Thommy H:
Okay, I’ll reply in order. As a rule I hate posts that reply to every bit of someone else’s posts (too many bad flame war memories…), but this is probably acceptable.
1.Why dont the sorcerer lord have a lammasu as mount?
2.Why can heros ride on a taurus?
warh
I’ll answer these together: the Lammasu and the Great Taurus have gone, replaced by a generic “Taurus” which is a smaller, but customisable, creature. To create a Lammasu, you would give your Sorcerer Lord a Taurus, upgrade it to a Winged Taurus, and add the Colossal and two levels of the Spellbreaker gift. As part of the Daemonic Gifts idea, I wanted to extend it to mounts and get away from the idea of these two arbitrary (and very similar) monsters that Chaos Dwarfs have now. Instead, characters can ride all manner of crazy things, and you can build something like a Manticore or a Juggernaut for them if you want. That’s why the Tyrant and Sorcerer can ride them too: you can’t build such dangerous monsters as a Great Taurus and Lammasu with their limitations, but you can give them a pretty nasty mount instead.
3.Why have the core troops chaos armour?
warh
Because they do! One of my earliest design decisions was to include this to get some clear water between Dwarfs and Chaos Dwarfs. Since the new Warriors of Chaos book says that Chaos Dwarfs make the Chaos armour, and they forge it for all these thousands of Chaos Warriors, they must keep some for themselves. In real life, a nation doesn’t export things it doesn’t use itself - if a country grows lots of grain, it doesn’t sell it all and let it’s own people starve. So Chaos Dwarfs ought to have universal access to Chaos armour, I believe.
4.Why no hobgoblins!?!?
warh
There are Hobgoblins! You can take Wolf Riders as a Special choice and the generic Slaves unit can be used to represent them too. That’s actually the intention of the poisoned attacks upgrade - the fluff, when it’s written, will associate that with Hobgoblins so you can represent Sneaky Gitz.
5.Why no earthshaker?
warh
Again, like the Lammasu, this is something you have to build yourself using Daemonic Gifts. If you look at the Infernal Shells gift, it replicates (in a toned down form for balance reasons…) the Earthshaker ability. Give this upgrade to a Daemonic Engine and you have yourself an Earthshaker.
No missile weapon options for characters? I like pistols
Baggronor
Well, there are a couple of magic weapons (including a pistol). Really, I don’t know about this. Chaos Dwarfs have blunderbusses, obviously, but they don’t seem to “fit” other missile weapons. I just can’t really see a Tyrant or Warlord with a pistol. It sort of seems like they’re more “traditional” than their troops. I’ll think about it though.
Magic standards for warriors and blunderbusses? Most other Core troops can’t have magic banners or can only take a 25pt banner.
Baggronor
Yeah, this is an oversight. It should be 25 points. The magic items section is probably the weakest area of the whole thing, and I need to expand some of the categories to include some new and better ideas, especially the banners.
I would have thought T5 and 3 wounds on the Lesser engine. 2W just seems a little easy to kill, even at T6.
Baggronor
That’s more to do with the progression of the Daemonic Engine stats, but since I’ve actually made it so Lesser Engines can’t take the Colossal Gift anyway, I might tweak the stats a bit, yes.
No Bolt Throwers? Or other types of missile fire besides Stone Throwers? I would be disappointed by that
Baggronor
I just couldn’t think of a way to include Bolt Throwers after ditching so much of the Greenskin element of the list. Maybe a Chaos Dwarf version, actually? One idea I toyed with was a special “support weapon” rule, in which Core units could take a small war machine that would have to deploy next to them and could use their Leadership (like Skaven weapon teams). Warriors would allow a mortar, Blunderbusses a bazooka and Slaves a bolt thrower (albeit a lesser version, most likely). I decided it would be way too easy to go gunline with that option though. The concept is still floating around in my head though, so I might try to find a way to make it workable.
Does the ‘Colossal’ gift increase the Engine’s unit strength too? I assume it would become like a rank-breaker like the Hellcannon/Hydra?
Baggronor
Yes, as monsters I thought their Unit Strength naturally rose with their Wounds? Although since it says their Unit Strength in their special rules, it may be that that’s not clear.
Stubborn Core? With Bondage of Hashut? And Bodyguard? With a BSB… and all the Special and Rare slots free for Unbreakable Engines?!
Baggronor
Yeah…I didn’t notice that. Interestingly, I didn’t realise how tough you could make Immortals until I started thinking about Special Character rules: I was going to do Rykarth the Unbreakable and, true to his name, I was thinking of giving him the option of making a unit of Immortals he joined Unbreakable. At first I thought this was way too powerful but, actually, with a character in the unit they’re only a hair away from Unbreakable anyway! As such, there’s no way they should ever be Core! I may drop that part of Zhatan altogether, or perhaps lose the Bodyguard rule since it makes them better than I wanted them to be.
Its pretty cool though, I really like the Immortals, BCs and Acolytes rules and the customisable Daemon Engine concept is spot on
Baggronor
Thanks! The Daemon Engine stuff is still probably my favourite part of the list. I like the possibility of running a monster list - with Ogres, Bull Centaurs and Tauruses too, you can make a very different kind of Chaos Dwarf army.