It seems the 40k releases are coming at breakneck speeds as of late. Seventh edition has been a whirlwind of codices and supplements. Now that the gap between 5th and 7th have been closed Games Workshop turns It's attention to 6th edition, and there's no sign of slowing down. Codex Eldar: Craftworld will be out in a week, and with it comes the hope that our current meta will see some much needed change. Change that most people have wanted for a long time.
It's true that Eldar have been at the forefront of the tournament scene. But I believe this isn't so much about codex imbalance as it is about players taking the easy way out. Eldar used to be a codex that took a lot of finess. They had a speed about them, and each unit had a specific job. With the 6th edition book the wave serpent became an excellent utility unit. It's fast and has enough options that it can take almost any field role. Now some might be saying this is the exact reason the codex is broken. But what about the other armies we see on the field? Let's take the chaos players love affair with the heldrake as an example.
The heldrake has been spammed in many lists just like the wave serpent. Unlike the serpent the heldrake only has one specific job it excels at; killing space marines. It lacks the universal utility a wave serpent is praised for. A much better candidate for chaos utility is the Defiler. For an extra 30 points a stock Defiler kills marines at longer range, carries more survivability, and can hold down large threats in close combat. But we don't see three Defilers in lists do we? I wonder why that is.
Wave serpent spam has always been around because they've always been good at zooming in on objectives. It's an old tactic. Marines used rhinos to capture and land speeders to contest. Every army had that fast unit for claiming objectives during the end game rush. What the sixth edition codex gave us was an opportunity to step away from wave serpents for a while. Have you ever seen a war walker gun wall? It's terrifying, more so than wave serpents. But it's not easy. Wave serpents are easy.
And that's why we see that in the meta. Not because the codex is broken. I believe in the asymmetrical design of the 40,000 codices. I like that facing Dark Eldar or Orks makes me think differently about my tactics. I like that my Chaos Marines are a defensive force. They carry none of the leadership mechanics of a loyalist Marine force and therefor can't afford to be brave. There's so many little differences that make each codex great, and we waste time trying to min-max lists and argue about what's broken, what needs fixing. The truth of the matter is, nothing needs fixing. The meta has had us stuck in this rut for years. We don't pick fun models or interesting units and practice anymore. We try to guess the most broken thing and copy the next guy.
I dare you to build a list that doesn't use your favorite 'broken' model or squad. Omit the wave serpent, ignore the heldrake. Play that 'subpar' list until you know it inside out. Make it work for you. That's what these codices we're designed for. You get to choose the models you love and perfect those tactics. Play enough with an army you really love looking at and soon you begin to maximize their potential and minimize their flaws. Eventually you'll be giving your opponent tough choices, because those subpar squads will start to look like the real threats they are.
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