Chaos Dwarfs 6.5 Army Book

[mattyfenby]

My club and I have been working slowly but surely to try and bring the Chaos Dwarfs from the Ravening Hordes to the spot we think they might have been in 2005 if the game makers had released an Army Book for them.

I asked for constructive criticism here about it a year or two ago and got some amazing feedback which helped to steer us in the right direction.

After a few test battles and a lot of research and whittling down, we are finally ready to enter the final stages of testing.

If anyone is interested in going through it, I am attempting to post our current version here:

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

I dont own any of the images we slapped over the Beastmen cover to make it Chaos Dwarf-y. Before it gets to its final form I will make sure not to have any uncredited artwork anywhere.

As much as we could, we kept what was in 4th Edition and Ravening Hordes. We definitely did make a few crazy changes: we gave Daemonsmiths the ability to choose Misfire results if within 6" of a War Machine, we put in a new unit called Infernal Guard, new Flamethrower Teams based on Salamanders, and we made Chaos Dwarf Bull Centaurs monster base rather than cavalry base, so we tuned them more towards Dragon Ogres than Centigors. The baseline Warriors and Blunderbusses are barely touched, but Hobgoblin Slaves do have added wrinkles like disloyalty and being able to buy Black Orc champions. We made some other slight changes but we were mainly focused on getting Ravening Hordes updated with as little upheaval as possible. The main advice I kept getting in the early stages were to tune the army down because I was making it too strong. I hope that the whittling we have done, as well as the pricing, brings this book closer to Balanced, though I am still working actively to test it and we are still very open to feedback.

The final steps after this section would be getting a final list of Magic Items together and compiling some Lore sections and back of the book Variant Lists before putting it together into a final Army Book format, which we have some cool ideas for. I also need to get a reference page together.

[Alarantalara]

One day a unit of flyers is going to charge the blunderbusses from more than 12" away. Since they don't have a "Front rank", you'll probably want to call out something reasonable to prevent argument.

For backstabberz, if the opponent also wants to lap around, what happens? For that matter, what if both sides are sneaky gits?

For Spirit of the Bull, why not just call it Frenzy? Not as much flavour, but easier to understand.

[mattyfenby]

Thank you, sincerely, for looking at it and for giving thoughtful insightful feedback right away.

I will try to think of a good way to handle that flyers or skirmishers issue.

Those are also great points for Backstabberz. Against an enemy wishing to lap round, the Gits would get to and this would prevent the enemy. I never even thought of them facing themselves- maybe THEN it would revert to which side won the combat? I will have to add something to that effect in there.

For the Frenzy rule, I cant tell you how many times we have gone back and forth on Frenzy, Hates Everyone, Stubborn, etc. The books seem to enjoy naming them lore-y things but it might be prudent to just keep terms as simple as possible.

Again, thank you just for taking the time to look and give feedback, but great feedback too, extremely thoughtful.


EDIT: I have put in a lot more changes now, including addressing your points

[Brr-icy]

We've been working with tuomas with his playtest list that he wrote during 6th to bring it to the proper 6th format and balance as well

[mattyfenby]

I would be extremely interested in seeing whatever you guys have been working on for that, that is wicked cool.

We have overhauled our version of a 6th Edition CD Book one last time and I think we are FINALLY, FINALLY, done adding or cutting units and we have moved on to Magic Items.

We have dropped the mixing of Black Orcs with Slave Units. I loved the concept but it wasn't working. LD 8 Hobgoblin Slave Driver who leads from the back, doesn't benefit from Look Out Sir! and dies immediately if the unit Squabbles or Flees for any reason has replaced the Black Orc.

War Machines are in what we think may be as close to the perfect spot as we can tune them. Effective but with enough randomness and risk in our opinion. We have resurrected Chaos Dwarf Bazooka Teams and incorporated the concept of Cavalry-Base Weapon Teams into the CD repertoire.

We struggled for a very, very long time to whittle down the final Rare slots. After much thought, we have put in the Abyssal Abomination, which can be represented by any appropriate 50mm monster based model such as a Tenderizer Wagon, a K'Daii Destroyer, a converted Spawn of Chaos, a converted Snotling Pump Wagon, etc. It has the statline of a cross between a Pump Wagon and a Spawn of Chaos with an inflated cost.

A lot of this book is shamelessly stolen from 4th Edition, Ravening Hordes, the Tamurkhan 8th Edition Booklet, and the feedback we got posting previous iterations of this online. Our main goals were to stay as true to Ravening Hordes as possible since that was balanced for 6th Edition, while making the Book feel like it came out in 2004 with a fully fleshed out roster.

Our Magic Items are starting to take shape. We have a big play test next month at 3250 points to put most of the roster on the table against Vampire Counts. I will actually try to do a good job and make a battle report for that with pictures showing off our new CD Army.

CURRENT ATTEMPT AT CD 6th EDITION ARMY BOOK : https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YMgwn ... K5bso/view