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Warhammer 40,000 6th Edition #Codex
Iyanden - A Codex: Eldar Supplement
For thousands upon thousands of years, the Eldar of Iyanden have sailed through the sea of stars, defending the galaxy's eastern rim from the threat of Chaos. They have won great victories against the most horrific of foes, but have known terrible tragedy also. Yet Iyanden endures, with the souls of the departed fighting alongside the few who have survived. Together, the living and the dead must fight for their race's survival in a galaxy riven by war. Iyanden is a 72-page full-colour hardback supplement to Codex: Eldar. It contains 32 pages of new, rich and expanded background detailing craftworld Iyanden, along with original art, box-outs, a timeline, and iconography of Ghost Warrior houses. It features a showcase of glorious Citadel miniatures presenting the colour schemes and iconography of the Iyanden craftworld. In addition to this it comes with warlord traits, wargear and psychic powers to help transform your Eldar collection into a mighty Iyanden warhost. You can even take a Wraith Lord or Wraithknight as your Warlord. It also includes battle scenarios - some of which you can use to relive epic battles from the Iyanden's history - plus there are stratagems for use in your games of Cities of Death and Planetstrike. Iyanden is designed work alongside the rules found in Codex: Eldar, which you will need in order to field an Iyanden collection on the tabletop.
72 pages, Hardcover
First published June 15, 2013
20 people want to read
About the author
Matthew Ward
58 books437 followersMatthew Ward is a writer, cat-servant and owner of more musical instruments than he can actually play (and considerably more than he can play well). He’s afflicted with an obsession for old places – castles, historic cities and the London Underground chief amongst them – and should probably cultivate more interests to help expand out his author biography.
After a decade serving as a principal architect for Games Workshop’s Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 properties, Matthew embarked on an adventure to tell stories set in worlds of his own design. He lives near Nottingham with his extremely patient wife – as well as a pride of attention-seeking cats – and writes to entertain anyone who feels there’s not enough magic in the world.
After a decade serving as a principal architect for Games Workshop’s Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 properties, Matthew embarked on an adventure to tell stories set in worlds of his own design. He lives near Nottingham with his extremely patient wife – as well as a pride of attention-seeking cats – and writes to entertain anyone who feels there’s not enough magic in the world.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
July 28, 2013
I have no words.
This level of incompetence is something I would not expect from this publisher even on its worst days.
Let's make this clear: Games Workshop has had a successful history with releases alien races, the eldar specifically, of late. They have a vast amount of talent which can deal with them competently.
They have Phil Kelley, the best writer GW has at the moment, who loves the eldar and created a book for them which stayed strong over several editions despite a lack of updates.
They have Jeremy Vetock, writer of Codex: Tau Empire, the single best alien codex we have had since Codex: Dark Eldar. One which has been near universally lauded and highly regarded in terms of both rules and background.
This is the first major supplement of its type. One which needs to sell fans on the idea, needs to be well written and crafted to a degree where players will accept the high price. Well written enough to accept the limited availability, some of the problems behind the idea and a writer who can take advantage of the additional space. Giving the faction the fluff it deserves and making people want to buy it. They need to get this written as close to perfection as humanly possible.
So, who did they give it to?
Matt Ward.
The strategically shaved ape. The one screaming about how he is the best writer in the business and furiously pleasing himself over images of Guilliman. The man who has succeeding in doing at least as much damage to the hobby as the endless price hikes. The same one who has repeatedly proven for over the better part of a decade that he has no writing talent in any area of tabletop wargaming.
Now, i'm all for giving someone a second chance. Or an twelfth by this point. Yet they're choosing to risk an entirely new line of books on a writer who has only proven himself disliked and incapable of writing good background lore. One who most recently A) Succeeded in an act of massive character assassination by turning the High Elves into theUltrameri Aldmeri Dominion and B) Tried to make the Wood Elves irreverent by giving effectively all their traits and attributes to one optional High Elf Army.
I have honest questions for Games Workshop by this point: Is Ward the brother-in-law of someone high up in the company? Is he blackmailing the CEO and chairman to keep printing his stuff? By this point I would have more respect for them if he had illicit photos of depraved activities than knowing they willingly stamped "approved" on one more major balls up by Ward.
Still, I can't hold this off for much longer. Let's take a look at everything wrong with this monstrosity starting with its rules.
Rules
Now, the supplement has already earned the ire of a few websites due to the number of pages which actually place emphasis upon special rules. Those relevant specifically to 40K in general, making Iyanden an individual force and making it a distinct army to field.
Out of the one-hundred-and-ten pages, how many do you think actually focus upon special rules, army stats and items. The answer: Two. Two entire pages which actually try to make the army distinct and stand out from the book it is based upon. Bare in mind that, whatever its quality, the last time he did something like this with Codex: Blood Angels a good half of its pages gave it stats, unique units and a distinct playing style. Here you have perhaps 1,500 words in total to do the same, including basic details such as permitting wraithguard being taken as troops etc. It also goes without saying that it's pretty bad.
Now, being fair some of his rules and equipment are at the moment far more tame than usual. While this might be due to a lack of interest in the subject matter (probably due to the lack of excuses to throw in "for they can never be Ultramarines" at some point) a few of his rules and items aren't as balls out broken as you'd expect. They don't suddenly give all of your units jetpacks or the ability to ignore plasma weapons, but without that it shows another big flaw on Ward's part: His rules are childishly simplistic.
The Grey Knights, Blood Angels and Necrons were infamous as they required no actual skill to play. All were so hideously overpowered that all you need to do is run forwards with the right units and the enemy will die in front of you. Unlike Tau Empire or even the Imperial Guard for all the crap Cruddance gets, you don't need to think that much to put together a neigh unstoppable list because his rules were so blatantly broken. Here he's unable to use a lot of that sheer raw power and many items come across as downright generic. Something completely unremarkable you'd usually overlook and forget about anywhere else because they require no thought or timing on the player's part.
The Wraithforge Stone for example is one item which just gives back a wraithguard or wraithlord model within 6" of its wielder on a 3+. Similarly the Guardian Helm of Xallathon just allows for automatic passes on "Look Out, Sir!" tests and for wraithguard to accept challenges. All you need to do is just remember you have them and you get a slight bonus once in a while. They don't stack in effect with anything else or allow for ingenious tactics on the part of the army's player. This isn't to say that every rule needs to be complex or some intelligence test, but these like many in the book are simply bland.
Of course it doesn't take much to get Ward back into his old "lol, insta-kill everything" ways.
Many of the other items (Gifts of Asuryan to be specific) just rely upon you getting halfway decent rolls to slaughter everything in sight. One highlight of this is the Soulshrive, a master crafted close combat weapon which is S3 AP2 and gains a point of strength every time you kill something. So you can throw an Autarch at a group of gaunts with some Striking Scorpions and have the guy walk out with a weapon between S7 and 10 if you're lucky.
Then you have the Spear of Teuthlas (yes, Arienal's special weapon) a singing spear which is range 18" S9 AP - with rending, fleshbane, armourbane and everything you'd ask for to up and murder something quickly.
These are two examples of several very killy weapons which are definitely something which are far too easily to use and cripple the enemy. It's just a case of being in vaguely the right place and the right time. Admittedly this is an upgrade of what we would have seen from this author before, but the lack of skill required to really implement them in games is very eyebrow raising and they're not the only ones. Others such as the Celestial Lance emphasizing only upon turning its carrier into a single minded combat monster, not enhancing the army as a whole.
There are very few items and rules beyond dictating how wraithguard now take up troops choices and the like actually help to bolster the army overall. Not just individual units or specifically give it elements to bolster your characters. Having armies driven purely by extremely buffed HQ units was something 40K was supposed once to be moving away from in some respects, but here it's just in full force. The few elements which do buff up the army overall are not devoted to specific troops choices but are given entirely over to HQ units.
The first of these is the Shadow Council, a group of up to five Spirit Seers which only take up one HQ slot but still count as Independent Characters. The second is a power each of them has in place of Conceal/Reveal known as Voice of Twilight. Something which gives any wraith unit within a 12" bubble around the caster both Furious Charge and Battle Focus.
These are actually really good ideas and help to cover the army's obvious flaws without breaking anything in a severe way. There's still some elements of risk involved with using them and it gives the army a degree of mobility to make it more familiar to eldar players. The problem is that it again devotes nearly everything of importance to who you have taking up your HQ slots not any Elite or Fast Attack choices.
Even when Ward tries to place more focus upon said units he just ends up turning them into glorified HQ choices with things like the Heroes of Iyanden. A rule which allows a player to declare a wraithknight or wraithlord to be a Warlord without having them take up an HQ slot.
That's more or less it as the devoted army rules go. Two pages of stuff which seems to have either been written by Ward bored out of his skull or determined to repeat the mistakes of the past. Only a handful of elements are actually halfway decent and even then they don't have anything to balance them out and make the Iyanden force ultra-reliant upon which unit choices are leading it.
What do we get beyond this that actually counts towards games? Pages upon pages devoted to Cities of Death rules, scenarios and stuff trying to get you to buy other Games Workshop books. Older codices did have these but it was usually only one or two per book at most, not the vast majority of its content. They didn't need more than that and even then they barely got used. That last detail is the real crux of the problem here.
Having been playing 40K since early 2001, I've seen few games actually make real use of the special scenarios. While you will get a few devoted to certain scenarios and ideas for games which serve as a break from the norm, many will just stick with the few listed in the rulebook. Usually either taking and holding certain areas of the map or more frequently simply shooting/cutting/punching-the-blood-out-of the opposing army in a direct fight. Few if any players will actually feel the need to utilise most of the book if any. At best a store might try to boost it by having a campaign surrounding them but beyond that these are going to be barely used.
The problems with scenarios are only made worse when you consider that many scenarios are devoted to the Battle for Iyanden during the conflicts with Hive Fleet Kraken, the campaign itself is extremely limited. Even if you tried to substitute the one army for another, you're repeatedly going to run into the problem of scenario specific rules designed for eldar and tyranids. Those which are devoted to other factions either feel inconsequential or not very well tied into the plot, usually also being very faction specific and isolated. A problem not helped by having only one scenario for fighting tau, one for other craftworld eldar (don't ask) etc.
When it comes down the the crunch, the Iyanden Codex Supplement is ultimately a huge failure. It has very little which is appealing, few proper rules, very HQ specific items and improvements and only a handful of good ideas. The additional campaign details and ideas are lackluster and very limited, having nothing to make them worth utilising for games. It's even a step down from the Codex: Sisters of Battle printed in a White Dwarf (then never re-printed or officially released in PDF form, thank you so much Games Workshop) and is all around badly written.
Still, this is only part of the book. Because of course the rules are only a part of a codex, with a huge portion always given to the background, history of the army and their place in the universe. So when we look next at the rulebooks of Warhammer 40,000, we'll be looking into how Iyanden fared in its fluff rather than crunch.
Is Ward's fictional creativity any better than his rules? Well here's an early indication of its quality: He uses C.S. Goto's Eldar Prophecy as a basis for how houses work in eldar society.
I wish I were joking.
Lore
There's no easy way to structure this, so let's just go through each problem one at a time:
Iyanden is no longer Iyanden, it's now Beil-Tan lite.
Despite having little details beyond the one event which defined their current diminished state, Crimson Fist syndrome as it's been nicknamed, Iyanden was suggested to be a unique force. Like all the craftworlds it had its own customs, culture and society unique to itself but was supposedly one of the largest of their kind.
Rather than trying to emphasise that, Ward made them obsessed with retaking their old empire and reclaiming the galaxy for their kind. You know, the thing Beil-Tan is best known for. Apparently he was so aware of this that the two craftworlds have now always been in a millennia old super-special-awesome-friends-forever alliance to do this. Every other craftworld having ignored their suggestions to retake the galaxy or even fight to protect the worlds with their ruins. It goes so far as to suggest that every other craftworld was inwardly focused upon its own survival or "higher priorities" for such a grandiose plan.
So yes, this means that every instance of the eldar coming to protect their old secrets, ruins, or even exodites is something only Iyanden or Beil-Tan would do. Ward goes so far as to list Ulthwé and Alaitoc as very specific craftworlds who denied any plan to help others. The latter no dobut in an effort to shoehorn Ward's own retcon about Alaitoc being hell-bent upon fighting the necrons. Meaning that, yes, like Graham McNeill's Ultramarines saga; Ward is apparently trying to render Gav Thorpe's Path of the Eldar series completely non-canon.
This section does at least knowledge that Beil-Tan and Iyanden are opposite ends of the bloody galaxy, yet still has the gall to somehow state that the two could patrol its entirety between them. Yes, they were so brilliant that they were single-handedly protecting the eastern and western rims on their own.
Unfortunately for us there are no breaks on this train, and the stupidity only gets worse with every word.
Despite it as having been a crucial part of each craftworld's design and the core of eldar society, Iyanden are now the first to have learned the use of the infinity circuit. Yes, that thing which has been described as the "wraithbone skeleton of the craftworld itself" which stops spirits being gobbled by Slaanesh? All adapted from Iyanden and a feature added after the fall. What was the infinity circuit's original use? How did Iyanden's spiritseers know how to do this? Why didn't the eldar originally have some plan to protect themselves against the obvious growing corruption? None are answered. Apparently Iyanden was just so good at what they did they learned of this first. It adds nothing to their overall story and is barely commented upon for the rest of the book beyond simple bragging.
At every point tries to emphasise upon their arrogance, pride and does everything short of calling them outright overconfident. No dobut that is to somehow excuse what happens next.
Skimming over a good ten thousand years or so of events, the codex suddenly jumps to the arrival of the tyranids. It then proceeds to make a complete mockery of the army it is trying to show as a competent force.
Let's compare what follows with the fifth edition Codex: Tyranids. While that edition might have had many, many problems the build-up to the Battle of Iyanden is easily one of its best parts. Why? Because it showed the eldar to be competent.
Having been blinded by the Shadow in the Warp which was the tyranid Hive Mind, with only their rangers alerting them to its advance, the eldar spent what little time they had preparing. They knew this was the greatest battle of their lives against a foe of vast power and the book emphasises upon this fact. Fortifying the entire craftworld, they summoned the Avatar, awakened all of their wraith units and prepared effectively the world's entire populace for war. For the twenty days they had prior to its arrival they prepared for a vast conflict, gathering every ship and soldier they could to press into the world's defence. This was also plan B after realising they could not outrun or simply avoid the tyranid forces.
How does this book handle it?
First Ward removes any excuse of unfamiliarity by claiming that Iyanden had fought the tyranids before that point. Battling them on multiple occasions over the years. Only that they were instead "tendrils of the Hive Mind's awareness, groping blindly through space" and not an entire Hive Fleet. Again more than once, this is not simply referring to the defense of Halathel. This means one of two things: Either that the second wave of tyranids somehow arrived before the Imperium realised yet Iyanden didn't bother to warn anyone. Or worse, that they had seen the Hive Mind in psychic projections prior to the Hive Fleet Kraken's arrival and did not bother to tell even the other eldar craftworlds. Take your pick.
Continuing with his theme of arrogance and stupidity, Ward then writes the leaders of Iyanden as believing that they could weather this storm like any other and grossly underestimated the threat they faced. No mention is given to any efforts to outrun or even avoid the Hive Fleet, none to any major efforts to fortify the craftworld or even preparations such as amassing the world's entire population into a huge army as before. Instead the codex states that they believed "their armies and fleet could vanquish the Great Devourer."
This goes about as well as you would expect.
By the time the battle was over "Iyanden Craftworld was reduced to ruin. The craftworld's armies and fleet were all but gone, destroyed in the relentless Tyranid advance. Countless billions were slain, whole bloodlines and families lost forever; the living were outnumbered many times over by the dead."
... I'm sorry, billions? Yes, apparently Ward decided that the eldar required a considerable population boost. Rather than having a few hundred million of their kind in total, apparently the more prominent craftworlds now have a bigger populace than the average Imperial planet. Now, this might not be so big a problem if the eldar's entire theme and background wasn't based upon the fact they're a dying race! As with the last headscratching moment, this has been done for little reason and will ultimately add nothing to the book nor mythos as a whole.
As if Ward was desperate for his army to garner sympathy after his efforts to present them as arrogantly stupid, Beil-Tan abandons them. With their thousands of year old oh-so-strong alliance suddenly meaning nothing, the other craftworld cuts all ties with them. Why? Because Iyanden has been damaged beyond repair and can no longer maintain a relentless war against the enemies of the eldar. Despite the fact this book's very existence and rules for them going to war outright contradicts this fact.
Now all of that up there? This is just how the book starts. Yeah, pages five and six; the introduction to the army. Things only get worse from here, usually every time Ward tries to actually expand upon things mentioned on these pages. Any time he opts to try and flesh out any aspect of the craftworld he only succeeds in dumbing down its mythos and ruining any complex or interesting concepts. Assuming he even manages to get any basic part of what he's writing right.
Follow The Links To Read The Review In Full
This level of incompetence is something I would not expect from this publisher even on its worst days.
Let's make this clear: Games Workshop has had a successful history with releases alien races, the eldar specifically, of late. They have a vast amount of talent which can deal with them competently.
They have Phil Kelley, the best writer GW has at the moment, who loves the eldar and created a book for them which stayed strong over several editions despite a lack of updates.
They have Jeremy Vetock, writer of Codex: Tau Empire, the single best alien codex we have had since Codex: Dark Eldar. One which has been near universally lauded and highly regarded in terms of both rules and background.
This is the first major supplement of its type. One which needs to sell fans on the idea, needs to be well written and crafted to a degree where players will accept the high price. Well written enough to accept the limited availability, some of the problems behind the idea and a writer who can take advantage of the additional space. Giving the faction the fluff it deserves and making people want to buy it. They need to get this written as close to perfection as humanly possible.
So, who did they give it to?
Matt Ward.
The strategically shaved ape. The one screaming about how he is the best writer in the business and furiously pleasing himself over images of Guilliman. The man who has succeeding in doing at least as much damage to the hobby as the endless price hikes. The same one who has repeatedly proven for over the better part of a decade that he has no writing talent in any area of tabletop wargaming.
Now, i'm all for giving someone a second chance. Or an twelfth by this point. Yet they're choosing to risk an entirely new line of books on a writer who has only proven himself disliked and incapable of writing good background lore. One who most recently A) Succeeded in an act of massive character assassination by turning the High Elves into the
I have honest questions for Games Workshop by this point: Is Ward the brother-in-law of someone high up in the company? Is he blackmailing the CEO and chairman to keep printing his stuff? By this point I would have more respect for them if he had illicit photos of depraved activities than knowing they willingly stamped "approved" on one more major balls up by Ward.
Still, I can't hold this off for much longer. Let's take a look at everything wrong with this monstrosity starting with its rules.
Rules
Now, the supplement has already earned the ire of a few websites due to the number of pages which actually place emphasis upon special rules. Those relevant specifically to 40K in general, making Iyanden an individual force and making it a distinct army to field.
Out of the one-hundred-and-ten pages, how many do you think actually focus upon special rules, army stats and items. The answer: Two. Two entire pages which actually try to make the army distinct and stand out from the book it is based upon. Bare in mind that, whatever its quality, the last time he did something like this with Codex: Blood Angels a good half of its pages gave it stats, unique units and a distinct playing style. Here you have perhaps 1,500 words in total to do the same, including basic details such as permitting wraithguard being taken as troops etc. It also goes without saying that it's pretty bad.
Now, being fair some of his rules and equipment are at the moment far more tame than usual. While this might be due to a lack of interest in the subject matter (probably due to the lack of excuses to throw in "for they can never be Ultramarines" at some point) a few of his rules and items aren't as balls out broken as you'd expect. They don't suddenly give all of your units jetpacks or the ability to ignore plasma weapons, but without that it shows another big flaw on Ward's part: His rules are childishly simplistic.
The Grey Knights, Blood Angels and Necrons were infamous as they required no actual skill to play. All were so hideously overpowered that all you need to do is run forwards with the right units and the enemy will die in front of you. Unlike Tau Empire or even the Imperial Guard for all the crap Cruddance gets, you don't need to think that much to put together a neigh unstoppable list because his rules were so blatantly broken. Here he's unable to use a lot of that sheer raw power and many items come across as downright generic. Something completely unremarkable you'd usually overlook and forget about anywhere else because they require no thought or timing on the player's part.
The Wraithforge Stone for example is one item which just gives back a wraithguard or wraithlord model within 6" of its wielder on a 3+. Similarly the Guardian Helm of Xallathon just allows for automatic passes on "Look Out, Sir!" tests and for wraithguard to accept challenges. All you need to do is just remember you have them and you get a slight bonus once in a while. They don't stack in effect with anything else or allow for ingenious tactics on the part of the army's player. This isn't to say that every rule needs to be complex or some intelligence test, but these like many in the book are simply bland.
Of course it doesn't take much to get Ward back into his old "lol, insta-kill everything" ways.
Many of the other items (Gifts of Asuryan to be specific) just rely upon you getting halfway decent rolls to slaughter everything in sight. One highlight of this is the Soulshrive, a master crafted close combat weapon which is S3 AP2 and gains a point of strength every time you kill something. So you can throw an Autarch at a group of gaunts with some Striking Scorpions and have the guy walk out with a weapon between S7 and 10 if you're lucky.
Then you have the Spear of Teuthlas (yes, Arienal's special weapon) a singing spear which is range 18" S9 AP - with rending, fleshbane, armourbane and everything you'd ask for to up and murder something quickly.
These are two examples of several very killy weapons which are definitely something which are far too easily to use and cripple the enemy. It's just a case of being in vaguely the right place and the right time. Admittedly this is an upgrade of what we would have seen from this author before, but the lack of skill required to really implement them in games is very eyebrow raising and they're not the only ones. Others such as the Celestial Lance emphasizing only upon turning its carrier into a single minded combat monster, not enhancing the army as a whole.
There are very few items and rules beyond dictating how wraithguard now take up troops choices and the like actually help to bolster the army overall. Not just individual units or specifically give it elements to bolster your characters. Having armies driven purely by extremely buffed HQ units was something 40K was supposed once to be moving away from in some respects, but here it's just in full force. The few elements which do buff up the army overall are not devoted to specific troops choices but are given entirely over to HQ units.
The first of these is the Shadow Council, a group of up to five Spirit Seers which only take up one HQ slot but still count as Independent Characters. The second is a power each of them has in place of Conceal/Reveal known as Voice of Twilight. Something which gives any wraith unit within a 12" bubble around the caster both Furious Charge and Battle Focus.
These are actually really good ideas and help to cover the army's obvious flaws without breaking anything in a severe way. There's still some elements of risk involved with using them and it gives the army a degree of mobility to make it more familiar to eldar players. The problem is that it again devotes nearly everything of importance to who you have taking up your HQ slots not any Elite or Fast Attack choices.
Even when Ward tries to place more focus upon said units he just ends up turning them into glorified HQ choices with things like the Heroes of Iyanden. A rule which allows a player to declare a wraithknight or wraithlord to be a Warlord without having them take up an HQ slot.
That's more or less it as the devoted army rules go. Two pages of stuff which seems to have either been written by Ward bored out of his skull or determined to repeat the mistakes of the past. Only a handful of elements are actually halfway decent and even then they don't have anything to balance them out and make the Iyanden force ultra-reliant upon which unit choices are leading it.
What do we get beyond this that actually counts towards games? Pages upon pages devoted to Cities of Death rules, scenarios and stuff trying to get you to buy other Games Workshop books. Older codices did have these but it was usually only one or two per book at most, not the vast majority of its content. They didn't need more than that and even then they barely got used. That last detail is the real crux of the problem here.
Having been playing 40K since early 2001, I've seen few games actually make real use of the special scenarios. While you will get a few devoted to certain scenarios and ideas for games which serve as a break from the norm, many will just stick with the few listed in the rulebook. Usually either taking and holding certain areas of the map or more frequently simply shooting/cutting/punching-the-blood-out-of the opposing army in a direct fight. Few if any players will actually feel the need to utilise most of the book if any. At best a store might try to boost it by having a campaign surrounding them but beyond that these are going to be barely used.
The problems with scenarios are only made worse when you consider that many scenarios are devoted to the Battle for Iyanden during the conflicts with Hive Fleet Kraken, the campaign itself is extremely limited. Even if you tried to substitute the one army for another, you're repeatedly going to run into the problem of scenario specific rules designed for eldar and tyranids. Those which are devoted to other factions either feel inconsequential or not very well tied into the plot, usually also being very faction specific and isolated. A problem not helped by having only one scenario for fighting tau, one for other craftworld eldar (don't ask) etc.
When it comes down the the crunch, the Iyanden Codex Supplement is ultimately a huge failure. It has very little which is appealing, few proper rules, very HQ specific items and improvements and only a handful of good ideas. The additional campaign details and ideas are lackluster and very limited, having nothing to make them worth utilising for games. It's even a step down from the Codex: Sisters of Battle printed in a White Dwarf (then never re-printed or officially released in PDF form, thank you so much Games Workshop) and is all around badly written.
Still, this is only part of the book. Because of course the rules are only a part of a codex, with a huge portion always given to the background, history of the army and their place in the universe. So when we look next at the rulebooks of Warhammer 40,000, we'll be looking into how Iyanden fared in its fluff rather than crunch.
Is Ward's fictional creativity any better than his rules? Well here's an early indication of its quality: He uses C.S. Goto's Eldar Prophecy as a basis for how houses work in eldar society.
I wish I were joking.
Lore
There's no easy way to structure this, so let's just go through each problem one at a time:
Iyanden is no longer Iyanden, it's now Beil-Tan lite.
Despite having little details beyond the one event which defined their current diminished state, Crimson Fist syndrome as it's been nicknamed, Iyanden was suggested to be a unique force. Like all the craftworlds it had its own customs, culture and society unique to itself but was supposedly one of the largest of their kind.
Rather than trying to emphasise that, Ward made them obsessed with retaking their old empire and reclaiming the galaxy for their kind. You know, the thing Beil-Tan is best known for. Apparently he was so aware of this that the two craftworlds have now always been in a millennia old super-special-awesome-friends-forever alliance to do this. Every other craftworld having ignored their suggestions to retake the galaxy or even fight to protect the worlds with their ruins. It goes so far as to suggest that every other craftworld was inwardly focused upon its own survival or "higher priorities" for such a grandiose plan.
So yes, this means that every instance of the eldar coming to protect their old secrets, ruins, or even exodites is something only Iyanden or Beil-Tan would do. Ward goes so far as to list Ulthwé and Alaitoc as very specific craftworlds who denied any plan to help others. The latter no dobut in an effort to shoehorn Ward's own retcon about Alaitoc being hell-bent upon fighting the necrons. Meaning that, yes, like Graham McNeill's Ultramarines saga; Ward is apparently trying to render Gav Thorpe's Path of the Eldar series completely non-canon.
This section does at least knowledge that Beil-Tan and Iyanden are opposite ends of the bloody galaxy, yet still has the gall to somehow state that the two could patrol its entirety between them. Yes, they were so brilliant that they were single-handedly protecting the eastern and western rims on their own.
Unfortunately for us there are no breaks on this train, and the stupidity only gets worse with every word.
Despite it as having been a crucial part of each craftworld's design and the core of eldar society, Iyanden are now the first to have learned the use of the infinity circuit. Yes, that thing which has been described as the "wraithbone skeleton of the craftworld itself" which stops spirits being gobbled by Slaanesh? All adapted from Iyanden and a feature added after the fall. What was the infinity circuit's original use? How did Iyanden's spiritseers know how to do this? Why didn't the eldar originally have some plan to protect themselves against the obvious growing corruption? None are answered. Apparently Iyanden was just so good at what they did they learned of this first. It adds nothing to their overall story and is barely commented upon for the rest of the book beyond simple bragging.
At every point tries to emphasise upon their arrogance, pride and does everything short of calling them outright overconfident. No dobut that is to somehow excuse what happens next.
Skimming over a good ten thousand years or so of events, the codex suddenly jumps to the arrival of the tyranids. It then proceeds to make a complete mockery of the army it is trying to show as a competent force.
Let's compare what follows with the fifth edition Codex: Tyranids. While that edition might have had many, many problems the build-up to the Battle of Iyanden is easily one of its best parts. Why? Because it showed the eldar to be competent.
Having been blinded by the Shadow in the Warp which was the tyranid Hive Mind, with only their rangers alerting them to its advance, the eldar spent what little time they had preparing. They knew this was the greatest battle of their lives against a foe of vast power and the book emphasises upon this fact. Fortifying the entire craftworld, they summoned the Avatar, awakened all of their wraith units and prepared effectively the world's entire populace for war. For the twenty days they had prior to its arrival they prepared for a vast conflict, gathering every ship and soldier they could to press into the world's defence. This was also plan B after realising they could not outrun or simply avoid the tyranid forces.
How does this book handle it?
First Ward removes any excuse of unfamiliarity by claiming that Iyanden had fought the tyranids before that point. Battling them on multiple occasions over the years. Only that they were instead "tendrils of the Hive Mind's awareness, groping blindly through space" and not an entire Hive Fleet. Again more than once, this is not simply referring to the defense of Halathel. This means one of two things: Either that the second wave of tyranids somehow arrived before the Imperium realised yet Iyanden didn't bother to warn anyone. Or worse, that they had seen the Hive Mind in psychic projections prior to the Hive Fleet Kraken's arrival and did not bother to tell even the other eldar craftworlds. Take your pick.
Continuing with his theme of arrogance and stupidity, Ward then writes the leaders of Iyanden as believing that they could weather this storm like any other and grossly underestimated the threat they faced. No mention is given to any efforts to outrun or even avoid the Hive Fleet, none to any major efforts to fortify the craftworld or even preparations such as amassing the world's entire population into a huge army as before. Instead the codex states that they believed "their armies and fleet could vanquish the Great Devourer."
This goes about as well as you would expect.
By the time the battle was over "Iyanden Craftworld was reduced to ruin. The craftworld's armies and fleet were all but gone, destroyed in the relentless Tyranid advance. Countless billions were slain, whole bloodlines and families lost forever; the living were outnumbered many times over by the dead."
... I'm sorry, billions? Yes, apparently Ward decided that the eldar required a considerable population boost. Rather than having a few hundred million of their kind in total, apparently the more prominent craftworlds now have a bigger populace than the average Imperial planet. Now, this might not be so big a problem if the eldar's entire theme and background wasn't based upon the fact they're a dying race! As with the last headscratching moment, this has been done for little reason and will ultimately add nothing to the book nor mythos as a whole.
As if Ward was desperate for his army to garner sympathy after his efforts to present them as arrogantly stupid, Beil-Tan abandons them. With their thousands of year old oh-so-strong alliance suddenly meaning nothing, the other craftworld cuts all ties with them. Why? Because Iyanden has been damaged beyond repair and can no longer maintain a relentless war against the enemies of the eldar. Despite the fact this book's very existence and rules for them going to war outright contradicts this fact.
Now all of that up there? This is just how the book starts. Yeah, pages five and six; the introduction to the army. Things only get worse from here, usually every time Ward tries to actually expand upon things mentioned on these pages. Any time he opts to try and flesh out any aspect of the craftworld he only succeeds in dumbing down its mythos and ruining any complex or interesting concepts. Assuming he even manages to get any basic part of what he's writing right.
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July 6, 2013
There is some good writing and backstory in this, but it is not as well executed as the latest Eldar codex. Unless you are an absolute Eldar fanatic, a die-hard fan of Iyanden or have to have every single codex (like me), you can probably pass this one.
The special rules and missions are interesting but they are not spectacular. Other than that, you learn a bit more about Craftworld Iyanden, which is nice.
The special rules and missions are interesting but they are not spectacular. Other than that, you learn a bit more about Craftworld Iyanden, which is nice.
November 12, 2019
The backstory of Craftworld Iyanden, "The Light in the Darkness".
I like the "Space Elves", (Eldar, now Aeldari), of Warhammer 40K.
Iyanden, with its warhosts of spirit-animated warriors in their
colors of yellow and blue, are one of my two favorite Craftworlds.
The few living warriors, fighting alongside the Hosts of the Dead,
Iyanden is the epitome of Aeldari in decline, a force still to be
reckoned with, even as their numbers dwindle!
I like the "Space Elves", (Eldar, now Aeldari), of Warhammer 40K.
Iyanden, with its warhosts of spirit-animated warriors in their
colors of yellow and blue, are one of my two favorite Craftworlds.
The few living warriors, fighting alongside the Hosts of the Dead,
Iyanden is the epitome of Aeldari in decline, a force still to be
reckoned with, even as their numbers dwindle!
February 6, 2023
Interesting read, some clever ideas
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews