For those who are planning to run these in AoS I’d love to hear if anyone has some early ideas.
The Mortal Realms give us a few options we could theme these guys around so I wanted a place to post some ideas and maybe hear some other ideas, a place of inspiration if you like.
Multiple times over the years, mainly with Marauder minis, I’ve tried to tie in Necromancy or the Undead into my Chaos Dwarfs. Ghrask Dragh is what the Chaos Dwarfs called Braugh Slavelord in ToW (an Orge who ate a Necromancer and of course therefore gained control over the undead…a little bit anyway ). So basing my army in Shyish would be the most obvious tie in yet.
Thinking along the lines of not content with binding demons my Despot meddles with binding souls too. Could use some of the amazing undead range for conversions, I’ve only done one mock up so far
I love the spirit hosts idea, consider that stolen. However I will paint them as flames (some fire Daemons). I’ve done something similar for legion of the damned
That is a fair shout on the cannon from the destroyer as we will get two spare ones with each kit.
Somewhat cliché but I imagine a beasts theme you’d have to mount the artillery on the back of a slave beast.
Reading posts like this makes me feel like I’ve “lost” creatively, as my idea of realm themes have just been what colors I’ve put on their bases mostly Things like these make for wonderful hobby inspiration though!
There’s a lot you could do with Shyish in particular, with skeletons coming alive on the bases, use cursed city bits, etc. Using bits from the Mortis Engine, Nagash and the Spirit Hosts kit you could have spirits trying to escape the furnaces on the Dominator Engine, or artillery.
Or haunting the “death-shrieker” rockets
An idea I’ve had for Chamon themed bases have been to cut up sprues to have “basalt”-esque pillars present, and in general drybrush some of the terrain to have random bits of metallic sheens or glittering edges. Maybe adding gemstones jutting out of the ground, and making it seem like a geological wonderland of riches.
Would seem like a prime target for some Helsmiths to extract and despoil!
Not sure where I’m gonna make mine be from yet, I kind of want to read more of the Helsmith’s lore first.
By the way that cannon arm as a thicker barrel for the bombard is a great idea.
Not and expert or very into AoS so cannot comment @GhraskDragh but wanted to say that the cannon conversion idea is so cool…could be a way of me representing different artillery in TOW. Stealing. Thank you!!!
Make the cannon barrel more vertical to be like a train funnel, pin the rockets from the rocket battery to the sides to act as steam cannons (or use any spare marker pens you have lying around), and then fill in the gap between the funnel at the front and the daemon engine at the back. Add a couple of bottle caps as rear wheels, and you’ve got a converted iron daemon without too much effort.
Your very welcome for the canon guys, sorry I’ve been sitting on that idea since announcement day only just found an app I like to chop shop things up, thinking exactly the same as you guys, we’ll have all the stuff we need in the one box to do it.
@cornixt that’s a bad ass idea for an Iron Demon… I do think we’ll be getting one in wave 2 also so it’ll be cool to see if they come close to each other in design.
I also had a random thought whilst at work today, a bit daft but I liked the idea of as it is the realm of death and to get a bit more underground like a dwarf I could base them all in an inverted Ziggurat one that gets buried into the ground like a mine with the Despot based at the very bottom where he can commune with Hashut…going back to the old world days where they found him underground after getting stranded. Absolutely no impact on minis that one, just a pure fluff idea
Shyish could be good, not just because black and purple are quite commanding colours, but also because you have possibilities like the ghostlight tones of nighthaunt to play with.
Pallid, near-dead looking fleshtone will really amp up the evil.
Wave two is probably at least 3-4 years away, and with AoS it’s more likely to be just a hero + a next edition battletome. Unless Helsmiths sell really well, and the designers like working with them, who knows!
(EDIT: Earliest possible release is 1-2 years away due to 4th ed being 1 year old, and editions lasting 3-4 years. The armies are not released in a specific order as my initial post might imply.)
However I should point out that due to the rumor spoiling the AoS Chorf release, and unaccounted warscroll-cards, it seems like there might still be two kits we haven’t seen yet. These are likely to be faction terrain and manifestations(minis for big spells on the table), but they could also be proper units.
Going by other recent AoS announcements they might show these off in about a month’s time. That is if these kits exist at all.
For clarification, the rumor states 12 kits (we have seen 10, counting the underworlds warband), and the rumor is ‘confirmed’ from THE leaker guy, Whitefang over on TGA.
Take it with a grain of salt.
Wondering myself about the Terrain and spell effects… It fits right into the 2 spaces left if those credible rumours are true however also Kharadron also went quite a while without them, only now getting some so it wouldn’t be unprecedented for them to have none
It’s got to be far more likely than 2 new minis though.
What do you think we would get?
There definitely doesn’t seem to be the big lean into industry that we thought we would see, in the minis at least. Would a big bit of mining equipment for these minis?
I have no insights or rumors about the possible terrain or spells, so I can’t really speak to “what I think we’ll get”.
In general I haven’t liked AoS terrain much, as it often incentivises playstyles that I don’t like. For example rewarding staying on “my side of the table” for buffs.
So if I could wish for what we’d get, leaning into the mining thing, I would wish for a “drill pod” that can deepstrike some slow-ass movement 4 Dwarfs onto the enemy’s half of the table. As it is right now Helsmiths look like they’re going to be a “castle & counterpunch” playstyle army, so it would be fun to have the option to get more stuff onto the battlefield-center aggressively.
Chaos Dwarves of the Shadow Realms could be in endless war with Dark Elves, A classic elves vs dwarves rivalry taken to the most twisted and evil extremes on both sides.
The Hubris of the Chaos Dwarves thinking only they will succeed (compared to other chaos or even dwarf forces who failed) at taking ground in the realm.
Their willingness to use the darkest shadow magics, and their mechanical and alchemical ingenuity would allow them to see their way through the illusions of the realm.
Really cruel story there if you had a frequent Dark Elves opponent, though AoS has yet to see a true DE faction, besides Snake Ladies and Deep Ones, Though a Chaos Dwarf fleet featuring Tordrek Hackhart’s Black Kraken Mechanical squid as some Amphibious warmachine would be cool too.
Edit: the Kraken had cooler artwork and model in the Dreadfleet boxed game.
What a great place to put Chaos Dwarfs, you really wouldn’t want to be a human living in that realm with those guys about fighting each other
I hadn’t thought of Hackhart at all since the release, it’s only a couple of warmachines I know but I could see his mechanical squid firing in perfectly.
I hope he gets a mention in the new book, as well that original off shore keep/castle thing we all first saw harvesting whatever it was harvesting
). So basing my army in Shyish would be the most obvious tie in yet.
Things like these make for wonderful hobby inspiration though!
