Eldar changes to look forward to

With what I hope is a June 30th release I've been thinking all sorts of 40k thoughts lately.  I will have the tearers ready willing and able to go when the new rule set drops but as always my mind turns to the Eldar.  Realistically a 6th edition codex is at least a year away.  That being said however, I'm positive changes to the core rule system will shake up the 4th edition codex.  Ultimately lending itself to seeing a shake up on what limited builds are available to the Eldar in the twilight of 5th.

First and foremost there is the Farseer.  At first I was fairly negative to the proposed changes to the psychic system with respect to the Eldar.  As it stands the Eldar require a list to be built around specific force multipliers found in their Farseer powers.  I thought that any change to these powers would make an already difficult army to play be all the more challenging.  After giving it some thought though, I hope the Eldar powers are revamped in the new rule set.  On its face, the most positive aspect of these changes will be opening a window to potential changes coming down the pipe for the Eldar.  That aside, I'm hopeful the new power system might open up new combo's for the old codex allowing the Eldar to take advantage of whatever new rules may be present prior to a new codex.  For example lets say the shooting phase and assault phase swap places in any given game turn.  Without equipping the Eldar with the tools to take advantage of this new playing field they would likely slip further into obscurity.  As I see it there are only 2 ways that this might be alleviated: 1) a new codex 2) change the way Eldar force multipliers work.  This is all conjecture, but I do remain hopeful that the new rule set will breath new life into the antiquated Eldar codex.  I don't expect 6th edition to make the Eldar a top tier army but I do suspect it will shake up the cookie cutter builds and inject some new life into the ancient space fairing elves.

Absent the Farseer, I remain hopeful that there will be multiple universal rule changes that might encourage new builds to be played.  Examples of USR rules that I will be paying particular attention to are: Fleet, Sniper Rifles, Wound Allocation, Fast Vehicles, Infiltrate, Stealth.  I'm hoping that we might see universal changes that would buff certain unused Eldar units.  Namely: Rangers, Scorpions and though often used the Wave Serpent.  I list the Wave Serpent because our bread and butter transport stands to gain massive improvements based on some of the rumours floating around.  Rangers and Scorpions are some of my favorite models in the entire Eldar range so anything that might encourage there use I strongly look forward to.

So with all that being said the only concrete thing to say is that time will tell.  The excitement for a new rule set is reaching epic levels.  I really look forward to starting fresh with the entire community to digest the new rule set.  I came in mid stream with 5th and the only time I've ever started a rule set fresh was when Rogue Trader switched to 2nd (and I played the bejesus out of 2nd edition).  In closing, I've attached a few photo's of Eldar models that I've started but never completed.  I'm hoping that 6th edition will inspire me to paint Eldar again rather than waiting for a new codex.