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Looking at the Warhammer World as it is, it is very set in Medieval times. Sure there are a ton of different races with bucket of real-world inspiration taken from our world's history, from Aztec and Egyptian and the time the world was almost consumed by evil beings wielding great magicks. But since Warhammer appears to be told primarily from the perspective of the Empire, it does have a very medievilly feel to it. But if there's one historical element I've noticed missing, it's that of a more advanced industrial race. That is, an army equipped totally with ranged powder-based weaponry akin to the armies of the Napoleonic Wars. Of course the Empire has its handgunners and its cannon, but it's still all very medieval. Which is fine. But I wonder if an industrial army could work in Warhammer. A fantasy army similar to 40k's Tau, good at ranged combat with its muskets and cannon but less capable at close ranged fighting. Of course I'm not suggesting a force like this should be included (it may not work, and such an army can be made from Empire units anyway), but it's just a little idea I thought I'd share with the forums. What do people think?

You can already do that with dwarves or empire.

More renaissance than medieval. Personally, I'd rather not see the technology advance any further than it has. I like the level it's at now, and any further advance would bring it dangerously close to Warmachine territory. I love Warmachine, but I want the two worlds to feel different. That's my personal take on the matter.

IMHO the tech that Empire and Dwarves have is developed too far.

Sounds like you are looking for a steampunk game.

I think the technology is just about right barring things like mechanical steeds (we don't have the tech for things like that in 21st century RL so it seems silly that the empire do. The rediculous idea of a napoleonic style army is that it would get massacred in fluff terms, the baker rifle and the "brown bess musket" were far less efficient weapons than the english longbow. British redcoats during the penninsular war could fire between 5-6 rounds a minute if they were good and they were faster than the french, A longbow could fire faster, further and more accurately the only downside to it was the high level of strength and training you needed to be able to draw the thing repeatedly, once boys stopped practicing with longbows the skills more or less died out, had they continued I have no doubt that the english longbow would have seen use into the napoleonic period probably up until the breach loading rifle.

Therefore to summarize in fluff unless your an extremely well armoured black powder shooty army you are gonna get your ass handed to you by the faster rate of fire and greater range of longbow equivelants.

Well, the skaven are quite advanced considering what your asking for. They have a lot of the modern achievements that seen beyond the "lesser" races.
firearms
warp-driven technology
cybernetics
gadgets
and a lot more....

I'm with tarnish and if you like you can always play a counts as skaven army with humans, or morlocks or mole people.

There's always Chaos Dwarfs, in many ways their a very advanced industrial race, but not losing with loads of tough warmachines, Blunderbusses and Fireglaives

Ugly Green Trog wrote:Therefore to summarize in fluff unless your an extremely well armoured black powder shooty army you are gonna get your ass handed to you by the faster rate of fire and greater range of longbow equivelants.

Too bad only elves are the only skilled longbowmen, and not every enemy is a human. Also, Greenskins, Beastmen and many other unarmored armies have easily defeated Elvish armies.

More to the point, however, I think the tech level is fine for WHFB.

Besides, the Tau of WHFB are Wood Elves. They're meh in combat, but their shooting is pretty good, though not S10 good...

Ugly Green Trog wrote:I think the technology is just about right barring things like mechanical steeds (we don't have the tech for things like that in 21st century RL so it seems silly that the empire do. The rediculous idea of a napoleonic style army is that it would get massacred in fluff terms, the baker rifle and the "brown bess musket" were far less efficient weapons than the english longbow. British redcoats during the penninsular war could fire between 5-6 rounds a minute if they were good and they were faster than the french, A longbow could fire faster, further and more accurately the only downside to it was the high level of strength and training you needed to be able to draw the thing repeatedly, once boys stopped practicing with longbows the skills more or less died out, had they continued I have no doubt that the english longbow would have seen use into the napoleonic period probably up until the breach loading rifle.

Therefore to summarize in fluff unless your an extremely well armoured black powder shooty army you are gonna get your ass handed to you by the faster rate of fire and greater range of longbow equivelants.

This idea that people just decided to stop using more effective weapons and start being less effective on the field is complete nonsense.

The earliest powder weapons were deployed because they were more effective against heavy armour than bows. These were a specialty weapon and deployed alongside traditional bow armed units. Later developments saw more and more troops taking to the field with heavy army, and bows became increasingly less effective, being largely replaced by crossbows. At the same time muskets developed, and were increasingly deployed, not in place of archers, but in place of line infantry. That's the tihng about early muskets, their accuracy at range was poor, but they were utterly deadly up close and the rear ranks could continue to fire while the front ranks were engaged in melee.

Meanwhile, the archer's role as a specialist ranged unit was replaced not by the musket but by increasingly deadly cannon. If you're going to deploy a unit onto the field that's highly vulnerable to ambush and to aritillery, you were better of simply investing in cannon. At the same time front line troops were steadily replaced by mixed units of muskets and pikemen, until eventually it became clear that the most effective frontline troop was a massed block of muskets.

Funny thing about war. It's a serious business, and the people involved take every advantage they can. This means that odds are if you see something that looks like people were started taking a less effective weapon over a tried and tested weapon, the most likely answer is there's something you're missing about the situation.

I also think that Empire and Dwarfs are almost over the top of how much technology a Fantasy game can endure.
More technology and you have steampunk. If you want industrial war, play Warmachine or 40k.

play Warmachine or wait for Tarmukan.

Tarmukan will be the Chaos Dwarf book from Warhammer Forge(its also going to have complete GW sanction) and they will probably have plenty of Steampunky feel about them.

Chibi Bodge-Battle wrote:IMHO the tech that Empire and Dwarves have is developed too far.

Sounds like you are looking for a steampunk game.

+1, game would be better without gunpowder, i have less of an issue with Skaven tech. Would prefer dwarfs to stick to rune powered arcane machines perhaps along the lines of some of the stuff in Moorcocks books.
Ancient armies with magical fire ball throwers would be preferable to hand guns and tanks.

Meh, without gunpowder, the Empire wouldn't be as unique.


at least its early gunpowder weapons and not 18th century rifles.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Warhammer Fantesy is an interesting mixture of renaissance level technology mixed with Fantesy themes such as magic and other races of beings.

Ugly Green Trog wrote:British redcoats during the penninsular war could fire between 5-6 rounds a minute.

Err... no. Even riflemen at this period would be lucky to get off 3 rounds per minute.

Yeah, it wasn't until breech loaders became common place that you could get more then a shot every 20 seconds or so. which wasn't till around the 1860s. although breech loaders had existed since the time of Henry the VIII.

i don't want it to go past 16th, 17th century

The tech of the Empire and Dwarfs is what makes those races unique. Without said tech, those races would be boring.

I agree that what we have is fine. Skaven or chaos dwarfs are probably the most advanced. Anything more advanced than them, dwarfs or empire would be too much.

The early renaissance feel of the empire is one of the things that makes them unique, as said above. They have a distinct Italian Wars/HRE feel. If you had to place a year on the (non-magical) tech in the Warhammer World in correlation with our own history, I would hazard it at 1490-1530. If that bugs you, play Brets.

Though, tbh, I wouldnt want to see anything above that tech level. Shakos and mass line infantry would look... strange against a horde of dark age tech orcs. The closest thing I want to see come out is the mothereffing Chaos Dwarfs. pleeeeez gw

Just to point out, the American Civil War is widely considered to be the first industrial war (A case could be made for the second Napoleonic War, but that's hogwash), and I'm not sure what it is the Confederates had the Empire doesn't, except for maybe bigotry.

Squash wrote:Just to point out, the American Civil War is widely considered to be the first industrial war (A case could be made for the second Napoleonic War, but that's hogwash), and I'm not sure what it is the Confederates had the Empire doesn't, except for maybe bigotry.

interesting. what's the main diff between a non industrial and industrial war

Mass federal conscription, professional officers and production-line armament/munitions manufacturing.

That sounds good to me, Squash... I'd definitely go for it.

My personal take- steampunk is decidedly lacking from the warhams world... with the possible exception of some adeptus mechanicus type stuff, and of course the "steam tank"... but that doesn't qualify in my book as the styling of it is not what I consider steampunk-esque. I'd love it if they could incorporate it somehow... otherwise, warmachine calls to my soul like a siren

RiTides wrote:otherwise, warmachine calls to my soul like a siren

Embrace the call, you won't regret it.

I'd say Skaven are fairly steampunk-ish. Evil magic steampunk.

Squash wrote:Just to point out, the American Civil War is widely considered to be the first industrial war (A case could be made for the second Napoleonic War, but that's hogwash), and I'm not sure what it is the Confederates had the Empire doesn't, except for maybe bigotry.

First? no. One of the many to pop up during the later half of the 19th century? Yeah.

Las wrote:

Squash wrote:Just to point out, the American Civil War is widely considered to be the first industrial war (A case could be made for the second Napoleonic War, but that's hogwash), and I'm not sure what it is the Confederates had the Empire doesn't, except for maybe bigotry.

First? no. One of the many to pop up during the later half of the 19th century? Yeah.

It was the first true Industrial war.


the first war in which Ironsided ships fought each other,

the first war, IIRC, in which repeating weaponry was used...

Ive mentioned this before in other threads but ill say it again -originally 40k had the scope to cover anything from stone age onwards, allowing for eg a group of space marines defending a world similar to WHFB from Aliens or suppressing an uprising of "modern day" humans on an agri-world nowdays the only "Steam Punk" style stuff is some of the ork machinery.
I think that as far as building a "counts-as" steam punk army it would probably be recieved by your opponents better in 40k, i once belonged to a club where a guy was building a 40k Skaven force using Ork rules and everyone liked it.
In WHFB ive always felt it would simplify things if wizards filled the role of artillery.

Industrial army concept: (Sorry guys, not steampunk)

Coal Powered Dwarves

Theme: Dwarves that represent the furnaces, factories, and black powder that marked the industrial era.

Rough Composition:

Core: Thunderers

Special: Miners, Organ guns

Rare: Cannons

Delivery: Painted soot smudged onto the models, really work with a mining theme.