Uh, no, rather Ward just decided to turn them a similar version of Biel-Tan while completely ignoring/walking all over other parts of the Eldar Fluff. Actual good Eldar fluff is Path of the Eldar (certainly not anything written by C.S. Goto.
That article is terrible. It straight up lies about the explanation given for the collapse of the alliance between Biel-Tan and Iyanden. The fact that Iyanden had faced nids before and easily beaten them actually made sense of their arrogance because they had a precedent set. Ward also specifies the shadow in the warp is a reason why they couldn't accurately foresee the mistake they were making. Before they just took on an unknown enemy with confidence for no reason. The article writer also seems pretty cluless about basic fluff and thinks Wraithlords can't give orders and thinks Eldrad warning Iyanden was something Ward came up with. And how are they anything like Biel-Tan? All Eldar want to see the Eldar race reborn, but see different means of doing it. Iyanden believe in engineering a new God and Biel-Tan believe in retaking the Maiden Worlds. It's like saying all craftworlds are the same because they fight Slaanesh. There are many reasons to hate Ward. A supplement that made Iyanden not entirely about being eaten is not one of them. And Path of the Eldar? The book series where a protag becomes an exarch after killing a SINGLE ork and the entire transformation process is completely glossed over due to terrible pacing? The series where a craftworld somehow can't outrun an Imperial navy? The series where Gav Thorpe has zero sense of scale and one chapter of marines is able to turn the tides in a battle against an entire craftworld (which have enough firepower to route a sector fleet) and farseers that are so incompetent that librarians read their minds? The series where Gav Thorpe can't stay consistent with how war-masks work and has his supposedly focused main character constantly get distracted mid battle and not pay attention? The series with that hilariously awkward flirting sequence with the female scorpion? The books where becoming an exarch means you throw ninja poses at passers by without realising it? You nitpick Ward but accept that clusterfuck?
LOL, Dakka you made my day with that summary of the Path of the Eldar I know I shouldn't be laughing since it's all true, but still I can stand up for Ward with you. I really enjoyed the Iyanden supplement and I would love to see more such in-depth lore development for the other craftworlds, especially those less known. As for Thorpe, I remember he did a very good job as a developer in TT WFB. The 6th edition Armybooks for High and Dark Elves are classic in my opinion. He also did an amazing job as the lead developer of the Storm of Chaos campaign back in the day. Having said that, I must also add - he's a shitty writer, in my opinion. He really should stick to development.
Which has not changed here. In fact, it's turned into the very thing you just described. Previously Iyanden's war against the tyranids was something they could not avoid, something which they could not avoid nor intercept before their arrival. They were only given word at the last moment, and as a result attempted to fortify the entire craftworld with effectively everything they had, preparing for the fight of their very existence. Here this boils down to "lol, space locusts we easily kill" even in the face of everyone, including Eldrad Ulthran, telling them they need to take this seriously or they are screwed. The former interpretation had a people who had survived the worst kind of storm imaginable and beaten the odds thanks to serious preparation, a last minute rescue and realising the tyranids were a major threat which had emerged on their doorstep. The latter turned them into laughing fools who ignored all warnings the tyranids were coming in countless numbers, ignoring any past experience with the Great Devourer, and needing to be rescued as a result. One was competent, the other turned Iyanden into a collection of gibbering halfwits. The writer no doubt thought he was being clever, as if he needed to repeat something similar to The Fall with their hubris overcoming them. While I do agree that (much like many factions such as the Crimson Fists) Iyanden did need fleshing out and developing beyond a single tragedy which identifies them, it could have been done with a lot less copying and pasting elements from other eldar factions. Also by someone who can actually be considered an author rather than a trained chimp chained to a typewriter. No, what Ward did is what he always does: Discard half the ideas which originally made up a faction, boil down the rest, and blow open plot holes as big as he can. The fleshed out elements we got were little more than a cultural transplant from Beil-Tan, with the craftworld going from something with an identity of its own to little more than Imperialists desiring to reconquer and rebuild their empire as a dominating force, the core personality traits of Beil-Tan. The difference here being that Ward, in his usual manner of desperately taking things up to eleven, stated that Iyaden and Beil-Tan were capable of doing this across the entire galaxy, rather than paroling areas of space as the latter was noted to have done beforehand and defending certain worlds. Were this not enough, the man then tacks on elements of Alaitoc because he is apparently determined to have his new interpretation of them stick, damn whatever any other author writes. As for the Ynnead, the original fluff did make sense and did give the eldar a single endgame they were working towards. Here it's written as if the eldar have forgotten everything they knew about Slaanesh's origins so it can try to cram some "true believer" nonsense down with one character, and turn her into a deluded cult leader thanks to poor editing.
The eldar are a dying race, few in number and fractured to the point where they have but a relatively few isolated major strongholds remaining. Their major tactics often involve seeing into the future manipulating forces to take the brunt of the fighting for them, beheading a foe before it can truly become a threat, performing hit and run attacks which allow them to inflict maximum damage while taking as little as possible in return, and ensuring the craftworld itself is not endangered by battle. Yet somehow all this translates to them suddenly thinking they can easily take on an entire hive fleet, with its thousands of vessels and billions of bioforms capable of absorbing any attrition thrown at it, and they are surprised at losing. This addition only robs Iyanden the excuse of lack of experience and almost losing thanks to having to fight a horrifyingly new foe with unfamiliar tactics, forms and weapons yet still emerging victorious. Again, it's an addition which only turns them into blithering fools who simply cannot understand when they are facing down a massive force capable of wiping them out of existence and, for seemingly no reason, thinking they can easily crush them. Better yet, let's take a look at one of these called victories which excuse this behavior - "On the Exodite World of Halathel defenders fiercely held their World Spirit shrine from a Tyranid siege. A fresh fleet from Iyanden commanded by Admiral Draech arrived to aid the Exodites and engaged the Hive Ships orbiting the planet. Draech's flagship, the Auspicious Illumination of Eternity was destroyed early in the battle. Command of the fleet was quickly seized by his second-in-command, a young Prince Yriel, who successfully led the Iyanden fleet to victory. However on the planet the shrine was overrun. In less than an hour the Eldar defenders were massacred and the Worldspirit destroyed. Yriel, overwhelmed by rage, gave the order to scour all life from Halathel." Odd, sounds almost like a very Pyrrhic victory which they almost lost while fighting the tyranids, and resulted in the death of a long standing ally. Well, what about the fate of their allied craftworlds this book puts them in cahoots with then? "Despite their victory, eventually Malan'tai was destroyed by the abomination known as the Doom of Malan'tai. However Iyanden emerged from the conflict relatively unscathed, and in their arrogance did not believe the warnings of Idharae Chief Farseer Taolis Eversong that the Tyranids encountered thus far were merely the harbingers of a larger swarm." So, not only was one outright destroyed by one of this new foe they faced, but the other outright said to Iyanden that things would only become far worse and a real threat was on the way. This is supposed to be one of the victories which made Iyanden so overconfident they could easily steamroll their way through the endless tide of enemy vessels and bioforms. Sorry, but this just reads like bad writing to me.
Except they were not. Previously Iyanden did not realise their approach thanks to that shadow in the Warp, and was only given warning thanks to their Rangers. They used the time to shore up their defences, gather as many forces as they could, awoke the Avatar and generally prepared for hell itself to soon be beating down their door. This was plan B. after realising they could not avoid nor outrun the majority of the enemy force in the time they had. In Ward's case they saw it and effectively went "Pah! Puny bugs, they're no match for our armies!" even as they were bearing down upon them. If you are going to accuse someone of lying, please do not commit the same act yourself. The codex itself presents the soul stones and revenants of the Wraithguard, Wraithlords and the like as having the most extreme fragmentary aspects of their personalities remaining as a driving force after their deaths. This is confirmed and established very early on in the book. Then all of a sudden a part of their timeline introduces a Wraithlord who is apparently in complete control of his faculties and capable of commanding entire forces like a genius. It's one of many bits where the codex completely contradicts its own lore and shows just how poor the editing was. Something which would continue into future codices, along with extremely poor research and the annihilation of the base personalities of entire armies. As for the Eldrad comment, i'll freely admit that I have not seen any previous reference to that, but i'll happily accept that as an error if you can list the codex, page number and quote the paragraph. That said, I will still argue this only compounds the book's stupidity in a multitude of ways. Beil-Tan was the one long established as being warlike, wanting to restore the Eldar Empire, and whereas other craftworlds would actively avoid conflict, it would seek it out. It was well known for patrolling certain worlds of interest and defending prior places of power which they still venerated. It was warlike, actively defended any it found and still held onto the idea of Eldar Imperialism despite their waning numbers.
Iyanden was effectively transformed into a poor copy of this, suddenly having many of these ideas and elements transplanted into its culture and history in a crude, ham-fisted way to try and flesh them out. Suddenly it had the same Imperialism, the same desires, the same attitudes towards others and hungered for a direct and militarised return of their people to power. It performed the same actions Beil-Tan was best known for but, again with Ward turning things up to 11, opted to have this same behaviour cover the entire galaxy, and presented it as the lone craftworld concerned with recovering old ruins and defending the Exodites from external threats. Both were working towards reclaiming the older worlds of power and were effectively identical up until Iyanden was steamrolled by the tyranids thanks to their own stupidity. Given this is the man who effectively turned the new Necrons into a poor copy of the Craftworld Eldar, not to mention the sheer number of stories he has openly stolen bits from, it's really no surprise he'd display such laziness when it came to writing a new army. Correct to a degree, except previously Ynnead was combined effort being born from the Infinity Circuits of countless craftworlds and being born out of a few trillion highly psychic beings slowly forming the god in a similar way to Slaanesh. This was relatively unchanged over the years, and the last news we received (in the 6th edition Codex: Eldar no less) only confirmed this by stating that Ynnead was thought to be growing in the collective Infinity Circuits but was not ready to fight Slaanesh. This was further supported by individuals on Ulthwe and other worlds, who considered it to be their race's endgame gambit to finally secure themselves a future in the face of total annihilation. Ward naturally craps all over this by turning it into a "morbid fantasy" scoffed at by all eldar, who think that using massed psychic power to create a god is impossible. The only one who supports it is half a craftworld now, pushed forwards by an extremely unstable and potentially insane Iyanna, and it is never substantiated in any way. Worse still, it is actually suggested to be entirely wrong and that she is dooming her people. Even if it isn't she is trying to use the souls of a single craftworld to accomplish this rather than more or less the entire eldar race. This is also without getting into some of the seriously disturbing implications behind the new lore involving her and Ynnead. No, what Iyanden deserved was something better. A supplement which actually treated them with some dignity and by a man who did not consider "research" "logic" and "canon" to be dirty words.
You really don't seem to have any idea about the Eldar beyond just reading the Lexicanum, do you? Those who become the new avatars of the ancient Exarchs are not proven warriors or great champions- they are simply Eldar who lack control over their emotions and have lost themselves to Khaine. Korlandril didn't become an Exarch because he was a great warrior and achieved glory in battle- he became an Exarch because he was weak, which was one of the key points of the entire story, although you seemed to have completely missed it. Secondly, of course a single Chapter of Space Marines is capable of doing massive damage to a Craftworld, where the fuck have you been for the past ten years of the Black Library? Space Marines are the most powerful warriors in the whole damn galaxy besides Chaos Daemons, and have feats going up all the way one Librarian Alpha Psyker flying through space and cutting a capital ship in half and bodyslamming a kaiju-sized daemon (it swatted away land raiders with little effort) into a volcano. Space Marines quire often kick the shit out of Eldar in 40k, it doesn't help that the Eldar need to bring out the special weapons as shuriken fire is terrible against heavy infantry like Necrons or Space Marines. And finally, Thorpe was fully consistent with the Eldar War Masks. You just don't seem to have any previous exposure with Lovecraftian flowery prose which dances around literate statements in staunch refusal to ever make them. Oh, yeah, you just really don't seem to know anything about Eldar or have even read the book! Eldar suffer from experiencing emotions on such a level of power that even surpasses that of Space Marines? Hell it was how they created Slaanesh in the first place. The avatars of the Exarchs that are assimilated by their composite mind become exarchs as they lack the ability to control their own emotions, which is incredibly dangerous for the Eldar. It's why you have a choice of either becoming an Exarch or possibly being euthanized if you're a threat to their community. It's why Outcasts exist, they see the Path as simply a trap that eventually either leads to stagnation or death. Craftworld Eldar live by sampling an assortment of masks and living as the expression depects. Only eventually they won't be able to remove one and will be forever trapped in its lifestyle. Hell one could even argue that it's GW making an unintentional jab at Communist ideal. Oh, and btw, I have to laugh at the irony of your post considering it's Gav Thorpe himself who's largely responsible for the modern Eldar.
None of this is conveyed through the writing. We are given very little character development in this regard. There is very little time given to the process of becoming an exarch. Instead of Korlandril's gradual loss of self as his individuality is slowly worn away by the growing influence of his warrior self we get a couple of unintentionally funny scenes where he accidentally talks about murder and frightens someone in the street because he can't stop doing kung fu at her and then boom, exarch. What should've been one of the most in depth aspects of the book about the protags internal drama is barely covered because Thorpe can't pace a novel to save his life. 1: Eldar have Aspect Warriors specially equipped for dealing with MEQ and TEQ infantry. 2: The sheer logistics of dealing with a craftworld means that it doesn't really matter how much mightier your infantry is. They could be ten times better, but 1000 space marines still cannot make a splash in a planet sized ship with millions to billions of enemy infantry. There's a reason why Imperial doctrine states attacking craftworlds is suicide and a terrible use of resources. It's because time and time again it's resulted in chasing an impossible to catch enemy while losing millions of ships in return. Craftworlds have enough firepower and infantry to deal with an entire sector fleet. Do you know how big a sector fleet is? That's enough ships to patrol a vast quadrant of the galaxy. And yet Gav ignores this fluff which has appeared in multiple editions with every rule book and has 1000 infantryman make their way through a planet sized ship against millions of enemies that have specialists that can easily deal with them and 3 Phoenix Lords who have been known to single handedly defeat hive ships, warbands and daemon hosts? Great sense of scale Gav. Lol no. Shurikens are extremely effective at piercing armour. Monomolecular ammo with high stream of fire tends to slip between just about anything. Hence the bladestorm rule. On one page he states "Korlandril was no more" after donning his war-mask. The next page he introduces himself by name and acts like he always does while they sit in a canteen and make wanking jokes. So much for becoming subsumed in his warrior alter-ego eh? If only I could be as intelligent as you and be condescending over pulpy sci fi novels with training sequences stolen from bad kung fu movies. It was so very lovecraftian when the exarch got sad his students were going to the pub without him and gave them a sad puppy stare from the door frame. Truly such cosmic horror is beyond the grasp of my meagre mind. Not modern Eldar. Look how much has been retconned over the years and how irrelevant much of his lore has become. He also wrote the single most reviled and hated edition of Chaos ever. But by all means, feel free to make stuff up about Ward making Iyanden like Biel-Tan despite writing extensively about how those two craftworlds fell out with one another due to ideological differences. Ward is the devil and Thorpe can do no wrong because everything is black and white.
