I was inspired by this image of the Dwarf Thunderbarge from the Time of Legends section in the special edition in the 8th ED rulebook (and the suggestion by tjub) to start this thread.
It seems creating a Chaos Dwarf airship might be a large undertaking. Of course Zanko has just posted his airship here, and Willmark has also started a conversion blog documenting the work going on in his airshipyard with his Chaos Dwarf Zeppelin.
Then there’s this photo of my craft table from mid-2010, which was the start of my Doom Engine and “Thunderbarge”:
So it seems it may be timely to collect inspirational materials and start a discussion about what might a Chaos Dwarf airship look like, what should it do, how might it be built, etc? What role might this have in the Darklands? If the Chaos Dwarfs were to create an airship (there’s got to be some mad Chaos Dwarf Daemonsmith out there who has thought to take control of the skies above ground) would an airship be a unique item, might there be a fleet of them? Would they have support fliers, like the Dwarf Gyrocopters?
On the hobby front, here’s a very nice example from Chest of Colours of a Dwarf Airship. It’s interesting in their case that they went with an airship that has landed, which greatly simplifies the creation. The thought comes to me as well, once such a large pieces is done, and given there’s no official rules for it, it’s essentially going to be decorative and you’re unlikely to be using it regularly. What do people think, is it worth the investment of time and money to create something this large, given that it may only see gaming use once, or maybe a couple of times in a year?
Well 2 things. i too am planning to build a air ship. dont know as what it will go in my army (vanilla or Chaos) But the idea of building one is just to awesome.
2nd, I can remember that when i still had a white dwarf subscription there once was a beautiful dwarven air ship, completely scratch build probably a golden deamon entry. I think I have that WD somewhere still, should be from 1997-1999 I guess.
I have always been a fan of the Dwarf airships. I have been keen to build my own. All I have managed so far, are some concept sketches. If I find them, I will share them here.
I have always been a fan of the Dwarf airships. I have been keen to build my own. All I have managed so far, are some concept sketches. If I find them, I will share them here.
G.2
Perfect, that's the sort of thing I'm thinking of!
Of course its worth the investment, atleast just for the fun of building it! Ill post my ideas when I have more time later, but as for the role of a CD air ship. Might be scouting, keeping local tribes of Hobo in check. Think it would be a great way to transport WIP, or considering ours mines are “dagbrott” (whatever its called in english :P) it would be great to get an overall look at times.
Anyway, my plan was for a lighter ship. More in the style of the old War Wagon than a flying battleship with loads of guns. And simply use it as a some kind of monster from SoM. Either with a “one use flame template gun”, or maybe with a Daemonsmith on board count as Lammasu.
I don�?Tt have the big 8th ed book only the pocket sized one so I�?Tve never seen that page with rules for the dwarf airship before. Is there a points value associated with it?
As far as a Chaos Dwarf Airship I think the concept is sound. Chaos Dwarfs are a race that are at least on a par with dwarfs technically and have less averse to risk taking and are more likely to experiment with modern concepts than their stuck in the past brethren. I can easily see that a race that builds an ICBM would have no issue with creating an airship. I like tjub�?Ts idea of them being used to oversee the slaves in an open cast mine, suitably armed to put down any slave revolt.
These could easily pressed into military service when needed and I can see not a large fleet but certainly a good half dozen or so throughout the darklands.
I do have to wonder about propulsion though my first thought was rocket technology but this might be a bit aggressive to push a large bag of gas through the atmosphere but propellers or the rotors from the gyrocopter would probably do the trick nicely.
A couple of thoughts on a model:
The airship described says 5 organ guns and 10 crew which is a pretty large gondola to start with. A realistically sized gas envelope would need to be at least 10 times the size of the gondola, so we�?Tre probably looking at an airship with a total size of at least a Thunderhawk Transporter by the time you�?Tre finished if you were to attempt the one from the book.
However this is a magical universe so we can probably discard real world physics in favour of something a bit easier to build
As far as rules go:
Looking at the Chaos Dwarf (Legion of Azgorh) armoury I think I would use the Steam Cannonade from the Iron Daemon (one forward facing) and or the bombs from the Dreadquake mortar with a much shorter range (possibly only dropping on units that have been passed over and scattering) crewed with at least a slave ogre and warriors with fireglaves able to shoot in any direction.
Great concept and I may just have a think about having a crack at one myself
Good find on the boardgame cornixt, looks like fun!
I’ve attached a bunch of images I’ve had sorted in my c:\temp\cd\airship directory with dates ranging from Jan 2007 through to Oct 2012… sadly, I haven’t done much with the concept since last year. These were all airship designs (or portions thereof) that I liked and seemed to have design elements that I thought worked well for Chaos Dwarfs.
Wow, I just found this thread, and there is so much good quality stuff in it!
I did some thinking about an airship myself and reasoned that:
-In a volcanic area where columns of fire erupt into the air and winged bulls spit flames maybe is not a good idea to fill a balloon with flammable gas. What if Chaos Dwarfs found a way to imbue “air daemons” into their creations? Rule wise this could be quite cool, maybe having a lesser Daemonsmith riding it (kinda like a Skink Oracle on Troglodon), the ship could fire daemonic energy, have magic resistance, an invulnerable save, instability, and maybe it could even look like a sort of “jetbike” floating thanks to air K’daai.
-Everyone seems to be thinking about blimps… What about an Hobgoblin hot-air balloon? Aside the fact that it would look quite hilarious, it could be sporting a bolt thrower (god I miss these), archers, Sneaky bombz, etc.
-I would say that a small blimp with a couple of mean looking cannons could be a fantastic stand in for an Iron Daemon. Toughness 8 could represent the difficulty to reach the thing.
-Background wise, well, In a barren ash desert constantly roamed by migrating Ogres and rampaging Greenskins (without mentioning Chaos followers) being several meters up in the air could be very useful for sentry duties (Great Tauruses are better at scouting). And the pic Tjub posted illustrates pretty well how an airship can come in handy when supervising thousand of groaning slaves.
-Everyone seems to be thinking about blimps... What about an Hobgoblin hot-air balloon? Aside the fact that it would look quite hilarious, it could be sporting a bolt thrower (god I miss these), archers, Sneaky bombz, etc.
Here’s some more nice images from around the 'net to get you further inspired about airship designs and details… took a little more searching than just typing in airship, zeppelin, dirigible, etc. into google :hat off
We’ll start out gently with this one from Teddy Ruxpin, which oddly enough has a site, www.teddyruxpinonline.com!
