a bunch of a Horrorfexes would be pretty sweet, too. It would probably be a Coven vehicle, maybe with a transport capacity 5 for a Haemonculus and some Wracks- transport capacity 6 would be clutch for double Liquifier, though! And, if you could split fire with those Horrorfexes...and if it had the Haemonculus defensive option of choice, a Clone Field...

For the above, +1 for Battle Barge and Corsair leader. Speaking of corsairs, how has no one mentioned The Duke, A-Number 1? He's so dreamy...

My wish list:

A few alternate Grotesque models. I love the idea of Grots but I don't quite like the GW models.
A Haemonculus Ancient.
Female Archon/Haemonculus
Some superheavy thing, possibly a slave galley of some sort. That would be fun.
A few monsters for the Beastmasters and the Haemonculi.

And a blasted TITAN. I love the Eldar Titans, I would LOVE to see what they would come up with for us? How about a superfast, heavily-armed, assault-oriented mech made partially out of slaves all sewn together as a sort of living armour or something?
Hell, that's a great idea. It would look like an evil Revenant with sections of armor missing, the gaps filled with writhing, wretched, agonized beings that can only pray for death.

My wishlist:
Lady Malys model, because im too lazy and unskiled to convert.
DUKE, because he is awesome and soooo many people use him.
Vect, because who wouldn't buy the origanal space pimp, even just to display him?
Would say Baron, but i dont like him....but him 2 if u have to.
Klaivex model, Incubi are cool right now, but you can feel that they lack a leader.
Talos + CPE, i dont like the models personally, to fleshy.
Flesh golem of some sort (think hellpit Abom)
and last and probelly least
a set of blasters, nothing else, just blasters because as i said im to bad at converting.

I like the blaster Idea, though I have been casting my own (as well as Dark lances) so a DE heavy/special weapon sprue could be nice and would save me the headache.
New Wrack models/upgrades as well; shirtless elves in skirts and dresses don't look flesh circusy to me.

A Trueborn / Bloodbride upgrade sprue similiar to the Khorne Bezerkers would be a truly awesome kit from Forgeworld. Some larger monsterous creature for the Beastmasters or a large flesh creature as a Haemonculus creation would be pretty awesome. Forgeworld would also make an awesome alternative Archon/ Succubus/ Ancient Haemonculi models.

A generic "Sky Lord" HQ. Must take either Wings (Scourge), Skyboard (Hellion) or Reaver Jetbike (duh), and then unlocks units based on which one you take.

Screaming Statues: deployed via deep strike (either normal reserves or on a specific turn). Allied units with X inches count as having one more pain token than they actually do when working out Power from Pain bonuses. Visually they look like horrific torture devices with people trapped in them, and some magical arcane machinery amplifying the screams and pain.

A vehicle with a built-in webway portal (counts as a weapon for the purpose of vehicle damage table rolls).

Haywire Blasters for the Raider and Ravager, with perhaps an extended range.

A far superior Court. Even better would be one that could be taken by any HQ and tailored to fit the kind of HQ taking it. So Court of the Archon, Court of the Succubus, etc.

Given how often they appear in lists, a trueborn conversion kit would be most popular I'd have thought, I'd love to see bloodbride upgrades myself.

I can see why they stuck with just the single weapon on the reaper, but I'd personally think it would be better to make it more survivable, perhaps add in a rule about using its gathered energy to dissipate incoming fire through some kind of forcefield, perhaps an uprated version of the flickerfield to either reduce damage from glancing hits or knock a point or two of the strength of things shooting at it.

And a voidraven conversion kit for the razorwing!

pretty much echoing those before me
Trueborn upgrades
Bloodbride upgrade
special characters
superheavy for apoc games (big slaver barge)
voidraven upgrade for razorwing

Yeah most of what's been mentioned so far is great! As far as terrain goes some Commorragh spiked buildings would be nice. Again there are some great ideas coming through here that FW should consider releasing.

I'm going to begin working on a compiled list soon that we can work on and discuss in more detail.

I think however that some people are missing the point in some respect.
I think it is highly unlikely that FW will release any of the special characters from the codex (though I think the Dais is a possibility). Nor would they release the Voidraven. I wouldn't believe that they will ever do a DE titan as it does not fit the fluff and I think that Klaivexs and Aberrations are not impossible, but highly unlikely.

Please tell me if you think I'm wrong on that account but you need to look at what the company makes - alternative models, bigger vehicles and upgrade kits. They do release some random things such as the scarabs and Grave Guard bsb but I think we should go along with what they normally do.

My new suggestion is an upgrade kit that turns the Razorwing into their Razor fighter, discontinuing that old model.

a full codex rule that allows DE to take something to ignore shaken and stunned results... every other army has it (literally)... I want it too... /cry /cry /cry

But seriously, they do a few special characters (very few) so maybe a duke model wouldn't be out of the question, and an upgrade kit for klavex is also something I can see them picking up.

Also, a DE titan wouldn't be especially non-fluffy (no more non-fluffy than a eldar titan), but with a smaller number of DE players, I would say its unlikely...

I think overwhelmingly what people want are (what i've seen most often)

Bloodbride/trueborn upgrade kits
weapons sprues
coven beast
Duke
alternate sex HQs

uodated rules for the tantalus and reaper would be nice, and I do like the sponsons idea.

im in the process of considering a tantalus/ravager gunboat hybrid. see my thread in the rules forum.

Keep it on topic please, this thread is exclusively for discussion of what we would like to see FW do on behalf of DE. Gob.

i ment it as a suggestion, i didn't know there were sketches, honest!

More HQ models are always good, female archon especially.

And some kind of kit to vary the look of raiders/ravagers a bit. I cant see kabal, wych cult and coven raiders being exactly the same...

This is hard for me, and to be 100% honest I'm not sure that I would buy it any time soon, simply because my funds are so low. However, i would definitely take note of the following:

An Archon or Succubus model on a Reaver Jetbike who either unlocks Jetbikes as troops or gives them a strong bonus. I would be quite happy to pick one of these up and start collecting more Reavers.

A haywire toting vehicle, something that puts out numerous shots or even a template. Alternatively, something that pulls a trick similar to Trazyn the Infinite's takeover ability, giving us the option to fire an enemy vehicle's weaponry at their own models.

SOMETHING THAT REPRESENTS SLAVES OR POWS. It doesn't have to be a unit itself, but perhaps something like Epidemius where after X kills our units start getting extra pain tokens or something. Imagine that for every infantry unit you killed, for example, every eligible unit in the army could roll and get a pain token on a 6. Instant sale. This would be an excellent way to work in a Gargantuan Creature upgrade for the covens and beast packs.

Also, as has been noted here, the fastest selling item they could create would undoubtedly be a Trueborn upgrade sprue. I cannot understand why GW has not given this to us yet. There is no way that they have not noticed the sharp increase in these at events and in their normal gaming stores. Elite units are what makes them the most money, selling s sprue means they get to sell the unit three times--once for the models, once for the sprue, and once for the vehicle to load them in.

I'd like to see a Trueborn upgrade sprue as well. I'd like something with a lot of cloaks, more weapons (three lances, three splinter cannons, and three blasters), and backs with banners. I don't see why every single Trueborn wouldn't be flying their own back banner.

I'd also like to see something I can attach to the vehicles so I could put a decal on it; like an identification plate or something to more easily pair up each squad to a venom or raider. I've done this using Skeleton shields with Imperial vehicles, and don't like the idea of messing up my aethyrsails with decals.

What about alternate floor plates for the Raiders and Venoms? The stock one is nice, but an etched brass sprue with two or three alternates would be nice as well.

For pairing up the vehicles, I plan on using the banner poles in conjunction with the banners on the models to match the two.