Hi all guys.
Today I´m gonna show you my first painted mini for my eldar army: The Autarch (What the plural for autarch is? Autarches, Autarchs or Autarch?).
Things are that the Autarch is supposed to be the pinnacle of eldar fighting, a guy that walked over all the military paths, mastered them and now uses his skills to lead entire eldar armies into war, but the truth is they are ignored by players in lieu of the more classic, useful and psychic powered farseers, or the burning brass encarnation of the bloody hand god that is the Avatar (not the james cameron Tau-esque guys, the ORIGINAL Avatar of Khaine).
I think the Autarch as they are in the codex has a pair of flaws.
First of all, they cannot purchase Exarch powers, which, in my opinion would be cool, fluffy and would make the autarch a very customizable unit (although some players would tweak him into an almost broken combat monster), and will give the Autarch a more prominent role, as well as more survival capabilities.
I´m not saying that they give him the option to buy full array of exarch powers, just some of them limited in number or create even Autarch powers.
The second flaw is the partial lack of equipment. Why, being the peak of the eldar military, cannot they access to exarch equipment?
For example, let them equip with a Triskelion, or warp spiders exarch´s dual web spinners, or a fire pike, etc, that will make them even more customizable and more valuable units in the field.
Or even make some unique Autarch items with rules â la Warhammer Fantasy (I mean, no the classig +1str power weapon or doubles the strength counts as a power weapon kind of weapons.
Thinking a bit I can tell you, apart of solving those flaws (in my opinion, of course), what I would make to the Autarch to invigorate it a bit.
.- If GW want the Autarch to be mostly a leader, then, give him some abilities to do so, for instance, an orders system as in the imperial guard command squad, but call them Warcries or Rune commands or whatever eldar-fluffy and make the autarch affect the behavior and performance of the units in his army... that is what a leader should do, and don´t limit his abilities to a +1 to the reserves roll.
.- Another thing, that is as old and fluffy as the eldar itselves are the names of their leaders, so, take advance of this fluffy and well stablished feature and make a surname system similar to the Space Wolves Sagas system plus Wood Elves hero path system, allowing them to take or compose surnames that gives the autarch some abilities example given:
.-Windrunner: upgrades his fleet of foot rule.
.- Bladeweaver: upgrades his WS skill
.- Dragonrider: alters his skill in a bike.
.- Warphunter: adds some abilities when equipped with a warp generator.
.- Packlord: gives him some leathership tricks.
And so on, something that make us seem the Autarch as the millenia trained combat and tactics master that he should be.
.- The last thing is add another entry in the codex and add an higher level of autarch, that is: The Eldar Prince, equal to the Autarch but better (kind of captain/chapter master difference), which is a concept introduced with Yriel so it won´t be something out of the sleeve.
Apart from this, I like the Autarch model a lot so I painted one as the first mini of my eldar army:
Black underfit with grey blue armour, "dark white" details, purple and white markings, purple bandannas and red or purple jewels... and that´s it.
The base needs a little revamp, the paint was torn off because I used the base to handle it while painting and it was painted grey and the bases of my eldar are light brown.
A shot of his backpack so you can see the markings that will be army-wide used.
Also the chunk of metal in which he is standing is supposed to be part of an imperial tank, so I am tempted to paint it in the colours of the space marines chapter of one of my friends (almost everyone of us have a space marine army, that are:
1 comment:
He looks pretty sweet! Great job on all of the gems, they came out well.
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