Ah, with Citadel and Games Workshop, I feel there is no force that they tried SOO hard to make successful yet failed then the Chaos Dwarfs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Of course, there are quite a few races which failed. Some like the Chaos Snakemen didn’t even get rules published but the Chaos Dwarfs they REALLY tried to push as a big thing yet appears to have failed hard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I might be mistaken on this but I believe the first apperance of Chaos Dwarfs in the Warhammer world was with the Second Editions Ravening Hordes (1987) where they are presented as a unit which Chaos can take. Well, Two units. There are the Underlings, who are exclusively used as crews of dangerous and unpredictable black powder weapons, and Warriors who, while standard troops, are said to be seen as leaders in Chaos Warbands or of regiments of Beastmen. Unlike normal dwarves, these guys have no hatred of Goblins nor any animosity towards Elves. We also get some of the warmachines they can use, as Chaos Dwarves (or Dwarfs as stated at this point) keep the metal working skills of their southern cousins (remember, Chaos is from the Northern wastes) and the weapons can be very nice. the Rocket Launcher which takes a crew of two (one to use the thing, the other to carry the rockets) and the Mortar, which also takes a crew of two. You could field up to 50 Chaos Dwarves, (which appear to include underlings in the total as they state they can be deployed as regiments of 5+, serving as crew, or leaders for other regiments), up to 4 Rocket Launcher Teams and up to 2 Mortar’s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When it came to 3Ed, they were dropped from the forces of the Chaos Army but added to the new Chaos Allies Contingent, along with Chaos Centuars, Chaos Goblins and kinda just more of what was already in the Chaos list. Their unit types did increase however, as you now could field up to 20 Chaos Dwarf Bersekers,, up to 3 of the renamed Chaos Dwarf Bazuka, up to 60 Chaos Dwarfs, up to 3 Chaos Dwarf War Machines (which was basically a specialist bread Dwarf Boar-Centaur with a hand cart) and up to 2 Chaos Dwarf Mortars. At this stage, the Chaos Dwarfs were mostly, just the same as Normal Dwarfs, but mixed with Chaos when it came to the figure designs with many, if not all, done by the Perry Twins. There was also the Chaos Dwarf Swivel Gun but I believe rules weren’t published for using this. Near the end of 3ed’s time, the Boar Centaur had come in two weapon loads. The Whirlwind, or the Tenderiser. They now added the Juggernaut but this appears to be very limited and not many copies of it are known about. It was far more a mobile siege weapon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Chaos Dwarfs were then revamped for 4Ed as what is commonly called the ‘Big Hats’. These dwarfs had 2 common features to them. Large Fangs, and long tall hats. compared to the original Chaos Dwarfs, these were more standardised. There was also another big difference. For 4Ed, instead of new army lists being either lumped together in the ‘Armies’ book, or drips in WD, Each army got their own army Book, which gave more background story and lore, as well as expanded army lists for each race. However, One stand out.. The Chaos Dwarfs!. All the Army books were released as ‘Warhammer Armies: <race name>’. Often extracts of these were then published in White Dwarf as a preview of the books to get people interested, and also to help sell White Dwarf, and to get it so anyone (who brought one of the two) could have some access to the force, and thus want to buy more figures. Chaos Dwarfs were completely different in that they had a ‘White Dwarf Presents: Warhammer Chaos Dwarfs’ where it was purely a collection of White Dwarf articles and lists re-printed into an army book. Hell, the title page makes this very clear with “A compilation of Chaos Dwarf Articles from White Dwarf Magazine”. Yep.. they didn’t even warrant there own original book, but just a compilation. There is even a big disclaimer on this on the contents page which also comments they added some special characters for this book but there are no figures, so they hope you use existing models or convert models for them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It’s also worth noting that the Chaos Dwarfs were then bulked out with the Hobgoblins, Black Orcs, and then some Orcs and Goblins. When you look at the Catalogue pages, it’s kinda interesting to see how there aren’t many Chaos Dwarfs. Out of 12 pages, 7 are a mixture of Hobgoblins, Orcs and Goblins. And out of them 5, 2 were large figures (the Great Taurus and the Lammasu Sigh. In fact, it’s quite funny to see a page which has 6 Command figures, with only 4 troops to command. Poor Boyes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Figure wise, these where now very much focused on Bulls. the new Chaos Dwarf Lord who rode a Great Taurus, Earlier weapons had been remade between Alan Perry and Norman Swales on some of the machine parts to include the Earthshaker Cannon (an upgraded Mortar), A chaos Dwarf Sorcerer on the Lammasu, which was a mixture of a Winged Bull and a Chaos Dwarf. The Rocket Launcher had it’s third name of the Death Rocket and was now cart mounted more then carried. The Boar Centaurs were now ‘Bull Centaurs’ to fit with the new theming. They increased their gun powder weapons to include Blunderbusses. Story wise, They were now a force of Dwarfs who had moved north and thought killed by Chaos, but instead twisted by it, now using magic, which other dwarfs didn’t (now) and started to worship Hashut, the Bull-shaped God, and had tied in their style with the Volcanos of the area, with lots of fire and The Tower of Zhaar-Naggrund, a tall.. well, Tower with a Temple to Hashut on the top. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the future world of Warhammer 40K (which depending on the time you look, is either the Future of the Warhammer ‘universe’ or a completely different parallel universe), the Dwarfs were turned into the Squats. Much like the Halflings (Homo Sapiens Minimus) and the Ogryns (Homo Sapiens Gigantus), the Squats (Homo Sapiens Rotundus) were Humans which had been mutated by life on new planets. They also released a few (only a few) Chaos Squats, which I believe were mostly by Alan Perry. The range didn’t take and like the Squats themselves, were soon dropped, claiming to have been wiped out from the Universe. Honestly, I don’t think rules were ever released for them. I’m pretty sure they weren’t in the original Rogue Trader, nor either of the Realm of Chaos Books.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Back to Fantasy, Warhammer Quest was GWs then attempt at a dungeon quest game (I did an article a while back about the range which included Hero Quest) and as well as the base set, had a bunch of new hero ‘warrior packs’ and 2 supplements (new quests with metal Minis) but when it was discontinued, there were two (atleast) supplements which were never released. One of which was the Chaos Dwarfs. Andy Jones<\/strong> did state that there was a entire Chaos Dwarf expansion ready for production but never did, however only 2 miniatures had been seen, and both are Chaos Dwarfs with Axes and had a very limited release. With how other sets had been released, there would have been roughly 8 miniatures in that set (the Orc Lord set had 8 miniatures with 2 variations of a Orc Big ‘Un, with one of them coming with the same figure twice, where as the Catacombs of Terror set also had a variation, one of which which was in the set twice, but had only a total of 6 figures, However, the Dread King figure came with his metal throne and Pedestal with book which would make up the final two figures.) Most likely the Dwarf Set would have one of these two twice, the other figure, then some more to complete the set. So they got the short stick of not even being released this time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I guess I better make a quick comment on Milnik. I have mentioned him on my HeroQuest lore series but Milnik was a Chaos Dwarf working for Morcar and showed Skulmar around the current troops in the Marvel Heroquest Special, set after Return of the Witch Lord. Kinda interesting and of note because of a Chaos Dwarf in HeroQuest. That’s one expansion we never got.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Man O’War from 1993, They had the base set game came with plastic ships meant for two forces, the Empire<\/strong> and Pirates<\/strong>. It had rules for, if I get this right, Empire, Pirates of Sartosa, Bretonnia<\/strong>, High Elves<\/strong>, Dark Elves<\/strong> and Orcs<\/strong>. Interesting to note that Sea Elves had been pretty much just turned into a small unit for High Elves by this point. They then released two Expansion sets which were Card Stock only (they did a few like this at the time. Always a bit of a let down). Plague Fleet<\/strong> added the rules for Chaos<\/strong> fleets, and noticeably the 4 Chaos Gods of Khorne, Slaanesh, Tzeentch and Nurgle) as well as Skaven<\/strong> and Chaos Dwarfs<\/strong>. They then released Sea of Blood<\/strong> which, while it added the Norse Fleet<\/strong> to the game, mostly was for added Sea Monsters and some Air ships and flying beasts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The various ships were released as Metal miniatures as either solo figures, or Squadrons. How many you needed for a squadron in game, I don’t know but mostly the squadrons were 3 ships (or units). However, there is a odd one out. Chaos Dwarfs!. They only released two sets for the Chaos Dwarfs and they were sets. The Chaos Dwarf Battle Fleet which came with the ‘Great Leveller Battlebarge’, the ‘Great Tauruses’ and 3 ‘Hull-Destroyers’. So it was a fleet in a box. They then released the Chaos Dwarf War Fleet, which had the Great Taurus (again), the ‘Thunderfire Battlebarge’ and 3 ‘Thunder Rollers’ (which look alot like the Epic BoneBreaka\/Bone Cruncha. So they didn’t think people would be happy enough buying the units on there own sets, they had to set them as a complete fleet… of course, citadel had done that before with some special offer army in a box but this was the only ones for Man O’War and the only releases for the Chaos Dwarfs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is also, by the way, a method used in marketing at times. While not always a bad thing to have a good ‘complete unit’ starter set, it was often used to make people think they are getting a better bargain (a famous example of his was when video game companies would re-issued lesser popular or just older games in a ‘compilation’. Sometimes the same price as 1 game that had just come out, or sometimes a bit more. Either way, It was soon as a good deal and made people more willing to pay. I think people would have been fair more interested in buying a fleet all ready, then buying the units on their own. I think this is a major sign of them not being popular, or expected to be, but the studio really wanting to push them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Well.. I think it’s quite clear that Chaos Dwarfs were never really that popular. However, the Studio liked them and kept trying to push them as a variable force for the Warhammer World. It’s not like some of the races which they gave up with, they REALLY tried to push them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When you look at the list of names involved, I’m not sure if its only a few people in the studio, or if a large amount were trying to push them. The Perry twins did ALOT of the Chaos Dwarf figures from the beginning, and into the big hat period, Rick Priestley appear to be behind alot of the lore and stats with bits by Grant Williams, Robin Dews, Gary Morley… well, okay, It appears to mostly be Rick Priestly and the Perrys who were really Chaos Dwarf Mad. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ah, with Citadel and Games Workshop, I feel there is no force that they tried SOO hard to make successful yet failed then the Chaos Dwarfs. Of course, there are quite a few races...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[245,164,149],"class_list":["post-918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gaming-comments","tag-chaos-dwarfs","tag-citadel","tag-games-workshop"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tesp.co.uk\/OHam\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/918","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tesp.co.uk\/OHam\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tesp.co.uk\/OHam\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tesp.co.uk\/OHam\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tesp.co.uk\/OHam\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=918"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.tesp.co.uk\/OHam\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/918\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1214,"href":"https:\/\/www.tesp.co.uk\/OHam\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/918\/revisions\/1214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tesp.co.uk\/OHam\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tesp.co.uk\/OHam\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tesp.co.uk\/OHam\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n\n\n\n