I had a crazy idea today I thought I’d share with you all, perhaps somebody might take inspiration…
My idea was to have some sort of upgrade option for warmachines (as in coming out of a points allowance per machine) whereby the crew would be bolstered by a number of Combat Engineers (say 7). They would join the crew, so that as long as there are at least 3 left they could all operate the machine.
The warmachine and attached crew then get the Scout special rule. Obviously the Combat Engineers cannot then leave the machine, if they’ve hauled it across hills and forests they’re not going to leave it now!
Fluffwise the idea would be that the Combat Engineers would build bridges and clear paths, dragging the machines (or using slaves) to get the right firing position.
So on the plus side your warmachines could get enfilading fire, and if they’re short ranged could get a much better shot.
On the downside you would probably lose the machine depenting on where you put it. If you distracted a couple of enemy units to attack them though it could potentially ruin enemy plans?
In the list i’m working on there would be another CD unit with the Scout special rule (0-1), so they wouldn’t have to fight alone. You could also group several machines together, so your enemy has to fight on two or more fronts. The unpredictability of where they would deploy would help my strategic aim of ‘disruption’.
What machine would you give this ability to? I like the sound of extra crew (I find the Dwarf engineer upgrade to be awesomely useful). I think the idea of a train of slaves dragging the machine supervised by an elite crew of Chaos Dwarf engineers is pretty cool. The slaves could be unarmoured hobgoblins, so they will give away some combat resolution (it is a war machine after all, and not supposed to be too hard in melee), but the Chaos Dwarf crew/engineers could have access to better gear/champion stats/maybe even stubborn like Dwarfs. You could even work in a chance of slaves dying of exhaustion, depending on how much extra ground you gain from the special deployment
Maybe even a new type of machine, as Bolt Throwers and Earth Shakers don’t really need the close-up deployment. Imagine something with the qualities of an organ gun or flame cannon deploying closer to the enemy:) You would need to charge some serious points/restrictions though lol
The ones I would apply this to in my list would be the smoke mortar, the equivalent of a bolt thrower, the soul reaper (relatively short ranged daemonic cannon, rare choice), and the bombard (armour piercing mortar that can be upgraded to hellcannon or earthshaker).
It would be fair to say that if the warmachine is a Large Target it wouldn’t have this option!
I did have another warmachine upgrade; the chaingang. This is a unit of 10 slaves that rank infront of CD crew for combat, and take all wounds. They are unbreakable as long as one CD still operates the machine, but they cannot work the machine itself.
I’d need to look at the points allowance on the machines to see if you could include both (combat engineers and chaingang), but either option would be totally in character IMO and make us very different from the Dwarfs.
I think the idea of mobile war machines is very unrepresented in the current rules, and that this would be an awesome idea. Combat Engineers always had a cool RTS flavour to me, and having additional crew for war machines is also something that hasn’t really been explored in WFB.
Reading this I had an idea for a disruption warmachine.
Some kind of Stone Thrower type machine that hurls a large boulder or something that lands on the battlefield and sticks there. Perhaps some kind of radioactive material, or molten rock, something that you can’t go near. In other words, you add a permanent piece of impassible terrain where the something lands. Alternatively this could be an idea to adjust the earth shaker. Like, the area affect of the earthshaker shell makes the ground affected into difficult terrain. Perhaps various shells could do different things. As I type this, I vaguely recall that someone may have had this idea before. n.n;
Not sure if I had the original idea (I think it was you actually Xander :)), but remains in play difficult terrain for Earthshaker is in my version of the list.
That idea is very good! Fluffwise I would say its a lump of daemonically possessed scrap metal, after all for every machine they try and build there would be dozens of failures… I will definately be giving that some thought.
I had a long think about this today, and I will try and bring it in as a special choice warmachine.
I have done a rough design for a machine, but its very unusual (much like my gyroscopic soul reaper cannon). I already had a special warmachine, basically a twist on the regular bolt thrower. So I wanted to design a machine that could be built onto the same frame.
That’s a challenge for anyone! Design a CD warmachine that can be assembled as either a bolt thrower equivalent OR a stone thrower equivalent! It’s not easy.
Only problem with my design is that the machine would fire sort of like a daemonic electromagnet. Which is totally different to anything in warhammer… The design is pretty cool though, its like hand with a pointing finger. I’ll tidy up my sketches next week and load them up.
I think it has to be done like a stone thrower, it would be hard to justify a cannon equivalent unless it was a special type of ammo.
Rules wise it would fire as a stone thrower, causing slightly stronger damage in the centre of the template, but perhaps slightly weaker under the rest (to balance a little and show its not shattering on impact like a stone). You would then place a 25mm circular base marker on the point of impact. If the marker would be ontop of a unit it is considered destroyed and will have no further effect.
I had an idea for the rules; Roll 2D6 for each unit (friend or foe) within 12" of the marker. Deduct the distance between each unit and the marker. Each unit will suffer as many strength 3 hits as the difference, armour saves as normal.
Certainly annoying!
If any unit passes within 1" of the marker it is destroyed.
Another idea was to have it reducing the leadership of any nearby units (friend or foe) until the next friendly magic phase:
Within 9" -1Ld
Within 6" -2Ld
Within 3" -3Ld
The idea being that it doesn’t cause any damage but is just really scary and extra annoying. It would be harder this way for you or your enemy to destroy it.
