Warhammer Fantays General

I know it's more of a Burgerland thing, but I think the general idea of a 'rebellious southern culture reluctantly brought back into a united fold' is something that a lot of settings don't take advantage of. GW could have worked it in with some provinces in the Empire to provide a scenario for a civil war if they wanted.

Just got the 6e war hammer fantasy battle rules, I started the game in 8e so this will be my first time playing an older edition, thinking of running a map based campaign using mighty empires with my gaming group, any advice?

What factions would you be playing as?

That's basically a lot of the Empire, as for nearly a millenium the states were autonomous and had periods of on again-off again civil wars. Marienburg seceded, as did Middenland from Middenheim.

Dark elves, empire and lizard men, we might have a vampire counts or orcs and gobs player.
The empire does have that but its more the rebellious northern and eastern provinces as the south of the empire is its heartland, what with nun and reikland being to of the empires most powerful cities and the cult of Sigmar centered in the south.

In an alternate dimension where warhammer makes more sense (humor me here) what weapons do the brettonian questing knights use instead of a greatsword?

Unless they are actually dragoons armed with greatswords using those weapons from horseback seems like a poor choice.

They would wield a one handed warhammer in conjunction with a shield wouldn't they?

Maybe an estoc on the side for trying to kill huge monsters.

I never played with Mighty Empires, but I did do a campaign using the rules in the Generals Compendium. Hopefully you have an even amount of players. We had five, so four of us paired off against each other and the fifth guy went around the map gobbling up territory and won.

Morning stars, perhaps.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseman's_pick
I meant a warhammer similar to this, not the impractical ones you see dawi using.

But yeah, a mace would be good also, no need to focus on edge alignment.

Maybe a horseman's pick, but a greatsword isn't that nonsensical, at least in the real world.

They aren't that much heavier or longer than a one-handed sword - you could use it one handed, with the other hand holding on to the reins, as long as all you had to do was swing a side-cut. This wouldn't be feasible for a footman, but a trained horseman could handle it.

That's true, though in 'reality' Questing Knights would have a variety of weapons they pick up on their journey. They wouldn't be uniform, some might have less armour, some might wield great weapons, some may not even ride horses. This should have been represented in the rules with a few choices to have different weapons and choose between mounted and infantry.

Any advice on getting people into Mordheim, I want to convince my D&D group to start playing so that when someone cancels unexpectedly we can play mordheim instead, the group is quite small so the loss of one player has a big impact. One of the other players plays empire, but the other two have no prior experience with mini wargaming.

I imagine questing knights returning from araby would have picked up a distinct appreciation for the scimatar from horsback, at least for killing enemies that lack full armor coverage.

Or a buddy.

That is true, and I definitely can respect that. It'd be nice to take Questing Knights from a slightly awkward category of usefulness, and make them feel really customizable compared to most Brets.

In the lore, the only real explanation for this is that Questing Knights take up the sword symbolically, setting aside the Lance - the symbol of a Knight of the Realm...which is a little stupid when you think about how Knights Errant use the lance, but ah well.

It's not so much as symbol of a Realm knight, but a symbol of their duty as a knight. They set it aside to gain the Lady's favour, picking up the lance again when they 'return to duty'. So a Knight Errant, though not truly a knight yet, still wields a lance as a symbol of his devotion to lord, land and Lady. Plus Louis the Rash did it and then everyone else did it too.

...

I now want to do this.

I was thinking more monastic orders

It can be sort of seen in the northern half of the Empire which is constantly teetering on the edge of civil war because of aggresive attempts at territory grabs and Boris Toddbringer being kind of a dick about not being Emperor.

Also the northern Empire is generally considered the more rural part.

I thought the most rural part was the east, with stirland and talabecland being predominantly farming provinces, while the north was more focuses on their navy and warrior culture, with the ulrican church being quite big.

Middenland is mostly wood and cities, the cities being actually pretty thriving and advanced (the rocket launcher being from there), and a somewhat thriving economy.

Nordland is probably a way poorer province, having lost Marienburg not really long ago.

Well, there were not much reason for them to stay in Araby. It's not their holy land. Bretonnia is.

>Though there is some old, vague lore about them having colonies in the Southlands, so you could use that as a springboard for fluffing things out, if you wished.
I think it was the Empire with Sudenburg. Bretonnia had colonies in the border princes IIRC.

Grail is just an euphmeism.
Lady just fucks the Knights she deems worthy and lets them drink when she squirts.

I think we talked enough about Bretonnia.

but talk is all Bretonnia has. no units, no fluff worth a damn, no proper self-identity, nothing original. don't take the last thing they have - the talk.

Western Talabecland is relatively rich thanks to trade going through Talabheim, but most of the province is rural wood and farmland.

Hochland is mostly woodland with few cities. Mostly walled towns. Main industry is lumber and meat, making it fairly rural compared to the rest of the Empire.

Nordland is mostly poor farmland, bar the coast which has some pretty lucrative trade with the non (or less) chaotic tribes of the lower wastes.

I'll give that the east is largely rural, with Stirland and Ostermark.

Nah.

Bastard sword.

>impractical ones you see dawi using.

THAT'S GOING IN THE BOOK!

beards should give Dwarfs +1 armor save against attacks made from front.

Dawi weapons are pretty stupid. They should be using spears and sword. They are much better for their stubby arms than axes and hammers.

Tolkien's dwarves actually used swords and bows quite a lot. It's just Warhammer dwarfs are basically D&D Dwarfs WITH GRUDGES, TOTALLY ORIGINUL, DONUT STEEL, with their obsession over runes, booze and hammers/axes, the last of which is simply because Gimli used axes and happened to be most iconic.

but since WHFB Dwarfs are built entirely out of cliches they are allergic to swords and spears.

Dwarf axe use predates film Gimli, cretin.

I'm not talking about film, idiot. He used axe in the book.

Yeah, the WHFB is by far my least favourite race in the setting. Even the elves have three different distinct cultures.

Warhammer dwarfs became even much more of a meme after chaos dwarfs got pushed aside and the race basically became one big, unified culture with no internal conflict. Considering that Veeky Forums often says that dwarfs are perfect and should never change, this is apparently what everyone wants.

Most people are uninteresting and like uninteresting things

No one cared about book Gimli, dumbass.

please, D&D cliches grew from LotR books first, besides Elric and Conan, that is, and from there everywhere. Gimli was THE dwarf back then, since Hobbit was "childish" and Silmarillion is beyond most people

Warhammer dwarfs do not behave like Gimli beyond disliking elves and using axes. Scant data to draw such a conclusion on.

why don't you read my comments? they behave like stereotypical D&D dwarfs. D&D dwarfs (and WHFB by extension) love axes because Gimli used axes. axes-swinging and elf-hating are pretty much everything D&D took from LotR's Gimli, since their races are always dumbed-down shallow counterparts of source materials.
WHFB just dumbed them down further by taking away their magic, but pretended to give them depth by adding grudges. That's it. Not as bad as WoW, which is dumbed down a step further with exactly zero culture and stuff, but don't pretend D&D/WHFB Dwarfs are something original.

WFB is not D&D.

WHFB Dwarfs are heavily based on D&D Dwarfs, minus magic plus grudges. Read the conversation before replying, will ya?

Minus magic, plus grudges, plus runes, plus trains, plus helicopters, plus guns, plus submarines, plus religious importance to beards, plus harem-style marriages, plus oathkeeping...

Dwarfs use guns and crossbows, both objectively better than bows, especially considering dwarfen height and what this means for bow length.

Hammers and axes as weapons almost certainly derive from picks.

Dwarfs also certainly understand swords even if they don't use them much. There's the Runefangs, after all.

It's pretty fucking close. It's a game based on using DnD minis for big battles.

runes are par the course for D&D Dwarfs. so is steampunk in gnomeless settings.

sorry, there's nothing really original in WHFB, it's the whole point. Elves are melniboneans, Empire is HRE, etc. That's the whole point. That's why we like it, I daresay. It's not a special snowflake setting.

>no fluff worth a damn
>no proper self-identity

This is so obviously untrue I question why you bothered posting it.

sorry, "arthurian expies lol" is not a self-identity. not enough of one in this setting, at least

Taking magic away is not a 'dumbing down'. The fact they are magic resistant but cannot cast spells makes them unusual for the setting in which they live.

And I don't know about anybody else but I still find it weird every time a Dwarf uses magic in another setting.

Have you even read their army book?

By your shitposter logic the Empire is just 'HRE with wizards lol'.

they were more like fair folk than modern D&D/WHFB/WoW Dwarfs in Hobbit - eyes glowing in the dark, Thorin obviously having at least minor magical power, telling smoke rings where to fly, trying to open locks with spells, not to mention the descriptions of their creations (though that last one is common among stereotypical dwarfs, in LotR it didn't stem from no runes, but rather from Dwarves' own talents, as Aules' children, plus what Tolkien described is more along the lines of what normally Elves make in D&D/WHFB/WoW)

Sorry, WF dwarfs did these things before it was set in stone (hue).

Obvious bait. Sad.

Feb 28

Folks, when the AoS general sends us people, they're not sending their best. They're sending redditors. They're sending redshirts. And some, I assume, are only ironically shitposting.

Or there is some sperg that wants to keep the discussion flowing with shitposting to keep the general alive.

>guys, why dare dwarfs so culturally similar when they live for extremely long times, prize tradition over innovation, and possessed for most of history huge highways to keep in constant contact?

Nah, Skavens and Nightgoblins cuts out too many of those highways for that to make sense. The dorfs society is hardly well oiled.

Dwarf society has been fractured for a relatively short time, during which we've already seen drift in Norse dwarfs, dawi zharr, and Grey vs Empire diaspora vs World's Edge dwarfs. You gotta remember they are very long-lived and historically consider being older synonymous with being correct.

I just think that their lack of diversity makes them a boring faction. Even the Lizardmen are less rigid.

I feel as if at least the Eastern and Southern dwarves should be at odds with each other. It is always kind of weird how the clans rarely come to violence even though they do carry out grudges against each other. On one hand this can be explained somewhat by culture, racial features, grudges, etc, but on the other hand it's boring and not really believable.

Even so, fuck yall, I like my WHFB dwarves, they're the shit.

>Blowing shit up
>Extensive use of fire in warfare
>Grudges make for hilarious stories
>Little dudes fight in tight, disciplined formation
>More unified than any other race, and they show it in battle
>Slayers being badarses
>FLAMETHROWERS

I love 'em. But you guys are right; there is seriously not enough internal conflict. At most there is grumbling and petty grudges. It would be far more interesting if the dwarves fought amongst themselves sometimes. However, they are more likely to tie each other up in cultural stigmas and conservative grumbling than violence.

That's why I like WHFB as a setting. It doesn't need to do anything original, it just needs to fun and over the top sometimes.

they even don't fight Chaos Dwarfs much, instead pretending those don't exist

>eastern and southern
Shit, I meant eastern and western

Internal conflict is one of the best and easiest way to make a race interesting and dwarfs are unfortunately missing it. They should blow each other up more often.

They should. But I treat this like a standard GW-world oddity. Some stupid combination of GW retardation + fan retardation = some more stupid shit in-universe.

>there are no skaven, it's just when Dwarfs go to war against their own, they don't admit to it, instead blaming it on mythical "ratmen".
>in truth, the holds and regions of underway that are "lost to skaven", are just wrecked in dwarfish civil wars, nothing more
>Dreaded 13th is just euphmeism for your clan's dwarfs for some reason defecting into enemy clan
>this all explains both why humans know nothing of Skaven, and why Skaven have such advanced and dwarf-like tech

>tfw Karak Eight Peaks will never become Karak Seven Peaks because of a grudge

The dwarfs have little to no logistical capacity to do so and they know it.

>have logicstical capacity to march across the Empire for two and a half pence
>don't have logistical capacity to wipe out their counsing who MAKE WEAPONS AND ARMOUR FOR WORLD-ENDING MANIACS
really?

also they can dig a tunnel and undermind Zharr-Nagrund

Slayers are another unique part of Warhammer dwarfs, especially since they occupy a social class that borders on untouchables. No one has anything like it, and the reasons for taking the oath can also be seemingly quite bizarre.

Zharr Naggarond is really isolated. It's also a dwarf fortress, and one of the most inpenetrable ever conceived. Undermining it is a laugh, dwarfs know how to deal with this because they're constantly dealing with the skaven chimping out. Let's not forget the dawi zharr's hobgoblin and Chaos allies, or the hordes of orcs just fucking around waiting for a scrap, either.

Speaking of skaven chimpouts, did you ever stop to consider that while this literally unprecedented throng is at the edge of anywhere, way back home the dwarfs will still be dealing with endless hordes of greenskins and skaven who reproduce and mature literally hundreds of times faster than them? You know, those hordes which, most the time, are merely stalemated, not being pushed back?

You ought to shave your beard and take the oath for proposing an idea so stupid, wazzock.

oh, but I'm an elf. so I'll shave your beard instead.

BY GRIMNIR

GET THE BOOK

THAT'S IT! THIS TIME WE'LL TAKE MORE THAN A CROWN!

>did you ever stop to consider that while this literally unprecedented throng is at the edge of anywhere, way back home the dwarfs will still be dealing with endless hordes of greenskins and skaven who reproduce and mature literally hundreds of times faster than them?
Then why haven't they taken over the world yet?

I think it's because at the end of the day, a dwarf is a dwarf. They breed too slow to get mired in civil wars when they still have greenskins and skaven to contend with.

Pic is an Errand knight.

The whole grudge thing as a general concept isn't unique to Warhammer Dwarfs, but I think its specific manifestation is really excellent, taking into account their honour system, extreme orthodoxy, gender imbalance, ancestor worship and the slayer cult.

They actually owe more to eastern cultures like China and Japan than the west in terms of their Shame/Honour culture.
I've been running a WFRP adventure recently set in a dwarf hold and I've been trying to portray the hold dwarfs (in contrast to the imperial dwarfs) as a thoroughly alien culture with a lot of hidden rules and social intricacies.

Doesn't Muslims have a thing against shaving their beards?

Because GW would have to stop producing Fantasy minis a long time ago?
If we go by the scales GW throws at us there would have been no way humans elves or dwarves would have survived that long.
For Khornes sake, it's stated that Beastmen alone that are lurk in the imperial woods outnumbers the Empire.

They're prone to periodic civil wars of staggering scale and everyone hates them with a passion.

The orcs are stupid, too. The skaven aren't dumb, but the constant political skullduggery tends to kill promising leaders for actually having potential.

You know, this is just a baity way of asking why a faction isn't more of a threat to other factions or in general, if they are so great.

So do a lot of Christians, and also many pagan Germanics. A shaved man, to them, isn't a man - but a slave.

The dwarf practice, though, is almost certainly based on the Sikhs, who do not cut their hair.

That's Sikhs.
They also have a religion that reflects the fact that they were constantly under attack by outside forces. Hence the sword obsession.

I could see similarities.

>Dwarves
>take over the world
Implying a little tectonic adjustment couldn't solve that issue.

Come to think of it, yeah. Sikhs have historically been under siege by vicious borderline animals who make up for their idiocy with inexhaustible numbers.

>one of the greatest magic-users in the world
>can't cure warts on his belly
fucking useless