Poll: Choose your favourite Dwarf army. There can be only one!

My ranked votes would be:

1: Classic Dwarves.
2: KO
3: Fyreslayers
4: Chaos Dwarves. (I do think they're cool, I just don't like Chaos, lol!)

 

Which makes sense. These are Infernal Guard, who can best be described as the Chaos Dwarf equivalent of Slayers. These Chaos Dwarfs have experienced some kind of dishonor and take the oath to become Infernal Guard, upon which time they are sealed in their armour:

"...and for them the Infernal Guard offers the solace of death in Hashut's grace and also anonymity, as upon taking its oath their names and past kinships are shorn away and their faces are seared and shut underneath red-hot iron and bronze masks. Only if they achieve great glory are the masks torn off, exposing the scarred and ravaged flesh of the redeemed warrior once again to the world."

So your analysis is a good one.

Fair enough.

 

Well they could still make it more interesting. Give them a helmet with the leering face of a daemon or something. Dwarfs are usually artisans so some basic steel plates just looks out of place.

 

That's just personal aesthetics. Some people like them, while some don't. You happen to be one of the ones that don't.

I like them. They are essentially nobody once they take the oath, so the minimalist style works lore wise.

 

Minimalistic can still be done with more than just slabs of metal. Especially if they then still get to wear nice scale armour.
Overall it just makes for a rather weird combination. Half his equipment is crude slabs of unpainted metal bolted together, the other half is relativly fancy (and work-intensive) scale armour with bright paint.

The lore itself I actually like though. But personally I'd either completly cover them in crude armour, or specificly make give them artisinal armour intended to make them look like daemons or some such with sculpted helmets and the like so everyone can immeadiatly tell from a distance that it's a infernal guard, bonus points if the sculpted armour somehow connects to their great shame.

 

As it is produced by Forge World and out of production, it is quite expensive. I was lucky enough to score a really great deal on Ebay a few years ago.

To each their own.

 

I personally think that Chaos Dwarf looks great. I think the armor is a good mix of ornate and disgrace at the same time. By bringing out both it both feels dwarf like and represents their shame. They are still dwarves but are in agony as well.

 

I may like AOS but I definitely acknowledge WHFB's superiority in lore. And love the many various factions.

 

WFB has the advantage of time. Its lore was developed over multiple decades. AoS lore does seem to be improving, so in time it might develop just as rich of a backstory as WFB.

 

Yeah I love the KO lore that I've read it seems really good. But my main issue is the setting. I just can't like it lol. The realms make it seem almost like a multiplayer video game in how it's like matchmaking. Just random battlegrounds that aren't connected.

 

well they are connected with the realmgates & there are some neat ideas, like the city that's build around one (hammerfall?) with one side in the realm of fire and one in the realm of life. With both sides providing essential services to the other (fire realm side recieves food & lumber, life realm recieves a steady flow of lava to keep the forests at bay as well as having acces to the massive industrial complex on the fire side)

But again, they've only barely started to explore the concept. So up till now there's relativly little going on between realms apart from that one city, or occasionally a fight around a realmgate.

It also doesn't help that each realm is essentially a planet. If they were "merely" the size of a country or even a small continent it'd at least be viable to have the story slowly progress from one realm to another. But at the established size it doesn't make much sense to have a story that takes place in multiple realms at once unless it's centered around something like the aforementioned city where you can relativly easily switch sides as you go.

 

Hell, we still really haven't even seen Uglu and Hysh. We got a glimpse of the Shadow Plane with the daughters, but it's still a mystery.

I bet we will see it more when the story of Slaanesh pushes further, and the bonds between Uglu and Hysh break.

 

I don't blame you; personally I've always loved WFB's medieval setting. Everything felt closer and more lived in. The stakes mattered more.

 

You read any of the books for AoS? Blacklibrary is what I mean, not the battletomes or "campaign" books. City of Secrets gives that exact feeling you're talking about. Or so I've heard.

 

No I have not.

Either way, I prefer WFB's medieval setting. That is just personal taste though.