If you were given a chance to redesign the Chaos Dwarfs - fluffwise and armywise what would you change? What would you keep? What new units would you add?
As almost everything in GW is generally a mediocre rewrite of Tolkien’s work, I would like to see the Chaos Dwarfs more like an offshoot of his petty dwarfs. Petty dwarfs with a hint of devil worship, living in cursed hills/mountains, shunned by their cousins, mostly brigands, swindlers, and slavers. Their armies would be composed of slaves, a core of hardened dwarf warriors and heavy use of mercenaries. As they are brigands their fighting style would add ambush elements, less head on fighting and lots of cannonfodder. Although I like the steampunk concept I don’t see it in a fantasy setting, so I would take the tech level down a notch. Instead of tons of warmachines I would add more unique small arms: snipers, bomb throwers (like the CD looking ones in 300), and brutes/hobgoblins with bombs strapped to their chests.
armywise I would change a bunch of stuff. too much to list right now,… mostly point values and some profile changes, rewrite iron deamon rules. stuff like that.
Aye, I have always prefered to make up my own rules and tinker existing ones along with fellow gamers. It brings for a much more characterful game in my opinion
Ahh those were the days… we were the outlaws of the Warhammer community, constantly bickering over masks and hats, inventing great stuff, playing with ravening hordes lists and converting our own armies to keep the Dawi Zharr from disappearing from the battlefields. It was a lot of fun.
I won’t go into all the depth, because that’s a book in itself, but put simply I would redesign them to have a motivation other than greed/power as their primary focus.
Which would influence chunks of the list and most of their background.
I would also bring in much greater inter-dependence between units on the battlefield in a way that’s rarely seen in warhammer.
If I had to redesign the Chaos Dwarfs I would enlarge their population to make all-Dawi Zharr infantry armies plausible, plus add a few more infantry units. At least Infernal Guards with great weapons would have to cost less points. A very cheap slave rabble unit would be made available alongside the existing Hobgoblins and some close combat unit option with many attacks would have to be introduced. I’d also stamp Chaos onto the Chaos Dwarfs with detested non-Hashut cults and an even greater emphasis on Daemonsmithing and Daemonbinding. I’d at least tinker with rules for Daemonforged barricades as a probably immobile deployment option worth some points. The war machine park would have to be expanded for a true army book as well, with the Colossus as an obvious addition (not because I’m fond of it - I’m not - but because it’s popular among CD players). Big hats would stay for leaders whilst masks would stay for minions. Other than that, I’d force at least part of the Hellcannon aesthetics upon most of the miniature range, make some changes to Lore of Hashut and make it available for Daemonsmith
With the recent stuff, I’d feel bad about redesigning them too much. I’d like customisable war machines and maybe monsters - dwarfs just have runes but I’d like our stuff to have more interesting upgrades that are visible on the model.
