[Archive] Are Chaos Dwarfs really 40K Chaos Squats?

zobo1942:

Hello,

Anyone else find that the Chaos Dwarf army is well, for lack of a better term - ‘over mechanised’?

Massive golems (ie. a dreadnoughts)

Rocket Batteries

Ordinance weapons (cannons, etc…)

Firearms

Kollosus (ie. tank/titan)

I’m sort of getting to the point where I’m thinking that Chaos Dwarfs are actually 40K Chaos Squats.

Is there a variant list that is more… well, fantasy? To me, the Skaven stuff seems even worse (genetic tampering, surgical alteration) but I’d like to find a way to make chaos dwarfs a bit more classical fantasy - and by that, I mean no guns, no dreadnoughts, no tanks…

I love the fluff and especially the daemon engine idea, and the idea of using a bound daemon as some kind of heat source - to make a steam weapon, or a flamethrower, or some kind of diabolical forge-thing to randomly affect magic or the effects of other magical weapons, etc…

Has anyone else tried making a different style of Chaos Dwarf army?

Firehammer:

I guess that you are talking about the fan-made army book usable for GTs.
Official rules don’t feature metal golems or tanks. Official rules and miniatures feature blunderbusses, rocket launcher and a canon though, that make up almost half the big hat models. You are free not to use them, but lose options for army building. Still possible. Even when the only current CD model is a canon with crew.

BTW Chaos Dwarves have absolutely nothing to do with Squats.

Fequiil:

i understand that you don’t like the machines and stuff, why do you play chaos dwarfs then?

cornixt:

There’s a few that play CDs as normal dwarf rules. The Indy GT list is not official but it is inspired by GW Black Library fluff. It wouldn’t be too hard to make the mech-style units into magical/daemonic units since there aren’t even any models for them.

Firehammer:

There's a few that play CDs as normal dwarf rules.

cornixt
Which reminds me that I play Chaos Dwarfs with Warriors of Chaos rules, with Lava elementals counting as Chaos Trolls, a War mammoth counting as Giant, a smaller beast counting as Chaos Spawn, Bull Centaurs as Knights, CD Warriors as Warriors and just one cannon. Also included are some steampunk elements coming from Rackham Dwarfs though (e.g. steampunk boars as chaos hounds).

zobo1942:

@firehammer: Maybe that’s the ticket - using the Chaos rules! Obvious, I guess, but I hadn’t really thought of doing that.

And by the ‘squat’ comment, what I meant that the mechanical (ie. technological, not daemon-driven) aspect seems more ‘dark future’ than ‘dark fantasy’ to me. That said, I guess our imaginations interpret things differently - I’m sure there are a lot of people who think a ‘little person’ on a flying cow wearing a giant fez is a little… well, not awesome.

Thanks for the tip about using the chaos rules, though. Good idea!

Bronze Bull:

I think the way the Indy GT codex is designed you can take an army that’s only a little “futuristic” if you want. You could easily take Chaos Dwarf Warriors, Bull Centaurs, Hobgoblin Troops, and just focus on those if you want. I’d recommend keeping the Blunderbusses as those are somewhat fitting with a fantasy universe (and give you much needed shooting!)

Abecedar:

And the empire aren’t over mechanised? Handguns, hochlands, cannons, volley guns, rocket batteries, mechanical steeds, Steam tanks?