cornixt:
Not properly read any of the newer army books, so I wasn’t sure if you were aiming for they same style or not. Seems they have changed a few things since I last had a good look at one 9which was quite a while ago)
The spelling is wrong in the army list entry.Pyromancer army list entry has him as a “Diregemaster”I assume you mean Pyrophant, but I’m not sure what you mean exactly. Dirgemaster is one of his special rules.
Thommy H
Thommy H:
Gah…I have no idea what the problem is, but for some reason some really arbitrary bit of formatting on some of the pages in the Army List section is corrupting the PDF. I’ve literally converted this thing dozens of times since I wrote it as I’ve drafted and redrafted, and this is the first time anything’s gone wrong! I haven’t even changed anything on the offending pages…
Anyway, when I take out the tables it works fine, so I’m trying to cut and paste them around a bit to make it work.
JonJon:
Like I said earlier I love the book and I didn’t have any trouble with the PDF ,i will be using your book only for the next couple of weeks,since it has more to offer my playing style. The immortals and the iron guard are very similar so its not a very big switch. I will be asking lots of questions on building the demon stuff lol
Jon
Thommy H:
Just like the Lore of Hashut though, my Immortals came first 
(My original Immortals rules, from 2008)
Also, I worked out that the problems with the PDF were being caused by the boxes in the Army List section. Absolutely no idea why: they worked fine before. Anyway, redoing all those now, but everything should be back up tonight.
Thommy H:
Okay - fixed everything. First post updated.
ChungEssence:
Well…
Haha
Looks like you’ve done it again. I still haven’t cover to cover read through your last epic so i’ll have to do that pronto so I can get this new beast.
The cover looks amazing btw.
Looking forward to it. I’ll have to bind this one up also and post some pics in my Offerings to Hashut thread. Kudos once again on what i’m sure is a tremendous effort.
Thommy H:
Just read the new one - the background’s better.
JMR:
A small update on me working on an Army Builder file. I can safely conclude that the AB Creator program makes me want to bash in my monitor using my keyboard, so I think I’ll have to give up. Maybe some other poor sod…errr I mean, brave contributing CDO member can pick it up instead.
I’ve just spent the last 2 hours trying to get the crew options for Mortal Engines right, so… bleh!
Edit: After a cup of coffee, I’ve started working on it again and I now have core and special units done.
cornixt:
JMR: I gave up on Army Builder for that very reason.
A more complete review. Some of this is reiterating what I have said before.
I’ve read a bit of the fluff, excellent writing as usual. Presentation is awesome. More specific critique of the army list:
I can’t fault the Core units. Specials - the CD units are fine. Black Orcs and Wolfriders are pretty standard, no complaints, even if BO serve the same purpose as Immortals. I can see fluff reasons for including Ogres, although they seem to serve the same purpose as both the Hellborn Constructs and the Bull Centaurs. Mortal Engines work wonderfully in allowing so much variety with a single unit entry.
The Infernal Engine should be an upgrade from the Doom Cannon (or vice versa). Was it just included so that people could more easily see what to do with a Hellcannon model?
My biggest gripe is that there is too much overlap between units. None of them are bad individually, but a little simplification would do wonders. It just needs a bit more streamlining.
I’m assuming you are using MS Word or OpenOffice to do this. There is a little trick that automatically lines up the “…points” at the end of each row. I can’t remember it off the top of my head but I will look it up if you are interested.
Thommy H:
Well, none of the units are going anywhere, I’m afraid! If you recall, the Doomcannon and the Infernal Engine did used to be one unit and it was an incredibly long, complicated army list entry that put people off right away. I admit that there’s some overlap in roles here, but the number of units is consistent with the number in modern Armies books. For example, the Ogre Kingdoms Thundertusk could easily be an upgrade for a Stonehorn but…it isn’t. Cygor/Ghorgon, Warsphinx/Necrosphinx, Necrolith Colossus/Heirotitan, Sepulchral Stalkers/Necropolis Knights, Coven Throne/Mortis Engine… There’s a lot of it going on these days, and it’s mainly so the big new plastic kits can be dual purpose.
Obviously I don’t have that limitation, but my design brief has always been to create an Armies book that’s indistinguishable from the current GW standard, so I go with their way of doing things - and that means loads and loads of units that might well do similar things, but create armies with subtly different feels. For example, as similar as the Dommcannon and Infernal Engine are, there’s one you’d quite like to Rampage everywhere and one you desperately want to stay where you put it. For that reason, they have different Ld values, and one always gets crew. Yeah, I could do that with options and Daemonic Upgrades (which I did in the last version), but I think this is thematically more interesting. Also, you can include two of each if they’re different units!
I’d be interested in the aligning trick though if you can remember it - I spent a little while trying to get the contents page to line up nicely, but couldn’t figure out a way to do it.
cornixt:
Makes sense I suppose, I didn’t realise all those units had separate army entries, I really need to get around to reading the new army books. I can’t find that Word trick, the annoying ribbon interface has hidden everything! I think it was under the Font or Paragraph settings.
Sounds like you have everything as you want it and my repeated blathering won’t make you change it. Looks good overall.
JMR:
I’m nearly done with the AB file now. I only have magic items and spells left to do. The rest should work.
While I was going through your book, Thommy, I noticed a couple of things. They may be well thought out and intended, but I’m just throwing them out here for a double-check.
- Hellfire Pistol doesn’t give +1A in combat like regular pistols do.
- Movement of a Palanquin is 4. I first figured this was done so that they can keep up with slaves/hobgoblins, but a Sorcerer Lord can’t join them, right? (Disposable rule)
- Petrified Sorcerer has LD10, boosting the unit’s LD. I guess that’s intended, and fluffy.
- Ferocious upgrade seems a bit cheap for Hellborn Constructs, especially when you take one as a mount. For 10points it seems like a no-brainer, because the LD penalty doesn’t come in to play when it’s used as a mount. For a unit the LD penalty means they’ll probably Rampage quite a lot, but maybe that’s not such a bad thing. Edit: Nevermind, just remembered that each model loses a wound when it rampages. That balances it out quite nicely. Still very good for a mount though.
P.S. A character on an Infernal Engine wins due to the rule of cool. Just the name alone… Infernal Engine! I must field an engine with a character and 8 Blunderbusses sometime and laugh maniacally as I shoot, burn and stomp stuff!
Thommy H:
The main reason the Hellfire Pistol doesn’t grant Extra Attack is that there wasn’t room for it on the page. But that’s fine because it’s being wielded by a Wizard, and Wizards don’t generally have access to additional hand weapons anyway. So it’s a design choice that it can’t be used in close combat like a normal pistol.
Palanquin’s Movement should be 3. I’ll correct that in the next version.
Hellborn Constructs are a bit wonky as a mount, but as you say, the fact that a couple of bad rolls can kill your Daemonsmith dead with no saves balances that out I think! Also note that a Construct used as a mount gains no benefit from Ironclad - in previous versions, it granted +3 armour save when it was given to a mount, but since there’s now only one combination in the whole book that fits that criteria, I left it out. Since Daemonsmiths have Chaos armour anyway, they should be fine.
Thommy H:
Actually, having thought about it since this morning, I think Ferocious doesn’t really work on Constructs. If you put it on them as-is, they’re likely to fail their Rampage test and then there’s a near-enough 50/50 chance of every model in the unit taking a Wound - even with +2 Attacks, that’s pretty crippling. So the only way to run them is to include a Daemonsmith on a Construct in the unit, in which case they’re suddenly never going to fail their Rampage test (with Ld 9 and a re-roll) so get +2 Attacks dirt cheap with no drawback. So I don’t think there’s a way to price it fairly - I considered making the ridden Construct more expensive, or pricing Ferocious higher, but I think that just shifts the problem. So I’m going to remove that Upgrade for the unit.
JMR:
Have you considered ruling Rampage to always use the engine’s Leadership value? There’s already the restriction of not being allowed to use a General’s leadership etc, so maybe rewrite the rule to restrict it even further?
Seems like that would only effect the situations were Ferocious is out of balance and wouldn’t effect situations where it’s fine as is.
Fluffwise you can explain it that no-one really has any way to contain or influence the Daemon’s spirit, except for Daemonsmiths, who can force a re-roll. The engine/construct’s Leadership value would then show how “volatile” the machine is. You can adjust the current Ld values if required.
On the other hand, I’m not sure the Ferocious upgrade really needs to be there anyways. Although sending a unit of rampaging, unstable, but highly destructive infernal constructs at your enemy is a cool concept…
Thommy H:
That was one of my original thoughts as well, but the way the rule is phrased (intentionally) is “any unit with at least one model that has the rule yadda yadda…”, which is in order to avoid having to mess around with saying whether it affects characters or whatever. It also makes Hellforged Items kind of a dangerous proposition, because it means your Overlord might send a whole unit charging where you don’t want them - his weapon is just that dangerous! What this means is that, even if I say you have to use the unit’s unmodified Leadership, or some variation thereof, there’s no good reason not to use a Daemonsmith’s Ld if he’s in the unit - and you wouldn’t put him on a Construct and not put him with your other Constructs, would you? So it would be a kind of artificial way of balancing it. There’d just be too many exceptions to what I think is otherwise quite an elegant rule.
The origins of the Ferocious Upgrade, and the reason it exists, go right back to the earliest drafts of the very first version of this book. Back then, there were Greater and Lesser Daemonic Engines, that would Rampage 2D6" and 1D6" respectively. The rule was taken almost verbatim from the Hellcannon, whence the concept came originally. Anyway, you could make your Greater Engines Ferocious, which dropped their Ld to Hellcannon levels, and made them Rampage just as far (i.e. 3D6"). Almost all of the original Upgrades were designed to make it possible to “build” existing Chaos Dwarf units - Ferocious was just one of the Hellcannon ones (as Favour of Hashut was a Great Taurus one and, originally, Obsidian Hull was a Lammasu one). And since Constructs were originally character mounts for making custom Great Tauruses and Lammasu, them having access to it is kind of an artefact of all that stuff…
Anyway, I think it’s best to just drop the option for Hellborn Constructs to have it. It doesn’t work that well for a unit, and doesn’t interact well when you include a character without it (does the unit Rampage 2D6" or 3D6"?) so let’s sidestep the whole issue!
Animatone:
As always Thommy… Amazing! Great work and thank you!
vulcanologist:
Still devouring the book, massive improvement Thommy, love the fluff especially the daemon magic. It all ties better now!
Couple of quick questions regarding the petrified sorcerer…
1. It gains the profile of the unit carrying it be they acolytes or immortals. Is that 1 attack or does it have bearers like a dwarf throne or shield?
2. If immortals carrying a sorcerer lord are immune to psychology should the same not apply to a
Petrified sorcerer? I would imagine a unit of immortals whose lord succumbed to the sorcerers curse while on campaign would fight harder than ever to get him back to Zharr Naggrund.
Thommy H:
Glad you like the background, Vulcanologist. Onto your questions:
1) It only has the WS and S characteristics of the unit carrying it, and is armed with the same thing. This is because it’s supposed to be held up by members of the unit! It retains its own Attacks value though to compensate for its irregular base size.
2) No, because he’s already dead. If a Petrified Sorcerer gets destroyed, it’s not really the end of the world! They want it to survive, and fight to protect it (which is why it has Bondage of Zharr) but it doesn’t inspire the same suicidal courage as a living Sorcerer Lord.
vulcanologist:
Cheers Thommy that’s cleared that up and also given me the green light for my next project…Immortals with petrified sorcerer! Hmmm… Or should I go with Accolytes…decisions, decisions!