Designing Fantasy Land Ironclads Part 1

 Hi!

I've spent a bit of time looking at my scribbled notes and ideas about the design processes and possibilities for a fantasy Land Ironclads setting and thought I'd use this post to work out some of my ideas!

My initial aim is to get my Dwarf and Orc landfleets built and into action so I'll be looking at them initially and post a bit about what aesthetics and type of play they will be aimed towards.

The Dwarves specialise in engineering and have no magic or magitech, relying on the tried and true steam engine to power most of their vehicles, with a few exceptions so they will stylistically be lumbering and slow moving classic tank designs with a majority of their firepower aimed forwards to suit their defensive nature. The smaller vehicles in the landfleet are the Ironclads, well armoured and armed but slow. Similarly the heavier Anvil class is basically a beefed up version of the Ironclad with heavier armour and guns and are intended to plod forward and blast anything that gets within range of them.

But I also have the Warhammer and Battle Forge classes, proper cruiser level Land Ironclads who will be able to dish out serious amounts of firepower while trundling around. While the Warhammer has a single medium turret and two medium gun barbettes, they also have a pair of light gatling turrets to deal with any marauding infantry trying to sneak up on the flank. The Battle Forge is a bit of an oddball with a heavy gun turret but also a very powerful broadside which doesn't fit too well with the modern Dwarven approach to battle.

Ironclad Formation

I still need to make more cruiser level Land Ironclads for the Dwarves and plan on making a couple of big Battleship levels as well but am currently pondering on how to make these look. One of the best things about working in such a small scale is that I can make machines pretty quickly and easily and with the nature of an industrialised people who are fiercely clannish, they will have a fairly wide variety of styles and makes of warengines depending on which Hold they come from. 

The Dwarves also make use of walkers so I'm going to make a bunch of War Golems to give the Dwarven forces some more mobile contraptions and am contemplating making some larger Living Ancestor class Golems for a bit of fun!

There's also the Airfleet to think of as I already have a Dig bomber and some Gyrocopters to buzz around and annoy opponents and suspect that I'll be beefing this branch of the military up as well...

Finally I want to add some specialist Land Ironclads to my collection in the form of a carrier and possibly some heavy artillery too to give me a really large selection of stuff to choose from for the upcoming campaign.

The Orcish Horde is a very different beast.

Titanosaur Gun Wartowers

The Orcs are a culture that thrives on war but are largely nomadic and use vast lizard like creatures to act as their weapons of war so I've got several small and medium level Warbeasts done already but feel that the Orcs will also be getting some experimental and very unreliable Land Ironclads too as they attempt to modernise their forces. 

Gamewise, the Warbeasts will be quicker and probably more manoeuvrable than the clanking Dwarven machines and better suited to rushing forward and getting into close combat with their opponents, relying on the combat prowess of the Warbeasts to crush enemy formations. This will probably mean that I've got a lot of sculpting ahead of me as the beasts will probably be quite cheap gamewise as they're a bit fragile so need numbers to make up the deficiency in lastability.

Orc Formation

I've currently got Necrosaur and Titanosaur gun wartowers which will form the bulk of my forces but will give the force more options by including rocket wartowers and twin titanosaur heavy gun batteries to give them some long range punch. Coupled with lots of infantry and cavalry, the Horde should fight quite differently from the Dwarven defenders.

Land Ironclad wise, the Orcs will be getting some Orkish style scraptech. Bodged together from all manner of sources, the Orcish Land Ironclads will be formed of a fairly readily available small class and rarer but heavy cruiser classes to act as mobile command and bragging bases for the Khans to lord it over their followers and as already mentioned, they will be pretty experimental with some interesting weapon options ranging from spar torpedos to the Eye of Gorath!

Necrosaur Gun Wartowers

The Orc airfleet will consist largely of Darkwings and Wyverns, small to medium sized winged lizards which will be available in considerable numbers as they will rely on swarm attacks to wreak havoc on their opponents. 

Fluff wise, the Orcs in Aeroth are actually Gorathian's, a race imported from another planet by the Elves long ago to act as soldiers in their army but The Death caused by the thrice cursed Elves use of the World Killer Engine to defeat a mysterious foe has left them trapped on Aeroth and desperate to get back to their own world, or failing that to conquer this new one. They are a largely nomadic culture but do have several permanent settlements which are more like military camps than anything else. They have subjugated the Goblins and use them as manual labourers who farm, raise flocks of smaller creatures and generally act as cannon fodder in Orc attacks.

Thus far I've spend more time thinking about the Orcs and Dwarves than I have the Elves and Human Barbarians who make up the other two major factions in the game but here's some ponderings on them too!

The Elves are masters of Magitechnology so have access to all manner of arcane weapons of war. Their frontier forces make plentiful use of Earthbound Dragons. Twisted and mutated descendants of the true dragons are fast moving and capable of carrying Powerlances mounted on their scaly backs. Next up there is the Landfleet, beautiful but deadly grav vehicles who use Liftstones to float effortlessly over the landscape and powered by Earthpower, an arcane energy that the Elves contain within great crystals and allow the vehicles to move, fire weaponry and in some of the larger and specialised classes shield them from incoming fire.

The Elven forces will probably find themselves outnumbered by pretty much any opponent but their long range and deadly firepower will balance the scales somewhat and their rapid moving and oft times shielded vehicles will tip the odds in their favour more often than not.

The Elves also have access to the largest and most powerful of airfleets with dragonrider wings and great flying barques that can rain down destruction upon any foe with near impunity so there's plenty of interesting stuff to play around with!

As for the Barbarians, they specialise in Elemental magic so can summon great elementals to crush their foes so there will be a number of different sizes and types of elemental to make ranging from stone elementals armed with massive boulder throwing and combat potential to fire elementals capable of searing opponents to wind elementals who specialise in bringing destruction on airfleets.

They also make use of warbeasts like the Orcs so will have chariots and wartowers armed with small shard guns, elementally charged weapons that fire iron bolts at great speed and capable of transporting infantry. 

I've also got loads of other stuff to work on, be they the Sea Demons, Daughters of Leviathan, the Horned Folk, Children of the Moon, Followers of the Worm, The Knights of the Eternal Light, the City States, the Order of the Tower, Grey Elves, The Stygian, The Fallen, Mercenaries and more! 

Hopefully I'll get chance to flesh out each of these forces but I want to get the Orcs and Dwarves finished first as well as delving into the setting I've been creating as well so apologies for all the rambling but I've found it rather fun to start getting the project moving on so do expect more Land Ironclads updates soon!

All the best!