New Mymeara FW book changes Eldar fluff?

[Theocracity]

At the earliest the vast majority of the IOM forces were weeks and month away from being deployed.
A period of weeks passed before the main attack and the moment the IOM sensors were brought down. Plenty of time to have their huge army poped out of the webway closest from the phoenix lord location and take the phoenix lord tomb and leave, before the IOM can mount an effective counterattack. Minimal loses for the eldar, IOM, less bad blood and brigdes burned between the IOM and eldar, allowing the eldar to use the IOM in the future more likely.
What was written the eldar recovery of the phoenix lord was a near loss, the eldar lost lots of their warriors and warmachines, and created unneded bad blood between the IOM and eldar making future relashions more impossible. And all this without being needed for the success of the recovery operation.

It is like the authors want their cake and eat the cake. They want big battles between forces with almost even odds of success, even if realistically ,because of how their army operates , one side would achieve their objectives and leave without the second side being able to do anything to hurt or stop.

Realistically with the eldar advantages they would always win against the IOM on the ground.
And the writers couldn't find reasons for the eldar to delay the completion of the objective(that can be completed in hours) for couple of weeks so that the IOM can bring their forces forward. It is like the eldar stayed to try to kill as many humans as possible even if this was not needed or counterproductive.

That makes an awful lot of assumptions. Perhaps the one-chance-can't-fail nature of the objective couldn't be risked, and a full frontal assault - no matter how overwhelming - had the chance of damaging their access to it. Luring the IoM's forces far from the true objective lessened the risk of the mon-keigh doing something stupid and unknowingly endangering it. It took weeks because the IG is a dull creature - it takes time and a lot of goading to get it truly moving. Sure that brought additional forces to the fight, but to a dying race more concerned with its mythic legacy than its material present it probably was worth the risk.

Also it's possible the deal with the Corsairs involved some level of necessary carnage.

[eldargal]

What Theocracity said. If they hadn't lured the IoM forces away from the objective they could have ended up bogged down by an unexpectedly fierce defense and caught in a terrible position when those reinforcements arrived anyway.

[thor2006]

That makes an awful lot of assumptions. Perhaps the one-chance-can't-fail nature of the objective couldn't be risked, and a full frontal assault - no matter how overwhelming - had the chance of damaging their access to it. Luring the IoM's forces far from the true objective lessened the risk of the mon-keigh doing something stupid and unknowingly endangering it. It took weeks because the IG is a dull creature - it takes time and a lot of goading to get it truly moving. Sure that brought additional forces to the fight, but to a dying race more concerned with its mythic legacy than its material present it probably was worth the risk.

Also it's possible the deal with the Corsairs involved some level of necessary carnage.

What Theocracity said. If they hadn't lured the IoM forces away from the objective they could have ended up bogged down by an unexpectedly fierce defense and caught in a terrible position when those reinforcements arrived anyway.

There were weeks before the start of the eldar plan and the arrival of the IG and fleet in force. The task could be completed in hours(a few hundreds or thousands of km) from the nearest webway portal . The eldar have access to temporary webways portals allowing to close the distance even more. The huge force the eldar had could have attacked the phoenix lord tomb , and the local PDF and IG forces could not even stop the mass eldar army(they were more concern with holding and protecting the big settlements). After the phoenix lord was recovered the eldar could have entered the webway and be gone before the IOM could even heard about the eldar attacks.
There were days ,or weeks before the local government found out about the raids and the call for reinforcements went to the IOM. Plenty of time to get in and get out.
There were weeks before the Inquisitor arrived.

EDIT

Or they could use the orbital superiority they had and bombed any IOM formation that moved against the tomb while eldar troops and vehicles and aerial transports, teleporters would be used to capture and extract the phoenix lord and leave by the webway. Allowing afterward the eldar ships to leave and escape the more ponderous human ships.

[eldargal]

Only if you assume the Eldar could have achieved the objective with the existing planetary forces virtually sitting on it and without easy striking distance. Eldar can't withstand prolonged firefights, they coudl have been beaten off at the objective point. Instead they forced the Imperium to spread its forces accross multiple regions and waste time chasing their forces down. Your assumption that they could have been in an out in hours before the Imperium could respond is just pure speculation. Maybe if everything went absolutely right, but when doe that happen in war? It would also make for a stupidly boring book, remember that it is the Imperium that stars, not Eldar. Eldar turned up, devestated the world, held their own, achieved their objective and withdrew on their terms. It could very easily have been far, far worse.

[Theocracity]

There were weeks before the start of the eldar plan and the arrival of the IG and fleet in force. The task could be completed in hours(a few hundreds or thousands of km) from the nearest webway portal . The eldar have access to temporary webways portals allowing to close the distance even more. The huge force the eldar had could have attacked the phoenix lord tomb , and the local PDF and IG forces could not even stop the mass eldar army. After the phoenix lord was recovered the eldar could have entered the webway and be gone before the IOM could even heard about the eldar attacks.
There were days ,or weeks before the local government found out about the raids and the call for reinforcements went to the IOM. Plenty of time to get in and get out.
There were weeks before the Inquisitor arrived.

EDIT

Or they could use the orbital superiority they had and bombed any IOM formation that moved against the tomb while eldar troops and vehicles and aerial transports, teleporters would be used to capture and extract the phoenix lord and leave by the webway. Allowing afterward the eldar ships to leave and escape the more ponderous human ships.

Having any armed humans near the tomb meant that the Phoenix Lord was at risk. A few things that could have happened:

1) Sergeant: "The Eldar are coming! Quick men, let's occupy this seemingly random building and dig in! If they storm us, we can fall back into the secret tomb-like tunnels underground. They'll never get us out!"

2) Artillery Sergeant: "The Eldar have invaded the city! They seem to be focused on this one seemingly random building. Target on that location: I want enough earthshaker rounds to level the whole block!"

3) Techpriest: "Now is the perfect time to test how angry this fusion core's machine spirit will get if I remove all safety limiters. This is perfectly safe as long as my power supply is uninterrupted. Oh no, the Eldar have attacked and my power supply is interrupted! *boom*

4)Imperial truck driver: "Derp derp, I'm hauling a huge truck full of deadly chemicals! Ahh Eldar, panic! Oh no, I accidentally all of the chemicals into that seemingly random building! They're in the secret tunnels and everything!"

Basically, as long as any humans were nearby, the objective was at risk. It took weeks to get them away from it, which lured more powerful imperial forces to the battle but still kept the objective safe. To the Eldar, the lives lost were not as big of a deal as the chance of permenantly losing another piece of their legacy.

[thor2006]

Only if you assume the Eldar could have achieved the objective with the existing planetary forces virtually sitting on it and without easy striking distance. Eldar can't withstand prolonged firefights, they coudl have been beaten off at the objective point. Instead they forced the Imperium to spread its forces accross multiple regions and waste time chasing their forces down. Your assumption that they could have been in an out in hours before the Imperium could respond is just nonsense.

There were days before the first settlements were slaughtered and the fact was found. There were days after that ,that the IOM found out that the eldar were responsible. At that time the sensor blackout was in. At that point the call for help was send because the forces in system could not defend even the big settlements strong points from an eldar attack.At that time the PDF were more concern with protecting the big settlements than fighting the huge eldar army. The plan was to allow the eldar to come to the big settlements and attack them , because there were no forces to engage the eldar without fortifications.
The fact that the huge eldar army that had the ability to split in multiple groups and still pose a threat to the big IOM forces could not fight and brush aside the weak forces that were in system is insane. They had titans ,superheavies ,orbital support and it took a huge IOM army to fight them on near equal ground. They could use their initial fleet and orbital superiority to kill any huge PDF and IG force that were trying to leave the strong points.
With sensors down the PDF didn't know what happened outside their big settlements. The eldar could have marched their army, use teleporters, ship landers, non permanent webway portals to bring the army near the tomb unseen and undetected by the IOM and then launch a quick attack,recover the phoenix lord and fade away before the slow ponderous news of the eldar attack (by courier and it would take days). It also the IG and PDF command would not attribute the eldar attack anything more than another eldar attack against low defense ,outlying ,marginal gain small settlement.
The initial big settlements and the phoenix lord tomb were thousands of km away from each other, and any eldar webway were at most hundreds of km away from the tomb.

[Theocracity]

Let me use an offbeat metaphor that can be made without any assumptions of a fictional army's capabilities and limitations.

Let say you have a big, goofy, clumsy dog. This dog is the Imperium. The dog is fast asleep almost on top of an egg (the Phoenix lord). You (the Eldar) need to get the egg away from the dog. Your only concern is this job.

You know that it's within your power to go up to the dog, shove it aside, and pick up the egg. But you know that this will take some effort as the dog is heavy, and in the process it could randomly decide to roll over, flail about, or do something stupid in a way that could crush the egg.

Therefore, you whistle for it, show it it's chew toy, and say "come here boy!" This may take some time as the dog is slow to wake up, but eventually it will overcome its laziness an get up. This way runs the risk of getting slobbered on by an overexcited dog, but it ensures the dog is nowhere near to damaging the egg.

The Eldar were okay with getting slobbered on if it meant getting what was really important.

[KingDeath]

Let me use an offbeat metaphor that can be made without any assumptions of a fictional army's capabilities and limitations.

Let say you have a big, goofy, clumsy dog. This dog is the Imperium. The dog is fast asleep almost on top of an egg (the Phoenix lord). You (the Eldar) need to get the egg away from the dog. Your only concern is this job.

You know that it's within your power to go up to the dog, shove it aside, and pick up the egg. But you know that this will take some effort as the dog is heavy, and in the process it could randomly decide to roll over, flail about, or do something stupid in a way that could crush the egg.

Therefore, you whistle for it, show it it's chew toy, and say "come here boy!" This may take some time as the dog is slow to wake up, but eventually it will overcome its laziness an get up. This way runs the risk of getting slobbered on by an overexcited dog, but it ensures the dog is nowhere near to damaging the egg.

The Eldar were okay with getting slobbered on if it meant getting what was really important.

The big and nasty dog was actualy far away and wouldn't bother to show up until several weeks had passed.
A more fitting metaphor would be that of a tiny puppy, which is near your egg. You could walk to the puppy, kick it into the next city and claim your egg or you could wait for the
puppy's 200 pounds direwolf mom to arrive...in order to "lure her away" from your egg.

Forgeworld is quite bad at actualy depicting sensible military campaigns in their Imperial Armour books once one applies even the most basic logic.
This applied to the otherwise amusing Vraks campaign (herpderp, we are sending Krieg soldiers from half a galaxy away instead of simply taking local forces...)
it applied to the Badab War ( and then spess muhreen chapter xy conquered the planet of Stupidis V all by themselfs because the Tyrant of Badab forgot to recruit more than a few thousand militionaries...) and it applies to their most recent book.

[Theocracity]

That wasn't the point of my metaphor. I'm saying that it didn't matter to the Eldar how dangerous the Imperium was to them; what mattered was how dangerous the Imperium could be, even unintentionally, to the Phoenix Lord - especially during the panic of a direct attack.

As for things not making logical sense...well, that's 40K for ya .

[Lord Squidar]

A pheonix lord is worth absolutely EVERYTHING to the Eldar to retrieve, even at a really really high cost in lives. Don't forget the prophecies about Feugan calling together the phoenix lords for the Rhanda Dandra, the fight to end all fights at the end of time. Some of the eldar, like a particularly pious farseer from Alaitoc say, would wholeheartedly believe that if a lost Phoenix lord had been found, he would need to be liberated for this. Although immortal, if the dude was locked up in some vault on Titan and used for experiments, the end times would be delayed until such time as he would be freed. It could be that the farseers are predicting this time will come soon, and so this one dude in a tomb seems very very very important to me =)

[TheDoctor]

Well, I know how to build Software. I know how Windows operates to the core and such stuff. That doesn't mean I can create one myself or a big group of people on my knowledge will be able to reconstruct Windows 95 exactly the way it was. Windows 95 is just 17 years old and humanity didn't suffer from a destruction of all the core worlds. I'm not sure a guy with a laptop on board of a holiday-cruiser-ship would be able to build up something like Windows 95 either. He lacks various things to complete them.
Bonesinger Exarch or not, but even those guys need training and some systems might be lost indeed. What's the problem? The Eldar suffered from their fall. Why should all technology have survived? And actually we know for fact that it didn't, because Titans had been PRESITGE objects in the past, not used weapons! Wars had been fought autonomously by drones, same like every labor work. Not by living Eldar and not by Wraith-constructs either. One might now argue that Craftworlders don't use that because it lead to the Fall in the first place. Well... I wonder what's better, sending Guardians to the front or drones. I guess even Eldar would be smart enough to differ between dire need and pure lazyness. So... the tech *must* be lost or I overestimate the smartness of Eldar by far.

But the thing is, the current Eldar can just ASK the guy who originally built it how he built it. The Eldar have access to various Maiden and Exodite worlds, so raw resources shouldn't be too much of a problem (granted, there might be).
And the bonesinger exarch doesn't need training, he is literally the guy who made Windows 95, Windows 1.0, etc.

So, I really am having a hard time seeing how the Eldar could just "forget" how to build stuff.

Also, you compare a craftworld to a holiday cruise ship. The majority of the craftworlds were purpose built to get the hell away from the fall, so I'm assuming they had the foresight to pack instructions.


As to the military tactics of the Eldar, my only bone of contention is:
-How the hell did the farseers not see that the Colonel guy was going to blow up the mountain? Yeah, you can stick in "but the Eldar didn't want the humans to remain alive", but the destruction of all of those Soulstones? Really?

[Vandur Last]

Thor2006 just said what I was itching to type after those unbelievable comments some people made in defense of the scale of the operation.

I'd also like to second the idea that unless Eldar super heavies, titans and wraithguard were constructed BEFORE the Fall there is no way they should be losing the ability to make them. I seriously doubt that they are from before the Fall otherwise they would probably be immensely more powerful, as well as having been unneeded by the Eldar who at the peak of thier power would not have needed such vehicles, especially the wraith-constructs

Also I love that Direwolf and puppy metaphor. Funny and accurate.
I mean, they go to great lengths to explain in multiple books how slow and ponderous the IOM is Nd how it can take decades for a response, let alone reinforcements to arrive. Then in this book they some how hav a huge army with ships, titans and marines that shows up faster than the Eldar can step through a we way portal.

[Hendarion]

Both sides may have their points, but I still tend to agree with those "the Eldar were portayed wrong" side. Get in, punch them all in the face, grab the Lord and leave.

BUT! Let me be a bit of a devil's advocate here:

If you would write the book like that, it would have been:
1) only 2 pages long
2) without any playable scenario that could even resemble anything like a balanced battle
3) without any reason to deploy Phantom Titans

Maybe the entire thing should have been started completely different then anyway. Like the IG unknowingly having a well defended bastion on top of the lost shrine which indeed requires brute force with massive armies on both sides right from the start.

[Vandur Last]

Hendarion is right. The book would not have worked if the current scenario had been portrayed correctly. The author should have come up with something more plausible, as suggested above. Maybe the Phoenix Lords tomb should have been underneath a heavily fortified complex on another world, which only became vulnerable when it's defenders we're stripped to be added to the force on Betalis.

[eldargal]

That may work for a bunch of soulstones or an artifact you want to keep out of IoM hands, but this was a Phoenix Lord. Why risk losing the chance of recovering a demi-god when you could expend a bit more effort and make absolutely certain.

Nope, I still maintain this is people nitpicking for the sake of it when we should be damned grateful it was as good as it was and the Eldar weren't just used as cannon fodder to make some idiot Space Marines look good. It also smacks of people refusing to believe that Eldar can have setbacks, just because you can predict the future with some accuracy doesn't mean everything is going to go your way. I think it stems from people being under the mistaken idea that somehow the Eldar were the protagonists. They were not, they were the antagonists, they were always going to be given a run ofr their money. Trying to argue for a more 'plausible' situation is just ridiculous. If you want a situation that doesn't have the Imperium putting up a credible defence and some things not going against th Eldar you are going to have to write it yourself or wait for Codex: Eldar, it is never going to happen in an IA book.

Both sides may have their points, but I still tend to agree with those "the Eldar were portayed wrong" side. Get in, punch them all in the face, grab the Lord and leave.

BUT! Let me be a bit of a devil's advocate here:

If you would write the book like that, it would have been:
1) only 2 pages long
2) without any playable scenario that could even resemble anything like a balanced battle
3) without any reason to deploy Phantom Titans

Maybe the entire thing should have been started completely different then anyway. Like the IG unknowingly having a well defended bastion on top of the lost shrine which indeed requires brute force with massive armies on both sides right from the start.

[thor2006]

That may work for a bunch of soulstones or an artifact you want to keep out of IoM hands, but this was a Phoenix Lord. Why risk losing the chance of recovering a demi-god when you could expend a bit more effort and make absolutely certain.

Nope, I still maintain this is people nitpicking for the sake of it when we should be damned grateful it was as good as it was and the Eldar weren't just used as cannon fodder to make some idiot Space Marines look good. It also smacks of people refusing to believe that Eldar can have setbacks, just because you can predict the future with some accuracy doesn't mean everything is going to go your way.

I love any xeno having setbacks against the IOM, but the fact how eldar fight(combat doctrine stated by the codex), the webway and temporary webways, and the ability for farseeing up to a point,better technology against WWII,Vietnam ,popular imagination Soviet Style fighting doctrine of the IOM it should have the eldar wining or accomplishing their objectives all the time with almost no exceptions.
Either the portail of the battle by the FG is idiotic, or IOM doesn't fight as their codex says, or the eldar are idiots not utilizing their full potential or caring about their soldiers and sometimes objectives in the pursuit of a good fight. Maybe they are more like the orks than they might be willing admit and think.

[eldargal]

The last thing we need is the webway being turned into a deus ex machina to let the Eldar get away with everything easily. Not to mention that from memory the warp gates were near the poles and the caverns/mines with Irrilyth were not.
I agree, in most match ups the Eldar should achieve their objectives very easily, but we are never going to hear about that in an IA book, because it would be boring for anyone who isn't an Eldar player. So we hear about an incident where hte IoM puts up a decent defense but the Eldar still achieve their objectives and don't come out of it looking like idiots like they usually do. That alone is worth a giant tick of approval. I'm not arguing it is perfect, there were missed opportunities and a few annoyances but honeslty I think picking scale as one of them is just silly.

[thor2006]

The last thing we need is the webway being turned into a deus ex machina to let the Eldar get away with everything easily. Not to mention that from memory the warp gates were near the poles and the caverns/mines with Irrilyth were not.
I agree, in most match ups the Eldar should achieve their objectives very easily, but we are never going to hear about that in an IA book, because it would be boring for anyone who isn't an Eldar player. So we hear about an incident where hte IoM puts up a decent defense but the Eldar still achieve their objectives and don't come out of it looking like idiots like they usually do. That alone is worth a giant tick of approval. I'm not arguing it is perfect, there were missed opportunities and a few annoyances but honeslty I think picking scale as one of them is just silly.

Ok, I see your point.
But give a modern first world military the capabilities of the eldar and give this objective and they will always win in a much better way without the need for taking casualties or even waiting for IOM reinforcements.

If you think that the eldar look like idiots in most of the fluff , I would point that most of the fluff makes humans look like retards, and not realistic at all.

But as I said any victory for the IOM against xeno that is not phiric is good for me.

[Vandur Last]

That nitpicking comment is starting to be insulting. We are discussing what we think may or may not be plausible in a fictional scenario with predefined combatants. If you don't want to participate in that, don't.

You're also ignoring the repeated explanation that the Imperium didn't have any remotely threatening forces anywhere near the tomb. Hell they only had threatening forced on the PLANET because the Eldar prosecuted the opening of the war in the dumbest way possible.

If the author wanted it to play out like this she should have said that this is one of the many worlds that have no access through the webway. I'm not saying the Eldar have or should have no drawbacks and failures, just that the scenario described in this book should have played out very differently.

[Shamana]

Hendarion is right. The book would not have worked if the current scenario had been portrayed correctly. The author should have come up with something more plausible, as suggested above. Maybe the Phoenix Lords tomb should have been underneath a heavily fortified complex on another world, which only became vulnerable when it's defenders we're stripped to be added to the force on Betalis.

I agree with that. Remember, Betalis III was supposed to be pretty much worthless. The Imperium had relatively little interest in it, and thus didn't put that much of a garrison. The Eldar pretty much had an overwhelming advantage because of the way the game was set. The book described the fighting in such a way that negated that advantage, so the fight could be tense, balanced and epic. This could all have been avoided if the Phoenix lord was located on a fortress world, where the Imperium already had large militaries, many allies, and so on - and both the Imperium and the Eldar could play to their strengths. Heck, if you want a big fight that you don't have to wring the plot through hoops for, you could have just had the eldar attack a different planet (i.e. Belsavis IV) or even different system.

Yeah, overall, it wasn't as bad as the way Eldar were portrayed in the SM or Necron codex, but it wasn't all that great either. Personally, I thought that whoever made up that battle plan wasan idiot. They sacrificed their troops in a big fight with the Imperium, where they could have accomplished their objective much faster and with much lower loss of life. Could this quick strike have risks for the strike team? Sure, but what they eventually did had risks as well.

Remember, having the Eldar being cunning and winning doesn't mean the Imperium loses or is made to look like schmucks. Belsavis wasn't Taris. Heck, at Belsavis III, the Imperium won at least as much as the Eldar did. The Eldar objective was to recover the Phoenix Lord, which htey did - at a significant loss of life (for them); the Imperium's objective was to protect their hold of the planet and drive the Eldar back, which they also did. The loss of life or equipment wasn't anything big for the Imperium, and they got some valuable intelligence. Fights between the Imperium and the Eldar are sometimes like that - both sides consider themselves the victors, as they both accomplish their objectives.