Shakespeare wrote: “there’s no art to find the mind’s construction in the face” – which is true, especially when the face is encased in a wraithbone helm. But there is an art to finding which new Warhammer 40k models fans would most lose their shit over, and it mostly boils down to: rarer characters and factions with particularly distinctive backstory and/or aesthetics, who’ve never had models (or only expensive Forge World ones).
Aeldari Exodites – unblessed with miniatures since the mid 90s and longstanding frontrunners in the ‘give us models or give us death’ stakes – had the whole bingo card, and thus set the 40k fandom aflame. I alone, it seems, remain unmoved by their reptilian charms.
I write this not just to throw out some contrarian rage-bait (though accusations of such would be fair). It’s just that I’ve spent a considerable amount of time, since GW’s Exodite model reveal, interrogating myself to puzzle out exactly why it is they leave me so cold.
When Squats returned as the Leagues of Votann, I wasn’t one of the dwarf lovers who’d prayed for the news, but I dug them (pun intended) and still do. The lack of mainstream model support for the ever popular Death Korps of Krieg never left a mournful void in my life as it did in others’, but I still danced a little jig when GW’s incredible new plastic Kriegers came out.
It’s not like I’m less interested in Aeldari than other Warhammer 40k factions, either – seeing new aspect warriors and revamped phoenix lords was one of my highlights of 2025, despite my Eldar army having lived in a box for some years.
It’s certainly not a matter of lore, because the story of the Exodites is, indeed, rad as hell. In the unlikely event that you’re not already familiar with these self-imposed exiles from the ancient Aeldari empire, there’s no shortage of material, compiled by their extremely committed superfans, that ought to get anyone in the mood to paint some.
Zap’s “The Exodite Corpus“, for example, is a monumental 12,000+ word treatise (complete with annotated sources and references) charting their entire in-universe history, right back to the first use of the term “exodite” in the June 1990 edition of White Dwarf, and even earlier still. People, really, really love these guys, and there’s a lot to love.
So why, when one of the Warhammer 40,000’s most bemoaned lacks of miniatures has been addressed in such dramatic fashion, am I not gleefully boarding the ‘elves riding dinosaurs’ hype train with everyone else? I can only come up with one answer, and you’re not going to like it.
I think it’s their most iconic heroes, the guys that finally made it into plastic: the Dragon Riders. I cannot help feeling that they’re just a bit… tacky. A bit shark-jumpy. A bit silly. Eldar, for me, are about refinement, grace, and subtlety. They’re arrogant, supercilious, calculating; they’re ruthless and deadly more often than not – but deadly like a monofilament razor at your throat, not deadly like a hydraulic sledgehammer to the gut.
Conceptually and aesthetically, my brain just can’t quite marry that personality up with “rides a literal dinosaur”. I can never shake the feeling that these characters ride their bizarre, reptilian mounts not because it makes in-universe sense, but simply because GW added dino-riding elves to Warhammer Fantasy Battle in 1995 (with the Dark Elves’ Cold One Knights), and people thought they were cool, so they got ported across with Jes Goodwin’s Epic scale Exodite Dragon Knights a year later.
Is that what happened? We don’t know. If it was, would it in any objective way change how cool or valid the Exodites were, or are? Absolutely not. This is a sci-fi world that also includes murderous cockneys made out of fungus, tiny green daemons who giggle while they give you the plague, and halfling snipers who’re canonically so greedy that GW sculpted an individual sandwich onto one of their miniatures. Only in my dumb stupid head are dino-riding Eldar somehow beyond the pale, and even I can’t properly tell you why.
In fact, in general, what does or does not belong in Warhammer 40k is an utterly pointless line of discussion – not only because it’s already stuffed with weird stuff and that’s half the point, but because only Games Workshop has even half a claim to offer a conclusive answer, and most of the time what it says is “you decide, go nuts”. And long may that continue.
I suppose what I’m really saying here is: I don’t get Exodites, GW misses me with them, and that makes me sad. Because their return was one of the few really historic ‘moments’ in the last few years of Warhammer 40k’s new, big-selling Golden Age that I felt left out of.
That’s all I’ve got, thank you for coming to my Ted-X(odites) talk. For another of my terrible 40k takes, you can read my argument that Orks don’t belong in Warhammer 40k anymore. Or if you’d rather just come execute me for the heretical prose above, feel free to do so in the free Wargamer Discord community.
Source: Wargamer
