[OSSR]Warhammer Dwarfs (vs Dwarfs vs Dwarfs)

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Fri May 30, 2014 9:05 am

Done.

Shatner wrote:Great review, AH. Thanks for writing it.

In the WHF setting, it seems like the dwarfs are pretty much circling the drain, and it's just a matter of time before the skaven, and to a lesser degree the greenskins, shatter what's left of 'em... or until they become nothing more than an enclave within the lands of humanity. My point is, it's a pity that such a neat faction and neat army has no real thematic reason to persist as a lasting force.

Well, that's the grimdark aspect of it; remember that WHF is supposed to be a crapsack kind of world, and the Dwarfs on a long, slow, tragic slide into oblivion...but they never stop fighting. That's what makes them attractive.

darkmaster · Post by **darkmaster** » Fri May 30, 2014 9:52 am

But, if the dwarves have better technology, better more loyal and braver troops, more reliable magic, and presumably better tactical acumen from thousands of years of accumulated military knowledge. Why are they on a slide to oblivion?

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Fri May 30, 2014 10:13 am

Numbers, mostly. Low birth rate is a traditional dwarf problem. And while their magic is reliable, it isn't the most powerful - see High Elves (whom they had a massive war against). Add to that some bad luck (earthquakes, vampires, Chaos incursions, etc.) and one by one they lose their holds.

Plus, there's a bit of stagnation in there - dwarf technology advances slowly; dwarfs routinely kill deformed babies; dwarf ladies sometimes get the hots for a particular dude and refuse to marry anybody else - it's a bit of an issue.

Ghremdal · Post by **Ghremdal** » Fri May 30, 2014 10:16 am

Some go on to become slayers because on Holy Dwarfday they got up on the left foot...Seriously though some of the reasons for becoming a Slayer are fairly ridiculous.

Laertes · Post by **Laertes** » Fri May 30, 2014 11:41 am

Numbers, mostly. Low birth rate is a traditional dwarf problem. And while their magic is reliable, it isn't the most powerful - see High Elves (whom they had a massive war against). Add to that some bad luck (earthquakes, vampires, Chaos incursions, etc.) and one by one they lose their holds.

Plus, there's a bit of stagnation in there - dwarf technology advances slowly; dwarfs routinely kill deformed babies; dwarf ladies sometimes get the hots for a particular dude and refuse to marry anybody else - it's a bit of an issue.

In OOC terms, I believe that originally it was due to Tolkien's general "Beauty is Fading" vibe, where the world becomes less and less magical every year. Like most fantasy settings, Warhammer has slowly moved away from Tolkien over time, but some things stay baked in. The elder races (dwarves, elves) have a feeling of melancholy, of being in the autumn of their culture, which is so marvellously evocative that it's not really something you want to get rid of.

In-game, of course, it's due to the factors Ancient History postulated. But those are ad hoc rationalisations that the designers had invented to justify their earlier decision to make the Dwarfs a fading race.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Fri May 30, 2014 12:17 pm

I'm a bit stumped as to why this review on THREE Dorf Books is this small.
I am coming up short with reasons as to why this could be.

OK, i am done.

rasmuswagner · Post by **rasmuswagner** » Fri May 30, 2014 2:00 pm

Omegonthesane wrote:AH, that image of an army stretches a 1600x1200 monitor, and I can't zoom out enough on my normal laptop to fit the article into one screen width while having readable text. Spoiler please?

Indeed, that image fucked the entire thread.

I find that right click, adblock, click solves it nicely.

Laertes · Post by **Laertes** » Fri May 30, 2014 2:01 pm

Stahlseele wrote:I'm a bit stumped as to why this review on THREE Dorf Books is this small.
I am coming up short with reasons as to why this could be.

OK, i am done.

That's a bit of a stunted post.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Fri May 30, 2014 2:52 pm

i feel like whoever did it should be the bigger man and own up to the fact that his tags fucked the thread up.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Sat May 31, 2014 12:58 am

One of you, unfuck your tags.

Part of the reason the reviews are so short is that with all the pretty pictures the info density is pretty low; I'd be surprised if there were 40k words in an 80 page book.

darkmaster · Post by **darkmaster** » Sat May 31, 2014 3:56 am

Ha! 40k I get it.

infected slut princess · Sun Jun 01, 2014 5:11 pm

This is the best thread I have ever seen on this forum. EXCELLENT WORK.

TheFlatline · Post by **TheFlatline** » Sun Jun 01, 2014 10:39 pm

This kind of makes me wish there was an OSSR for Blood Bowl. There was a game that didn't take itself grimdark.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Sun Jun 01, 2014 11:53 pm

Ah, Blood Bowl. The Rule 34 for that was epic.

[/edit]Also, Laertes needs to fix his fucking tags.

Desdan_Mervolam · Post by **Desdan_Mervolam** » Mon Jun 02, 2014 7:28 am

I am curious about something, though I suspect I'll not get an answer about it until this page gets unfucked.

On average, how badly were players screwed over by the semi-continual edition rollover? I imagine that to an extent, it's like an edition rollover in D&D, where the extend you are screwed over is determined by how much your friends embrace the new regime, but I was adjacent to the warhammer* fandom enough to know that many playspaces, even non official ones, more or less adopted tournament rules (Which seemed to boil down to "We use the latest edition, you must have actual minis to represent your army (No counters or tokens), the minis must actually represent what the minis are, and they must be painted to a minimum standard of quality", and that even if you didn't there was a lot of pressure from other players to play to those standards anyway.

So, I guess my question boils down to "How quickly do the books come out once the new edition comes out, and what do you do if your army's new book hasn't come out yet?" and "To what extent are the minis from the previous edition rendered obsolete by a new edition, requiring players to shell it out for a new army?"

* I was adjacent to the Warhammer fandom from about the year 2000 to about the year 2006.

Red_Rob · Post by **Red_Rob** » Mon Jun 02, 2014 8:58 am

Well, the thing to remember about GW is that they are a miniatures company first, and a games company second. Therefore any decisions they make as a company are primarily designed to sell more little mans rather than, say, making a fun or functional game. As such GW Army books aren't designed to add an interesting new tactical dimension to the game, as much as to hawk the latest additions to the model range. This of course means that "you must have the right mini" is treated as holy writ by official stores & tournaments.

SOP for GW is that pretty much every army book has a "killer app" unit that just happens to be incredibly efficient for it's cost, have some crazy special rule that runs roughshod over the game and generally put the rest of the army to shame. Then once everyone who plays that army has bought enough of these to max out their allowance, a new book comes out that nerfs the old unit in the name of "balance" and introduces a new "killer app" that everyone has to go out and buy. Of course this pisses off people who just want the army book to use what they already have, but they aren't buying new models so fuck those guys lol.

darkmaster · Post by **darkmaster** » Mon Jun 02, 2014 9:17 am

So what you're saying is GW is abusive and horrible to their player base and will likely go out of business when someone with a comparable product and better customer service comes along... Interesting. *scribbles down notes*

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Mon Jun 02, 2014 9:55 am

Games Workshop's monopoly is very difficult to fight. For starters, it's a vertical monopoly. Games Workshop owns most of the distribution channels in Europe and almost all of the distribution channels in the United Kingdom and Ireland. If you want to go to the store and buy some games, you will probably go to a Games Workshop store.

Second, Games Workshop is incredibly ruthless about enforcing their monopoly and anti-trust regulators don't seem to care about the gaming industry at all. Games Workshop is not at all afraid to cut their prices for a period of time in order to drive a competitor out of business, and they are willing and able to fuck with distribution channels to interfere in other companies being able to compete with them at all.

Example the first: if Games Workshop finds out that you are selling models below their suggested retail, they will cut your retail discount until you stop doing that.

Example the second: if you produce a game that GW is at all threatened by, they will choose to not stock it in their stores or stock incomplete lines so that people can't actually play your games.

Example the third: if a retail outlet is stocking a product that GW feels at all threatened by, they can and will start delivering their own products late so that fans buy from other outlets.

It's just the gaming industry, so we're talking millions rather than billions or zillions of dollars, but GW does all that illegal bullshit that Standard Oil got broken up over. And it is ridiculously difficult for a new company to break their hold on the market. Even though most of GW's fans hate them and say they want an alternative.

It really would take a company with deep pockets like Mattel or Hasbro to fight GW and win.

-Username17

crasskris · Post by **crasskris** » Mon Jun 02, 2014 10:13 am

Great review.

One nitpick:

Ancient History wrote:This is Sigmar Heldenhammer (literally, "he who holds the hammer")

If the name is supposed to borrowed from German, and the first name supports that theory, it translates to "Hero's Hammer" (Held=hero).

On the other hand, that may be a purposeful play on words by the authors.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Mon Jun 02, 2014 1:54 pm

Neither is completely correct, but the latter is closer than the former.
There is no 100% correct translation for the Name.
Technically it would be Herohammer. Because the german Language is all about combining Words to make new and exiting ones.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Mon Jun 02, 2014 2:03 pm

Stahlseele wrote:Neither is completely correct, but the latter is closer than the former.
There is no 100% correct translation for the Name.
Technically it would be Herohammer. Because the german Language is all about combining Words to make new and exiting ones.

Wouldn't it be "Heroeshammer" because "Helden" is plural?

-Username17

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Mon Jun 02, 2014 2:26 pm

Yes, there is that.
But there is also
Der Hammer des Helden.
The Hammer of the Hero.

Der Hammer der Helden.
The Hammer of the Heroes.

The Heros Hammer.
Des Helden Hammer.

And you usually don't refer to a single person using the plural.
But yeah, semantics ^^

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Tue Jun 03, 2014 12:53 am

Apparently in official GW parlance, it means "Hammer of Heroes." So, my bad.

Anyway, on the books front: GW is actually incredibly lax about providing updated rules for certain armies once a new edition comes out. What usually happens is that they have at any given time something like 6-8 armies they're supporting with models (The Empire, Dwarfs, Orcs & Goblins, High Elves, Dark Elves, & Chaos) and a bunch of armies that they update less often (Lizardmen, Vampire Counts, Tomb Kings, Wood Elves, Brettonians, Skaven, Chaos Dwarfs, Ogre Kingdoms, etc.), which means that even though this is 8th edition, some of the "official" armies that you can field are still using 6th edition rules (with errata). It also doesn't help that they sometimes go nuts and split armies, which is why "Chaos" is now Beasts of Chaos (Beastmen), Daemons of Chaos (Daemons), and Warriors of Chaos (Chaos Warriors), all of which can be fielded together if you so chose.

...and of course that's not counting "expansions" like the overpriced-by-GW-standards stuff from ForgeWorld or the one-off mail-order crap like Kislev.

Desdan_Mervolam · Post by **Desdan_Mervolam** » Tue Jun 03, 2014 1:17 am

So, if your 7th edition army required special figures that aren't in the 8th edition rulebook and your army book isn't out yet, you continue using the 7th edition rules for that model? How much backwards compatibility issues does that create?

Also do they find ways to make miniatures obsolete too? Do you have to update your models to the ones new for this year, or can you keep using the models you've been using since all the way back to when you got into the hobby if you want?

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Tue Jun 03, 2014 1:34 am

They very rarely completely obsolete an old unit; as noted, Dwarfs have had practically the same line-up for the last 20 years, with only minor variations (stone throwers became the grudge thrower), and even the special characters that don't make it into the rulebook are often errata'd and listed somewhere on the website.

Of course, the major problem is when they do stop producing an old unit - like the Chaos Dwarfs - and then even if the army is more-or-less legal for tournament play, buying enough models to fill out said army can get expensive. Moreso in the case of Chaos Dwarfs, because in 2010 they gave it to ForgeWorld as their studio army, which means they're a) on "experimental rules" and b) being put out as resin models that cost at least twice as much as the normal plastic models. Seriously, the Chaos Dwarf artillery train gets into the hundreds of pounds.