I Painted the Dwarf Allies…And Broke Warhammer Allies (1988)- Part I

From White Dwarf #108: "Eradicated Gremlins GW? More like they lived on for nearly 40 years."

There I was, happily painting up a Dwarf Ally Contingent from the 3rd Edition Warhammer Armies Book from 1988. I had a handful of figures left over from my six thousand point Dwarf army, so it felt like an obvious project. This also tied into my larger plan. I have been trying to collect all eleven armies in the book (Norse from White Dwarf #107 eventually too) and every Ally and Mercenary Contingent, each with its own dedicated set of miniatures.

As noted on the blog previously, years ago, I consolidated and rebuilt my Dwarf Mercenary force using leftover Battle for Skull Pass figures from the later editions. Even after that, I still had extra metal models from the period, along with plastic Dwarfs from the old Warhammer Regiment box set. You know how this hobby goes. A few Quarrelers, some Ironbreakers, a hero, and you think you are ready to field a proper contingent. That was the plan, at least. I was wrong.

While I was finishing the Dwarf Warrior unit, the question hit me. “Okay, who can actually take these guys?”

It seemed simple. Open Warhammer Armies from 1988, check the ally lists, match these stout warriors to the army that could field them, and move on with the project.

Except this is where the wheels came off: no one can take them. Not one of the eleven armies in the book.

• Not Empire.
• Not Bretonnia.
• Not even the Dwarfs themselves.
• No Army AT ALL.

That could not be right, or so I thought. But it was. By painting a simple ally contingent, I had stumbled onto one of the most quietly funny and completely uncorrected design mistakes in the entire 3rd Edition era.

The best part? It was right there in plain sight for thirty seven years and nobody ever noticed.

How I Found the Break Point

After rereading each army entry and its allowed ally list, I decided to reverse the logic.

Rather than asking “What allies can this army take?”
I asked a different question. “Which armies can take these allies?”

I doubt Games Workshop ever approached it this way. I will talk more about that in Part II. I went contingent by contingent and built a full matrix. As the list grew, the pattern became obvious. Army after army had nothing but empty space under the Dwarf Allies category. The Dwarf Ally entry is fully written, fully pointed, and laid out just like every other valid contingent, but no army in the book is actually permitted to use it.

I still did not believe it. So I checked my notes again and kept cross checking online. The result never changed. I even checked the Norse list from White Dwarf #107, which is an official 3rd Edition army. They cannot take Dwarf Allies either.

Then I pulled out both of my copies of the Army Book, the hardcover and the softcover. The same gap appears in both. I will come back to that in more detail in Part II.

Surely This Was Fixed in an Errata?

That was my next thought. I went straight to the web to look for it. This had to be a known issue. I expected to find a long forgotten White Dwarf sidebar, a footnote, a FAQ, a designer comment, or something buried on an old website. Anything at all.

There was nothing.

So I turned to the two White Dwarf issues that are always cited as containing the 3rd Edition corrections for Warhammer Armies from 1988.

• White Dwarf #107
• White Dwarf #108

And guess what?

Still nothing. Not a single word about Dwarf Allies. Those errata entries only address small housekeeping items. They mainly correct point values and attribute scores for Dark Elves and Skaven. The Dwarf Ally issue is not mentioned anywhere.

The only conclusion I could reach is that the Dwarf Ally Contingent was and still is completely orphaned. It is a dead entry in Warhammer Armies from 1988, and none of us caught it. I have handled that book thousands of times and never noticed it.

And now that I see it, the whole thing feels right in line with the era.

The Most Oldhammer Thing Possible

Welcome to 3rd Edition, where Chaos mutations contradict their own points formula, where Fimir somehow ally with Norse in ways no scholar of fantasy biology can explain, where Nippon mercenaries can be taken only by Dark Elves for reasons known only to the gods, and where the best way to understand the rules is to accept that nobody in 1988 was paid enough to cross index the ally matrix.

This is peak Oldhammer. Creative, chaotic, brilliant, flawed, and absolutely perfect all at once.

Why I Never Noticed This in the ’80s, Even Though I Used Allies

I used allies all the time during the 3rd Edition years. Wood Elves, High Elves, Halflings and Norse saw plenty of table time for me, but I never once used the Dwarf Allies. That alone explains why this flaw stayed hidden from me for almost forty years.

There was another reason as well. Everyone else in my group had started playing before I did, and we had a simple rule. No one could play the same army. I took Empire because it was still open. That choice dictated the allies I reached for. When I looked at Dwarfs, my attention went straight to the four dwarf cannons from the Dwarf Mercenary Contingent. That was the obvious path for an Empire player.

The Dwarf Ally Contingent itself did not help matters. There is nothing in it that you cannot already get from the main Dwarf army list:

• 
  
  1 Contingent Commander
• 0–40 Dwarf Crossbowmen
• 0–10 Ironbreakers (really, what are you doing with just ten???) 
  
• 10–80 Dwarf Warriors (that's like a whole army!)

It is a perfectly serviceable group of troops, but nothing that would tempt a player who had better and more cost effective options elsewhere. 

So What Now?

Well, in my case?

I fixed the oversight in my own matrix I created. Dwarfs are available to Empire and Bretonnia and Dwarfs themselves as Allies (see here).

But the real fun was the discovery itself. I set out to paint a few allies… and in the process, I broke Warhammer Armies (1988). I didn’t just paint Dwarf Allies. I painted a glitch in the game’s original source code.

Not bad for a weekend project.

One last note? I discovered this a year ago, got pulled into other projects, and never followed up. Even when I finally uncovered the glitch, I still managed to lose track of it for twelve more months. Peak Oldhammer.