Dwarf Army Book - Suggestions for 8th edition

[Razakel]

It seems like the RoS on Ironbreakers question needs to be answered a few different ways.

1: Will Ironbreakers with a 2+ armour save and a 6+ parry save be imbalanced by virtue of their toughness?

2: Will Ironbreakers with a 2+ armour save work too well with other Dwarf units? I don't want to start a furious anti-Skaven debate, but for example the Slave is a terrible unit. Awful statline, explodes when they flee and are pretty underwhelming. But when you factor in Strength in Numbers, generals leadership, reroll from BSB and Steadfast makes them pretty immovable. We need to consider if Ironbreakers with RoS would be too good in combination with our other units, since no army unit exists in isolation.

3: What should this unit cost if they're going to get this upgrade?

I was also just talking to a friend of mine and he had a really interesting idea that I think has a lot of promise. What if Ironbreakers caused reverse impact hits when they were charged? To represent how tough and fearsome they are? For example a unit of Orcs (5 wide) charges a unit of Ironbreakers (5 wide) and the Ironbreakers inflict 5 impact hits on the charging Orcs.

This would give them some extra punch when they get charged.

Thoughts?

[BooTMGSG]

I think, in terms of toughness, they are no tougher than your standard heavy calvalry. Yes they are T4, but they are a a T4 army and Woc and Liz have the 2+ T4 knight. The main thing that will differ is 1. mobility, I think if they are to be a defensive rock a penalty to charge distance wouldn't be unreasonable. 2.) Numbers, it is likely that they will cost less than knights and you will be fielding more. 3.) Not that Killy, if they had the same offensive stats as a Dwarf warrior i think they could get away with being that rock solid.

However, I'm not sure how this would work with the idea that dwarves should get a reverse armour pen rule (reduce the armour pen by 1) With a 2+ save it could get excessive.

2.) How will it work with the other Dwarves? I think it will be the defensive elite in a defensive army. To use the slaves, they are suposed to be flighty, but the army rules remove that weekness. The second problem is that skaven can shoot into them. I think if we focus on the weekness of the Ironbreakers, they are purely defensive, and have little offensive out put. I don't think there is little room for abuse. The worse I could think of was to let them pop up again via Regrowth, but we can't use magic.
On another note, If you were going the whole shield wall root with ironbreakers, you could limit their ultra defense to the front arc, reducing their defense/parry from the flank.

3.) Price is always tricky and you need to know a whole host of things to get that right.

The reverse Impact hits, would make more sense with spike traps or a Shield and spear setup. However, one thought that did occur was that you know the ogres have a bigger impact hits, for really long charges. What about the reverse. If the oponents were a fair distance away and made the charge they'd get a heavy hit, but if they moved in closer then charged, they'd be spared, but would be closer to a dwarf charge. It would teach them for using cavalry and infantry with more than M3

[yabbadabba]

How about Ironbreakers always count as Steadfast? Would that be too game breaking?

[ProphetofProfit]

Runesmith buffs could be combined with Runic Standards (which are awesome btw) so something like:

a. A unit without a Runesmith or Runelord may have a Runic Standard worth up to 25 points.
b. A unit with a Runesmith may have a Runic Standard worth up to 50 points.
c. A unit with a Runelord may have a Runic Standard worth up to 100 points.

Fluffwise this could be explained by saying that the Runic Standard was created by the accompanying Runesmith or Runelord.

[theunwantedbeing]

How about Ironbreakers always count as Steadfast? Would that be too game breaking?

That would prevent anyone being steadfast against them, so yeah probably too game breaking.

[yabbadabba]

That would prevent anyone being steadfast against them, so yeah probably too game breaking.

No it wouldn't. If I had said that the Ironbreakers counts as always having more ranks, that would. But due to the timing of Steadfast Ironbreakers cannot be Steadfast if they win, so the opponent can still be Steadfast if they lose.

[The bearded one]

That rule exists already.

It's called "stubborn"




GW doesn't appear to add all that many special rules to units anymore apart from BRB special rules (frenzy, hatred, fly), and the occasional centerpiece with wacky complex rules ( * cough * mortis engine ), but regular unitts don't really seem to anymore. I think GW will keep it simple and just keep ironbreakers as they are, with a pointreduction maybe, or give them a point of extra armour or something and nothing else. More complex (and interesting) special rules like reversed impact hits, or having their armoursave be less modified by strength than usual (like -0 for str4, -1 for str5 etc.) seems to be out of the question if we look at the designtrend for the last 5 books. The most complex thing a rank&file unit has gotten that I can think of, is maneaters choosing generic BRB special rules.

[Razakel]

You're probably right TBO, but I'm still hoping against hope that our old units will become more interesting to use, or that we'll get new units.

Regarding your Maneater example, in my big post on the previous page, I used the Maneater example myself and am currently hoping for a Slayer update to that effect. E.g. we get a list of traits like cancelling regeneration; ignoring scaly skin saves; +1 to wound etc. and we choose (like Maneaters) from that list.

[Bikhu]

That rule exists already.

It's called "stubborn"




GW doesn't appear to add all that many special rules to units anymore apart from BRB special rules (frenzy, hatred, fly), and the occasional centerpiece with wacky complex rules ( * cough * mortis engine ), but regular unitts don't really seem to anymore. I think GW will keep it simple and just keep ironbreakers as they are, with a pointreduction maybe, or give them a point of extra armour or something and nothing else. More complex (and interesting) special rules like reversed impact hits, or having their armoursave be less modified by strength than usual (like -0 for str4, -1 for str5 etc.) seems to be out of the question if we look at the designtrend for the last 5 books. The most complex thing a rank&file unit has gotten that I can think of, is maneaters choosing generic BRB special rules.

I am worried you are right. I can understand their desire to simplify, but just making Ironbreakers cheaper does not do much for the blandness of my favorite army. As a matter of fact it will just reduce my motivation to take hw/s warrriors even more. If they simply add new types of units to the army without creating some diversity in our current infantry toolbox than I will be very disappointed. I love my traditional Hammers, Ironbreakers, and Longbeards, I just want them to contribute different things to my army.

I also think that the reverse armor save combined with stubborn on lords and thanes is the best option for adding needed extra fluffy character and effectiveness to Dwarfs as a race.

[BooTMGSG]

GW doesn't appear to add all that many special rules to units anymore apart from BRB special rules (frenzy, hatred, fly), and the occasional centerpiece with wacky complex rules ( * cough * mortis engine ), but regular unitts don't really seem to anymore. I think GW will keep it simple and just keep ironbreakers as they are, with a pointreduction maybe, or give them a point of extra armour or something and nothing else. More complex (and interesting) special rules like reversed impact hits, or having their armoursave be less modified by strength than usual (like -0 for str4, -1 for str5 etc.) seems to be out of the question if we look at the designtrend for the last 5 books. The most complex thing a rank&file unit has gotten that I can think of, is maneaters choosing generic BRB special rules.

Perhaps the exception is Army wide rules, the charge impact wound, plus choppa rule is largely army wide, so things like the modified armour saves idea, are more a posibility as an Army wide rule, than say a specific buff to the ironbreakers.

[The bearded one]

Perhaps the exception is Army wide rules, the charge impact wound, plus choppa rule is largely army wide, so things like the modified armour saves idea, are more a posibility as an Army wide rule, than say a specific buff to the ironbreakers.

Even those are not always incredibly complex. The more complex of them (the TK and VC undead special rules) don't really become more complex anyway than they were in previous editions. Choppa's is just "+1 strength for orcs in the first round of combat" and has now been generalised to all weapons used by orcs instead of only hand weapons. The ogre bullcharge was also simplified. Previously it used to be that the strength of the impact hit of an ogre was increased for every model behind that ogre, meaning that a rank of ogres (without characters in it) could have different strengths if the backrank wasn't fully complete (so one model could have 2 models behind him and the other 3). Now it's simply +1 strength to impact hits per rank after the first.

I find this development regrettable. Developers appear unwilling to try and write any kind of complex rule to express something cool and fluffy, and want to avoid it alltogether or make the rule as generic as possible so that they can incorporate existing rules from the BRB.

[yabbadabba]

That rule exists already.

It's called "stubborn"

D'oh! Well there goes my membership to the playtesting guild .

[The bearded one]

D'oh! Well there goes my membership to the playtesting guild .

* snatch *

and now it's mine! Mwuahah!

[Razakel]

While browsing some areas of Warseer I don't often stray into I found Haravikk's thread on his player-made Warhammer army book, modified for 8th. He has a lot of interesting stuff in there, and in particular his army-wide special rule is a re-roll for characteristic tests.

This seems to satisfy the criteria for a simplified army-wide special rule, but how effective would it be?

Haravikk's thread by the way: http://www.warseer.com/forums/showth...layer-Edition)

[The bearded one]

That armywide rule sounds a bit like an explicite counter to pit of shades, purple sun and dwellers below, doesn't it?

[Razakel]

Certainly, sounds like an imbalanced army rule, not that it's too good or too bad. But if you're against a guy relying on his magic to take you out and you can re-roll all the tests, it's probably too good. Then there will be situations where you won't need to take them at all, which neutralizes the army wide rule.

Compared to army wide hatred (dark elves) or the choppa rule (orcs) it seems too narrow to be effective in every game.

[BooTMGSG]

While browsing some areas of Warseer I don't often stray into I found Haravikk's thread on his player-made Warhammer army book, modified for 8th. He has a lot of interesting stuff in there, and in particular his army-wide special rule is a re-roll for characteristic tests.

This seems to satisfy the criteria for a simplified army-wide special rule, but how effective would it be?

Haravikk's thread by the way: http://www.warseer.com/forums/showth...layer-Edition)

Interesting army, book. However, reading it, it did seem to make the case for streamling the special rules. It seemed a tad bloated in parts. I think the case could be made for reducing the types of units, particularly the redundent ones, and just giving the unit some options, that let you tailor them a bit.

So for simplicity sake, what you'd be looking at is
Perhaps some army wide rule, reverse armour pen, perhaps shield wall 5+ ward save on front arc with shield. or whatever, keep it simple and don't pile them up.
Some reworking for runesmiths-
Units can be dealt with by the apropriate wargear and stats change, and if you have to universal rule.
New rules for new toy
New unit X
Streamling the runes. Though I fear they might say just pretend the BRB items are equilivant runic weapons and look at these 8 nasty runic devices. (it would be a travesty, but could be redemable, if you could place runes on units a kin to marks of Chaos on unit. Though this may ramp up the complexity)

[Razakel]

I agree with your comments on streamlining the rules. In the end it all feels so futile though, GW is going to release a new army book for Dwarves at some unknown point in the future, and it feels like the speculation is usually not close to what really comes. My real fear is that the emphasis on simplification will rob Dwarves of all the things that are unique about them, we currently stand to lose our runes, our focus on anti-magic, our exclusive infantry mantra and so on. Obviously any one of these things doesn't make the Dwarves who they are, but if they all go at the same time will we just be Empire with T4 as other people have been saying? Seems depressing to me.

[dwarfboy]

It seems to me that people are basing a lot of ideas on what has happened in the new books, Empire particularly. While they may hint at where the new books are going, they aren't making all books have exactly units the same just with a different name. I know that MI, MC and a big monster seems to crop up a lot recently (although I think O&G and Vamps didn't get MC unit? and Empire didn't get MI?), it doesn't mean Dwarfs have to become Empire with T4. Just because their Warrior Priest no longer generate dispell dice doesn't necesarily mean that Runesmiths/Lords will as well, because Dwarfs don't have access to magic (or monsters), putting them at an imediate disadvantage. Although there is the possibility of gaining magic, I'm not inclined to think it will happen, because it's the diversity which makes the game great, and Dwarfs are one of the most diverse races out there due to their lack of what pretty much every army has. Sometimes I think that the Dwarf's ability to generate DD is a bit good, and perhaps as an elite race, and the fluff behind Runesmiths/Lords, Runesmiths/Lords could have a price increase to create a semblence of fairness, but then again without it the whole army just gets annihilated but magic. I really love the Dwarf army as it is, with the lack of magic, and all forms of monsters, instead having things to combat the things we lack, and so I would personaly rather see more things in line with what we have, but expanded upon to create diversity within whats already there.

[Charistoph]

I really love the Dwarf army as it is, with the lack of magic...

I would like to point out that a Dwarf army without Magic is the same as a Daemon army without protection. The biggest difference that Dwarfs have from everyone else is that they don't use their bodies to channel magic directly, but entrap it for use through Runes.