Forgeworld rules seems to have an interesting heritage in the gaming community. By this I mean that even now, after more than a decade, the stigma attached to using forgeworld rules and army lists is still going strong – at least in my neck of the woods!
This is a real shame in my opinion. The team at FW (as it will be know from this point onwards) has done a cracking job at making a set of rules that is balanced and almost always takes the cautious approach in terms of points and abilities. This could also be a perception issue thanks to GW themselves being so gung-ho with new super rules but that’s another topic.
I have a love of FW and their Horus Heresy setting (which is no secret!) but I also love my Eldar in all their forms. I own Titans (yes plural!) and all manner of FW models for them – from squads of infantry to variant tanks and then the weird stuff for the dark eldar! With the release of the second edition of Imperial Armour Eleven – the Doom of Mymeara I get to roll my love of pointy ears and FW resin into one new project.
Corsairs
I have been playing 40k along time – since the heady days of rogue trader in fact and one of the most iconic images I can remember from that heady tome is this…
Which comes from this larger image – which I am showing purely for cool value!
These pirate raiders are what first caught my eye in the early days of my tabletop gaming life and while they had no models at the time – its an image I always thought was cool. Towards the end of rogue trader we got the craftworld eldar aspect warriors (by the legend that is Jes Goodwin) and it had me hooked.
Between the awesome aspect warriors of the craftworlds and the newly revived pirate dark eldar I thought my pointy ear fix would be sated. Then we got IA:11, Doom of Mymeara…
This book – despite me never picking it up – gave us back the real corsair fleets. Dark Eldar raiders were similar in nature but their goals were different. The Corsairs are now much closer to mercenary companies than the pirates of old. I think this is a brilliant twist on them to make them different to the dark kin.
The main issue with the first book was that the rules for it were super busted. Allowed to add in eldar or dark eldar units and a huge swathe of special rules and gear, the Corsairs were easily one of the most broken rules sets of their day. This reputation was well deserved and was the only reason I held off on the book and an army for it.
2nd Edition
I was very keen to see the new IA:11 with the updated corsair (and all my eldar toys) rules in it. Would the list just be updated to match the newer codex? What about allies? Trepidation was there as I hit confirm order on the FW web store.
Turns out I was worried over nothing.
Is the corsair book good? Absolutely! Is it busted like its predecessor? That’s a no and not a small one!
This post won’t be a review – those will come in the following days – but suffice to say I am very impressed by the army as a whole. They have managed to avoid a copy past of existing units from the other eldar books while simultaneously giving the corsairs varied and thematic rules and abilities. Corsairs are harder to get to regroup (mercs prefer to live to fight another day then satying and fighting!) but most also got a new item called a brace of pistols – very pirate like!
I am super stoked to be exploring this faction and best of all, I have an event that’s going to let me use them…
