Finishing Up 6th Ed Chaos Dwarfs Army Book

[mattyfenby]

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YMgwnf ... sp=sharing

(Please let me know if the link is broken or if the PDF does not display properly formatted)

Good Morning,

To everyone in the US I hope your Veterans' Day is going well. To all my friends abroad happy Monday depending on time zone.

I have been working extremely hard to get my club's 6th Edition Chaos Dwarfs Army Book up to snuff. We started a few years ago with the Ravening Hordes list and sort of went crazy with it. We tried out a bunch of different cool looking models that could be in the CD lineup. We brought our list here and to reddit for criticism and feedback and got a lot of good ideas. It was very tough to prune things or nerf our beloved Chaos Dwarfs to make this flow properly and balance but I think we are finally, finally there.

With this Army Book, you can lean into a fully Chaos Dwarf list with solid warriors, magic, and fun war machines. You can also decide to run a slave-heavy, creature filled list, or balance it out somewhere in between. If you want to just use all Ravening Hordes models, you pretty much can. If you have a couple old Bazooka models from many editions ago, an unwieldy specialty model such as a steampunk CD mecha thing, and some of the new Fire Glaive wielding models, you can get those on the field, too! After a lot of back and forth, Bull Centaurs are cavalry base but in Appendix I we have included 40mm monster base rules for them if those are the models you have (our club has one member with one size and another member with the other size of course).

I have run 11 test battles now trying to make sure the units on the field balance out properly. The Chaos Dwarfs have won and lost about an equal amount of battles. There is now a "Reference Page" on page 40 and some Appendix pages to show which pages in other Army Books I have been referencing. I expect to be putting the final editing touches on this Army Book this month and have it be completely finalized by 2025.

If anyone on here likes this kind of thing I would be thrilled to get some more looks at our Chaos Dwarfs Army Book. We took a lot of the advice offered here earlier to trim and balance the list. Most of the magic items are copied directly from their Ravening Hordes entry or ripped from adjacent Army Books but there are a couple original items in there too which facilitate certain interactions and mechanics in the Army (example: the Daemonsmith who can decide to make a Misfire the 6 result has the opportunity to equip a magic item that in fact CAUSES the Misfire.) I would love to hear thoughts from anyone who has the time and interest. Thank you all very much!

[Alarantalara]

Some things I noticed while reading:

• Animosity This doesn't have the same rules as normal animosity, which may cause confusion. You might want to rename it.
• Blunderbuss It's fun to see a ranged unit that encourages ranking up.
• Beast Tamer There are two rolls associated with monster reaction tests. Does this apply to one or both? If it applies to the leadership test part, how does it interact with the dark elf beastmaster's rule which allows rerolls for nearby monsters? (I assume the skip part takes precedence over this rule, but if you pick the leadership roll and I choose to reroll it, what happens?)
• Abyssal AbominationAlmost everything that has this many wounds and functions as a monster is also a large target. Should this be one too?
• Magma Cannon misfire chart What number is added to the guessed distance on a roll of misfire if a 6 is rolled? If a second misfire is rolled when Abyssal Alchemy is relevant, is it a 2-3 or a 6?
• Bazooka Team Can the team guess 0" or is 1" truly the minimum range?
• Weapon team misfiresIf the weapon team rerolls the misfire and gets a second misfire, does it take another hit and have a chance to try again until it succeeds or dies, or does it just count as a 0?
• Abyssal Artifices Consider sorting each section by decreasing points cost to match other books.
• Daemonic Crucible Doesn't seem like much fun for the opponent. Automatically destroying an enemy war machine if you can't dispel the effect is nasty, especially since it's cheaper than basically everything it affects. Conversely, using the misfire on your own weapon to gain an extra shot is confusing since you haven't actually guessed a range. How does a bolt thrower misfire? Is a salamander hunting pack or ratling gun a war machine (they can misfire, though the salamanders don't have a misfire chart to roll on and the ratling gun has a chart but doesn't roll on it)? If you pick KA-BOOM on the Empire Volley Gun, who picks the target, since no shooting was declared (shooting your own enemy's weapons against them seems really unfriendly)?
• Chaos Dwarf Oligarch Regular dwarfs might declare a grudge over the points cost. 15 points less and gets free armour (25 points less with the second book, though that's just building the armour cost into the unit)? (this might be completely fair, but it may get complaints given that both cost the same in Ravening Hordes without armour)
• Chaos Dwarf Prophet You might want to stay at S3, T4 for this. Most high-end spell casters don't have better stats than the basic version of their unit type other than wounds and leadership.
• Chaos Dwarf Sorcerer On the other hand, they aren't worse either. You're fine with WS 4 here.
• Chaos Dwarf Warriors Why did these become more expensive? Dwarfs pay 8 points for the same infantry and only 1 point for shields on top of that.

[mattyfenby]

This is exactly why I posted here. Thank you so much for your extremely thoughtful feedback!

Some things I noticed while reading:

• Animosity This doesn't have the same rules as normal animosity, which may cause confusion. You might want to rename it.

In the Ogres Book they have the Gnoblars call it Bicker. This is a good thought and we can consider giving the Hobgoblins a unique name to reflect their unique 1 result.

[*]Blunderbuss It's fun to see a ranged unit that encourages ranking up.

This one is straight from Ravening Hordes and I believe even the 4th Edition book so I can't take credit for it, but I am glad to see it on the field too!

[*]Beast Tamer There are two rolls associated with monster reaction tests. Does this apply to one or both? If it applies to the leadership test part, how does it interact with the dark elf beastmaster's rule which allows rerolls for nearby monsters? (I assume the skip part takes precedence over this rule, but if you pick the leadership roll and I choose to reroll it, what happens?)

For both this and Daemonic Crucible, I am going to take your advice about how controlling your enemy's stuff feels bad. I will be making them only affect friendlies. The Prophet can automatically pick the result on the Monster Reaction chart if the Monster has already failed the LD test it takes prior to that.

[*]Abyssal AbominationAlmost everything that has this many wounds and functions as a monster is also a large target. Should this be one too?

This was definitely considered. Chariots are also known to be S5 T5 W4. This was tuned to be a cross between a Chaos Spawn and a Snotling Pump Wagon and we don't wish it to become a magnet for Bolt Throwers and Cannons visible even past 1 story terrain and troops.

[*]Magma Cannon misfire chart What number is added to the guessed distance on a roll of misfire if a 6 is rolled? If a second misfire is rolled when Abyssal Alchemy is relevant, is it a 2-3 or a 6?

For the first shot, it would be treated as a HIT or adding 0" to the guess distance. Then on the second firing attempt, we didn't want any endless loops or abuse so if there's another misfire we just decided blow the whole thing up at once.

[*]Bazooka Team Can the team guess 0" or is 1" truly the minimum range?

1" would truly be the minimum range. It is a 3" template so are there situations where you think they would really want to just guess 0" and hope for a 2 or 4? I am not dead set against allowing 0" be the minimum guess.

[*]Weapon team misfiresIf the weapon team rerolls the misfire and gets a second misfire, does it take another hit and have a chance to try again until it succeeds or dies, or does it just count as a 0?

We will add a rule that it just blows up immediately. We don't want to get into endless loops or open it up to abuse.

[*]Abyssal Artifices Consider sorting each section by decreasing points cost to match other books.

I will absolutely do so. It is currently the Ravening Hordes Items at the top of each category and my made up ones afterwards.

[*]Daemonic Crucible Doesn't seem like much fun for the opponent. Automatically destroying an enemy war machine if you can't dispel the effect is nasty, especially since it's cheaper than basically everything it affects. Conversely, using the misfire on your own weapon to gain an extra shot is confusing since you haven't actually guessed a range. How does a bolt thrower misfire? Is a salamander hunting pack or ratling gun a war machine (they can misfire, though the salamanders don't have a misfire chart to roll on and the ratling gun has a chart but doesn't roll on it)? If you pick KA-BOOM on the Empire Volley Gun, who picks the target, since no shooting was declared (shooting your own enemy's weapons against them seems really unfriendly)?

I am convinced that that would be unfun and we will rewrite it to only affect a friendly machine during the bearer's shooting phase. The point of it is to trigger a Misfire and let the Daemonsmith shine by delivering the 6.

[*]Chaos Dwarf Oligarch Regular dwarfs might declare a grudge over the points cost. 15 points less and gets free armour (25 points less with the second book, though that's just building the armour cost into the unit)? (this might be completely fair, but it may get complaints given that both cost the same in Ravening Hordes without armour)

I will take another look at the points cost and consider making it match his counterpart. I think it currently matches the Ravening Hordes value.

[*]Chaos Dwarf Prophet You might want to stay at S3, T4 for this. Most high-end spell casters don't have better stats than the basic version of their unit type other than wounds and leadership.

This is honestly very fair and I will consider rolling this unit back.

[*]Chaos Dwarf Sorcerer On the other hand, they aren't worse either. You're fine with WS 4 here.

Also fair.

[*]Chaos Dwarf Warriors Why did these become more expensive? Dwarfs pay 8 points for the same infantry and only 1 point for shields on top of that.

I can take another look at how the points stack up. They can attach Weapon Teams but those do carry their own cost. Maybe I will decrease their cost to match their counterparts and increase the cost for making the regiment Stubborn.



You have given me a lot to think about and your feedback has been very very helpful in improving this list before it is completely finalized. Thank you very much for taking the time to look through the Army Book and to share your insights and opinions!

EDIT: I'm a huge moron and tried responding to each point but I have screwed up the formatting with the quotes thing. I'm working on fixing it. EDIT AGAIN: Fixed