"Cry havoc and let slip the rules of war!"

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Titan Wargames, Zanko &  AtomTaylor Presents: Artisan's Contest XXVIII!

Warcry: Chaos Dwarf Skirmish Warband Rules

The goal here is to write rules for a Chaos Dwarf skirmish warband! This contest is launched in recognition of Warcry, the new skirmish game from Games Workshop, set in Age of Sigmar's Eigthpoints, a place where small warbands converge from all over the realms of creation to seek the favour of Chaos, get a good scrap, or try and torpedo the Chaotic proceedings. Warcry is small in scale and designed to be fast-paced, generally played out on small battlefields with lots of scenery.

Chaos Dwarfs were never gifted a set of Warcry warband rules, and so we'll take matters into our own hands, yet again! (There is however a new Twisted Duardin miniature, part of the Iron Golems warband; but this contest is about proper Chaos Dwarf warbands.) This is your chance to put your mark on the Dawi Zharr heavens.

Some of you may recognize a  somewhat familiar theme here, as was found in the Path to Glory Chaos Warband rules. It goes without saying that this contest is open to ALL wargame systems and settings out there, including your very own homebrew if you are so inclined. So this is your chance to create Chaos Dwarf skirmish warband rules for Mantic's Vanguard, WHFB skirmish or Mordheim (including the unofficial fan rules pack Ninthheim), Frostgrave, Lord of the Rings or whatever you feel like.

Layout, maps, background/story text and visuals such as illustrations and photos are entirely up to you yourself to craft and decide. Just make sure you ask other artists and hobbyists for permission first if you wish to use their images (please keep such correspondence in private messages or E-mail rather than in public posts, in order to not spoil the surprise). We all would like to have beautiful rule packages to read through, so unleash all you've got if you'd like to!

Just avoid to use any official artwork and photos from companies such as Games Workshop, Forgeworld and Mantic.

Ideally, we would like to have your entries received in both PDF and images format (no upper limit on number of pages/images), but either of those will suffice. You can also enter your entry as simple text in CDO PM. We will make sure everyone can access all the entries as images in the end. Please do not send your entry as an MS Word document, though (the contest organizer do not own that program).

The CDO Staff won't be picky with what entries are accepted. Instead we expect voters to reward those entries which play to the spirit of the contest theme, as is usually the case.

Still, if you are unsure whether your entry will meet the requirements please PM Admiral.


Prizes

Zanko will reward the gold winner with this Forgeworld Daemonsmith:

While the silver winner will carry home an unpainted Chaos Dwarf boss kit, courtesy of AtomTaylor at OldHammer Miniatures and Wargaming:

Baggronor at Titan Wargames will in his turn give the bronze winner an unpainted miniature of Cinneron Dhum, Dwarf Pyromancer:

And finally, one lucky entrant not in top 3 will claim the random draw prize of a 15mm kit of four Flora & Fauna Bonestingers, sculpted by tjub:

Should you wish to donate a prize to the contest, please PM Admiral and he will sort it out with you and the Staff.

Deadline

The deadline for the submission of entries is the 31st of October 2019 at 11:59pm EST.

Rules of the Competition

Each member may only enter once.

Write Chaos Dwarf skirmish warband rules. Whatever setting and system you feel you feel like. No contest rules limits on number of pages, illustrations, layout, text and photography.

Submissions can be entered as a text message, images or a PDF document.

Don't post your entries in the forum before the contest is over.

See also the General Rules & Guidelines.

How to Enter?

Submit your entry by sending a PM to Staff (a special user that all Staff have access to) with your entry (as text, image files and/or a PDF document). You can also send your entry to chaosdwarfsonline ( at ) gmail.com no later than the due date, but be sure to write out your forum name in the E-mail if doing so.

How will this be judged?

Sometime after the due date we will post all entries to a new thread and voting can commence!

Good luck everyone!
The Staff

This post was last modified: 10-02-2019 09:33 AM by Admiral.

Note: All of mine and MadHatter's pictures and art are open source. Grab what you like, no need to ask.

This contest will be immediately followed by another Artisan's Contest, because we're going to get our yearly Art Contest in before Christmas. Golden Hat again after that.

This post was last modified: 10-02-2019 10:00 AM by Admiral.

Well... I'm not sure I can think of anything suitable. I let myself be surprised!


                     

Hmm.. this one will take some serious noodling

Also.. those Bonestingers are hilariously awesome.

Looking forward to see what you come up with, folks!

Would some kind soul please spread the Warcry contest news to Age of Sig Zharr Facebook group? (I would do, but I got shadowbanned for no reason.) This is relevant to their interests.

This post was last modified: 10-03-2019 06:40 AM by Admiral.

Thinking and Writing.......2 of my least favourite things
But I will try.

Bump.

Would it be possible to change the Prizes so that 1st place gets 1st choice for one of the three minis, and so on? Personally I'd be the most interested in the 3rd prize, but aiming for 3rd place is a bit weird.

Nice idea! We could certainly experiment with it, and especially if more people wish us to try it out. We tweak and tinker with the running of contests all the time, and this could surely be a short term benefit of an improvement.

However, there is an unusual catch in this particular case: It's a long term burden to managing competitions. I'll try to explain below.

I've handled most comps on CDO since the latter half of 2014, and can easily keep doing so indefinitely. This is on the one hand because contest handling is mostly copy-paste from existing templates, and on the other hand because the process is decently streamlined.

Contest running mostly consist of three days (and certainly not full days by any stretch of the imagination) where you work to prep and launch the contest; cobble together entry pictures and put up a voting thread; and declare winners and finish it off. And in between there are some PMs to answer.

The third day, of winners declared, is the crucial one here:

You count votes and check twice. You write up a winners thread. You hand out virtual medals and slaves. You enter the latest contest into its relevant compilation library/hall of fame. And you contact all winners of prizes (and all other donators) all at once, asking for shipping addresses. Then you ship those prizes you have at home over the following days as winners log in and respond (sometimes they give their prize to other entrants).

So the prize handling is done in parallell. All winners handled alongside each other. This allows the contest handler to do all the conclusion tasks all in a morning's work.

If we instead were to handle prize handling serially with one winner picking first, the second next and so on, we would repeatedly run into a bottleneck. Many people don't log in at once when contests are over, and shouldn't ever be expected to do so. Visit when it suits you, it's laidback hobby fun. So I swear on all experience that we would often have a situation where the contest handler would be waiting for an answer for days, before he can ask for the next answer and likewise wait for a time more.

In other words, serial prizes make the process more clunky to handle. Nothing critical by and of itself, but remember that nowadays only one man handle contests, and my days are busy, all filled with juggling work and projects for 10-14 hours a day, including weekends. So with this industrious but rather enjoyable rhythm of life, I want to be able to check off contest conclusions as done in a morning, and move on to other work.

But yes, we can still try if people want it.

Cheers

This post was last modified: 10-24-2019 09:19 AM by Admiral.

Thanks for the reply!

It's a fair explanation. I've organized competitions over at Carpe Noctem in the past so I totally get the issue with the workload, you want to keep it as simple as possible.

The one solution I can think of is to require entrants to list their preferred prizes in order when entering. That way the organizer can figure out what to send to whom without consulting them. Would still mean a little bit more work. Obviously this wouldn't work for this contest since people have already entered stuff, but maybe something for the future

That could sure be tried! May be worth a test run or three after this contest.

Deadline is closing. How is it going?

Struggling to create understandable sentences

Everyone who plans to enter but are skeptical of making it before deadline, please tell if you'd be able to make it with some extra time on your hands.

We've run rules competitions rather few times while I've been around, so I have a hard time telling how much time people might need.

Best of luck!

This post was last modified: 10-30-2019 05:37 AM by Admiral.

I'll be away working a few days. Deadline set to 3rd of November.

May entry is in.

Great going Abecedar! Let's see if someone more enters with a little more time at their hands. It'd be nice to have at least as many entrants as prizes.

Deadline set to 13th of November.

I've not run rules contests before, so I may have underestimated what a good time before deadline was here. If so, please pardon it. However, I know there may be at least one more entrant incoming already. Please be patient folks. It's a first.

Cheers

This post was last modified: 11-03-2019 11:15 AM by Admiral.

Hi all! I'd love to contribute to this one, because I think the topic is really well chosen. However, I've been out of touch with even basic GW systems for years now and never have been much of a rules buff to begin with. So, instead my heart felt appreciation goes out to all who manage to cook up something for this contest! I'd love to see your work!

I haven't played GWFB for a few years, Only a few KoW games and literally Nil Warband games ever except for one small local series of matches 10 years ago.

All I can say is I had a core of an idea that got some flesh on it but nothing earth shaking

Cheers, folks! Unless I'll be called away for unplanned work bouts or the like, we'll launch this ship down the slipway the 14th of November. If entries are few for once, then all the more prizes for those who entered, and all the more power to them.

Then it's time for our yearly art contest. Stay tuned!

This post was last modified: 11-11-2019 06:52 AM by Admiral.