With the concepts, miniatures, lore, and painting of the Helsmiths of Hashut comprehensively covered this week, it’s time to look at their rules and how they’re implemented in the game in our final round table interview.
Ben – Product Developer: We have a lot of Chaos factions, but five are linked: the four Ruinous Powers and the Slaves to Darkness. They’re united by their relationships with each other and the mortals of the Age of Sigmar. In some ways they feel like one or two very specific expressions of Chaos, which all revolve around how the four gods interact with their followers.
Skaven gave us a new angle on Chaos, one of complete anarchy and rampant consumption. It doesn’t really have any similarity to the Ruinous Powers at all, but they now have a seat in the Great Game, thanks to the Great Horned Rat. The Helsmiths of Hashut give us another flavour, which has been talked about in earlier articles – one of order via control and domination, industry with a cause rather than just consuming. It adds a lot to the identity of Chaos as a whole.
We’ve designed the army set in a different way than usual. They’re always great products for hobbyists and players as they come with a set of miniatures as well as a book and accessories, but this time there are no pre-existing Helsmiths of Hashut players.
We decided to make this set a Spearhead so people can play out of the box immediately. There’s no need to use proxies, you can get a taste of how they function immediately. The rest of the range will arrive soon, but you aren’t going to be playing games with half an army in the meantime. It also provides a strong foundation if you want to take the army further, but you aren’t missing anything by just getting the army box.
Martin – Miniatures Creative Lead: We always knew it was going to be a big release, and, as a brand new army, we really just wanted to maximise what we could put out. A lot of the choices were natural, and we had a lot of archetypes from the previous Chaos Dwarfs releases that we wanted to cover. There are other concepts we haven’t covered yet… but we have been extensive with the kits we have available, and many of them are dual builds.
Matt – Lead Rules Writer: That’s a nice thing about the range from a rules perspective too. Dual builds gives us more space for rules designs, incentivising us to push things apart via their warscroll profiles.
A lot of these are very impressive in how different they are as well. For me, the Daemonsmith and Ashen Elder being the same kit is really fantastic – they’re both very distinct from each other. The Bull Centaurs and Anointed Sentinels are pushed apart – both in design and painting terms – and we’ve tried to carry those differences through in the rules.
To create the rules, we need to take the visual elements and the background elements and realise those on the tabletop. One of the big challenges is that the Helsmiths are a brand new faction, so they need a unique playstyle that fits in alongside the others. Another challenge is the nature of the slow, sword-and-board, infantry-based duardin army coupled with a lot of shooting, which tends to lean into more passive, castle-style gameplay.
What we wanted to contrast that with was the need to move around the battlefield, taking advantage of units like hobgrots, Bull Centaurs, and Infernal Tauruses. The contrast needed to be the key – a slow-moving, ranged castle that also depends on its units moving around the battlefield.
That led us to the core hook of mining and extracting power from the battlefield, bringing desolation as you go, which matches the fiction and even how they’ve been painted and based by the ’Eavy Metal team. Gameplay-wise, it forces you to move around the battlefield, sending these elements out to contest terrain and objectives to power up that slower core.
We played with a lot of prototypes and ideas that circled this theme. The extraction element came earlier on, and gameplay initially involved pouring all of that firepower into either all the guns, or all magic – but that forced you into army builds that doubled down on only one element. You’re now encouraged to take a wide range of units due to the ability to choose which units to power up and how much by. You might empower your heroes earlier on, getting more out of their spellcasting, then have your Bull Centaurs amped up for a longer charge, before finishing things off with artillery.
It was a long process of trial, error, and iteration to create this unique and different playstyle that would ask you to try and take advantage of the whole range. Traditional duardin armies have perhaps suffered from lacking a bit of variety. We wanted something different here.
Jordan – Background Writer: Playing them is also a bit like operating a machine. You’re trying to pull all of these different levers to assign resources to the right place, making sure not to overinvest in the wrong places or spread yourself too thin.
Matt: It is essentially a sort of resource management minigame during your main game of Age of Sigmar.
Jordan: It fits their fiction well, that they’re trying to maximise extraction in a quite industrial manner, while also trying to stamp out their foes at the same time.
Matt: That whole idea of them being the most ordered of the Chaos armies bears out in the rules too. In a way, they're an inverse of the Sylvaneth, who want to overgrow the battlefield and fill it with life energy. The Helsmiths want to extract energy from it, and dominate it – but in a methodical fashion. They feel a bit like a Death or Order faction in that respect.
Another challenge is role differentiation, trying to give every unit something interesting to do and a useful role on the battlefield. Dual kits present a great chance to broaden an army’s tool set, but the danger is they might look like they should be doing the same thing – how should a unit of Infernal Cohorts with swords and shields be different from one with spears and shields?
We gave the spears the ability to extract additional daemonic power from objectives that they control, while sword-wielders have a forced march ability that lets you overcome their slower movement. We had similar challenges with the two Infernal Razer variants, and the war machines. It was all in service of finding interesting ways to use your daemonic power points, and changing how you might want to spend your points as the game state changes over time.
Bull Centaurs provided an interesting challenge – it can be quite hard to give cavalry unique roles beyond charging in and dealing heavy damage. The normal Bull Centaurs do what you expect: they go and charge off, getting stuck in. The Anointed Sentinels are a defensive cavalry, based on their lore as temple guardians. They gain Strike-first when they Counter-charge, meaning it's better to hold them back as your enemy moves forward, punishing units that step out of line.
Most of the range is quite elite, so your troops are precious. Because you need to get out there and start desolating things to earn your daemonic power points, having something a little more expendable is valuable, which is where the Hobgrot Vandalz come in. They’re in quite a precarious position, with their Disposable Lackeys rule – which has them move in the deployment phase, letting you desolate the battlefield… before becoming a speedbump for your enemies.
Jordan: The Helsmiths aren’t above using hobgrots to range their cannons. If their first salvo takes them out, then they know they just need to aim a little bit further. It’s very efficient.
Max – ’Eavy Metal Lead: You have to wonder what horrors await them after the battle if they don’t do the job they’ve been given. Maybe they’re more scared about what’s behind them than what’s in front.
Thanks to everyone who contributed to the discussion. The Helsmiths of Hashut Army Set goes on pre-order tomorrow.
