Well, the upcoming Battlebox is Craftworld Eldar VS Chaos Marines, as pretty much everyone expected. To be honest I would have rather seen this crop up a few months later given we’ve just had the Genestealer Cult vs Custodes Battlebox, but the faction choice is OK (it could have been a lot worse - yet more Sisters of Battle
) even if there historically hasn’t been much in the way of enmity between these two in the past.
Craftworld Eldar get a new Autarch, Rangers and a new Jetbike unit that seems to follow the Ork method of having two riders:
I’m surprised they released a second plastic Autarch when the first one is perfectly decent, but it does mean you don’t have to buy one with Swooping Hawk wings if you’re not into Swooping Hawks, and the compatibility between the two means you can try some kitbashes if you wish.
A much-needed upgrade to models for a quality Craftworld Eldar unit, though they’ll probably cost the same as the overpriced Howling Banshees kit so the entry cost for a Craftworld Eldar army likely won’t be changing much.
I’d rather have seen them release updated Shining Spears right now rather than yet another new Jetbike unit, but these models are still decent and given GW say that’s just the tip of the iceberg for both Craftworld Eldar and Chaos maybe plastic Shining Spears will arrive in the future.
Over on the Chaos side there’s an updated Warpsmith, dedicated Chosen models and a Maulerfiend/Forgefiend (an existing decent plastic model, so that won’t have a picture shown here):
This was on the cards given that a Chaos-style mechatendril was one of the Advent Engine Rumour pics, and makes sense given the current model I believe is Finecast.
Pretty decent Chosen models, shame there’s only 5 in the box, but given I already have a unit that would count as Chosen in a Chaos Marine army (as they have more than 2 Heavy weapons in the squad), I don’t need to buy these. However, Chosen haven’t been seen as actual miniatures since six of them appeared in the dull Dark Vengeance boxed game that lasted from 6th to 7th Edition, so if you’ve got some of those or simply hadn’t got round to converting Chaos Space Marine Chosen yet, you’ll probably be grabbing a couple of boxes of these.
However, the most interesting news is a passage that appeared right at the end of the article:
Cranes Blerpshop said:
If you’re a fan of Warhammer Age of Sigmar, we will have a major reveal coming on Monday, pitting two allies of Order against one another in a battle of the elements.
Looks like an AoS Battlebox is also on the horizon, I’d like to think between the recent 40K Battlebox just gone and the one previewed yesterday, and I love a good army speculation. ‘A battle of the elements’ is particularly intriguing, as there are 4 main Order factions that would classify as being rooted in one of the 4 base elements:
Kharadron - Air
Sylvaneth - Earth
Fyreslayers - Fire
Idoneth Deepkin - Water
I can certainly see Idoneth being in this box, as after the recent Maggotkin release they are the only faction now still languishing in First Edition, and are struggling in the meta even with the recent Broken Realms update for them. And you know what the counterpart to water is?
Fire.
Fyreslayers vs Idoneth would make a fantastic Battlebox, as neither have appeared in one before and, in particular if, like the Craftworld Eldar vs Chaos Marine Box, they gave both factions one or even two new units to play with, as both need some additional units to bulk out their rosters (Fyreslayers in particular given their variety problem). Though I certainly hope GW don’t just give each faction a solitary new character and be on their way, because if there’s one thing Fyreslayers do have, it’s plenty of unnamed character models!
