So you’ve just bought your first set of those fancy Warhammer 40k miniatures you’ve had your eye on, some Eldar Dire Avengers, you open the box and out drops a funny light-blue sheet with lots of odd squiggles and glyphs on it. You look at it for a while and think to yourself “what the hell does any of this mean?”
Welcome to the world of transfers, or decals depending on who you’re speaking to, a very handy way to apply nice patterns and sigils to your miniatures without having to actually paint them by hand. There’s just one problem: GW is pretty notorious for not bothering to explain what each sign on the transfer sheet actually is.
My friend, worry no more, for I, keewa, will go through each transfer sheet in exhaustive detail and let you know exactly what each squiggle means. We’ll start with the aforementioned Eldar sheets.
Craftworlds
First up we have the symbols of the 5 main craftworlds, which pop up on every transfer sheet. From left to right we have Alaitoc, Biel-Tan, Saim-Hann, Iyanden, and Ulthwé. If you have a slightly older sheet, a few other “minor” craftworlds are present, these are: Lugganath and Iybraesil.
Wraiths
This stylised infinity symbol, and variations thereon, represent the Craftworld’s Infinity Circuit, and therefore are for things like Wraithguards, Wraithlords, and Wraithknights. There’s no different meaning between any of them, just their size.
This happy little fellow is the symbol for Wraithguard specifically. So if, say, you wanted to show that your Wave Serpent is carrying Wraithguard, stick this on the back door.
and this…. thing is for the vertical stabiliser on the Hemlock Wraithfighter.
Aspect Warriors
I like these because in some cases you can kind of see where they come from? The Scorpions have the sort of mandible, the hawks have stylised wings etc. On the older transfer sheet you’ll find much larger versions of these runes, sized to mark what squad is inside a transport. There are 4 non-aspect warrior runes in here as well, confusingly, there’s the Corsairs, the Guardians with their triangles, and the Rangers. Confusingly the Shining Spears don’t have any transfers on the sheet – a little strange given they were one of the most recent relaunched kits. Warp Spiders are only available in metal from 1992 and they’re on the sheet, but the new Shining Spears don’t get anything, go figure.
and the one Aspect Warrior temple I absolutely always forget:
The Corsairs have a few runes related to their… corsair… group.. thing. For some reason a Dire Avenger shrine symbol is put in here, for no real reason. Yriel’s in particular is quite camp, isn’t it?
If you see any Eldar symbol with an eye on it, you can be reasonably sure that it’s got something to do with the various seers and warlocks present in the Eldar arsenal.
Presumably Eldar have mechanics and those mechanics need to point out which parts of their grav vehicles, jet planes, etc will turn your beautiful alabaster skin into pork scratchings, that’s what these transfers are for.
Weirdly, there are two decals representing Eldar Titan Clans on the transfer sheet, so if you’ve forked over hundreds of dollars for that Revenant Titan, you can have two (quite small) transfers to represent them?
The triple yin-yang is for the Autarchs, while the regular yin-yang is for Exarchs
These transfers represent various aspects of Eldar mythology.
These ones are a little odd, they don’t really fit with anything but here they are anyway. There’s a logo for a Swooping Hawks aspect warrior shrine, another Dire Avengers one, an alternate symbol for Biel-Tan (although you only get one), a small yellow-on-black version of the Crimson Hunter sign, and pilot badges for your grav tanks and planes.
These triangles are the kind of warning labels you’d expect on the dangerous parts of a flying alien tank or plane.
These rondels are various badges for your grav tanks, your Wave Serpents, Falcons et cetera
Two Craftworlds have special decals for the fronts of their jetbikes, no-one else does, but Ulthwe and Saim-Hann do!
So that’s all of the transfers on the newest Eldar Transfer Sheet, go forth and add them to your Eldar with gay abandon, knowing that you know which one is supposed to go where.
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