40K Deep Thought – On Dark Reapers (and a teensy rumor)
If there is one Aspect Temple that needs a reboot, its Dark Reapers. Lets take a stroll through their past, and possible future.
First the basics. The Dark Reaper aspect represent the Eldar God of War Khaine in his aspect of Destroyer. They wear dark, heavy armor, characteristic large boots (providing extra stability for their heavy weapons), and destroy the enemy at range.
But the Dark Reapers have quite a twisting history of equipment and power over the editions. For three editions, they were armed with the long ranged Eldar Missile Launcher with a large array of missiles including:
Frag
Krak
Melta
Plasma
Anti-plant (don’t ask)
More importantly one of the hallmark pieces of equipment was that odd looking helmet with the vanes sticking out the sides. It wasn’t just for show, but had a critical role. It was the Reaper Rangefinder:
Reaper Rangefinder: this piece of equipment feeds an array of tracking information directly into the user’s helmet, making it virtually impossible to miss the target: The user gains a +1 to hit, and can track fast moving targets. The negative modifiers to hit fast moving targets is ignored.
Only in recent editions did the Reapers lose their missile launchers for the current Reaper Launcher – the S:5 AP:3 Heavy2 MEQ killer they use today.
Even more oddly, back in the day Dark Reaper Exarchs had a strange set of available weapons, such as Shuriken Cannons, Web of Skulls (the nastiest set of bolas you’v ever seen), and could even take power weapons. One could argue that this odd Exarch mismatch was the legacy of Maugen Ra, who uses a weapon (the Maugetar) at odds with the basic equipment the Reapers normally use.
Still though – there is rumor chatter out there of one aspect getting a massive overhaul rules-wise, to redefine their role, and bring the army up to date with 6th edition. If I were a betting man and had all that history to fall back on – I wouldn’t be surprised to see new weapon loadouts and anti-air options for our favorite black-clad killers.
I’m hoping in a few weeks, Reapers won’t just be an excuse to get an Exarch to man an Icarus Lascannon.
What would you do to bring Dark Reapers into modern 6th Edition?
