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Hello everyone. Recently I have reached the point where I am just sick and tired of losing games because of how ridiculous the magic phase can be. Because of this I have decided that for my second army that Dwarfs (aka THE army that is the best at telling the magic phase to go to hell ) however I have run into one pretty big problem: I cannot stand the look of the dwarf models. No offense to fellow dwarf players but the idea of running an army of druken bearded midgets is not for everyone. However being a history major I have recently been learning more and more about the Roman Empire, in particular, the Roman Military Machine. The more I learned I realized the similarities between the dwarfs and the Roman Military and thought a kick ass conversion army would be perfect. I mean if you look at the armies compared:

-Both armies rely on tight formations of disciplined, tough infantry. (This works with the dwarfs movement, Roman infantry would move at a slow pace and keep formation).
-Extensive use of warmachines such as ballista and catapults
-Liked fortifications as their other favorite tool, the shovel, love to fight battles that forces the enemy on their terms (aka for them to come to us).
-Disciplined and rarely ran from a fight, also relied on infantry much more the cavalry.
-No magic (could easily say the weapons were forged with tougher metals to explain runes).

These are just a few examples of how this conversion could work, also did I forget to mention that they absolutely are against magic and are pretty dang good at stopping it? . This idea is one that I think would work really well stat wise and fluff wise, but now the real issue of how to deal with the models? Since I do not want to run dwarfs (and believe it or not I want to play in GW tournaments with these bad boys) I am going to need to come up with a way to put together some Roman Soldiers. The rough Idea I have come up with at this point is this:

-White Lion Legs
-High Elf/Dark Elf Spear Arms or Empire Sword Arms (DE ones because they look kind of bad a** , also Roman infantry had spears as well as their famed short sword).
-Bretonnia Men at Arms shields
-Empire Greatsword Salient Helm
-High Elf Seaguard Torsos (or) greatsword torsos

With this conversion I feel that I have a reasonable way to create some decent looking miniatures (I do realize how big of a pain this will be but this is a project that would take a while to complete) and in the end look pretty good...I hope. Tell me what you guys think and if anyone of you has any better Ideas how to create roman infantry (and at the same time make it at least 50% GW so I can play in their tournaments) I would love to hear it. Thanks for reading!

Well the following are not by GW (and at some GWs 50% is not enough), but they are Roman Dwarfs:

Westwind: http://www.westwindproductions.co.uk/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=1_4&products_id=821


Greebo Roman Dwarf Bloodbowl team: http://www.greebo.it/greebo/Teams_Legio_Dwarf.html

If only you didn't care about playing GW run stuff... Warlord Games has some decent Imperial Roman models.

I'm curious as to how you are going to make the army, given that Romans never used Great Weapons... and in WFB Dwarves do MUCH better in close combat with Great Weapons.

Don't get me wrong, I think your idea is really cool. But... don't expect to compete with the 'Ard Boyz lists in tournaments; an army of HW+S Dwarves won't.

Vulcan wrote:I'm curious as to how you are going to make the army, given that Romans never used Great Weapons... and in WFB Dwarves do MUCH better in close combat with Great Weapons.

Don't get me wrong, I think your idea is really cool. But... don't expect to compete with the 'Ard Boyz lists in tournaments; an army of HW+S Dwarves won't.

Well, this is Fantasy we're talking about, so he can just use fantasy Romans.

Romans wielding massive two-handed swords? Awesome!

Vulcan wrote:
Don't get me wrong, I think your idea is really cool. But... don't expect to compete with the 'Ard Boyz lists in tournaments; an army of HW+S Dwarves won't.

ever seen a unit of 100 shield and hand weapon dwarves lay down the oathstone?

it aint pretty or easy to defeat.


I like the idea. It might not be competitive, but it would be cool as heck to see it on the battlefield.

Yeah, I have seen the oathstone uberbunker. Not being able to move means I just go mop up the rest of his army with impunity and laugh. If I'm feeling really bold I'll send assassination squads after the characters and try and pick them off. But there's no way I'd take that on in close combat with anything less than Chaos Warriors... and thankfully, there is no need to, either.

I was being slightly sarcastic.

the idea with that is he hopes the rest of his army can kill more points then they are worth and you can't kill his 100 man block. classic points denial, although it works better with a mobile deathstar that can activly go after something/

Surely if you didn't like the look of Dwarves then you wouldn't choose your army to be Army Book: Dwarves?

TheFirstBorn wrote:Surely if you didn't like the look of Dwarves then you wouldn't choose your army to be Army Book: Dwarves?

Not at all, I love the battle style of the Dwarves and how they fight, I just thought it would be cool to see something different and also I am not the biggest fan of the miniature range for them, I can enjoy the book and not neccesarily the miniature range, plus In terms of conversion Ideas I think this is really cool.