Category: Background

A Gathering of Might

Up to this point, I’ve done a fair bit of blathering about “background fluff”, reminisced about the fantasy gaming scene in Belfast in the ’80s and ’90s, and even started my own Chaos Dwarf armylist.

More and more it all felt like I was dragging my heels.. Where was I going with all of this? Which figures did I need? How many of them did I need? How was I going to get them? What sort of army did I want to end up with?

Beginning with the end

The first time round, I didn’t have a plan and it showed. I was buying miniatures because I liked them without any idea of what I needed or what I needed them to achieve on the battlefield. I rarely looked at Warhammer Armies and certainly didn’t use the lists to decide what minis I needed next. So although I ended up with a lot of really great minis I had an army with Multiple Personality Disorder, often without the minimum unit-sizes that I needed.

I didn’t want to make that mistake again.

The armylist would help give me the structure I needed but I also had overarching D.A.F.T. requirements:

Destructive: Not in a Herohammer way. I didn’t want invincible heroes striding about the battlefield in god-mode, bashing everything to pieces. I had been an Orc general in the early days and I guess I still had a soft spot for the havoc and devastation that war-machines bring to the table. The Chaos Dwarf army-list gives me access to a whole lot of awesome chopping, mashing, exploding materiel – I’ll be taking all of that, thank you!

Awesome: Maybe above all else, I really, REALLY wanted this army to make people say “That’s the coolest damn thing I’ve ever seen” and with plenty of nice surprises when you looked closer. This meant rare miniatures, some big monsters, some clever conversions and (thanks to the relatively small number of different troops / poses produced by Citadel) sourcing some proxies – all while being true to the original feel of the classic Chaos Dwarf feel. If I ever get to Bring Out Your Lead (a major goal of mine), I want those guys to remember me!

Flexible: I’d read plenty of battle reports where Dwarves sat back and shot up the opposition, who had to try and close the distance as possible. EVERY TIME. Far too boring. I don’t really care about winning battles but I absolutely want to enjoy playing with my army, and for my opposition to enjoy playing against them. To me, this means being able to fine-tune my army selection to change tactics between games – and maybe even during a game – so I can keep the opposition on their toes.

Tremendously big: (OK, “tremendously” is a stretch but I do like my acronyms) I wanted to emulate those 3000-point battle reports in White Dwarf, sure.. but I also wanted to field a bloody huge army, one that wouldn’t look out of place in the titanic clashes in the issues I pored over as a kid. Vast armies with whopping great units. Remember the 33000-point battle “24 Hours at Carik Mound” in White Dwarf 107 or that incredible Magnamund-based “Battle Day 2: The Final Conflict” in G.M. magazine (Volume 2 Number 6 in February 1990) using 1525 miniatures? They are still a great read and exactly what I was after.

Not too much to ask, surely? 🙂

“24 Hours at Carik Mound” in WD 107
The Good, the bad and the smug: Battleday 2 report in G.M. magazine, v2 no.6 1990

A blue-print for my army

Both you and I know what I’m aiming for now, so here’s the early plan:

  • 80 chaos dwarves
  • 40 chaos dwarves with crossbows
  • 20 chaos dwarves with rifles
  • 30 black orcs
  • 40 human slaves

Special troop-types:

  • 20 chaos dwarf beserkers
  • 20 chaos dwarf +1 elites
  • 20 chaos dwarf +2 elites
  • 10 boar centaurs
  • 2 animal-handlers with 2 chaos spawn and 10 chaos hounds

War-machines:

  • 4 bazuka teams
  • 2 mortar and petard teams
  • 2 swivel gun teams
  • 4 whirlwinds or tenderisers
  • 2 cannons
  • 1 juggernaut

Big monsters*:

  • 3 dragon ogres
  • 3 giants
  • Jabberwock
  • Manticore
  • Wyvern

*I make no apologies for my choices here – I just love the miniatures, so I’m getting them 🙂

What do you think, suitably D.A.F.T?

It’s all about the fluff – part 2 – Kazad Unbar Brak

Let’s put a little more flesh on the bones of this back-story..

Looking at p.199 of the Warhammer Fantasy Battle rulebook, some key points in the Imperial Calendar (IC) timeline are:

  • -10,000 IC: The construction of the warp-gates and the arrival of the Slann
  • -7,000 IC: The warp-gates collapse and the first Incursion of Chaos
  • 2,300 IC: A huge Incursion of Chaos occurs in 2302 IC, resulting in the overrunning of Praag in 2303 IC
  • 2,500 IC: Present day, with the expansion of Chaos remaining active

The influx of Chaos in 2300 and the engulfment of Praag also coincides with the capture and disappearance of a northernly Dwarven stronghold, Karak Vlag (see https://whfb.lexicanum.com/wiki/Karak_Vlag).

This really got me thinking: the forces of Chaos sweep down through the Worlds Edge Mountains and a whole Dwarven stronghold vanishes!? What could I do with that?

I had read a fair few of the Dragonlance novels when I was younger and the whole ‘flying citadel’ concept was pretty interesting and had lots of potential for storylines, modelling and the like. What if something similar had happened to Karak Vlag?

In this narrative the fortress could not be found because, thanks to the awesome power of the Chaos gods, it simply was no longer there, a whole city uprooted from its foundations in the mountains to vanish into the Chaos Wastes.

The citadel would appear without warning, the twisted inhabitants descending to slaughter whatever unfortunates they found in their way, a whole thriving city of murderous Dark Dwarves bent on havoc and mayhem, before disappearing back into the Wastes from whence they came..

Floating Citadel from Dragonlance World of Krynn – artist: Keith Parkinson
Taken from Games Workshops “Realm of Chaos: Slaves to Darkness” book
Floating Citadel from the Dragonlance world of Krynn – artist: Valerie Valusek

This idea had legs!

What about a name for this manifestation of doom? ‘Karak Vlag’ doesn’t very Dwarfy in the first place and it certainly doesn’t convey the right amount of dread and foreboding that seeing this monstrosity should cause.

There’s a certain insanity to the very idea of a floating city and, along with the warping power of Chaos upon the mind, there was a theme to work with there.

Working with the Khazalid lexicon on chaos-dwarfs.com and Bugman’s Brewery I thought Kazad Unbar Brak struck the right note – The City of Madness.

And who better to rule over this teeming hotbed of murder and mayhem but a certain infamous Chaos Dwarf – The Master of Madness from the Chaos Dwarf Renegades boxset!

chaos-renegades

In one fell swoop I had my backstory and my arch-villan/general!

** Addendum **

I took a little artistic licence with the Khazalid translation here:

  • Kazad = city or fortress
  • Unbak = to break permanently. ‘Unbar’ translates as “breaking” but I like the sound of this more.
  • Bran = Clever, alert, mentally sharp. The addition of “az” means that the word means a physical thing or place, giving us ‘Braz’. The addition of “ak” shows the root applies to an abstract concept, such as honour.

Kazad Unbar Brak = The City of the breaking mind / madness.

As the good and learned folks on The Oldhammer Community on Facebook have pointed out, this would more than likely be contracted to Kazad Un’Brak by the inhabitants. Thanks to Andrew, Matt and Ashley, in particular.