After reading the arcane runes (looking at the Aeldari Book) we have divined the future of narrative play (read the Crusade section) and folks, the future is bright. Inside you’ll find rules for reading the threads of fate of the galaxy and working to prevent disaster those threads entail. You also get a ton of the standard array of stuff, including full support to your Harlequins.

As always, thanks to Games Workshop for providing us a review copy of this book.

Guiding Fates

The 9th edition of Codex Aeldari: The Crusade Rules Review was all about your squads and various character switching jobs and silly hats. The 10th edition insteads zooms out from this scale and instead focuses on the Aeldari species as a whole and how they deal with future threats as foretold by magical space elf wizards touting cryptic pointy eared nonsense that can be interpreted in almost any way.

What Guiding Fates actually does is give you three additional objectives to fulfil in battles whilst you race against the clock in the guise of Growing Threats. You start out by rolling three unique results on the Threads of Fate table. Guiding Fates is completed by either ending all three threads or your Growing Threats tally hitting 13 or more. Growing Threats is a tally which you increase after each game by D3 points or the full 3 if you somehow lost.

In order to attempt to end a Thread, you need to use the Fulcrum of Fate Agenda in order to attempt to achieve that particular mission objective. Each Thread has three different stages of Dawning, Waning and Frayed with each starting at the Dawning stage. Successfully ending a thread will deduct points from your Threat Tally with 3 for Dawning, 2 for Waning and 1 for Frayed.

The reason for all of this space elf nonsense is called the Weave of Consequence and the payoffs are certainly worth all of the extra work required with not only a lot of extra Requisition up for grabs but powerful keywords that give your units access to the more powerful Aeldari Paths battle traits.

Those that smashed out all three Threads of Fate decisively and finished with a Threat of 0-4 will have earned the Aeldari a Brief Respite.

• Gain D3+2 Requisition.
• One of your Psyker units gains the Path of the Seer keyword.
• An Autarch gains the Path of Command keyword.
• Up to three of your Asuryani Infantry units gain the Path of the Warrior keyword.
• Up to six of your Asuryani units each gain one of the Aeldari Paths Battle Traits. (Beanith: Keep in mind they still need the correct keyword.)

Those ending with a Threat rating between 5 and 8 will have managed to achieve the Watchful level.

• Gain D3 Requisition.
• One of your Psyker units gains the Path of the Seer keyword OR an Autarch gains the Path of Command keyword.
• Up to two of your Asuryani Infantry units gain the Path of the Warrior keyword.
• Up to four of your Asuryani units each gain one of the Aeldari Paths Battle Traits.

Just nudging over the finishing line with a Threat tally of 9-12 to earn the Beset moniker still gets a prize.

• Gain 1 Requisition.
• An Autarch gains the Path of Command keyword.
• Up to one of your Asuryani Infantry units gain the Path of the Warrior keyword.
• Up to two of your Asuryani units each gain one of the Aeldari Paths Battle Traits.

Somehow screw it all up and somehow manage to gain 13 or more Threat earns you a swift kick in the teeth and you must Endure the Inevitable.

• Select one unit in your Crusade force to gain 2 Battle Scars
• Select two more units in your Crusade force to gain a Battle Scar each.
• The look of disappointment from Wings.

Threads of Fate

Just going to cover a couple of the Threads as Beanith is overdue for his nap. The Dawning level stages are all quite tricky and your opponents are incentivised to stick the boot in as they tend to gain XP should you fail that stage. Waning tends to be a bit easier and Frayed you’re basically just phoning it in.

Destined Device

• The Dawning objective lets you choose any objective marker on the map and if at point in the game your opponent controls that marker in their Command phase, the objective is removed and that unit gains 3XP. In order for you to end this Thread however, you need to be in control of the objective at the end of the battle.
• The Waning objective is a bit more friendly, your opponent chooses three of their units on the battlefield and then you get to randomly decide which one of the three is holding the magical MacGuffin. Your task is now to destroy the unit in order to snip this Thread.
• Somehow beef the Waning objective? Did your opponent do some sneaky redeploy stratagems and stick a Lone Wolf back in deep strike? That was mean, thankfully you can phone it in with this Frayed objective assuming the dice gods are kind. Randomly select an objective marker, your mission is to control that objective marker and in your Command phase roll a 5+ to find the talking toaster.

Enemy of My Enemy

• Dawning here is another objective where your opponent chooses three of their units on the battlefield at the start of the first battle round. You then get to randomly decide which one of the three is just too adorable to harm. Should they survive the battle, success! Should they die, it’s because you made them run towards your Banshees or Striking Scorpions for a proper scrap.
• The Waning objective here is punishment detail for your Psykers because you screwed it up and killed that chump. Now your opponent chooses three of their units on the battlefield at the start of the first battle round. You now need to get a Psyker within 9” and in your Command phase, pass a Leadership test to influence them to be better people in general. This will get progressively harder as you get less attempts each time you pass despite everyone and their space elf mother having the Psyker keyword these days.
• Frayed is just plain mean. Choose an objective in your deployment zone and one of your units. In your Command phases, if that unit isn’t destroyed and not holding the objective, that objective is removed and you have failed Wings… for shame.

Beanith: I just know people are going to ask about the Guiding Fates, Threads and Threats nonsense so here’s my TDLR

• You have to use the Fulcrum of Fate Agenda to attempt a thread.
• This is also how each thread advances along the dawning/waning/frayed path.
• You need at least three games to complete the Guiding Fates for the tasty payoff.
• Growing threat tally is nasty in how quickly you can get to 13, especially considering how quickly you can upgrade most of your Crusade if you manage to get a Threat ending of 0-4 or 5-8.
• Now to type that in such a way that doesn’t cry out for “insert elf bullshit here’

The Aeldari Paths

So you’ve saved the galaxy from the threads of fate being unraveled or whatever and now it’s time to cash in on some sweet rewards after quashing the various threats. There are four bespoke Battle Trait tables that you can roll on here, each for a different set of units.

Path of the Seer (Aeldari Psychers)

Webway Spar kicks us off with an insanely powerful trait, this Battle Trait lets you teleport anywhere on the board on a 2+ once per battle. This can be very useful to reposition to a better shooting vantage point or even just to deliver your warlock conclave hell bomb directly to your opponent’s deployment zone turn one.

Spirit of Eldanesh gives your psychic weapons [Anti-Monster 3+] and [Anti-Vehicle 3+]. Again, Warlock Conclaves love this one.

Footfalls of Fate lets you move through models as if they weren’t there and lets you reroll advance rolls. Pretty good, but probably the weakest of the three. If you can combo it with something looking to advance and charge this becomes much more attractive.

Path of Command (Autarchs)

Strategic Philosopher gives you extra CP on a 3+ if this unit is in range of an objective marker you control. Considering how good Aeldari stratagems are, this is incredibly strong.

Master Misdirector lets you redeploy two units after deployment and you can put those units into strat reserves. This ability can be situationally very helpful but is also always welcome.

Paths of the Pathless lets you give two Aeldari units within 6” Scouts 6” before the game starts. This is always really strong and especially potent if you know you’re going first and want to apply some early pressure. Weird that you’d call this dude pathless when they’re on the path of command but okay.

Path of the Warrior (Asuryani Infantry)

There are two tables here, one for shooting infantry and one for melee infantry. For shooting we have:

Battlewraiths gives you a free Fire and Fade on a unit, letting them move D6” after shooting. This has been the bane of many an elf opponent and I don’t expect that to stop here.

Sunshock Fire Patterns forces a Battle-shock test on a unit this unit shoots. This one’s fine but not great.

Dead-Eye Shots gives the whole unit precision. This one might be the best of the three, letting you snipe out important characters with stuff like dark reapers can be incredibly strong.

On the melee side we have:

Khaine’s Vengeance forces mortal wounds on a 2+ if an enemy falls back from you. This is a great incentive to keep your opponent’s stuff exactly where you want it, but this kinda falls flat when compared to other books that have traits that force desperate escape tests.

Tactical Teachings gives you the Benefit of Cover while on an objective. This is great for when you just wiped a unit off an objective and are stuck in the wind before you fade back when being shot.

Nimble Fighters grants the unit -1 to hit in melee. This one’s just annoying and is always good.

Agendas

There are the four standard Agendas here that are present in most of the Crusade sections we’ve seen so far. First is Fulcrum of Fate which honestly, probably shouldn’t be an Agenda. This is how you progress/interact with the Threads of Fate system. When you select this agenda, the thread becomes active for that battle, if you succeed then a unit gets 3XP, if you fail the thread advances. It’s a bit baffling that this is tied to an agenda and isn’t just part of the mechanic but here we are.

Eldritch Supremacy is much more standard, giving you scaling XP for your Aeldari Psychers depending on how many models you kill with that model’s psychic weapons. This one actually falls apart pretty quickly with the Warlock Conclave having four models with separate tallies. Do you add all their tallies together? Do you gain xp per model? Our recommendation is just to add it all together since the XP caps at 3 that way.

Few in Number is much more straightforward, giving you XP for every unit that survives the battle and kills something. You get 3XP if that unit is above half strength and 1XP if you’re below half strength. This is pretty strong, essentially guaranteeing some XP so long as you don’t get tabled. I would consider this one every game.

Lastly, Evasive Warfare is an interesting one. Each corner of the battlefield is considered Encircled if nothing is within 12” of that corner, then at the end of the battle you get scaling XP up to 3 for a unit in an Encircled corner depending on how many corners are Encircled. This can be a bit more demanding depending on the mission, but can get 4 units from your army 3XP if you table your opponent early. That said, Few in Number is probably better since if you’re doing this, you probably accomplished the steps necessary to achieve that.

Norman: I really, really, don’t love Fulcrum of Fate being in here. Considering a lot of Crusade packs use Agendas to further the mechanics in them (Like Pariah Nexus’ Blackstone) it means that if you’re focusing down the Threads mechanic you don’t have the opportunity to look at the rest of the Agendas in this list. That said, that may be an intentional lever to stop you from getting the threads done too quickly. Which, if that’s the case, I wish that had been handled more directly since hopping around the book to get a holistic view of your army’s Crusade mechanic is wack.

Requisitions

Aeldari have six requisitions to play with. First up is Consult the Runes which costs 1 RP and lets you reroll a Thread of Fate to one you don’t already have. This can be pretty nifty to making sure you don’t fail the thread requirements if you’re not confident your army can do it. You can only use this once per time you Guide Fate so you can’t tailor a perfect set of threads.

Burned Futures gives you a pause button on threads, letting you stop threads from going to the next stage or ending in failure. This is really great for when you get diced and lose the game. This is a great option to have in your back pocket, that said it costs 2 RP so you’ll need to have those banked going into the game.

Spiritual Necromancy is your obligatory “change a unit into another unit” requisition. You take an infantry unit that would gain its second or subsequent Battle Scar and you can turn it into a wraith unit with all the appropriate upgrades. You also get a bonus ability to reroll out of action tests for that unit which is neat.

Next up is Paths of the Aeldari which lets you change an infantry unit into another infantry unit and gains D3+1 XP. If it’s an Aspect Warrior unit it automatically gets on the Path of the Warrior. This is cool and thematic and definitely something you should consider if you didn’t already fill your list with all those new Aspect Warrior sculpts.

Court of the Young King and Manifest the Yncarne both let you get the Avatar of Khaine and Yncarne respectively in your army without having to worry about your Crusade force limit, but it only lasts while you’re guiding your current fate or whatever the correct phrase for that is. In addition to the 1 RP cost, the Avatar of Khaine requires you to put a scar on an Aspect Warrior unit and Manifest the Yncarne requires you to have Yvraine in your Order of Battle.

Norman: While I get the Yvraine requirement here for lore reasons, I think it sucks to put named characters in your Crusade roster so on principle I don’t like that Requisition.

Battle Traits

In addition to the Aeldari Paths listed above, this book has an additional six tables, giving you a slew of options to specialize your forces.

Psyker Units

Soulseeing starts strong giving you [Ignores Cover] and lets you ignore modifiers for your Ballistic Skill and the Hit roll. Luckily this does not work on support platforms otherwise D-Cannons would be going nuts but this is still a very solid trait for any unit you think is going to be running around with an attached Psyker or even just on a big ol’ Warlock Conclave brick.

Psy-Prism gives Psychic weapons in the unit [Sustained Hits 2]. Nice on a Farseer’s Eldritch storm but otherwise not particularly exciting since most of the potent psychic weapons in the book have [Torrent].

Fallen Foreseen gives the unit a 3+ shoot on death if they are killed by a ranged attack. This can be nasty under the right circumstances and is particularly funny on the Hemlock Wraithfighter because giving it an extra activation is way better than a few guardians.

Vehicle Units

Crystalline Targeting Matrix gives you [Assault]. This is a really solid one considering just how fast Aeldari tanks can go before throwing an advance on them.

Hallucinogen Launchers gives the unit the SMOKE keyword and lets them use Smokescreen for free. Kind of insane that there’s no “once per game” rider on that last part.

Star Engines grants the unit the ability to fall back and shoot. Combo this with the first trait in this tree and you have a one way ticket to making me very upset at the table.

Guardian Units

Desperate Protectors lets you hit on 5s when firing overwatch, or 4s if the unit is in range of an objective marker. Don’t love that this works on attached support platforms but ultimately it’s fine I guess.

Sombre Determination increases the OC of the unit by 1. Simple but also can be great to throw 30 OC on the objective.

Seasoned Protectors gives the unit [Heavy]. Most of the time your army is going to be pretty mobile so this kind of goes against the Aeldari gameplan, but this is great when your D-Cannon gets line of sight on a target that was stupid enough to try and catch you out of position.

Harlequin Infantry Units

Fell the Mighty grants +1 damage against Monsters and Vehicles. With those dev wounds on everything this is what we call in the business “Pretty Good”.

Graceful Advance gives models in the unit [Scouts 8”]. Fantastic for applying early pressure with your Starweavers.

Preternatural Acrobatics lets you advance and charge with this unit. Combo this with Graceful Advance to make elf jail real and frustrating.

Aspect Warriors Units

There are two tables here, one for shooty Aspect Warriors and one for melee Aspect warriors. For shooty Aspect warriors we have:

Farstrike grants +6” range for your ranged weapons and +3” instead for [Torrent] weapons. Slam this on Fire Dragons with Fuegan yesterday.

Way of Stone gives the unit -1 to wound if the strength of the attack is higher than this unit’s toughness. Considering these are all t3 that’ll be all the time, so yeah blanket -1 to wound is pretty good.

Hunter’s Eye grants extra AP if you fire at something within half range. This is fantastic for Dark Reapers considering AP is something they really want and their range is massive.

On the melee side we have:

Bladeweave gives the unit -1 to wound to melee attacks. Anything to make your melee missiles more annoying to remove is a major upgrade so this is absolutely welcome.

Shadowswift makes it so the unit cannot be targeted outside 18”. This is fantastic for dodging indirect fire which is arguably the thing these units are most afraid of.

The Falling Blade lets you reroll charges for the unit. Very vanilla but very good.

Crusade Relics

Aeldari get the standard range of Artificer, Antiquity, and Legendary relics with an extra one in each category for Harlequins.

Artificer Relics

Rune of Faolchu is the first one, letting you pick an enemy unit within 18” and give everyone in your army +1 AP against that target. This is, frankly, insane for an Artificer relic. Almost every unit in this book gets massive dividends from this relic and you should grab this as soon as you can. Next is Banner of Asuryan which is another incredibly good one, giving you another Battle Focus Token. I hopefully don’t have to tell you why this is incredibly strong and you should go for this one quickly as well. Last is the Harlequins relic, the Serpent’s Tail, which is the first relic that’s at the level you’d expect from Artificer. It forces a Battleshock test to everything within 6” of the bearer’s unit at -1. This is fine but far from a must have.

Antiquity Relics

There are two relics here. The Shimmerplune of Achillrial gives an Autarch’s unit -1 to be hit and wounded. This is insanely good and I feel like I’m going to be saying that a lot in this section. The Mask of Secrets is the Harlequins relic for this category, giving the unit an increased CP cost aura of 6”. While the range is lower than similar abilities of this type, this is still a great disruption piece and is absolutely worth considering.

Legendary Relics

There are two relics in the Legendary category and they’re both very good. Kaela Mensha Shelwe, Song of the Bloody-Handed which in addition to making your roster impossible to read, gives the bearer’s melee weapons [Anti-Beast 3+], [Anti-Infantry 3+], [Anti-Mounted 3+] and [Devastating Wounds] with the cherry on top that lets you heal d3 wounds anytime they kill a non-vehicle model. Anti anything and dev wounds is always a strong combo and it certainly doesn’t stop here. Harlequins, not to be outdone, get the Raiment of the Laughing God which gives the bearers unit advance and charge as well as +2 to advance and charge rolls. While this is kind of a nonbo with the Battle Trait Preternatural Acrobatics it’s still incredibly strong for making sure your Harlequins always get where they need to be.

Beanith: The salad (kale/kaela) sword doesn’t have a ranged profile so the Vortex Grenade still wins. Fight me

Name Generator

Norman: I got Ishta Kinshar Gloywach. I hate it.

Beanith: Gesundheit. Mine was Eldroth, Child of Coheria. Clearly I’m the Eldrad that your mum tells you we have at home.

Final Thoughts

Norman: Overall this is a very strong Crusade ruleset to go with a very strong book. The fact that there’s slightly more here than every other book we’ve covered is a bit odd and honestly I think this book suffers from it since there’s only so many upgrades you can give something before you hit overlap.

While I thematically like the Threads of Fate system, I think its a bit more complicated than it needs to be and the payoff for that complexity isn’t as interesting as you’d hope. It took both of us a while to figure out that you need to do an Agenda to interact with the Threads of Fate mechanic, and I still maintain this is a mistake all together.

All that said there’s plenty here to enjoy and lots to build around, the only downside is you have to play with elf models to use these rules.

Beanith: It’s a fantastic set of rules, incredibly complex with a ton of flavor, which can just be simplified to “pointy-eared space elf bullshit”.

Again, I agree with Norman; having to give up an Agenda to use your Crusade mechanic is a little rough. They should have taken a page from the Space Marines Oathsworn by letting them take the Fulcrum of Fate Agenda as a bonus and just remove the XP bonus.

I like how they kept a bit of the Path of the Warrior from 9th and just turned them into special battle traits that can only be accessed after not screwing up the Guiding Fates.

One day I’ll pull the trigger on my Eldar Jetbike army (the craftworld ones, not that murder clown nonsense) but that day is not today.

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