Do y'all think that an Exodites army with Treants and Dryads in it is a blatant violation of the canonical fluff? t.
Yes. There is no such thing in the fluff, and would be a horrible throwback to the link between fantasy and 40k which has been dwindling so nicely over the last few years. I would advice against it if you want to play "Exodites". If you want to play "Wood Elves in Space" then please, go ahead. I am sure it will look fantastic.
Thanks for your vote of confidence, but you must think I'm a better painter than I really am to say such a thing
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Anyway, as to the rest, I'm agreeable to that, but calling them Space Wood Elves sounds a bit lame (and "but Aluinn, your concept is a bit lame, so it's a perfect fit!" would be an answer I could accept, but not one that helps me out any), and I really couldn't conceive of any other name (unless you just call them some sort of Outcasts, which is okay but not very descriptive, and would require some revision to the fluff to explain why they left their Craftworld). It would also kind of nullify the World Spirit explanation for animating trees. A name that sounds better but
means "Space Wood Elves" would be fine. Wood Eldar? Still a bit lacking, IMO
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I should add that I never intended them to represent all Exodites, or even
any Exodites except themselves. I didn't want to write their fluff to state that they're the only ones who can use, um, arbomancy (?), because I find that sort of thing can be interpreted too easily as another way of saying "Hey guys, my army is special, look at me!" which is not what I want to do. However, if anyone doesn't like it, I'm quite amenable to it being just
these specific Seers that create tree-creatures, and not suggesting that it's something that happens all over the place. I only employed that name as an explanation of why they were Eldar on Maiden Worlds that would be easily recognized.
Basically, I see what you're saying, I'd still like to do it (well, the models be had, so in some sense it already is done), but purely
for myself I feel a need to come up with a 40K fluff explanation. I have no problem with anyone not wanting that to describe Exodites, but then I need some other concept that answers the fundamental questions about origin etc.
As an aside, do you think Hrud as Space Skaven, at least model-wise, suffer the same problem? I don't intend to do it, I'm just curious, and have seen several converted armies of that sort around the internet. For that matter, what about Chaos Daemons, who in model and concept are only really differentiated by the Soul Grinder? This is not an argument, I'm just trying to pin down what constitutes "universe overlap", so that I might possibly come up with background that mitigates it better. I mean, the models themselves may be inevitably jarring in the 40K setting, but to some extent it seems that
how I explain them being there might be more important.
P.S. Dark Eldar arms fit Glade Guard pretty well and the splinter rifle trimmed of spikes makes a good long rifle, for anyone wanting plastic Rangers. The main difficulties are that 4/16 bodies have to have an arm up that looks like it's drawing a bow, and the quivers. What I did was put a knife in the arrow-hand for those bodies, then give them pistols in the other, and put gun butts sticking up out of their quivers (trimmed of arrows, of course) to make them rifle cases. This also explains what the empty "rifle cases" are on the other models, who are holding their rifles of course.
