Q. How do I resolve the shooting of a unit of Chaos Dwarf Blunderbusses
that is firing from inside a house?
A. Their �?ofire zone�?� is as wide as the face of the building they are
firing from. The hits are Strength 3, +1 for every storey from which
another five blunderbusses can fire.
S. Official Warhammer 7th Edition FAQ
—End Quote—
Shouldn’t this read “+1 for every story from which another FOUR blunderbusses can fire”? Considering earlier in the FAQ they established that for BB strength bonus purposes, a rank only needs be 4 wide, rather than the usual 5.
ALSO, why does the dwarf warriors box come with only enough warriors to rank them in equal lines of 4? (kinda crappy that we only get 16 when you can get 20 miners for the same price!) Do normal dwarf warriors receive rank bonuses from ranks that are only 4 wide? (even the BFSP warrior unit is 4x4)… If so, does that apply to Chaos Dwarfs as well?
Shouldn't this read "+1 for every story from which another FOUR blunderbusses can fire"? Considering earlier in the FAQ they established that for BB strength bonus purposes, a rank only needs be 4 wide, rather than the usual 5.
It's based on the way the rules for buildings work: 5 missile troops can fire from each storey in every other unit, so that's the precedent used instead of the outdated anomaly that are the Bunderbuss rules.
ALSO, why does the dwarf warriors box come with only enough warriors to rank them in equal lines of 4? (kinda crappy that we only get 16 when you can get 20 miners for the same price!) Do normal dwarf warriors receive rank bonuses from ranks that are only 4 wide?
Prior to 7th Edition, a "full rank" was four models, not five. That's why Blunderbusses are weird - it's not a special feature, it's an artefact. Because units used to usually come in multiples of four, that's how all the regiment boxes were sold (it's not just Dwarfs - most older regiment boxes come in 12s or 16s) and it's how the sprues are made. Since retooling the machines to produce new sprues would be incredibly costly, the regiments are still sold with the same number of models, even though they're weird numbers for the current rules. Newer regiment sets come in multiples of 5 instead.
No, it’s because a “full unit” used to be 16 models. As I said, if they redesigned the sprues it would be massively expensive. The start-up cost for the equipment to make the plastic moulds is absolutely huge - the shift to “all plastic” is a big investment for GW, as it takes shifting a lot of units to make the money back. They don’t want to have to do all this stuff again, even if the rules now no longer gel with the number of models being sold in some boxes.
It’s a shame they don’t make a small dwarf warrior 3 pack or what not… like they have with skeletons and orcs… that would solve the problem… but it should be really cheap, which it wouldn’t be, of course.
strange though, that the BFSP starter set, using 7th edition rules, still gives you a unit that ranks up in 4s… how can that be explained?
It's a shame they don't make a small dwarf warrior 3 pack or what not... like they have with skeletons and orcs... that would solve the problem... but it should be really cheap, which it wouldn't be, of course.
strange though, that the BFSP starter set, using 7th edition rules, still gives you a unit that ranks up in 4s.... how can that be explained?
CheTralfara
They probably made that one long before they knew ranks would be 5 not 4.
There's many instances like this, rules and miniatures are only in lock-step at the very beginning of the process. Sometimes one thing spawns another.
Eventually they will get all boxes to fit with the 5 wide only for 9th edition to introduce 6 wide instead...:P
im little lost smtimes, in the whole corect rank thing, i usulay use ranks of 4 , tho if i have a charecter in there may be a rank of 5, but i am pritty lost somtimes, is there any offical thing determing the number???
Seems a little ridiculous that you wouldn’t get a ranking shove bonus from warriors ranked in lines of 4. Ranks of 3, I could see not being very “shoving”… but it seems like the rule to have a minimum rank of 5 was designed purely to put more warriors in combat.
Oh yeah, and to require more purchases of boxes that only have 4-wide ranks
Seconding that question, afaik the dark elf spearmen have always come in boxes of 16.
Also, just chiming in on the plastic moulds thing, but Privateer Press looks like they’ll be doing occasional units in plastic, and I’ve heard the price of moulds quoted at $10-15,000, rather than the “hundreds of thousands” that it used to be 8-10 years ago. Now, I can’t say if that’s true or not, but if it is, it certainly means far fewer regiments having to be sold to make a profit. I’m sure technology has also improved since then, which potentially lowers the price. And as someone once noted, the mould for plastics tends to last far, far longer than moulds for pewter minis, which tend to be rubber instead of steel.
Er… just my $0.02, hope I haven’t strayed too far off-topic…
$10 - 15,000 might be accurate, but think of how many plastic kits GW produce... You can see why "everything in plastic" is such a huge investment.
Thommy H
Well, they have *once* mentioned what it cost them to make a plastic mould in WD and it was expensive.
But technology *has* improved, there's no way the new start-ups that make plastic figures now could have afforded the technology 10 years ago.
But something has changed, because there are several historical figure companies now making things in plastic.
*Some* of the newer plastic regiments feel almost like bargains. Cold one knights and Chaos Knights for example. Of course the manufacturing costs are small compared to what it costs to keep the rest of the company going, as most of their money comes from figure sales.
And as you say GW has much more plastic kits than any other manufacturer. In fact I bet they have more than all wargaming manufacturers put together.
You raise an interesting point with the historicals. I was very surprised when I saw those models emerging, given the cost of producing plastic kits. I wonder if it’s because historical gaming has a slightly different business model than fantasy and sci-fi. With the latter, it’s all “oooh, shiny new stuff!” because the setting is a blank canvas that constantly has to be expanded or the range goes stale. On the other hand, with historicals you’re aiming for accurate depictions and large numbers of models at low cost (historical gamers, in my experience, tend to prioritise price as opposed to quality). So, while the start up costs for plastic historicals may be huge, if you can sell loads of figures cheaply, they’ll get snapped up because that’s what the market wants.
You can only sell about six Space Marine tactical squads per gamer…but you can flog hundreds and hundreds of Romans to someone who wants to refight Hannibal’s invasion.
With historicals, it seems to me that you can also afford to do far fewer poses, and make most, if not all, of your range as one-piece sculpts. What historical wargamer wants to glue arms onto two hundred redcoats? As well, why have more than, say, three poses of said redcoat? I think when you look at it that way, moulds for the historicals are a bargain compared to something like GW’s. I mean, I don’t know how large the molds are… do they have single moulds that can create the sprues for both devastators, terminators, assault squads and regular tactical squads? Or does each mould make a single sprue type?
So when you consider that historical moulds may create 5 or 6 different one-piece troop types all on the same mould, you may already be looking at savings there, versus having to purchase multiple $10,000 moulds.
