Avatar of Khaine: Fixing the Eldar’s Unloved God
How the mighty have fallen. The Eldar God of War has been overshadowed by his fellows, but here’s how to restore his crown.
It’s a sad pitiable state.
Kaela Mensha Khaine, the most unforgiving and fiery tempered of Eldar Gods – sits upon his corroded iron throne – in the beating center center of every craftworld.
Yet his rage is shackled as every Farseer and Autarch bars the door to his throne room in times of war, and speaks the words: “Umm, lets leave “hot-sauce” behind and go with more scat-bikes and Wraithknights.”
The God of War has been fairly unloved since the beginning. You have to go all the way back to 2nd edition to see versions of his rules that inspired fear and respect. The sad thing is that on paper, the Avatar is at an all time high power level – but is sidelined by other busted units in the Craftworld codex and a game that has moved away from a plodding close combat monster being a path to victory.
less scary than 7 scatter laser jetbikes
But he can be fixed.
First of all we need to go back to some of the lore and background of the Avatar hidden in fluff across the decades of GW writing. We all know the basic story. Slaanesh could not destroy Khaine and when he fell back to the material universe his essence splintered into shards, each of which took root in a Craftworld of the Eldar, to grow into the Avatars. What is generally not known is that these shards are not equal.
Thus each Craftworld’s avatar is a unique fragment of Khaine, in effect a giant collection of slightly different aspects of the God of War. Some are slightly smaller, or larger, and they wield different weapons from Avatar to Avatar. While the left hand drips blood eternally, the right hand may carry a wide array of weapons.
You know what that really reminds me of from a modeling opportunity viewpoint? The Blood Thirster.
Forge World – close but not quite… What’s with that funky Eldar 8-pack?
The Changes:
So imagine this for a new Avatar of Khaine (rumored to be coming) plastic kit.
- Make him twice as large.
- Make him a gargantuan creature.
- Make at least three different weapon options (say spear, sword, halberd)
- Up his points to match
Not worried about the Avatar – should be…
Design Goals:
The size improvement is needed to make the model an army centerpiece and to justify his other rules and power improvements. The Avatar mini was quite the badass 20 years ago when the model was released – but in 2016, he’s a pipsqueak.
Speaking of pipsqueaks – look at the original Rogue Trader era Avatar
Gargantuan Creature status fixes a TON of the Avatar’s issues. He gets to move 12″, making him a mobile threat. He can stomp, he can’t be one-shotted by Destroyer weapons, and he gets a huge list of included and fluffy USRs.
His weapons are designed to give not only hobby options but rules options. His three weapons should affect his stats and like the Bloodthirster prsent various battlefield options. The sword – a pure assault offense, the spear – a potent ranged option, the halberd – a defensive buff.
Finally up his points to be able to stand toe to toe with the major daemons of the various chaos powers.
I have high hopes for a new Avatar model from GW, but want him to be able to hold his ground and open up new army options for the Eldar that don’t revolve around Jetbikes and Wraithknights.
~ I can always dream.
