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Dwarf ideas

  • P

    @Brian Van De Walker the ones on the classic fantasy range. They're not boring, they're near perfect. A little smaller axehead, a proper crossguard on the sword and they'd be perfect. And a spear, bow and crossbow option. No firearms, steampunk is horrible.

     

    @timbus the thirteenth got Oathmark ones. The medium infantry are very nice, as are the heavy, but both of those got wrong helmets. So does the light infantry. Proper spangenhelm all the way. As to your comment for Brian, I feel weirdly insulted and seen :D (the Kharadron are a blight upon the world tho)

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  • BV

    @Piisami Lets agree to disagree on weather they are boring or not😆, they are pretty much the oathmark dwarfs all over again with less options and armored up to be even more like dark age Northern Europeans in chainmail* which is one of the most over done topics in plastic minature at the moment as well the most over done theme for dwarves.

    They don't even have proper guns for Kings of War, they are just a bland LOTR theme set to me which is a pity since dwarves could be so much more than that .

    *(and clearly the Scandi ones at that, the heads may as well have come in a set of historical Viking set. If your really having an issue with the heads oathmark has I suggest looking at the Victrix Dark Age sets) 

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  • P

    @Brian Van De Walker Oh, I disagree they're the same. Disagree hard on that.  Obviously, you're entitled to your opinion. Victrix heads sadly do not fit the Oathmark bodies, they're too small. I tried that.

    It's not overdone, it's the proper theme. What I'm seeing is weird steampunk / renaissance popping up everywhere, and that's just not that good. All these weird new theme dwarves are just useless, to me at least. If they weren't metal I'd buy a couple hundred Ragnarok Miniatures dorfs, they're proper good ones. I don't think there is a single proper viking-dorf plastic set available, despite your claims. No, Oathmark is not that. It gets close, but not quite. No, neither is LOTR dorf from GW. Double no, triple, quadruple no on GW Old World dorfs, where's their legs at?

    Those WA sculpts on classic fantasy got better looking body proportions on them, they got better helmets, they got a proper look in general. Superior to Oathmark, except weapons could stand to be a bit less exaggerated.

    The unarmored Light Infantry from Oathmark is a tad better, but they sadly don't come in single weapon and shield without kitbashing.

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  • BV

    @Piisami  Your so wrong on that😆.  Not only is  it over done (Em4 does norse dwarfs, oathmark does norse dwarfs, God only  knows how  many norse dwarfs you can 3D print out, same deal with metals, etc.) there is plenty of ways to  actually convert them from other sets (ranging from converting viking sets to simply sticking random dark age warrior heads and arms on halfings since there little noticable diffrence between the dark age Northern europeans). 

    Likewise the norse Viking culture is perhaps the most overused or atleast second most overused theme in fantasy  (wargaming or otherwise, it actually overdone for historical wargaming and fiction too at this point😆), basically the old raider culture is overhyped  to the point I would argue  it is no longer a proper theme for anything non-historical if done plain jane like the stl ones,  it is just being lazy with  dwarfs or whatever other fantasy race your making norse, it needs to be more than just historical Vikings squatted which is what the STLs are, (they should at least add some horned helmets or something since the ones they have are just boring historical helmets you can get the in historical Viking Age sets, like buy Saxons you should get some😆point is I have come to deeply despise the helmets you love as far as fantasy topics go😤).

    Also the "weird steampunk dwarfs" as you call them are far more in line with classical fantasy dwarfs than the "riped off histiorical Vikings" ones considering the WFB dwarfs where always gun totting scots,  heck even in the original  old pagan Norse myths  dwarfs where  craftsmen who wore goggles and created artfacts that could best be veiwed as "magitech", not short stack Vikings,  thats like making them lesser mortal beings, why bother  with them in that case when can just use human vikings?

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  • timbus the thirteenth

    I've often said that dwarves are somewhat like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. everybody knows what a pb&j is like, they're not hard to make, and you've eaten it a million times. but doesn't make them bad at all! I bring a pb&j to work every single day, cause they're easy to make, taste good, and have a million little variations to keep things fresh. classic fantasy dwarves are pretty similar! they've been done a million times, but they never really get old cause they're dwarves, and everybody likes dwarves. (unless they're a filthy knife-ears, but that's a separate conversation). so I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with the existing design.

    however, market saturation is a genuine problem, and so I do think it's valid to ask if the existing dwarf designs need to be spiced up a little. WGA is famous for dual kits, so I do think they could make everybody happy here. Just off my Very Untrained eye, it looks like there'd be tons of room on the sprue to go wild with extra bits, and maybe even some death fields upgrades. guns! grenades! dwarven gas masks! go weird and wild with it, while still keeping a solid core of Dorfiness. it could be a really fun kit, imo.

    either way, both of you please do remember to keep this polite. it's good to be passionate about toy soldiers, but at the end of the day they're just toy soldiers, and hypothetical ones at that. not worth being rude about other people's hobbies for.

  • P

    @Brian Van De Walker I won't say you're wrong since it's all an opinion, but I will say I disagree with you. Let's start with rehashing the fact that Oathmark are not norse, and neither are the old Grenadiers. Oathmark, well my mate calls the general aesthetics there fantasy Arthurian and I think that's the best description, more or less. The heavy ones are roman-ish, both in helmets and the armor got vibes of lorica segmentata, the medium ones are pretty close but the helmets are not, the light ones, ditto. Splitting hairs, maybe, but what else you gonna do on the internet? I do like them and unless something better comes on the market am likely to buy more of them but I am not excited of the prospect.

    Sure, there's lots of variety in 3d prints. I think you can get most anything, really, even make your own. Don't think that's really relevant to discussion as you can probably get whatever else you want, too. Metal, personally I'm not a fan. I got traumatic experiences of the constant chipping of paint and the hardened layers of cyanoacrylate I always end up with on my thumbs when working with metals. If I didn't have this aversion I'd buy loads of Ragnarok, Medbury and when they come on the market, the Warhost dwarves. The latter are at least partially Rus inspired, so it's likely there's gonna be some sculpts I won't like that much but what are you gonna do.

    As to the rest of your post, I just don't think that's true. I keep hearing that thing but I'm never seeing it. Warhammer, steampunk-renaissance. Warcrow, steampunk-renaissance. Kings of War, steampunk-renaissance. Warmachine, yeah. What else, just everywhere I look I see sculpts I personally do not like in aesthetic styles that I do not like and frankly think are overdone. Unlike the personally preferred dark ages. Hell, most fantasy seems to be this cod-renaissance thing these days. Have you seen the artwork in the newer editions of dnd?

    As to the whole last paragraph, I just don't think that's true either.

    @timbus the thirteenth Exactly. There is An Objectively Correct And True Version Of Dorfiness. Now, as I just stated there I'm not sure the market is saturated. Granted, I'm only a market segment of one and might be weirdly particular in my tastes but I have trouble finding what I'm seeking. If I wanted dorfs with high medieval-renaissance armaments, Guns, what have you, it would be super-easy to find. I may be wrong, I have been before, but this is my experience. 

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  • M

    i wouldn't mind a few nods to Discworld dwarves if a kit gets done. they're fairly stereotypical on the whole, with their axes, chainmail garments, etc. but you could add some 'deep-downer' heads (hoods and masks), maybe some rat themed customization bits (eating a rat, ot some rats tied to a belt, etc) maybe a set of dress/kilt legs..

     

    one thing i'd love to see weappons wise is mattocks.. which are a sort of combo axe and pick. tolkien's dwarves of the iron hills used them in the hobbit, but they almost never show up. but they're mining tools easily turned to war.

    also they need the option for really big backpacks, like the iron hills dwarves.

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  • P

    @Mithril2098 as timbus there pointed out it might not be a bad idea to do the sprue with a basic, universal, boring to some but popular among dwarf aficionados kind of bodies and equipment as a core and then add some weirder bits in addition, ones that can be used or discarded.

    I think Oathmark light dwarf infantry has a couple mattocks as weapons if you're on the lookout for those.

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  • Yronimos Whateley


    I'm still up for something a bit more Rip Van Winkle than LotR or Warhammer, and I never was a fan of historical theming for fantasy "races" (the demand for "Viking", "Scottish", "Japanese" "Assyrian" or whatever dwarves just sort of bugs me a little for some reason), but I get that WGA's Classic Fantasy is pretty much explicitly aiming for "boring" and "generic", and, though my "classic fantasy" tastes run from anywhere from Grimm's Fairy Tales, to The Wizard of Oz or Alice in Wonderland, to Dunsany and Lovecraft, to Conan the Barbarian, Kull of Atlantis, Bran Mak Morn, and Solomon Kane, I understand and say there's nothing wrong with "boring and generic".

    So, I'd be perfectly fine with "settling" for nondescript classic fantasy dwarves of pretty much any sort (most likely drawn from old Tolkien illustrations), as long as the bodies are nondescript enough to be used for all sorts of flavors of fantasy, and the kits include some unusual head and weapon options beyond standard-issue helmets and axes (considering just how common the dwarf miner trope is, it always seemed weird to me that axes were the cliche default, rather than picks and hammers!  Pretty much any band of dwarf miners my RPG parties ever encountered seemed to be hacking away in their mines with axes and swords, for some reason....)

    As an aside, I really like Othmark's dwarf, human, and goblin light infantry:  they're pretty useful for all sorts of things outside the usual Warhammer/Warcraft/D&D thing.  I've used the bodies from these sets for sci-fi figures with no problems, aside from the lack of retro sci-fi bits to work with.  The light infantry bodies also work just as well for "Renaissance fantasy" and "steampunk" style settings where chainmail and scalemail might look a bit out of place, as for generic fantasy.  Those settings might not be for everyone, but it's nice to see options that allow for different flavors of fantasy and sci-fi!

    If WGA can do something that's similar enough to be useful to gamers like me, different enough that they aren't doing the exact same thing as Oathmark light infantry, and still useful enough to mainstream fantasy wargamers to not rock any boats, then I'm all for that.

     


    "Boring and Generic", but they look great, and I'm sure they'll work for the majority of fantasy gamers.

    With that in mind, WGA's digital dwarf set doesn't excite me, and it's definitely not something I could kitbash far out of their established "boring fantasy" genre, but the set LOOKS great anyway - it looks like a standard-issue, default classic fantasy dwarf set to me, should blend right in with Reaper Miniatures and Warhammer and any other miniature dwarves, and should surely be a crowd-pleaser for tabletop wargamers and role-players alike.  I don't think WGA can go wrong with it.

     

     

    @timbus the thirteenth "...looks like there'd be tons of room on the sprue to go wild with extra bits, and maybe even some death fields upgrades. guns! grenades! dwarven gas masks! go weird and wild with it, while still keeping a solid core of Dorfiness. it could be a really fun kit, imo."

    I approve and agree, but, to be fair, the Death Fields-friendly thing is pretty much where the Death Fields Einherjar faction was coming from, whether it's quite what you or I picture or not.  I'm pretty sure that set dates back to one of the earlier Wargames Atlantic sets, before the multi-use Lizard Men were introduced, but still covers a lot of sci-fi dwarf territory, while honestly, they really aren't far off from generic fantasy dwarfs either:  swap out the arms with spare medieval bits like swords or axes and shields, and the Einherjar are pretty much ready for "generic fantasy" use (in fact, the kit appears to come with some axes and shields!)  They wouldn't really be my go-to choice for either sci-fi or fantasy projects, but aren't a deal-breaker for me - I have been waiting for my first sprues of them from the Damned crowdfunder, and will certainly find some uses for them.


    Death Fields Einherjar: pretty close to a fantasy dwarf set with Death Fields options already!

     

  • timbus the thirteenth

    @Piisami I think the issue here is that from my pov, there's easily five different "generic" ranges: whfb, mantic, fireforge, oathmark, and mesbg. but also, I am not a True Dwarf Enjoyer, and so I can't really tell the difference between the ranges. if we wanted to keep it a "true" dwarf kit, I think there's a niche that I haven't seen filled yet. oathmark dwarves are great for rank & flank, but don't have a lot of "civilian" bits to make them good for dnd/skirmish games like mordheim. look at how great the guards are for kitbashing, and how many different variations of "generic fantasy human" you can make. a Classic Dwarf kit with a range of weapons, backpacks, lanterns, etc could be very helpful for a lot of people, similar to the conquistadors or guards kit.

    also @Yronimos Whateley, i know about the einherjar and love them deeply. a death fields'd dwarf kit could just be a steampunkier variant or some kind of heavier armor, idk. honestly i just love kharadon helmets and would like that style on a more generic kit. might not be the place for them, though.

  • P

    @timbus the thirteenth Oh, I could wax on endlessly about the differences between those, definitely not generic 😂. Yeah. That might actually not be a terrible idea at all. There's some stuff on all three of the Oathmark dwarves but more bits might be good. Putting that 3d-sculpt, or something very similar to it, as the base would make a very good base for lots of variation, it's a good warrior base. It looks like it's got the dorfs a bit bulkier and with shorter legs than Oathmark, who are a bit skinny perhaps.

  • timbus the thirteenth

    believe me i get it. im a knight fan so i've gone on several rambly rants about how sallet helmets and azincourt bascinets OBVIOUSLY have different vibes, leading to the average person looking at me like i need to switch allergy medications. i spent 30 minutes the other day giving a harbinger of nurgle a bec de corbin. if you wanna explain at length, feel free too, nobody's here because they aren't a nerd. also my commute is long as shit and i like to read stuff while on it.

    last thing id like to say: im not sure if you're in the mordheim scene, but a one stop shop for dwarf treasure hunters would go HARD. i feel like oathmark dwarves have some nice equipment but it's not really in use. a lantern is cool on a belt, but i'd rather they be holding it, yknow? and even a "civilian" dwarf should be in basically full scale mail, so it can use the existing scults just fine as a base.

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  • P

    @timbus the thirteenth well, since you asked, I'll ramble.

    Whfb: this is a weird one. Very much their own thing, the newer sculpts, doubly so with the AoS factions. The warriors are approaching what you might think of as generic, but the whfb style of dwarf has a very weird body shape. Once you see it, you realize their feet basically are attached to their torso and they'd need to move with a weird hopping. The ironbreakers and the lords are all either very high fantasy or steampunk or both. Nice helmets on the ironbreakers, but I'll give them a pass nonetheless. Doubly so on the Kharadron and the Fyreslayers. I do detest whfb for inventing the dwarf slayer concept, which then infiltrates elsewhere too.

    Mantic: the combination of weird helmets and heater shields takes them very far from the ideal dorfiness I imagine, and from anything resembling generic. They are very distinctive, evoking a much more high medieval - renaissance feel. They, too, are wielders of Guns as well, something I'm definitely not a fan of in fantasy.

    Fireforge: these have very much the same thing going on as mantic, so maybe you can call the look generic. It's not, however, generic fantasy in my opinion. It's, umm, this conception of fantasy as a renaissance world, whera rapiers, poleaxes and firearms abound, not proper spangenhelms (horns optional), viking swords and round center grip shields.

    Oathmark: these are very close to ideal. The heavy infantry are pretty close to what you could call generic high fantasy dorf. They would fit in most fantasy settings, but definitely still retain a very particular style. The style evokes something between the dark ages and imperial rome. Personally, I'd like to have helmets a bit different but what are you gonna do. I will keep buying them unless something better comes along. The medium infantry would be pretty much perfect, except the helmets and to a lesser degree the weapons are all over the place. The helmets got a weird mix of styles with a neck guard like roman helmets, exaggerated separate nasal cross, what have you. The feeling I get from them is more or less that someone on the design team went "but wait, no, it's superbad if we make them vikings since that's generic and boring, let's add a twist!", and then the twist actually subtracts from value as it's a thing missing. They're dark agey, but could fit somewhat generically in various periods. With their chainmail being short-sleeved and all, definitely not high-medieval. The light infantry, I guess they are very generic. The style of clothing they wear can fit a multitude of periods easily, as can the bows and the tools, and they can be kitbashed for a lot of stuff due to this as well.

    Mesbg: the dwarf warriors are somewhat generic, I guess, but clearly fantasy in armor style and weapons, too.  The style however,  is very distinct with the shape of axes, style of armor, shield. I like their helmets. The expansions like the various things from the Hobbit are very distinctive in style, too. Moreso than the basic warriors. Much more high fantasy, I suppose that actually makes them more generic as it expands the kinds of places they can be used in greatly.

    As to Mordheim, I loved it dearly but there's not that much of a scene here. Hope there's a new campaign next year. Warhost is what I'm excited for right now, sadly I'm having trouble finding players wanting to try so far.

  • BV

    @Piisami well you and others may not like it, but no the the last paragaph of my comment is 100% true if you believe Dwarfs came from the old pagan Norse myths and not from late Middle Ages Christian German folktails. (The old norse may actually be about unrelated creatures to Dwarfs as we know them which for sure was a thing in 1300's Germany, that said in either case they really didn't wear the historical nasal guard helmets🤣). 

    In the old norse myths the "dwarves" made "magic devices" (for lack of a better word) including the flying ship of the God Freyr and magic almost living metal hair of the Godess Sif,  and dwarfs where always either clever  craftsmen, miners, or mages in those myths who could match wits with the old gods, not axe wielding warriors in chainmail  (ie the old mythological dwarves are the same as engineering dwarfs you see in JRPGs Videogames like Final Fantasy 4, not the warriors from Lord of the Rings film franchise, they where "steam punky" even in the old stories, enough said🤣).

     Also most popular fantasy war games list them up as what could best be thought of as "axe and shot" armies, like it or not the typical ("generic" if you must use that dirty word) fantasy dwarf army wields guns just as much or even more than axes often alongside steam tanks and breachloading cannons, they should look like a culture that actually reached that peak, not some chibi edition of a saga army! 

    Oathmark probably didn't go full out on the nasal guard helmets cause they wanted to make the dwarfs look like a craftmen based culture that gave the familer feel in favor of Europe but  not so hard as to tie it strickly to Historical Dark Age Europe and near uniform nasal guard helmets don't really evoke craftmanship but do scream Historical Dark Age Europe in "SAGA" volume levels (which is the big issue I have with the WA dwarfs, high fantasy isn't Dark Age Europe nor should it be). 

    @Yronimos Whateley Boring yes, genric? HEL no! since Norse isn't genric. Plus the fact that "generic" again does not actually exist for fantasy races and monsters since no one really agrees on what "Genric" is for them (like we all agree thats  a "dwarf, dragon, elf,etc." when we see one but we all very diffrent ideas on what its basic look should be).

    For example the genric dwarf look to me either comes from Walt Disney's classic Snow White or is some big nosed short stubby bearded dude that wears a big horned helmet and boots with any armor or clothing between those two articals being mostly if not completly obscured by the beard, not chainmail clad Vikings that didn't eat enough meat😆. 

    @timbus the thirteenth Hmm, depends, while I don't think Death Fields stuff is needed in this case, honestly I think they could add some gas masks due to all the Weird War games, and  guns are a must for dwarfs, more so than the two handed axes which are more of an elite unite weapon even in the lower tech games.

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  • P

    @Brian Van De Walker No, that's just not true. They are definitely craftsmen, but magical craftsmen. Not technology. Arguing they do magitech is just plain false, not supported by anything, an opinion and a personal conception of the myth.

    Simple mechanics are fine, but guns and magitech ruin fantasy (in the opinion of me and others like me, obviously). Tolkien dorfs, where a lot of their fantasy conception comes, are definitely not magicotech-using steampunkers, but axe-and-chainmail warriors. If need be, this can be supported via a variety of sources. Early DND, which made the conception more as it is, also supports this.

    Pick one, either the argument from popularity should be abiden by, as WHFB dorfs take quite a bit of their looks-inspiration from vikings, or not. If you argue deffo guns because that's what should be gone for, then you can't rightly wheel around and go the other direction when it comes to looks. Even their gyrocopters do carry runes and try to evoke that.

    An aside, do you have something against Saga? I see you keep making these weird references to it. I tried it once and it wasn't my cup of tea but I really wonder what that's about.

  • timbus the thirteenth

    @Piisami Okay, so if I'm getting this right, I think the problem boils down to dnd versus lotr. dnd-style dwarves tend to have that big round cylinder helmet and plate armor, while lotr-style dwarves tend to have a lot more runes and scale mail. I grew up with dnd-style dwarves, so that's what I tend to think of the 'right' look, and is probably why I'm more chill with things like magitech and kharadons. But I also loved the Hobbit growing up, so I get where you're coming from! Chainmail goes hard. And yeah, most current dwarf kits lean towards the dnd-style look. We're gonna have to agree to disagree on guns in fantasy, but past that, I'm now convinced. 

    @Brian Van De Walker One of the most popular versions of dwarven culture is from lotr, which has basically zero 'magitech' outside of maybe the movies. certainly no guns. you're thinking of whfb, which is a pretty fun setting but definitely not for everyone. also, are you aware that runes and horned helmets aren't just a nordic thing? the best dwarves, imo, take bits from teutonic helmets and irish knots/crosses. 

    totally unrelated: if this kit does become a thing, I'd love to have a set of bald heads, shackle bits, and crossbows on the sprue. I'm a duergar fan, sue me. 

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  • P

    @timbus the thirteenth Close, something like that. Proper Fantasy, to me, is a vaguely dark ageish aesthetic. Some mix of early dnd art, Larry Elmore, that kinda stuff. The most proper version has dwarves in spangenhelms and chainmail, I'll accept Bruenor or Flint on a book cover in a pinch. GAZ 6, Dwarves of Rockhome, has both some of the most Right and Proper (armor on p. 35.) illustrations and Horrible No-No (most of the clan helmets on p. 13 and weapons on p. 9). I think the most mainstream fantasy these days is some kind of high medieval - renaissance hybrid, thinking WHFB, newer editions of DND with the plethora of rapiers and what have you everywhere. 

  • Yronimos Whateley

    @timbus the thirteenth "dnd-style dwarves tend to have that big round cylinder helmet and plate armor...."

    Really?  Maybe that's a 4th/5th edition thing?  Seems like most of the D&D dwarf artwork for the monster manual or iconic dwarves from "back in my day" wasn't a whole lot different from the Wargames Atlantic digital dwarf set above - generally, a dome-shaped metal cap, with or without horns, and either chainmail, scale mail, or leather armor, in a fantasy "viking" style, and that really didn't seem to change a whole lot over the years:

     

    They're all named Beardy McDwarfbeard, they speak in terrible "Scottish" accents, they drink
    a LOT, they hate goblins, and they argue with Elves.  That's all the characterization you need.

     

    The '70s Bakshi Lord of the Rings had Gimli in what apears to be cloth armor and a hood, while the Rankin & Bass Hobbit film portrayed its dwarves in similar hooded cloth costumes:

     

    Peter Jackson's Gimli is where I start finding a cylindrical helmet, and would, I assume, be where any later D&D dwarves would play follow-the-leader in that regard:

     

     

    For my tastes, the '70s and '80s LOTR cloth-and-hoods / soft caps are most like the dwarves I grew up with in e.g. Grimm's Fairy Tales and the like, but I understand that's not really fashionable or likely to happen, and I'm OK with that.

    Seems to me that the D&D style dwarfs above - leather and chainmail/scale-mail with horned metal caps and "viking" axes and shields - are the "Classic Fantasy" default that Wargames Atlantic would aim for instead, as evidenced in the Digital set, and that seems fine to me.

    I just don't think the gaming world - or Wargame's Atlantic's legal team - needs clones of Peter Jackson's Gimli with the serial numbers filed off, any more than it needs rip-offs of the over-the-top Warhammer dwarfs.  Or, at least, I don't need it... please, no more dwarves in mohawks.  Anyway, those would be the two most depressing options, in my book (YMMV!)

  • timbus the thirteenth

    I'm MASSIVELY oversimplifying, I know its a lot more complex on both ends. Ultimately it helps me to group up different aesthetics by what I most associate them with. By a "dnd" dwarf I'm secretly talking about pathfinder dwarves. Specifically this guy from the starter set who stuck with me through the years for some reason. That's how I usually like to picture dwarves: giant walls of iron and hair. But also, that look exists plentifully (if not very well done, but that's a seperate conversation).  So yeah, to cut a long ramble short, I understand what makes the digital dwarves unique and am now in favor of them. Also I've thought way too much about dwarves, which is always kind of a plus. 

     

  • BV

    @Piisami Magical craftmen that make things like flying ships and magical boars is a concept that is at least begging hard to be given a magitech treatment if not inspiring it to a degree that demands it.I agree GW was/is going for a low key faux viking vibe with thier use of runes , etc., but at least its clearly not a history set squated, the WA set is. 

    The point is the norse myth dwarf don't match your, the so-called "others" you mention, or even the STL WA idea of dwarfs (they aren't mere low tech/low magic axe swingers and that isn't the most popular in wargaming or even on the wider table top RPG market). They are magitech dwarves, deal with it!🤣 

    "Norse dwafs" the you and others want clearly aren't dwarfs or from the Norse Myths, they are just a modern, (possibly eurocentric nonsense pride modern) depection of Vikings yet again, why bother with them. 

    Also while you and the others may not like it, magitech is a classic part of fantasy, even in mythology (it certianly shows up in Greek, Chinese, medieval Christian era, etc. and I hard argue Norse despite your protests). Toklien and Gygex are hardly the end all and be all of fantasy, and Gygex do magitech from time to time, in D&D even.

    And, to answer your aside no I have nothing against SAGA presay, I do however have something against the historical Viking look in any form for hard plastics at this point and lot against low tech European Dark Age look  in general for fantasy since its as boring as spit and isn't particularly fantasy to me and "several others" as you would say. SAGA is just the go to rule set for Dark Age Europe, making sets designed with it in mind .perfect comparsions for what I hate seeing in fantasy. 

    @timbus the thirteenth Actually I am well aware the horned helmets aren't particularly Norse, heck I know for a fact they really aren't norse, which is why I like them it makes the Dwarfs more fantasy and less "european history cause we are lazy about design" which is what I hate about straight nasal guard helmets wearing STLs.

    Also for wargaming, just wargaming alone, no lotr depiction of dwarfs is clearly not the most popular since lotr is not the go to fantasy battle game for most folks including dwarf players (in fact I think more people reuse the LOTR rules for history gaming than play in middle earth😆), I am also pretty sure most dwarf player like guns and magitech elements otherwise I don't think GW would have switched to that since they can actually do market research beyond just polling FB followers.

    Likewise LOTR clearly not even the most popular setting flavor for Dwarfs in the table top gaming, we have a lot of dwarfs out there but  most common type I see always has guns as well axes, typically with steampunk tech.  Heck I would say LOTR dwarfs are not even the most popular version in general media at this point (maybe back in 00's with films, but now its kinda of "meh, Peter Jackson dwarves", it's one iconic version of them yes but its not the only iconic version or the most popular at this point).

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  • BV

    @Yronimos Whateley the Vikings never dressed remotely like any of those dwarfs, like the closest was the first one and it was more like a crusader era men at arms than a viking and maybe the dated metal minis (but its kinda of hard to tell with those😆).

  • P

    @Brian Van De Walker Again, that is quite simply your personal conception. The myth is not begging it, it is not asking for it, the thought would never even pass for many, possibly most people. That is, through and through, your opinion.

    In this post, you did make a statement which claims to be factual, so now I will say you are wrong. Conclusively, thoroughly so. They are not magitech dwarves. The concept of magic, you seem to equate it with magitech. A flying boat definitely does not call for the tech part. It can, but it does not in itself. Magitech would imply things like replicability and being a thing that has a clear, mechanical, understandable principle of operation, since it is tech that can be wrought, while all these things made by the dwarves seem to be mystical, one of a kind items. You are wrong here, just plain old wrong.

    It is fine to have a personal conception like that, but it is not actually the truth. Magic can do many of the things that are done via technology in the modern day without being technological / scientific in nature. It can remain, quite simply, magical. A boat that flies because it is magic, or a boat that flies because someone went and stuck a jet engine in it. It is you, the person, who is begging for the magitech treatment, not the myth. This is quite conclusively proven by the fact that I, another person, do not need or particularly want the magitech treatment.

    You could argue something like the Icarian wings are magitech, since the myth describes someone building them and they have some clearly understandable components like being glued together with some adhesive that melted in the sun or something. However, they are not presented as something clearly understood, replicable, any of the hallmarks of actual technology unless I remember my mythology all wrong. So it's not actually explicit or a hard truth at all there either, like you claim. I am not familiar at all with chinese myth so you may be correct there but as we're discussing the nature of mythological (mostly Germanic I think?) dwarves it's not really relevant.

    Again, boring and all that is your opinion. It is not fact in any usual sense of the word. It does not bore me, or many others. What bores me is unneeded subversion, "ooh, let's make ours different!", which renders things unusable or utterly uninteresting to me and others who share my opinion. We differ in our opinions there.

    As to your apparent opinion on the viability of the WA dwarves as a product, it's possible you are right. Personally, I would say that you are very much in the wrong as they are awesome and quite distinct, but I recognize that is my opinion and I do not claim to have enough market expertise or whatever to be able to say it as some absolute truth. I fully recognize the fact that I have strong and particular preferences in the appearance of my dwarves and that it is not a taste shared by everyone, even if I know it is shared by many. If you have the confidence to speak as if yours is, well, all the power to you. I can only say that me, personally, I would buy many of the STL dwarves in plastic. They are awesome, distinctive, very much the proper fantasy look for dorfs (As recognized by all proper dwarf-fans. The radical machine-dwarves will obviously disagree with the righteous opinion of the Ancestors.). Really, maybe the best fantasy dorfs I have seen as miniatures.. Something that I find is unavailable currently (in plastic at least), with some about-there products that can serve. 

  • timbus the thirteenth

    Hell, I love magitech and I can get behind these dwarves, so long as they get some extra bits. I think in order to make tech work in fantasy, it needs to have a really strong visual identity and aesthetic that I'm just not sure WGA can produce. For the kits they produce in plastic, they tend to be derivative of classic figures from media, popular aesthetics, and most importantly, historical groups. I'm not sure they can really make the dwarves look weird and distinct enough from, say, mantic or citadel dwarves, while still guaranteeing that they'll recoup the losses. In that case, wouldn't it be best to simply fill a gap in the market using a kit they've already got designs for? Leave the crazy genre-bending to bestiarum and conquest.

    @Piisami Normally I'd say the best way to take down an orc horde involves an attack helicopter and some artillery strikes... But all this dwarf talking has reminded me of reading older Forgotten Realms books, which had some fantastic dwarven tunnel fighting. Maybe when this kit comes out in plastic, I'll pick up a set myself and get to recreating ;)

  • P

    @timbus the thirteenth Effective, sure. My personal favorite is probably the descriptions of their ways of war in the MERP rulebook Moria, with the decisive infantry advances and very nice descriptions of armor and arms, too. For tunnels, I've always imagined stuff like burning leaves. Just wet leaves. Makes lots and lots of smoke, thick, black and dangerous to breathe. Dwarves, being hardy and resistant to poison, can survive it a little better than their enemies even if the smoke blows back or whatever. Not gasmasks, but I could live with special linings on helmets to help with that, too. Tolkien had dwarves with fire-resistant helmets.

  • BV

    @timbus the thirteenth Hmm, given the number of people that play middle earth and generally use just GW models and that most people who really want Norse Dwarfs already have a pile of metals, magitech dwarfs would likely recoup mold expenses as much or more than the  midget vikings would, and rule wise both WHFB and KOW (the two big battle games people actually seem to play) have them as shooty/melee armies with cannon and most other rule sets go that route too for dwarfs.

    Also given the trench war stuff WA is doing I think they could do a great job and whats more make it fit in classic fantasy given the gun heavy lizardmen.

    @Piisami Sorry but given the Dwarfs clearly could repeat and re-apply the principles of thier works about as well as any other smith or wood caver in pre-standeriztion land, I disagree, your just wrong on this point. Its clearly all magitech (the boar and the boat could both fly, many of the weapons made by the dwarfs had similer properities, they hammered these items out in a workshop instead of pulling them out of a hat,  yeah no dwarfs are magitech, your just arguing they could/should be low magitech like humans with enough basic enchantement knowledge to make mud golems instead slightly higher magitech with stuff that incorperates more complex chemical sceince like magic steam engines,etc.).

     To quote dictionary that Microsoft bing uses, technology is  actually "the application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes, particularly industry" and "machinery and equipment developed from the application of scientific knowledge" , also says that Magic is "the power of apparently influencing events by using mysterious or supernatural forces" end quote. Both are agreed upon by most other sources.

    So with those definitions  in mind,magical technology is "the application of magical knowledge for practical purposes, including industry"and magitech would be the "machinery and equipment developed from the application of magical knowledge".  (ie if its crafted and magical and isn't pulled out of thin air its arguebly magitech, maybe low magitech but still magitech).

    What this means is no the flying boat, Iron boar, etc. the dwarfs made in the old myths all count as magitech since they where clearly made on a set of  principles the dwarfs had unless of course you wish to make an arguement the dwarfs are some how just natural wild magic like the fae in celtic myth who just touch stuff making it magic.  No I would say the dwarfs were clearly always magitech, they just predate the label, sorta of like how lighting existed before it was called electricity and of course most people don't think of it that way, magitech is a very new word for a remarkably unimportant thing (which just means the hammer of enlightment must be used all the harder on the uneducated and thier silly notions of  nose winking magic Viking dwarfs😆). 

    Setting that humorus topic aside. While I don't like the idea of more  "Viking themed"  stuff,  I understand why you an some others want them given the LOTR films.

    That said  the  classic fantasy doesn't revolve around merely the works  of Tolkein and gunpowder exists in quite a bit of it (media and general folklore), particularly when you look outside the English sphere (which we should) and dwarfs often have it. Even if WA keeps chainmail look as is, they should have some guns (probably similar to the lizard man guns), and I  for want want either some classic horned helmets and/or a set of the same odd "fantasy brodie helmets" the goblens have (since I doubt the WA goblins could make that many identical helmets) as an alternative to the dark age nasal guard helmet option.

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  • P

    So I won't bother with answering all that, but I had another idea while working on my rpg stuff. The goats for Classic Fantasy Battles are nice and all, but how about...

     

    WAR YAKS!

     

    They're beautiful and I now love the idea and consider it canonical in fantasy.

  • timbus the thirteenth

    @Piisami erm 🤣🤣😂 looks like cr*p they should be riding magitech motorcycles 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 saga could never 😂😂😂🤣🤣🤣

    (in all seriousness thats a great idea and I love it. I think victrix is coming out with some shaggy medieval cows soon, could make for a nice kitbash)

  • Yronimos Whateley

    The war "Oliphaunts" have been a fantasy classic since at least Tolkien's day, at least.  Exotic cavalry of various sorts are at least as old as Lovecraft's Dreamlands, where zebras and weird dreamlands monsters were a "thing".  I suppose that sort of thing - elephants and yaks - is certainly possible for Dwarf cavalry.

    I'm inclined towards old-fashioned horses, even of dwarfy proportions:  I seem to recall that even Tolkien's hobbits got along famously with ponies as transportation.

    Then again, seems to me that fantasy game designers seem to like giving us a lot of dwarf, goblin, hobbit, and other fantasy "races" on dogs, wolves, rabbits, cats, bears, frogs, spiders, dinosaurs, dragons, rhinoceroses, snails, or whatever - even when those creatures are not really well-suited for riding.  That, we're dealing with a fantasy world, and the artists, sculptors, writers, whatever could just as easily just invent original fantasy creatures instead, with a lot less handwaving and suspension of disbelief.  Maybe start with extinct megafauna for a loose inspiration, and put your own weird fantasy spin on it instead?  (Extra legs, eyes, horns, claws, teeth, tusks, and the like are classics, as are weird colours, scales and feathers or shaggy hair where there ought to be a more conventional covering, and so on....)


    Star Wars, "Bantha"

    I, for one, think we could do with more creatures in the spirit of Byahkhees, Buopoths, Thoats, or Banthas! 

    What sort of strange, pale, blind, troglodytic beasts might the Dwarves have drag up from the shadowy, lightless depths of the Darklands beneath their mountain to use in their armies as beasts of burden or mounts for their mad, drunken knight-berserker lords to rage into battle on?

    I mean, it COULD be bears or big dogs, but with a world as vast and original as your imaginations, what else might be down there in the cavernous deeps?

  • BV

    Actually given we are talking dwarves, you could  turn the elephant/mammoth/big monster into walking tanks with cannons or ballistia howdas.

  • P

    @Yronimos Whateley personally, I favor non-horse mounts for dwarves. Something off with the aesthetics of horses+dorfs. The yak is now my favorite, elephant was in pic because I was using ai tool to compare different mounts. Not a fan of elephants as non-mountain creatures.

     

    All sorts of weird underground beasts, possible. Beetles have a huge carry weight relative to size. Not a great big fan of insect mounts on good races though. That's probably an issue with most truly weird beasts, they have the feel of bad guy mounts. Runic golems and constructs, animated magic statue-like that is, super too.

  • M

    Personally I'm inclined to say dwarves shouldn't have cavalry. instead, if they're fighting on the surface, they should have war wagons or something. Maybe channel some hussite ideas, with armored wagons they can use to rapidly make fortified fighting positions.

  • timbus the thirteenth

    @Piisami i agree, horses look weird with dwarves. i think part of what makes dwarves fun is their practicality. every dwarf should look ready to fight, eat, and mine an ore vein at the drop of a hat, and i feel like having mounts that double as food and beasts of burden make sense. also, i feel like you'd want something that would be okay underground or on a mountaintop.

  • BV

    @Mithril2098 Not going to lie, I think they should just have steamtanks and skip domisticated animal, but if your going to do them wagons and hodaws would be the fun way, I just don't see dwarfs as a chargy army.

     

     

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  • P

    @Mithril2098 yeah, war wagons are cool. The only issue is that dwarves are a people of the mountains. Wagons don't do well there. And they're not really an active warfighting thing, rather they're quikforts that you set up while deploying for battle. Which is super-dorfy, turn any battle into one for a fortification. 

     

    Not entirely sure they should have cavalry, either, but some pack beasts are necessary. And beasts, specifically, as wheels would be of far less utility in mountains. A dragoon kind of deal seems the most natural to them, riding into battle for the speed, but dismounting to actually fight, like the saxons did iirc. The saxon fyrd-model seems to fit for their doctrine as well, with a militia consisting of most able bodies that can hold terrain while the military elite come in to do the hardest fighting.

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  • M

    they live in mountains, but pretty much every version of dwarves also includes crossing other regions to travel to more distant dwarf settlements in other mountain ranges. as well as trade with surrounding regions. both of which usually involve wagons of some sort to carry themselves and any supplies/goods they brought along. the idea that they'd weaponize such when fighting non-dwarves isn't much of a stretch. even if it is just putting thick wood or metalpanelling on the sides for cover and sticking some bow/crossbowmen inside. more elaborate forms might well take cues from carroballistae or the roman anti-elephant carts. 

    and yes wagon forts are a pre-battle thing.. but with the right design an armored wagon could be used for either mid-battle mobile combat or forming the wall of a pre-battle field fortification.

    and given the scale on which dwarves mine, wagons are perfectly in keeping with them.. after how do you think miners move the spoil from a rockface being excavated? especially before the advent of rails? carts and wagons. and pretty much all versions of dwarves mine on scales comparable with modern longwall methods, which usually involve dump trucks to haul away the spoil efficently. so large wagons would fit for them.

  • BV

    @Piisami They are still a fantasy race so doctriane need not be based on real world history in any shape or form, and I vote no to saxon anything for the same reason I am opposed to Vikings in fantasy but with an added note, it is too overplayed in fantasy for the human forces too be Dwarf or any other races except maybe orcs, plus its too boring for humans at this point. practicaly every other person I have come across proposing "new human fantasy troops/town guards" thats aiming for genric fantasy shows a picture of saxon warriors and as it stands there are something like 2 or three fantasy sets with that in mind already not done by WA and  given the lack of differances between them everyone in else in Dark Ages europe... well its all but turned me into racist against Saxons and Vikings which is a grand irony since I am part Engish and Scandinavian😆.   

    @Mithril2098 Yeah, I think armored wagon trains make sense for dwarfs if you are not going to give them steam engines,  and honestly there is a lot of wheeled carts and things in mines even in the moutians, today there is even treaded vehicals so I think terrian is a moot point particularly given a lot of the tables they will be on will be fields not moutians.

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  • P

    @Mithril2098 Yes, if they use wagons then it is very appropriate. However, I'm not sure they would use wagons. Wheels are a good way of conveying things, but not the only way. They could use beasts, they could use different mechanisms, winches, sleds, what have you. Sky's the limit, and so's the geothermal gradient that eventually ends up too hot where the Balrogs live and all.

    I think they mine shaft-and-adit. The spoil can be used as backfill for old tunnels, just dumped down a valley or even used as material for the roads for the wagons if they do use them at scale. The roads are the big thing, see. It's really very hard to build proper roads into the mountains. The roads we have are usually ones that lead through passes. What the dwarves, being a nearly or wholly mountainous culture, would have is possibly a different logistics system. Think Incas with better beasts of burden. Yaks are surprisingly good pack-beasts.

    Of course, if and when there's hill dwarves too, those probably do use wheels at much more frequency, and they'd be your top candidate for the war wagons too.

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  • BV

    @Piisami Real moutian people have used wheeled carts, etc. since before the bronze ages most likely because they where in contact with civilizations that did, the only notable real world exception is the Inca and other Mezoamerician cultures and frankly the sighted reasons behind that are kinda of suspect as roads can be modified.  Dwarves, given thier contact with elves and humans, would at least have wheeled transport and it would not be makeshift if we are talking an army from race noted for its craftmen, they would also have modified moutian roads for said wheeled transport. Likewise a "just dwarves" line should cover both moutian and hill. 

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  • Yronimos Whateley

    @Piisami "That's probably an issue with most truly weird beasts, they have the feel of bad guy mounts...."

    They can come across as bad guy mounts.  And why not?  If you ask goblins and orcs, they would probably tell you dwarves ARE the bad guys, just like vice-versa.  I should imagine both folk's propaganda arms work overtime telling awful stories about each other - it's true enough of humans, and if history teaches us anything, it's probably that both sides are exaggerating, but probably right: they've all got a bit of villain in them.

    And, of course I'm in an odd corner of the fantasy market, but to my imagination, there always was something psychedelic and weird enough about dwarves and elves, that it seems to me that monsters from a fever dream would be right at home among them.

    But, then again, it's all in the sculpting, isn't it?  And it does even have to be THAT weird to evoke fantasy.  Take the odd-looking creatures that accompany the Fidwog Command as an example:

    Plenty weird enough for a fantasy setting, yet just this side of endearingly cute.  

    And, the weird beast from Bakshi's Wizards is in a similar place: weird, even a bit menacing, but kinda cute - I haven't seen the movie since the '80 or early '90s, but I seem to recall the character was a deserter from an evil wizard's cavalry:

    Something similar could be said of many species of bats, whose fantasy counterparts dwarves might well share some troglodytic territory with: weird but cute, though there are also species of bat that are grotesque enough to suit any traditionally evil goblin army as well:

    That's not to say we should mount dwarven cavalry on bats and leave it at that (though that is an idea), but one could do worse than conjure a sightless, ground-walking megafauna loosely inspired by the more attractive bits of bats:  the fur, large ears, etc., while applying all the menace of a charging war-horse, camel, oliphaunt, or attack dog....

     

    And, I'm excited to see in this week's newsletter that Wargames Atlantic is actually about to make just about the most perfect dwarves (and elves) for me that I could hope for, in the form of "Villagers (2): Elves and Dwarves" - which shouldn't have surprised me, as I also loved the first fantasy Villagers set:

    Sure, I could nitpick on wanting even more eccentric hats and so on, but why, when the bits that are thre, are great stuff! (And maybe there's another half-frame or more to this set that hasn't been previewed yet - that would be icing on the cake!)  Villagers and townsfolk, yes, but I also see town militias there, reluctant heroes, unconventional villains, eccentric NPCs of all sorts, specialists for more formal armies (scouts and rangers and the like)... and these are characters that can even be translated into a sci-fi setting readily enough, too (see Shadowrun for example, though there's also room in Death Fields for this sort of thing - see again the Einherjar faction.....)

    I, for one, will be loading up on these guys.  Thank you very much, Wargames Atlantic!  

  • timbus the thirteenth

    man, I've been getting back into 80s psychedelic fantasy aesthetics recently and god damn those designs scratch an itch. I've always been really fond of the little knights from Joust, with all the bright colors and bird mounts. hopefully as the more "basic" units get filled out, wga might expand into more trippy designs. I always thought a heavy armored goblin design based on labyrinth could be fun. maybe gnomes too?

    anyways, back to dwarves, wga just put out a ram riders stl that could make for a nice kitbash. with that in hand I bet you could make just about anything.

     

  • P

    @Yronimos Whateley Different strokes, I suppose, but I got an overdose of the whole subverting the tropes / complexity of characters / moral greyness/relativism in fantasy thing somewhere back in the 90s and 00s. I now favor a more clear framework on these things with heroism and all. Call it simple or naive or whatever if you will but it's much more enjoyable to me these days. Dwarves are definitely in camp good guy, goblins are camp bad guy, so it's irrelevant what the latter think of the former. You can do weird stuff, obviously, but it's much harder to do while retaining the image of the good guy camp, a lot of stuff like bugs are just a little icky and properly belong in camp bad guy.

    @timbus the thirteenth Yeah. Shame about them being stl, again, would buy those lads in plastic in a minute as well. Maybe some day.

  • Yronimos Whateley

    It always surprises me that century-old pulp literature, even older fairy tales, and illustrations from the Victorian likes of Arthur Rackham, Walter Crane, W.W. Denslow, John R. Neill, or Sydney Sime is considered "subversive", "radical", and "avant-garde"!  

    For fun, and because I don't really have a good imagination of my own with which to pcture anything that hasn't been done to exhaustion already, I had an AI try drawing beasts that dwarves might ride into war; I'll post them here just for fun, in case anyone else can enjoy them.


    The prompt here was for a dwarven cavalry mounted on "troglodytic woolly worms with bat-like faces", charging across a subterranean battlefield of the inner earth, with a forest of towering mushrooms in the background.

     

    The prompt for this one was a little more vague, calling for a "fantastic beast of burden or cavalry mount" suitable for a dwarven rider, a "sightless beast from the depths of the inner earth".  The terrasque-thing in the background is kind of typical for the AI's work - it generated a lot of reptile-toad-dragon-things and this one is not the dullest of them - but I really liked the relatively conventional horse-like creature in the foreground:  it's alien, but plausible enough as a fantasy equivalent of a warhorse, and it seems to be a dwarf-compatible character of its own, with that weird scowl on its face.

     

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  • BV

    @Piisami@Yronimos Whateley Actually its pretty easy to make a "camp good guy" looking weird riding beasts, just make them "round, cute and friendly" but most importantly "friendly" (the Wizards riding beast lacked that last element and you can see the diffrence😆). A particular cartoon multi-legged flying bison comes to mind here, it may not be as diginified or cool as a mount for a dragon knight but it did give off the "good guy ride" vibe.

    While I personally would prefer evil/neutral dwarves along fantasy Ottomen empire lines, for classic good guy dwarves I could easily see either some fantasyed  up take on a Doedicurus (the armored volkswagon sized ice age mammal) and/or Ankylosaurus like earth dragons being used as mounted warbeasts and war wagon pullers, perhaps even giant moles. 

    For single rider mounts, I could see something like the two legged riding birds popular in Japanese pop culture or even freindly looking two legged lizards be used  easily enough by any of the "good guy" factions including dwarves (though that might be a millinal to gen-alpha veiwpoint). 

    I would also  like to note that many "good guy" and "bad guy" factions can share many of  the same fantasy riding animals and warbeasts just by going "feral vs. friendly" route in the sculpting with a feral mount sprue for evil mounts and a "friendly" (or perhaps "nobel") sprue for the good guy mounts.

    That all said while I am not a big fan of it concept wise, riding dogs should be an option we talk about a bit more given that marketing for WA's fantasy sets does seem to be aimmed a bit more towards D&D players as well as the normal wargamers, and those breeds of dog would fit well for dwarven mounts an work quite well in subterranean setting such as mines.

     

  • timbus the thirteenth

    I dunno, I always take a bit of offense at people seperating animals into "good" and "bad". I'm personally very fond of beetles, bats, and the like, even if they have negative connotations on heraldry. I'm in kind of the same camp as @Piisami, though, when it comes to morality in fantasy. The Malazan series does morally grey heroes in fantasy so damn well I stopped caring for most other versions of it. I guess it's sort of a "batman vs superman" debate: the edgy one is great fun, but sometimes its really nice to just have some good old fashioned hope and kindness.

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  • BV

    @timbus the thirteenth get what your saying, hence heavy use "" around those words since animals are not good or bad persay. The reality is animals with triangle shapes tend to be poisionus/venomus or carnivorus and humans have... breed themselves out to recognize this subconsciously for the most part😆.  

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