Eldar Legion

The Eldar Legion box contains Eldar Warriors supported by Grav-Tanks, which serve as troop transports and main battle tanks.

Contents

220 Miniatures in 2 Poses

• Falcon Grav-Tank with Las-Cannon and Shuriken Cannon (20)
• Eldar Warrior with Shuriken Catapult (200)
• Flag Pole (10)
• 19 × 19 mm Infantry Stand, grey (20)
• 19 × 19 mm Infantry Stand, black (20)

Evaluation

Excellent choice of subject, the Eldar Warriors and their Falcon Grav-Tanks are a well-designed and very elegant looking army for Adeptus Titanicus, Space Marine Epic Battles or any other science fiction wargame for that matter. There are enough figures to recruit five Swooping Hawk or Avenging Warrior detachments for epic tabletop engagements.

Despite their small size, these 6 mm Eldar Warriors may be painted in a variety of attractive uniform colour schemes. The back of the box provides colour printed painting instructions for Eldar Void Watchers, Sunblitz Brotherhood, Black Suns, and Eldritch Raiders chapters and their attendant vehicles. The inside box flap is printed with black-and-white Eldar banners which may be attached to the flag poles, but these are gravity-defying chipboard-like banners with perfect right angles, which appear to be flying in an extremely stiff wind. They are far less attractive than scratchbuilt banners made with a 75° slope and proper folds in the cloth.

The ¾ inch square infantry stands are slotted for five Eldar Warriors each, which conveniently makes the round figure bases disappear flush with the ground level. As a result, there is very little basing work required later. Unfortunately, with five figures on the stand, the perfectly choreographed checkerboard formation looks so un-military that we have decided against it. Instead, we mount only three Eldar Warriors on each stand, in a proper wedge (Ger. Keil) or two up (Breitkeil) formation, and fill the unused slots with terrain. This works, because figures do not act individually in Space Marine Epic Battles. The smallest tactical unit is the infantry stand, and the actual number of figures on a stand is irrelevant to the game.

The plastic infantry stands are 1 mm thick and they have bevelled edges, making it nearly impossible to pick them up without actually taking hold of the figures on the stand. While this may work for relatively sturdy Space Marines in power armour, the Eldar Warriors are much too delicate to do this. One workaround might be to place pebbles, tree stumps or similar pieces of terrain in the rear corners of each stand. Alternatively, make your own stands from 1.5 mm plywood or cardstock without bevelled edges.

Since there is only a single figure pose in the set, command stands including an Eldar Warlock need to be marked with a banner to identify them in the game. While beautifully painted banners are nice to have, mounting them on telephone poles at the back of the command stand needlessly detracts from the overall military appearance of the unit. We've decided to convert our own standard-bearers by inserting a 0.3 mm piano wire flagpole into an individual figure base and attaching a smaller hand painted banner to it. With only three figures on an Eldar troop stand, the command stand can be further distinguished by using the standard-bearer as the fourth figure on the stand, possibly placed very close to the figure actually representing the Eldar Warlock.

The Falcon Grav-Tank can be made to skim the battlefield by mounting it on a short length of 0.6 mm piano wire and inserting that into a plywood, plastic or cardboard base.

The Eldar Legion is an excellent army to paint and play with. The miniatures are quick and easy to paint well, and the beautifully sculpted Falcon Grav-Tank looks nicely futuristic.

Sci-Fi Miniatures