High Elf Warmachines & Chariots, Warhammer Unit Chronicles
It’s time for some more elven elegance, let’s see what kinds of machines of war the noble Asur have built through the years. As usual, we’ll go through the full history of all the models, rules and lore for them in Warhammer Fantasy as well as some general history on the sources of inspiration.
This one is dedicated to a generous and kind reader (“somebodyelse"), who wished to see some more elves in this article series. Warmachines might not be the most elven thing, but there have been many beautiful elven warmachine units in the game throughout the years so hopefully this will be enjoyable to all elf-friends out there! Back in the mists of time even the Wood Elves dabbled in machinery of war, I’ll include that in this article as well since a dedicated article on Asrai warmachines would be woefully short. Surprisingly this has become my longest article yet, which is saying something, but that’s mostly because I also decided to document all the changes to chariot on bolt thrower rules throughout all the editions and as usual add a bit of context for each edition. I’m am the Rambling Longbeard after all… Of course feel free to skip any parts that aren’t to your interest!
The High Elves have always utilized just 2 kinds of warmachines, their swift and deadly chariots and their ever effective bolt throwers. As usual, let’s quickly go over a brief history of those types of warmachines. For the purpose of this article I’m including chariots under the general concept of “warmachine" even if not strictly accurate.
The first known users of war chariots were the Sintashta, as demonstrated by the depictions of war chariots in their burials that are dated to around 2000BC. They were an Indo-European people from the south Urals, it seems that the use of chariots for war slowly spread from this region to other areas. Prior to that the Sumerians had already used “war wagons” pulled by semi-domesticated onagers that served as an elevated and protected platform for javelineers and slingers, they were used in a different way to later war chariots due to being slow and cumbersome. War chariots were used by many civilizations, among them the Assyrians, the Hittites and famously the ancient Egyptians as well as others. The war chariot offered powerful advantages in the warfare of the bronze age period and the chariots themselves served as status symbols. War chariots usually had a crew of 2 or 3 with one of the crew being the driver, he held the reins while the others focused on command or fighting with ranged or melee weapons. They were pulled by 2–4 horses depending on the size and purpose of the chariot. The speed of chariots enabled the use of hit-and-run tactics, lighter chariots were used as skirmishing mobile platforms for ranged fire with bows, javelins or slings. They were effective at harassing enemies and keeping out of danger, the most effective way of dealing with them was ranged fire against the crew or horses, but the chariot could be a surprisingly difficult target due to it’s speed and it could also provide cover for the crew and the crew or horses could be armoured as well. The biggest limitation for all types of chariots is the terrain, the enemy could deny any use of chariots by selecting a battlefield that wasn’t suitable for chariots, if they were in a position to select the place of engagement although rough ground would of course pose challenges of it’s own for any fighting force. Heavier and more sturdy types of war chariots were also used for close combat, they were especially efficient in breaking and trampling loose infantry formations by their charge. The crew could strike the enemy efficiently from the elevated position when passing by, but they had to be careful of being stranded in the middle of enemy infantry or them damaging the wheels or spokes, if the chariot lost it’s momentum it could be taken out relatively easily. The heaviest war chariots had 4 crew and were pulled by 4 barded horses, they could also have scythe blades attached to the wheels to cause extra damage or certainly serve as a potent deterrent — this type of heavy chariot was said to be able to break through even heavy infantry units.
The bronze age was the heyday of war chariots, they were widely used and are thought to be one of the main technological innovations that enabled the Indo-Europeans to migrate throughout Eurasia. After the bronze age collapse the chariot gradually fell out of favour partly due to developments in horse riding and changes in warfare. Among the last users of chariots were the Celts who used a chariot called essedum, it remained in use in Britain and Ireland until around 200AD. When relating that to the time period Warhammer Fantasy is loosely based on, it means that chariots do not really quite fit in, but then again almost all the factions who use chariots in Warhammer are ancient civilizations, so it’s kind of fitting. The obvious example are the Tomb Kings, but they are really a bronze age civilization and incapable of technical innovation due to the little inconvenience of being dead! For the High Elves I think it’s fitting as their civilization is a very ancient one, so they are still using some of their old traditional technology for warfare. The other races who use chariots are technologically backwards so it sort of works based on that, although Chaos Warriors do not necessarily quite fit in the same category as beastmen and orcs on that scale. In the case of these 3 last armies I think the real world comparison breaks down a bit, but chariots just look very cool for all of them so I don’t mind even if I wonder where the beastmen get their chariots! The beastmen and orc chariots could be said to be based a bit on the Celts and how it was kind of anachronistic that they used war chariots centuries after others had stopped using them. It’s interesting that thematically and visually chariots work so well in the setting and game for the most civilized and elegant armies (Tomb Kings used to be the height of civilization) and also for all the most brutal and least civilized armies. I guess for the civilized factions we are sort of viewing it from the perspective of the high civilizations of our own world, like ancient Egyptians, but in the case of the brutal factions we are viewing it like perhaps the Romans viewed the Celts still using war chariots and how they probably deemed it barbaric. In any case, I’m very glad they included chariots in the game even though they are sort of outside the historical period it’s based on since for me they are some of the coolest units we have (I play Tomb Kings, no wonder!).
How about repeating bolt throwers then, was there ever a real historical warmachine like that? As it turns out — yes! There actually was a type of repeating bolt thrower used back in antiquity. Surprisingly prior to writing this article I had never come across this device even though I’ve always been very interested in history and have read quite extensively on it, but perhaps this was a gap just in my knowledge — that happens. Knowing how many of Warhammer’s writers were very heavily involved with history I should have assumed that it would be based in history like most things in the setting, but I always deemed it a fantasy contraption! Now of course the real world version didn’t quite work or look like the elven repeater bolt throwers, it wasn’t capable of shooting a big bolt and neither could it shoot multiple bolts so rapidly that they would be hitting the target at nearly the same time like the repeater bolt throwers do in the game. The real historical one was the polybolos (polys — many and bolos — to throw), an ancient Greek repeating ballista. It was reputedly invented by Dionysius of Alexandria, a 3rd century Greek engineer of the Rhodes arsenal. The device shot much smaller bolts than the more regular ballistae but still bigger than what would be used with crossbows. It resembles a crossbow mounted on a stand although it’s not a crossbow as it uses a torsion mechanism drawing it’s power from twisted sinew-bundles. It had a wooden hopper magazine on top of the mechanism from where the bolts where fed automatically to the shooting mechanism, as the mechanism is operated by rotating the windlass it would go through the whole shooting sequence. If the mechanism worked without fault it meant that the operator could just keep rotating the windlass and the polybolos would keep firing bolts out to where it was aimed. It is estimated it’s rate of fire was somewhere around 10 shots per minute, but could have been even faster than that. That is all very impressive! Sadly it’s use didn’t continue anywhere after 3rd century Greece and the sources don’t tell us why. It seems to have worked well enough from the accounts we have so it was probably due to not offering enough of an advance over crossbowmen or bowmen and likely due to being expensive and complex. It also lacked a clearly defined role that only it could fill like other more widespread warmachines had, in essence it was just a fancy crossbow, it didn’t do anything different in kind. Coming back to Warhammer, we don’t have to worry about practicalities here so it’s a good pick for a warmachine as it’s certainly very cool. It also fits very well thematically for the High Elves as they are a very intelligent race, but that isn’t reflected in them being technologically advanced like the Empire or Dwarfs, so a very refined version of a more traditional warmachine suits them much better. There are also the pretty clear ancient Greece inspired elements to them, making an obscure Greek warmachine very fitting for them in particular.
Researching the history of war chariots in the genre of fantasy proved to be a difficult task so unfortunately I don’t have much to write about that other than the fact that they don’t seem to feature too often in fantasy literature or games. It isn’t too hard to work out why with most fantasy being inspired by medieval Europe where war chariots weren’t in use anymore. The same can certainly be said about the polybolos, although it’s a bit more obscure so there’s even less of a chance of it featuring in any fantasy settings although it’s intriguing high level of technology could make it a fitting warmachine for a high fantasy setting. I don’t personally remember even ballistae being featured in any of the fantasy books or games I’ve consumed along the years (there’s many!), if there’s anything it’s usually a catapult of some kind or maybe a siege tower and a battering ram (this trio of course featured in Lord of the Rings as well). Personally I find descriptions of battles in fantasy literature very dull for the most part so I don’t care too much about featuring more warmachines in the genre, but I guess it could add some interest to a battle scene to include some obscure Greek technological wonder.
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That’s enough of that, now let’s get into the history of these machines in Warhammer.
Warhammer 1st Edition (1983)
As far as I’ve been able to find out, there weren’t any warmachines nor chariots in the game during Warhammer’s 1st edition. At least neither the rulebook nor the army lists supplement Forces of Fantasy have rules for them and I couldn’t find any White Dwarf or Citadel Compendium entries either. There weren’t any suitable Citadel models from the period that would fit either (with the exceptions mentioned below), but it’s always possible there’s some obscure White Dwarf article with rules and instructions on how to build a chariot from popsicle sticks and toilet rolls or something like that. I always do my best to check every possible source, but I’m only human after all.
Interestingly there was an Elf Chariot model as well as a Half-Orc Catapult produced by Citadel during these early years, but they were licensed Ral Partha models, part of the “Ral Partha Boxed Sets”. Citadel had of course been producing their own and licensed models for roleplaying games, especially DnD, and historical wargames prior to Warhammer and these Ral Partha models were part of those offerings. Based on those models being part of the Citadel catalogue it wouldn’t be strange for them to have published Warhammer rules for them as it was normal to use Ral Partha models in Warhammer at the time even if they weren’t specifically designed for it, but it strongly seems that they didn’t. The First Citadel Compendium was the last Citadel catalogue to feature Ral Partha models, although a few early 1984 flyers still had new Ral Partha models mentioned in them, so perhaps Citadel was already aware of the license deal ending so they didn’t want to publish rules for them. It’s not clear which side ended the relationship which had begun in 1979, I think it’s more likely that Citadel wanted to move to an exclusively Citadel range and ended the deal, although it probably suited both sides as Citadel was moving it’s production to models that were designed especially for Warhammer Fantasy Battles and so less suitable for general roleplaying purposes. Ral Partha had in turn produced licensed Citadel miniatures for the US market, both stopped featuring the licensed models in their publications in early 1984 and by 1986 Minifigs gained the UK license for Ral Partha models. I’ll update the article if I manage to find any rules for that Elf chariot for Warhammer 1st edition.
It’s hard to write much about that Ral Partha elf chariot as this is the only image I have of it, but I suppose it wouldn’t have looked too out of place in an Warhammer elf army of the period, it does have that usual elven flowing elegance and certainly the suitable pomp with those prancing fancy horses. The wing motif on the chariot body is suitably high elven as well.
This Ral Partha Elven Chariot is surprisingly still available to be bought new as there’s a company who bought the rights to cast at least some of their catalogue, I haven’t bought anything from them so if you are interested, do your due diligence before and look into the company. You can buy it here.
Warhammer 2nd Edition (1984)
The second edition of Warhammer Fantasy Battles refined the ruleset very much compared to the somewhat rushed 1st edition and added rules for many aspects that were missing from the ruleset to make it a proper wargame instead of a sort of halfway house between a roleplaying game and a wargame like the 1st edition was. One of these additions were the new rules for all kinds of warmachines and chariots, now the core ruleset included all the basic types of warmachines we are familiar with from the later editions, the stone thrower, the bolt thrower, a cannon (bombard) and the chariot. Let’s have a look at the first Warhammer chariot rules next, I won’t go over the bolt thrower rules as the High Elves didn’t have any kind of bolt throwers available to them quite yet.
As the army list supplement Ravening Hordes for 2nd edition was still a few years away the rulebook had a way of generating points cost to a chariot for any army if the players wanted to use one. You really needed to be dedicated to wanting a chariot in 1984 when 2nd edition came out as Citadel hadn’t produced any chariot models yet so you had to scratch build one yourself or perhaps you had bought one of those Ral Partha elven chariots for your High Elves. In any case, you could work out the points value for your chariot by adding up the points value of the creatures pulling the chariot and it’s crew and then doubling that value — that would give you the points value for any chariot in 2nd edition before any proper army lists had been published. You could find the points values of the creatures and crew from the Battle Bestiary book that was one of the 3 books that came in the Warhammer Fantasy Battles 2nd edition box set. The chariot rules also specify that “the usual way" of basing your chariot is to have a base wide enough and long enough to fit the entire chariot on it, including the draft creatures, but there isn’t any specific size given.
As you needed to kind of create the chariot yourself, there’s even rules for determining the load of your chariot and how many creatures you need to have pulling the chariot for them to be able to pull it! It sounds very convoluted and it kind of is, but the system is actually quite elegant and simple and I at least got a kick out of it! To work out the load you add up the wounds of all of your chariot crew and times that by 2, so if you have 3 goblins with 1 wound each, the load would be 6. To work out how much the creatures can pull you simply add up the strength of them so if you had 2 wolves pulling your goblins with the strength of a wolf being 3 you’d need 2 wolves to be be able to pull those 3 goblins whose load was 6. I don’t see any restrictions in the rules about which creatures you can use to pull the chariot or which creatures can be the crew so it seems you could have made up some crazy chariot crewed by ogres and pulled by manticores or whatever suits your fancy! The movement of a chariot is the same as the creatures movement stat but reduced by -2 and they reserve move as normal in 2nd edition.
If the chariot is shot at by missile fire it counts as a large target and if a hit is scored on it then it’s hit location is determined by a D6 roll. On a roll of 1-4 the body of the chariot is hit, on a 5 a crew member is hit and on a 6 a draft creature is hit. All chariots have a common statline of WS3, S4, T4, W5 and I3. To me it’s a bit peculiar that the chariot itself has a weapon skill and initiative stat, the way they are used becomes clear in the close combat rules but I mentioned the statline already here for context on how missile fire works against them.
The close combat rules are the longest section, but these rules really aren’t that different to modern rules for fighting chariots. All the chariots cause D3 impact hits at strength 4 with one additional hit per scythed wheel (normally you’d of course have 2 for D3+2 impact hits). In combat all the crew members fight with their own statlines and the draft creatures can fight if the enemy is in front of the chariot, the crew can fight normally to flanks and rear as well. Enemy units attacking the chariot must always strike against the chariot using the chariots WS to determine the ‘to hit’ roll, which explains why it has a weapon skill stat, but that part of the rules still feel really strange. After determining the hits you will need to randomize the hits between the chariot, the crew and the draft creatures in the same way as before for missile fire and then determine whether they are wounded based on the individual toughness of either the chariot, the crew or the draft creatures. I guess there’s a certain logic to that based on how in a real fight the enemy would be hitting whatever part of the chariot they can, but I do prefer the modern simplified take of a combined chariot profile for close combat instead of having to keep track of individual wounds on each aspect of it! Although I do kind of like it for missile fire as that can take out the creatures pulling the creature and have various effects depending on the edition of the game where that was possible. In 2nd edition if you took out even just one of the draft creatures the whole chariot stopped and the crew would continue to fight on foot for the rest of the battle! If the full crew is killed, then the chariot is automatically routed and flees the battlefield. In case the chariot itself takes a wound, then you’ll need to roll on a D10 table to see what happens with the following results:
- Roll of 1–6 nothing happens at all, no effect.
- Roll of 7 one of the crew is instantly slain as the chariot is badly shaken and one of them is thrown off!
- Roll of 8 the chariot is stopped as the axel snaps. It moves D4″ next turn, then halts so the crew can continue the fight on foot.
- Roll of 9 the yoke-pole snaps and the draft creatures are freed, they head towards the nearest enemy to charge them, the chariot is useless now but again the crew can continue to fight on foot.
- Roll of 10 the chariot is destroyed as it loses a wheel and is overturned, but the crew may continue on fighting on foot.
As can be seen from those results, during 2nd edition if you used chariots, it was crucial to have miniatures to represent the crew on foot as they could quite easily lose their chariot from under them! In later editions this really only applied to characters using chariots until they couldn’t leave the chariot anymore either. That’s it for the chariot rules in 2nd edition, I wanted to go through them in detail as these are the first chariot rules for Warhammer Fantasy so I thought it’s interesting and it sets the baseline for going through the rules in future editions, that way we can just note the changes without having to go over the full rules again in this article.
May 1987 saw the publication of Ravening Hordes, the army list supplement for Warhammer Fantasy 2nd edition. As mentioned previously, up to until then players needed to use the Battle Bestiary to create their army lists and while this 2nd edition bestiary did include example army lists and other assistance for creating army lists, it was still a much more involved process than it would be with Ravening Hordes. It’s really well done supplement but sadly it came so late in the life of 2nd edition that to me it seems some of the effort put into it was wasted, as far as I know it could be used with 3rd edition rules with some possible modifications so it did probably get a bit more play than it’s late publication date indicates, however with 3rd edition Games Workshop was much faster with the publication of it’s new army lists supplement Warhammer Armies.
The chariot rules in Ravening Hordes are really minimal however, you would still use the same 2nd edition chariot rules mentioned above, Ravening Hordes simply has unit entries for chariots ready so that you wouldn’t need to calculate their points cost by yourself. Of course they also mention which crew and draft creatures are used in that chariot, in the case of the High Elf or Wood Elf chariot their base cost is 40 points and that includes 2 elven warhorses and 2 elves as the crew. The chariot can be upgraded to have 4 warhorses at the cost of 10 points per chariot and with extra crewmembers (up to 4) by 16 points per model. In addition to that you need to pay for shields (½ points per model), chainmail armour (1 points per model) or Elf bows (5 points per model) for the crewmen you have as they have only hand weapons by default. Other than that the only mention here is that the chariots can act either independently or or in units. Do also note that in Ravening Hordes there’s a single section for “Elves” which includes both High Elf and Wood Elf units with some of the units being available to both and some to only one type of elf army, the chariots are available for both.
Sadly there never was a model for these basic 40 point chariot as instead in April 1987 Citadel released the impressive MD4 Elven Attack Chariot boxed set which was one of the biggest and most complicated kits they had released so far, it’s in game cost was 1500 points! All the pictures below are courtesy of The Stuff of Legends, feast your eyes on this magnificent kit!
So nice to have such good pictures of such an old kit for once, thank you Stuff of Legends! This magnificent contraption was designed and sculpted by Jes Goodwin and Bob Naismith, interestingly the credited designer seems to be different in all the publications I could find it in although Jes is listed as the main one in each. The first advert for the kit was published in the Citadel Spring 1987 Flyer, that credits Jes Goodwin alone as the sculptor but in the same month’s White Dwarf #88 April 1987 both Jes Goodwin and Bob Naismith are credited. In the later Citadel catalogues the credit has once again changed to “Jes Goodwin & The Citadel Design Team”. I think it’s fair to say Jes designed most of it, Bob did other parts and they may have had some help from others as well. I suspect Bob Naismith might have sculpted some of the chariot with Jes Goodwin sculpting the elves and horses, but that’s just a guess based on what I’ve heard of both sculptors and their strengths as Bob Naismith was involved in some of the more technical types jobs with miniatures. Then again Jes certainly isn’t a stranger to designing or sculpting technological miniatures or being involved in their production!
The rules included in the back of the box for the Elven Attack Chariot differ greatly from the normal Elven Chariots listed in Ravening Hordes — for a start the normal chariots cost 40 points while this special Elven Attack Chariot costs 1500 points (sic)! All of it’s 4 crew are character models and even the horses are kind of characters as they have their own names and much improved stats from normal elven horses (movement 10 and strength 5 instead of 8 and 4). The chariots in Ravening Hordes have just 2 horses and 2 crew at baseline although the chariot can be upgraded to have 4 horses and up to 4 crew, the Elven Attack Chariot has 3 horses pulling it so neither of the options in Ravening Hordes fit that model! I haven’t been able to find any other elven chariot models for 1st or 2nd edition of Warhammer with the exception of that Ral Partha chariot featured above, but even that one has 3 horses pulling it and it looks more like a heavy chariot instead of the lighter chariot described in the rules. There is a Machineries of Destruction flyer from right around the time Ravening Hordes was published that includes all the warmachines and chariots Citadel was making at the time, it does include multiple chariots but the MD4 Elven Attack Chariot is the only Elf chariot available (not including the unreleased Dark Elf Chariot). I also went line by line all the Citadel model releases up to 1988 and didn’t find another chariot so I must conclude that this Elven Attack Chariot was the only one released during 2nd edition.
Now what do I think about the model and can I glean what Jes and Bob might have used as inspiration for the design? To be honest, the design doesn’t really bring to my mind any specific ancient culture and neither could I find any historical war chariots that resemble it. That of course doesn’t mean they didn’t use some specific type of chariot as their inspiration, but I think it’s likely they just designed it based on the general look of a war chariot. It’s clearly of a heavier type with scythed wheels which would point to the Persians as they seem to have been the only major civilization that widely utilized scythed chariots as attested to in many sources, although there’s also some evidence of the Celts using scythed chariots as well as the Chinese. The Celtic inspiration would make most sense here as in 2nd edition the army list in Ravening Hordes was for Elves which included both the High Elves and the Wood Elves and the Wood Elves have certainly utilized the Celts as inspiration. To me just visually there’s also something ancient Greek about the visual look of the chariot although I can’t exactly place which part of it makes me thing of it. Let’s just say it’s a fantastical war chariot with a loose tie in to historical chariots and mostly based on the imagination of it’s designers.
The model itself is very impressive to me and must have been a challenge to sculpt and cast back in the day — I can imagine that it must not have been the easiest kit to put together! Visually I’m not the biggest fan of the early Elves so based purely on that this isn’t a model I’m lusting after like most old models are. Even if it isn’t strictly to my taste I think it’s a very well designed model that portrays the characteristic elven traits of elegance, agility and effectiveness really well. It’s a big chariot with it’s complement of 3 horses and 4 crew, but the design makes it look light and lithe. It fits the look of a really special unit in the game as the stats on the back of the box indicate, but I think it wouldn’t really suit the basic chariots that are described in the rules. I would have also liked to see a model for that more modest Elf Chariot produced in this period. All in all, a very impressive model especially for the time — as well as still today!
Warhammer 3rd Edition (1987)
Warhammer 3rd edition (December 1987) saw arguably the biggest consolidation of rules in an edition of Warhammer Fantasy ever, although you could possibly make an argument for the most recent iteration of Warhammer The Old World being even more extensive. 3rd edition has more rules for all sorts of different mechanics and more complicated rules whereas Warhammer The Old World has a huge number of special rules. Be that as it may, for chariots (and warmachines!) it meant updated rules, but as this is 3rd edition we are not talking about minor updates or quality of life changes, we are talking about creating a whole new subsystem for the chariots with their rules taking nearly 4 full pages! Luckily the bolt thrower rules are quite simple in comparison, we’ll need to quickly go over them as well since now the High Elves have gained their first bolt thrower unit. Unfortunately the coverage this time for 3rd edition will be rules heavy, but I’ll try and describe the rules as concisely as possible.
As previously mentioned in Ravening Hordes, chariots can still operate either individually or in unit, but now we have a bit more detail on how that works. The chariot units can consist of between 1 to 6 chariots and the chariot model’s bases do not need to be in contact with each other, instead they need to remain within 4″ of each other. The unit can have a leader just like any unit and if there’s a musician or a banner present in the unit, these are in the same chariot as the leader (either a crewmember or strapped to the chariot). The rulebook mentions that the players can still innovate and create their own chariots as previously, but that only the chariots listed in Warhammer Armies are allowed for competitive play. There is now a new rule to determine the movement of the chariot and it’s dependent on how many draft creatures there are in the span as follows:
- 1 draft creature, movement rate as creature minus 3″
- 2 draft creatures, movement rate as creature minus 2″
- 3 draft creatures, movement rate as creature minus 1″
- 4 draft creatures, movement rate as creature
There’s now also 3 different types of chariots instead of just one, them being heavy chariot, light chariot and wagon. Heavy chariots are any chariots with 3 or more draft creatures and/or 3 or more crew, less than that it’s a light chariot and a wagon is any wheeled vehicle with 4 wheels instead of the 2 a chariot has. There are a few chariot type dependent rules and that’s why that is relevant, for example light chariots are allowed a reserve move while heavy chariots or wagons are not.
The movement rules for chariots in 3rd edition are a bit difficult to explain, but basically you need to place your tape measure on a right angle as many inches away as the chariots movement is and then you can measure the turn move by turning the measure on that point (see picture below), this gives you your turning radius. I really like the fact that chariots move in a different manner to other units which is more realistic for a chariot, but without having tried this it seems like a bit of a pain, although I might be wrong on that. Anyway, chariots can only move forwards and cannot turn or wheel like other models but they do not need to always turn like in the picture below, they can turn for part of their movement and then move in a straight line as well.
It doesn’t end there however, for light chariots the turning radius is half the movement rate of the chariot instead, so they can execute much tighter turns than can heavy chariots. It’s a bit strange that they only mention the term “turning radius” after having explained the chariot movement rules, at least to me that term made the rules themselves much more understandable as that makes it clear what the rules are aiming to portray. Wagons instead are very cumbersome, they have 2″ less movement than a similar chariot would have and their turning radius is 2 times their movement rate so they move like ships. Wagons were used in 3rd edition to portray the supply chain of the army and in scenarios, but you could also use them to fight the enemy in theory, although in practice it wasn’t advisable.
A heavy chariot can have up to 4 crew, a light chariot up to 2 crew although if they are halflings then it’s 2 times more and for snotlings it’s 3 times more, an ogre occupies the space of two normal sized crew members. Crew members always count as fighting with hand weapons no matter what the model has and all crew members must be purchased the same armour and/or shield. One model must be designated as the driver, his statline will be used for all psychology and rout tests. The crew may fire missile weapons in any direction, but there is a -1 to hit penalty for shooting from a moving platform. The rules for shooting at the chariot and it getting into close combat are mostly the same as in 2nd edition with the exception of now you use the weapon skill of the crew for determining to hit rolls, you use the highest value any of the crew models have. There’s also rules on how to determine which chariot is hit in a unit of chariots and the update that impact hits are resolved first before any other attacks which wasn’t mentioned in the first chariot rules for 2nd edition. There is a major change in how damage is determined though, now chariots do not have a toughness value at all, instead you need to roll 2D6 and add +1 to the result for each hit sustained by the chariot (missile or close combat) and the result of that will determine what happens to the chariot. There are various effects with the chart going from 3 up to 14, results of 3 to 7 have no effect on the chariot and any value after that will cause similar types of damage than in the previous rules (axle breaking, yoke pole breaking, crew member lost etc.) with the higher result generally being worse. You can even lose or damage the reins which makes future run amok tests harder to pass, that’s a test that is taken each time a crew member is lost and if it’s failed the draft creatures get out of control which means it will charge the nearest unit or move it’s maximum move to a randomly determined direction in the front arc of the chariot, if the chariot charges like this the crew cannot fight in the first round of combat. Normally the run amok test is only failed on a roll of a 6, but if the reins have been damaged prior, then it’s on a roll of a 5 or 6. Yeah, that’s a lot of rules and we are not even done yet…
Terrain now has effect on the chariots as well, if a chariot crosses either difficult or very difficult terrain, then it adds +1 to all chariot damage chart results that turn. If a chariot is driven over a hedge or a ditch, then you add +D6 to the damage chart results that turn and if no other hits are sustained that turn, then you need to make one automatic roll on the chariot damage chart that turn. If the chariot hits a wall or other solid enough object, the chariot is wrecked and the crew need to take a saving throw or die horribly. As chariots do not take wounds like normal units the combat results of their close combat fight is determined slightly differently than normal. You get +1 for each chariot that is hit during the round and an additional +1 for each chariot destroyed, running amok, without draft animals or without crew. For routing a chariot turns around and flees like a normal unit.
There’s a few more rules about wagons as cover, dismounting and remounting chariots, characters in chariots as well as the points cost of chariots. It’s possible for all crew members except the driver to dismount the chariot or remount it during the movement phase, character models can be put into chariots and the points system for determining the points value of a chariot is still the same as it was in 2nd edition in case you wanted to create your own chariot that wasn’t listed in Warhammer Armies.
Luckily the rules for bolt throwers in Warhammer Fantasy 3rd edition are mostly exactly the same as they will be in later editions so we don’t need to go into detail with that (shot with crew BS, -1 to str for each penetrated rank and stops if failed to wound etc.). There’s a couple different things to note here, a 3-man bolt thrower can be moved by 1″ per crew member so a maximum of 3″ per turn if the whole crew is alive, other than that all bolt throwers can be turned on the spot. Interestingly there are rules for bigger than 3-man bolt throwers as well and the rules specifically note that Citadel only makes models for 3-man bolt throwers but that you can make bigger bolt throwers at home by using a “plastic toy as the basis”. There are rules for up to 6-man crewed bolt throwers with each step up in the crew members making the bolt thrower more powerful by giving -1 to saving throw per crew member, +1 strength per crew member as well as a longer range and more wounds per hit as well as costing more points for each crew member more. The 6-man crewed bolt thrower has a range of 96″, strength 8, -5 AP and does 2D4+1 wounds of damage! That is crazy powerful and seems to cost just 30 points over the normal bolt thrower, I don’t see any mention of these bigger bolt throwers not being usable in competitive play as is noted for other things in the rulebook so I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that there were a lot of custom bolt throwers around during these years!
Warhammer Armies, the army lists supplement for Warhammer Fantasy 3rd edition, was published in October 1988 and it was easily the apex of army list supplements and the last of it’s kind as the next edition would see Games Workshop moving to the army book model instead. It was mainly written by Nigel Stillman and it was his first major work for Games Workshop, that’s quite a feat to write all the army lists for a game as complex as 3rd edition is! To be honest I can’t say anything about the balance of the book, but it’s certainly a very comprehensive book with a huge number of units for many very interesting armies, well written and well produced. With the exception of the Slann, all the main armies are still in the game today, but in addition there are smaller army lists for mercenaries and allies which contain really esoteric and cool stuff like a Nippon list, a Zoat list (!), a Norse list, a Hobgoblin list, a Half Orc list, a Fimir list and a few others that wouldn’t be playable in future editions. I’ll definitely need to try and get into 3rd edition one day, Foundry still even sells some of the original 80s Citadel Norse and Nippon models!
Now in Warhammer Armies the High Elves and Wood Elves have their own distinct lists instead of the kind of strange combination they used to have in Ravening Hordes where they had a combined list but most of their units were still army specific. Let’s take a look at all the High Elf warmachines and chariots that feature in the supplement as well as go over the Wood Elf chariot as this is the last time they have access to one.
This time the rules clearly fit the model of the Elven Attack Chariot and are for a “generic" chariot instead of the super charged character version rules that was pretty much an army by itself printed on the box. These Warwains (wain meaning wagon or cart) come at the default cost of 128 points including 4 crew and 4 warhorses, but no equipment like bows or shields or the infamous scythed wheels which cost 20 points extra. They can also be upgraded with a magic banner or a magic instrument for the musician.
There’s also a bit of cool lore about chariots and High Elves on the unit card, although I don’t know whether that’s considered “canon” nowadays anymore or not that they fight mock combats on chariots to establish the right to command. I don’t remember seeing that bit in later lore, but to be honest High Elves are among the races I’m the least familiar with. I don’t have much else to mention about these, otherwise they follow the same chariot rules as other chariots which we went through previously. I guess it’s kind of interesting that the default chariot for High Elves is a very heavy chariot, but then again they do have a lot of heavier unit types so it isn’t really out of character for them.
In addition to this heavy chariot, you could still create a light chariot with a smaller crew and less steeds based on the rules in the rulebook, although I’m not certain what the status of such chariots outside of the Warhammer Armies lists were for competitive play and so on.
We also have the bolt thrower that would become ubiquitous featuring for the first time in the High Elves army list, although this iteration is very different to the later ones. These are just normal bolt throwers without the repeating function and they are crewed by Sea Elves as they are meant to be bolt throwers that are normally held on the decks of their ships. Of course after 3rd edition we lost the separate category of Sea Elves so that’s likely part of the reason why the next iteration of the bolt thrower would be quite different. They did keep the connection to the ships for the later bolt throwers as well though which I think is a nice reference to these origins of the unit. Sadly there never was a model released for this unit so they likely were a rare sight on 3rd edition battle fields!
A quick mention of the Wood Elf Wain Lords unit as mentioned above, there really isn’t much else to mention about the unit other than the fact that the Wood Elves used to have access to a chariot which is kind of cool I think. It’s exactly the same as the High Elf Warwain, but with a few changes to what the crew can be equipped with (one can even be a falconer!). I do understand fully why they took it out of their roster for the next edition as it doesn’t really fit their theme of forest skirmishers living in harmony with nature, but still I’m kind of sad that they don’t have it later on. Then again they never even got a model for a chariot of their own, as can be seen from the unit card above, the same Elven Attack chariot model was meant to be used with the Wood Elves as well and it’s certainly not the most fitting chariot for them. Maybe they could have a very light chariot with wicker sides and so on, that would work. Anyway, that was the Wood Elf chariot.
Warhammer 4th Edition (1992)
Warhammer Fantasy Battles 4th edition was released in October 1992 and it was a big sea change for the game in all aspects of it, the rules, the models, the lore, the art, the setting, how it was marketed — everything! If you are a longer time reader of these articles, all of this is very familiar to you by now as I think it’s important to mention something about the general context around the game to better understand it’s history. I’m slowly working on a general history of all the editions of Warhammer Fantasy where I can go more in depth on that and to refer back to it for future articles, but until then I’ll give the context. To understand why there was such a big change with 4th edition you’ll need to know a couple key facts, the first one is the management buy out of Games Workshop from it’s previous owner Bryan Ansell as well as the lagging sales performance of Warhammer Fantasy 3rd edition compared to Warhammer 40.000 Rogue Trader. The new management wanted to make the company more commercially driven and to widen the player base, both in geographical terms but also in terms of age. Both of these required quite drastic simplification of the rules, first to make it more easily approachable for teenagers or even kids and also to make it more easily translated as to penetrate many of the big European markets like France, Germany and Italy you needed to offer the game in the local language — especially in the early 90s when English wasn’t as widely spoken in those countries as it is today. It’s really kind of funny to think about how Warhammer Fantasy 4th edition was the simplified, easily approachable and more kid friendly version of the game back during those times! In today’s gaming market it would be considered complicated even for veteran adult wargamers or at the very least a clunky or heavy ruleset, I’m a self admitted grognard so I can’t help but make some conclusions about the general direction of people’s attention span, reading comprehension etc. but you could also certainly view this as just wargaming rules design having progressed to where it’s today and that these old rulesets were unnecessarily clunky or complex where you could achieve similar results with a heavily streamlined ruleset. I personally enjoy these “classic” types of rulesets and to be fair in many ways Warhammer The Old World is more complex than 4th edition so it’s not like today’s designers or gamers aren’t capable of writing an enjoying a ruleset in that classic style, although arguably most of it’s players are older players who are used to such games.
Be that as it may, 4th edition brought about these big changes and really was the beginning of what most of us would know as Warhammer Fantasy with the armies and units becoming the version of them that we are familiar with up to today. Obviously there’s many changes to come visually, in rules and in role, as well as additions, but in general they wouldn’t change as much as they did during the transition from 3rd edition to 4th edition. This is exactly why I need to write that general history of the game as I always get carried away with these context sections!
Let’s take a quick look at the general rules for chariots and bolt throwers in 4th edition as these simplified rules will form the basis for all the future editions of the game, well for the chariots anyway as the bolt thrower rules remain mostly the same as previously so the foundation of their rules was already set by now.
The rules for chariots have been drastically streamlined, especially the movement rules as now in 4th edition their movement is simpler than that of normal infantry units! They move just as individual characters or monsters which in this edition means they can move freely to any direction without needing to wheel or turn, that’s quite a departure from the turning radius system of 3rd edition. The only restriction is that they cannot march but they do still double their movement for charges. Chariots can still be grouped into a unit, they are considered to be in a unit if they are within 5″ of each other in a “rough line or forming a clump" (that’s what the rules say!). It’s mentioned that the only benefit this gives is being able to make leadership tests with the highest value in the unit, so if you have a character in the unit that might be useful although I don’t think this was done much and I’ve never seen it in mentioned by any of the active 4th ed guys. Chariots cannot move over obstacles or difficult terrain by choice and if they are compelled to due to fleeing for example they take D6 strength 6 hits so are quite likely destroyed. The close combat rules are now mostly back to what they were in 2nd edition, when fighting the highest WS of any in the crew is used and any scored hits are randomized between the crew, the creatures and the chariot which each have their own toughness value against which the hit is normally rolled against. The same applies for any missile fire that hits the chariot. Chariots usually have toughness 7 and 3 wounds, individual chariots can in theory have other stats, although I don’t remember seeing any chariots with different values. In any case they are very hard to wound so hits randomized on the chariot, which is the most likely result (rolls of 4 to 6), usually are deflected. Every chariot user in 4th edition dread getting hits on the creatures pulling it as there’s usually only 2 of them and losing one means halving of it’s movement and losing the other one strands the crew (if there were 3 creatures, losing one would mean losing 1/3 of it’s movement, for 4 it would be 1/4). The crew may continue to fight if the player has models to represent them individually and if instead the whole crew is slain then the chariot moves in a random direction for a random amount (up to it’s maximum movement) in the compulsory movement “phase". A chariot with all it’s creatures moves as fast as the movement value of that creature, for example 8 for a normal horse. The chariots cause impact hits on the charge as usual, D6 hits +1 per scythed wheel which I think is always +2 as I don’t think you can upgrade just one of the wheels! If a template weapon hits the chariot then all of it’s parts are treated separately, so if the template covers any part of the chariot then it’s potentially hit and the same for the crew and the creatures.
As mentioned, the bolt thrower rules remain mostly the same as in 3rd edition, although now no armour saves are allowed against hits by them and there’s a mention that they can only move if the model has wheels on it, moving at the crew’s movement rate. Unsurprisingly the rules for bigger bolt throwers have been discarded and now most have only a crew of 2 where losing 1 crew doesn’t affect the firing rate although if the bolt thrower does have a crew of 3, then losing a crew member or two does reduce the rate of fire to once every other turn like for stone throwers as it’s assumed that bolt thrower is more difficult to operate as it needs a larger crew.
February 1993 saw the publication of Warhammer Armies High Elves (4th edition) written by the illustrious Andy Chambers and Bill King, the first ever High Elf army book. Prior to that the great 4th edition starter set (the first Warhammer Fantasy set that combined rules, models, dice etc. in one box) included a booklet with army lists for all the armies that would be playable in 4th edition called Warhammer Armies (well, with the exception of Chaos Dwarfs). It was written again by Nigel Stillman and all of the statlines in it are already mostly the same as they would be in the later dedicated army book for each army, so clearly they had already done a lot of preliminary work for all the armies when they designed the new ruleset. It’s only 26 pages so it’s simply just the army lists and unit entries without anything extra like magic items, there’s a list of generic magic items in the rulebook. The High Elf army list seems particularly condensed as it’s less than 1,5 pages, the first entry in the “Regiments” section of the list is chariots at 82 points per chariot with a crew of 2 and drawn by 4 elven steeds with options to arm the crew with javelins, longbows or shields or to add extra crew or scythed wheels. This is before the release of the iconic 4th edition High Elf Tiranoc Chariot so perhaps this was written still with the Elven Attack Chariot in mind or just as a generic High Elf chariot. The Bolt Thrower in this list is still just a normal bolt thrower although with just 2 crew now.
In the actual army book both of these have changed, the chariots are now the famous High Elven Tiranoc chariots with just one charioteer riding it and pulled by two Elven Steeds at movement 9 costing 72 points. The charioteer comes with light armour, hand weapon, halberd and a bow and can be equipped with a shield, spear javelins or a longbow for 1 points each. The chariot itself can be given scythed wheels at 20 points. The charioteer has an impressive weapon skill of 5 and initiative of 7, well that’s pretty basic for more elite High Elves, but still.
The bolt thrower has also now changed to the iconic Repeater Bolt Thrower that can either fire one bolt with the normal bolt thrower rules or a hail of multiple bolts although this first version of this mechanic for the High Elves is quite different to what it will be in all the later editions. Here in 4th edition the Multiple Shots version shoots 4 bolts that act just like the “big bolt” in that successful wounds go through the ranks with a reduced strength of -1 per rank, the difference is that the first rank is hit at strength 4 instead of 5 and the damage done is just 1 instead of the D4 wounds inflicted by the big bolt, no armour saves are allowed even against these smaller bolts. That sounds really good to me, especially against basic enemy troops it wouldn’t be hard to take down around 4–8 models with one hail of bolts from this thing and it still costs just 50 points like in the initial Warhammer Armies list even though it has gained this superb ability!
With this being the first ever proper army book there’s also much more lore than in the previous publications, but as usual each unit only gets a relatively short section. Using the Tiranoc chariots is told to be a traditional art of fighting still kept alive by the peoples of the sundered realm of Tiranoc. The chariots are pulled by 2 elven steeds and directed by one elven noble who controls the chariot with only his spoken word. The charioteers traditionally carry the deadly Singing Blade, a glaive like weapon that shrieks as it’s swung that could cut a fully armoured man in half when struck from a fast moving chariot. They are also skilled with bows and utilize both for fast hit and run attacks.
For the Repeater Bolt Throwers there’s even less, now there’s no mention of any connection to ships, it’s just mentioned that the High Elves have never developed black powder technology as they haven’t needed to due to their superb marksmanship with their bows and the fact that centuries ago they developed a torsion powered and counter-weighted device, the Repeater Bolt Thrower, which are kind of their equivalent to a cannon but perfected to such a level that they are in many ways superior to cannons.
Now let’s feast our eyes upon the beautiful new 4th edition models, that Tiranoc Chariot is especially a thing of beauty!
The iconic 4th edition High Elf Tiranoc chariot was released in February 1993 alongside the army book and many other classic miniatures, it was sculpted by Jes Goodwin and Norman Swales. Back then Jes was still sculpting the occasional fantasy model before focusing almost exclusively on 40K models, he did a few Skaven characters and a couple other fantasy miniatures in the 90s but nothing else before coming back after a 7 year break to sculpt a few Chaos models released in 2002. Norman Swales is an interesting sculptor as well, I hadn’t looked into what he has done before now and it seems he exclusively sculpted chariots or warmachines for fantasy! I didn’t see a single “organic" model listed under him so he was clearly the machine guy at Games Workshop during the 90s, all the models he is credited in had another sculptor as well who did the crew and creatures while Norman did the machine sculpt and that’s the case for the Tiranoc chariot as well.
As is probably obvious by now, I really like chariot models in Warhammer and this one for me is one of the best ones which is a bit surprising for myself as I’ve never been a huge fan of the High Elves aesthetics although I have really started to adore the 4th edition range for them and might possibly even try to collect an army from this era one day (one can dream, right?). I usually enjoy a bit bigger chariots with at least 2 crew members, but the charioteer in this one is just such a cool model that he is more than good enough on his own. He is really quite imposing for an High Elf and for some reason gives me David Bowie vibes (I probably got that from Josh of Crown of Command fame), that pose is very confident and menacing and that massive feather crested helmet indicates that he isn’t your basic elf (he is slightly above average you know!). Just look at the charioteer by himself in the bottom right corner, look at the level of detail on every bit of the model and the delicate features on his face, that’s just absolutely mind boggling for me to think that someone was able to sculpt that by hand into Green Stuff or whatever Jes used back then (I think it was Green Stuff) with some basic dental type tools, that’s just so impressive to me — not to mention the design that went into the model! The model itself really looks like at least a hero level character model so it’s a bit over the top for the stats the charioteer has perhaps, but then again it’s the High Elf nobles who ride these chariots so clearly this one just blinged himself out without having any actual magic in his items or the spectacular skills that such exquisite gear usually indicates.
We haven’t even gotten to the chariot body itself or the Elven Steeds! I’ll mention the steeds first, they are also used by the Reaver Knights so they aren’t quite unique to the Tiranoc chariot, but I do think they serve their part very well. They are the single weakest element of the model to me, there isn’t anything particularly wrong about the in my view, but they don’t impress me like the rest of the model does. The body of the chariot, sculpted by Norman Swales, has some very impressive decoration to it on most surfaces, but especially on the front facing section of the chariots body. It’s very distinctly of High Elven style which brings to my mind both Japanese and Greek / Macedonian (Alexander the Great) aesthetics with it’s kind of sun ray / wing motifs. I might be off base on that and that there actually is some more direct inspiration to the style, but especially those alternating blue and yellow decorations bring to my mind the traditional Japanese sunray illustrations which was used especially prominently in their World War 2 Rising Sun (Hinomaru) battle flags used by the Imperial Army and Navy, although the design goes back around 1500 years. I’m sure there are other cultures who have used a similar motif prominently and to be honest I don’t know exactly why I’m getting the ancient Greece and/or Macedonia vibes, but those are my slightly educated guesses on where the inspiration for that might have come. Oh, the ancient Greece connection must be due to Atlantis as Ulthuan is obviously based on that, I don’t know that there is a specific style tied to that, but for me the prominent use of white and those Phoenix motifs certainly heavily tie the High Elves to Atlantis and likely usually Atlantis has been illustrated and described at least aesthetically as sort of Greek with the pillars and so on. There’s an obvious connection between the Phoenix, Atlantis and the rising sun theme utilized by Japan. Hopefully that was somewhat coherent, if you have better ideas on the inspiration of the visual elements on this chariot, do let me know in the comments — let’s have a discussion about it!
The High Elf Repeater Bolt Thrower model came out already in November 1992 so 3 months prior to the army book and most of the other models, it was also designed and sculpted by Jes Goodwin and Norman Swales. Jes certainly did the crew, but I also suspect that he likely did a lot of the design work on the bolt thrower itself while Norman would have sculpted it with his talented in sculpting inorganic shapes. I base that simply on Jes being such a legendary designer and on the fact that in some catalogues he is the sole credited designer for the kit. I don’t have too much to say about this one, it’s a nice quite elegant and simple kit perfectly in keeping with the High Elven aesthetic, it looks very nice. I like that the Phoenix motif is being carried through on it and the crew has nice poses, the model itself is really small by later standards, but that’s alright. It doesn’t really look anything like it should if it was trying to look like it actually worked like it’s rules do, which is obviously quite difficult, but there are many warmachine models especially from the 90s and early 00s that go surprisingly far in showing the technical detail that makes it look like it could actually work and I really like that aspect of those models, that not being present on this one makes it slightly less impressive for me, but even with that it’s still a really nice model. It certainly looks nothing like it’s historical inspiration, the polybolos, which interestingly the old 3rd edition Dark Elf Repeating Bolt Thrower kind of did as it had a clear magazine on top of it. I suspect the designers wanted to keep that magazine look only for the Dark Elves to make the 2 elven races as distinct as possible, the magazines are heavily used on Dark Elf models with their repeating crossbows.
Warhammer 5th Edition (1996)
The 5th edition of Warhammer Fantasy Battles came out in October 1996 with the perhaps most iconic starter set the game ever got, the game had reached a kind of maturity with this edition being just refinements to the previous ones and on a more grand scale you could say that it has been just refinements from here on out. Sure the tone would shift noticeably with 6th edition, but 5th was already moving in that direction and in general there wouldn’t be any drastic changes made to the setting any more. The rules would change a bit more here and there, but really you could argue that the ruleset didn’t change in any truly significant way since 2nd or even 1st edition, the core of the system stays the same throughout. In any case, overall 5th edition is my personal favourite era of the game, especially visually for both the miniatures and art. It’s the perfect middle point between the later “grimdark" ethos and the whimsy and fun of the early 90s, a more mature take than 4th edition while at the same time retaining that popping fun style of 4th. The more I look at the various eras the more I’m also being drawn to 3rd edition, which in it’s own way is also a mix of dark and light, but it doesn’t have quite the same pull for me. As a game I think 6th edition is the strongest certainly and visually it’s early years are nearly as good in my view.
The High Elves are the only army that got both a 4th edition and a 5th edition army book and unfortunately I don’t know why that’s the case. As far as I know the original army book wasn’t particularly weak compared to others, so perhaps it was just because they got quite a few new models during 5th and because they are one of the most established and popular armies in the game or perhaps they had a powerful champion at Games Workshop. The credits on the book are certainly impressive with Andy Chambers, Jes Goodwin, Bill King, Tuomas Pirinen and Rick Priestley all being credited when usually there was just one or two main writers credited. I know Tuomas was a very keen High Elf player and very much wanted to write an army book for them, he especially admired what Bill King had done with their lore in the first army book and was very proud to have been able to work on the lore in this next version with Bill himself. At this point Tuomas was quite new at Games Workshop, a rising star certainly, but it’s doubtful the book was made because he wanted to, surely it didn’t hurt though. Also to be accurate there was also the Realm of Chaos supplement published during 5th edition and Chaos also had a 4th edition army book, but the 5th ed Realm of Chaos supplement is quite different to a normal army book with it’s unique warband army selection rules and having rules for all the 3 Chaos armies so that I still think it’s fair to say only the High Elves got an army book in both editions as I wouldn’t consider Realm of Chaos an army book really. Interestingly Realm of Chaos was mainly written by Tuomas Pirinen again, it’s a pretty ambitious work, although not to the level of the original, but still I’d like to cover it in a dedicated article one day. I seem to be especially rambling in this article for some reason, perhaps it’s the chariot theme that’s letting my imagination gallop away. I do apologize about that, let’s quickly check if there were any interesting changes to the general chariot and bolt thrower rules and if the High Elf units changed at all for this updated army book.
For chariots the answer is not at all, in fact most of the rules text for them has been directly copied from the 4th edition rules. There’s two added clarifications, one about excess wounds never carrying over from one unit to another, not even if the chariots are in a unit with multiple chariots and the other one about characters on chariots and challenges mentioning that the creature’s attacks count as part of it but the crew’s attacks and impact hits do not and are directed to the unit instead.
For bolt throwers unsurprisingly there isn’t any changes, in fact I think the next time there’s a significant change to their rules will with the recent Warhammer The Old World! There is one thing to mention which I wasn’t aware before now, that’s that all warmachines in 5th can be formed into units called batteries if multiple of the same type are deployed within 5″ of each other and again deployed in “a rough line or clump". There doesn’t seem to be any particular advantage to it, perhaps all the crews fight if one of the machines is charged but that’s not mentioned and really it would be a detriment in most cases as it would tie up all the crews. It’s still kind of neat to have batteries.
The rules for the Tiranoc Chariots and the Repeater Bolt Throwers in the 5th edition army book are nearly identical to the 4th edition army book, the chariots have slightly changed now coming with 2 crew by default to match the new model and are only armed with hand weapons and bows by default, there’s a few more options like the steed can take barding and you can take a magical banner for one of your chariots. There’s now a limitation on the number of Repeater Bolt Throwers that can be included in the army which is you cannot have more of them than you have units of Spearmen, Archer and Lothern Seaguard in your army although you can always include at least 2 of them anyway. I guess there had been some bolt thrower spam lists in tournaments with 4 edition allowing you to take as many as you had points for warmachines (max 25% of the army).
The new lore flavour text for Tiranoc chariots doesn’t include anything new about the chariots or charioteers themselves, it’s mostly about Tiranoc and how beautiful that area of Ulthuan used to be before the sundering. There isn’t any new lore on the bolt throwers either so let’s move over to the new 5th edition chariot model.
As I mentioned, usually models from around ’95 to ’00 are my absolute favourite ones, but sadly this one is an exception to that as I much prefer the previous one man chariot model to this one. There isn’t anything particularly wrong with the model and the chariot itself is really quite superb. It’s just that the crew themselves look very basic, pretty much like a normal High Elf Spearman and Bowman, so compared to the previous over the top charioteer they feel really plain. Sure it makes sense for them to be a bit more plain than the previous version, but they should still be High Elven nobles and just purely on a visual level I wish they had a bit more going on like a more distinct type of armour, helmet and weapon. The horses I actively dislike, they are of a better size than the previous tiny horses, but their faces barely look like horses at all and more like some Saturday morning cartoon characters. I’m not sure who sculpted the horses, but I suspect they were trying to make them look different from the horses used by the human armies as they are Elven Steeds and I really appreciate that idea, but sadly the outcome is the opposite of what a refined and elegant elven horse breed should look like. I think those horses are the only 5th edition models that I dislike, I can’t think of any others. That’s very unfortunate as otherwise it’s still a very nice model and overall I do like it, just not as much as the previous one.
The 5th edition army book features this converted Tiranoc chariot and I wanted to include it as it fixes the complaints I had about the crew in the basic version, I’m not a big High Elf connoisseur so I don’t know which models have been used for the crew but they work here really well and look much more distinct and noble than the standard crew. The chariot body is from the 4th ed chariot which I also prefer even if it’s a bit small for 2 crew and in a way the small size works here as it looks like the crew are using their elven agility to stand so calmly on such a small platform while being pulled over ground by fast steeds. The paintjob on the horses is great too as it makes them look a bit more realistic so even they look alright to me. I wish I knew who did the conversion so I could credit him, it’s a really good job!
Warhammer 6th Edition (2000)
October 2000 saw the release of Warhammer Fantasy Battles 6th edition with it’s great starter set pitting the revamped brutal looking Brian Nelson Orcs against the Perry “might as well be historical miniatures” of Empire, for me personally it was the last iconic starter set for Warhammer Fantasy even if there would be a few nice ones to come. I still remember those heady days of excitement, I was 12 back then and I split the starter set with a friend with me taking Empire. I still have some of those miniatures and the rulebook as well as a few units I bought for the army back then and I’m certainly planning to restore those one day and build a full 6th edition era Empire army of it although it will have to wait for years due to my financial realities but luckily I do have a couple other armies to work on in the meantime. Those will likely keep me occupied for years anyway, so perhaps I’ve managed to redeem my finances by then. Anyway, not to go on another massive context tangent, but I’ll just mention that I think Warhammer Fantasy 6th edition is the edition with the most focused design ethos in my view. It brought together mostly a new generation of designers working together with seasoned veterans that perhaps for the first time were working with a very clear vision on what the game should be like. That’s mostly due to what they referred to as the “Mordheim effect", a sort of grimdark vision conjured up by John Blanche and Tuomas Pirinen in which the rules, the lore and the art were all in harmony to produce a clear atmosphere and style which was also followed by the miniature designers. There’s certainly something to be said for the more eclectic style of the early editions or the bright and fun style of the 90s editions and whether the dark style of 6th is to your liking or not, I think it’s fair to say that it was a very coherent and well designed edition. I do really love the style and I think 6th edition is the best ruleset, but even with all that praise I still personally prefer the previous era visually at least for models.
6th edition was the next clear break in terms of rules after 4th and 5th with a shift of focus from characters to units as well as reigning in the power level of units across the board to facilitate army builds that actually look more like armies. If it has one clear flaw it’s likely the over favouring of cavalry and perhaps somewhat of chariots, although due to their nature chariots are inherently more balanced as they rarely can defeat units by themselves so I wouldn’t consider them unbalanced really. Based on my limited experience I’d say chariots were in the best spot they ever have been with 6th as they can be decisive, but only in cooperation with other units which encourages tactical thoughtful play. The overall chariot rules changed very little this time around as well apart from one major change, they move just as freely as before, fight like before and so on. There’s a few subtle changes too, now the chariot itself has an armour save which it can “use" against hits on it and the chariot also gives improved armour saves to characters riding it (+2 save for most chariots, +1 for light chariots) . There are now more “proper" chariot units available for some armies, most prominently the Tomb Kings which can have a standard for +1 combat resolution or a magic banner, but only specific chariots can form into units. There’s also a new rule on how high strength hits destroy the chariot right away, if they take even just one strength 7 or higher hit (usually a cannon ball!) the whole chariot gets destroyed although any characters can carry fighting on foot if they survive the single strength 5 hit they have to take if the chariot is destroyed for any reason (the crew itself is destroyed with the chariot). The big change I mentioned is that now the chariots are treated as single models for the most part, the only exception is a character riding it, otherwise all attacks are made against the chariot’s profile so it’s no longer possible to take out creatures or crew separately which makes them much more useful as it used to be easy to kill the creatures pulling it and slowing it or fully stopping it. The toughness of all chariots have been drastically reduced to reflect this change, if they stayed at their previous toughness 7 they would be very tough to take out! Now most chariots are at toughness 4 so it’s possible to wound them with most units although at the same time most of them have gained one wound (up to 4 from 3). The strength of most chariots have been lowered to 5 from 7 as well for impact hits. If a character is riding a chariot, then they can be targeted in close combat or if shot at the hit is randomized between the chariot and the character but the character is only hit on a roll of a 6. Well, that turned out to actually be quite a lot of changes! Really pretty much everything except the movement rules was changed, mostly a little, but all together the changes mean that chariots do play quite differently in 6th edition compared to 4th and 5th.
Bolt thrower rules in general remain the same except the initial hit is now at a higher strength of 6 and they cause D3 wounds (used to be S5 and D4 wounds).
How about the Tiranoc Chariots and Repeater Bolt Throwers from the Warhammer Armies High Elf supplement from January 2002 (main writers Jake Thornton & Space McQuirk)? Again mostly the same with one big change, the Tiranoc Chariots are now more streamlined with their only option being extra steeds at 7 points for each and the crew members having hand weapons, spears and bows by default. The chariot also now has a +5 armour save, the cost is almost the same as before at 85 points and with 6th edition’s stricter army selection rules there’s an added bonus of being able to take up to 2 Tiranoc Chariots counting as just one Special choice. The big change is for the Repeater Bolt Throwers, now their volley fire mode shoots bolts that work just like normal crossbow bolts so no more penetrating ranks with them although it’s rate of fire is up to 6 bolts per turn. These bolts hit at strength 4 and have -2 AP on them making them quite consistent on taking out most basic infantry units. Repeater Bolt Throwers can also be taken as 2 counting for just 1 Rare choice which is very useful as it’s hard to include many Rare choices, they now cost 100 points each which is nearly double their previous cost but they are still very much worth their cost as they are very versatile and useful with their 2 different firing modes.
The lore in the book follows the same line as before, but there’s a bit more detail. The Tiranoc charioteers are told to be the few remaining members of the nobles of the lands of Tiranoc, where riding chariots used to be their traditional way of war as well as life with them competing on the chariots both with racing and bow shooting of the back of the chariot. Their lands were sunk under the sea with the Sundering and the remaining ones are those that were off fighting the Dark Elves when that happened, they are embittered by the loss of their lands and they are particularly keen to fight, especially their hated dark kin.
The Repeater Bolt Thrower, also called the Eagle’s Claw is now again tied to the maritime tradition of the High Elves with them being described as being attached to their ships and then take off and carried by the Seaguard inland for expeditions which is a nice nod to the 3rd edition Sea Elf bolt throwers.
There were a couple new models released during 6th edition as can be seen below.
A new Repeater Bolt Thrower model was released along the army book and a host of new models in January 2002 as the previous 4th ed model didn’t quite match the updated look of the army. I quite like all the early 6th edition metal warmachine kits and this one is no exception even if it isn’t quite as cool as the Dark Elf version for me. It carries on the eagle motif but looks a bit more functional and believable than the older version, in fact I think I prefer the machine itself compared to the 4th edition one but I prefer the older crew (hard to beat Jes!). I do really like the fact that there’s 2 variations of the crew, that’s really rare for Games Workshop to release variant warmachine crews which is always a bit of a problem when using multiples of the same one in a game as it doesn’t look great to have the same exact poses on all of them. They did the same with the 6th edition Dark Elf Repeater Bolt Thrower as well, but sadly I think those 2 are the only ones with multiple sets of crews out of the multitude of warmachine kits. All in all a very solid kit!
Already just a bit over 3 years after the previous kit in May 2005 a new Eagle’s Claw kit was released, marking one of the very few times that Games Workshop released 2 new kits of the same unit during just one edition. Usually that only happens for units that are sculpted for a starter set which then have a separate kit released later as GW likes to keep their starter set models distinct from others. In this case the reason was the ambition to move to a fully plastic range of miniatures that was still progressing at a fast pace during this time before being considerably slowed down as the popularity of all GW games took a big downturn a bit later. It’s kind of amusing to see them returning to quite large scale metal model casting now again with Warhammer The Old World, but hey I’m all in with that — if it was up to me I’d phase out the plastics in favour of metals! The new model itself is decent enough, I like the fact that it was designed in a way that shows how both firing modes would work with it in theory and that the kit includes both types of ammunition with it as well to really showcase that. The design is almost exactly the same as before but for some reason I do think the metal variant looks better, there’s just something about metal models that can’t be translated into plastic even if it’s very subtle in this case. The same applies for the crew, but still I’d say it’s a great kit, those accesories and “technical detail" on the mechanism really sell it to me.
Warhammer 7th Edition (2006)
September 2006 saw the release of the 7th edition of Warhammer Fantasy, this time under the overall direction of Alessio Cavatore. For me 7th edition occupies a peculiar place, on it’s surface I should still really like it as it seemingly was a full continuation of the 6th edition design ethos which I enjoy very much, but sadly for me that’s just the surface veneer. Mind you, I don’t blame Alessio for any of that, he’s a talented designer but by this time Games Workshop had become very management led and risk averse so he’s hands were mostly tied. The main rules for 7th edition are great, it’s really 6th edition with some fixes here and there that mostly improve the game so really as a pure ruleset it might be the best Fantasy edition ever. The problems lie in the wildly fluctuating balance level of the army books game wise and for me personally the bigger issues lie in the miniatures of the era and the lack of passion that can be seen in the army books and the fact there isn’t much in the way of cool campaign books and extra army lists like 6th edition had.
As could be expected there weren’t any notable changes to chariot or bolt thrower rules for 7th edition, for chariots there’s a slight addition on them charging, stating that they can pivot once during their charge move either at the beginning or once in the middle of the movement but other than that the rules remain exactly as before.
The 7th edition High Elves army book was published in November 2007, it’s main writer was Adam Troke. As usual for rules of this period a lot more special rules started to be added in, there aren’t any specific ones for the chariots or the bolt thrower, but all of them do have the army wide High Elf special rules giving them the infamous Always Strikes First rule (Speed of Asuryan) as well as being able to reroll any failed psychology tests when fighting the hated Dark Elves (Valour of Ages). There is one major addition in the light of this article, that’s the new chariot unit Lion Chariot of Chrace which gives up a bit of movement and gains considerably in hitting power being pulled by those fearsome lions and crewed by White Lions with their two-handed axes. The crew have strength 4 base like a unit of White Lions on foot which is brought up to strength 6 by their great weapons and with that Always Strikes First all High Elves have they fight at their initiative of 5! That’s not bad already, but those lions pulling the chariot themselves have 2 attacks at weapon skill 5 and strength 5 (initiative 4) not to mention the strength 5 impact hits from the chariot itself — that’s a hefty charge! It only loses by 1 movement at movement 8 compared to Tiranoc Chariots so it’s not even slower than most chariots, it costs 140 points per chariot which is on the higher side for a chariot but doesn’t sound bad at all to me! Oh and just to top it off, it causes fear too which was still very effective in 7th edition.
As is the style of these more modern army books, each unit gets a much longer section of lore than previously but there isn’t really anything new about the Tiranoc chariots and the Repeater Bolt Throwers, just more detail especially about the people and lands of Tiranoc but we won’t go into all of that now. There is a cool mention on how the Eagle’s Claw bolt throwers can shoot multiple small bolts simultaneously, they are said to use a bundle of bolts that is launched from it that separate in the air before hitting the target. That’s a cool description, a kind of sabot projectile for bolts! It’s clearly different to what they originally thought as that’s not exactly repeating fire, but it works with how the modern model looks.
Lion chariots are a new unit in this edition so let’s look at their lore very briefly. The lions that pull the chariots are natibe to the lands of Chrace and they are the lions from which the White Lions have taken their name. The lions stand as tall as a horse on their shoulders and can tear apart most foes with their immense strength. These lions pose a considerable threat to the population of the area and because of that the White Lions hunt them and sometimes they encounter lion cubs in the wild. High Elves take no pleasure in killing these majestic beasts so they capture these cubs and train them carefully, just like they train other dangerous beasts like griffons and these well trained lions go on to be used as war lions pulling the famous Lion Chariots of Chrace. These chariots are used to break the heaviest enemy formations as there are only few foes that can survive their mighty charge!
Aa usual there were new models released alongside the November 2007 army book publication, one of them was a new plastic Tiranoc chariot, the third version so far. It’s clearly a much more modern looking kit, as far as I know most of the plastics of this period were already digitally designed, I’m pretty sure this one was at least as it has some of that characteristic digital look to it. The horses are a big improvement on the previous ones although I don’t really like how they have that cloth only on the front and that big metal piece around their necks — I wish they had gone with either fully covered or no cloth at all and left that metal part (well, painted metal here anyway) out of it. The chariot body and the crew are alright although this crew is even more bland than the 5th edition one that I complained about being too bland but on the whole I think it’s a perfectly fine model for the period. Not my thing as is likely obvious, but still. I do really like the flag on it though, the shape of the flagpole really brings to mind Japanese style strongly like I mentioned previously about some of the other High Elf motifs and designs.
I’m pretty sure this is a dual kit that builds both the Tiranoc chariot and this Lion chariot so they are visually quite similar although the upper part of the chariot body is clearly different here with the lion motif at it’s front and a few other places like on top of the banner pole which makes it clearly distinct. I like the crew more in this version as they have a bit more going on than just looking like standard High Elf troops, but I’m not the biggest fan of the lions and especially those decorative plates they have on their shoulders. Overall I do think it’s a cool addition to the army, it’s something totally new but it’s still in keeping with the lore and style of the High Elves and it’s not something totally whacky. Sure it’s a bit out there, but not so much as to feel unbelievable.
Warhammer 8th Edition (2010)
In July 2010 Warhammer Fantasy Battles 8th edition saw the light of day, back then no one certainly knew that it would be the last edition of the game in the usual form as you could argue that Warhammer The Old World is something different. It was another break in the continuity of the ruleset, in some ways arguably the biggest shakeup the rules saw since 4th edition. I have only experienced it secondhand through Youtube battlereports so I’m not very qualified to give opinions about it, but on the whole I think it’s perhaps the weakest ruleset made for the game. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still Warhammer Fantasy all the way so lot’s of fun, but there are certain elements that are very strong in it’s gameplay that I don’t personally enjoy but there is or at least was a clear community who really enjoyed those elements of the game (hordes, the magic system etc.) and that’s great. I’m not whining about it because I was out of the hobby back then and now I have at least 4 different editions that I really love and can play so it’s no loss for me. I’ll go deeper into all that in some other article, this one is already long enough.
The rules for both chariots and bolt throwers seem to remain the same as before, although I think there are some changes in the general rules that do affect the chariots at least, but there are no specific changes made to their rules other than they are shorter now. The bolt thrower rules certainly remain exactly the same as they have been since 6th edition.
The 8th edition High Elves army book was published in May 2013 and by all accounts it’s one of the most powerful ones of the edition especially due to Always Strikes First and the changes to charging and initiative from previous editions which can make playing against them a bit frustrating but they certainly have their weaknesses as well like high cost and being fragile. The main writer for this version was Matt Ward who also was the main writer for the 8th edition rules in general (no, were not going to go there!).
The unit rules in the army book for all the previously covered units remain the same as in 7th edition, but there is a new addition to the roster of chariots this time again. It’s the funky and somewhat controversial Lothern Skycutter, a flying chariot pulled by a Swiftfeather Roc (a big bird!)! They can be either crewed by just Lothern Seaguard or they can also take a Eagle Eye bolt thrower that’s bolted on to the chariot which they can fire even if they have moved with a range of 24″ and strength 5, it causes D3 wounds with no armour saves allowed against it but it doesn’t penetrate ranks like a normal bolt thrower does. Still, that’s quite powerful especially mounted on a very fast flying unit! The fly move is 10″ but they can march too so move up to 20″ although I think if marched then the bolt thrower likely cannot be shot, that’s not specified in the unit entry but I think that’s in the general rules. A Lothern Seahelm character can also be mounted on the Lothern Skycutter to make it even more powerful, they have a +4 ward save against shooting when on the Skycutter, otherwise it has a +4 armour save so a bit better than the +5 chariots usually have. The base cost for the Skycutter is just 90 points, but it goes quickly up if you add the bolt thrower at +25 points and the abovementioned character alone is 100 points without any extra equipment. The birds pulling the “chariot” aren’t bad either at weapon skill 5, strength 4, initiative 4 and 2 attacks, even with the generally lowered points costs of 8th edition this seems like a great unit to me, but take that with a fistful of salt as I’ve never seen it actually used in game.
Here we have the Lothern Skycutter model, it was released alongside the army book in 2013 but sadly I do not know who designed it. Now we are properly in the realm of modern digitally designed Games Workshop plastics with all that entails! I quite like the look of the crew in both versions of the kit, but I’ll be honest here, I really dislike everything about this kit. I know many enjoy it very much and I’m very happy for them, but for me personally this is exactly the kind of thing why I prefer older models. It’s just too far off to be believable in any way and as those who have read any of my articles know, I really enjoy the historical inspiration, quasi realism and low fantasy grittiness of Warhammer Fantasy, for me those are the main pillars of what the setting is about so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that something like this Skycutter really rubs me the wrong way. Again, don’t let me dampen your enjoyment of it if you like it, that’s great and I’m happy you do.
Warhammer The Old World (2024)
Warhammer Fantasy is back! It’s still very early days for the game as we don’t even have all of the models available for the first two armies released for the game, but we do have all the rules already so we can quickly take a look if there are any bigger changes to the units covered in this article. Overall I’ll just say that I’m quite impressed with the ruleset, a few bigger flaws seem to have come up as usual but I’m sure those will be dealt with and even if not, the ruleset is totally fine to be used in friendly games. There might be some contentious issues for competitive gamers, but that’s not my thing so that doesn’t worry me. I especially enjoy the fact that the rules are very classically Warhammer Fantasy and that those elements of the game that I didn’t enjoy in 8th edition have been changed for better. Whatever gripes there might be about lines or dragons I still feel this is one of the best rulesets the game has ever had!
I’m not yet fully familiar with all of the rules for Warhammer The Old World, but once again in general both the chariot and the bolt thrower rules remain mostly the same although there are more changes this time than in the previous 3 editions. Chariots are now divided into Light Chariots and Heavy Chariots again in the core rules, sort of like in 3rd edition, which affect how they move, the light chariot section doesn’t mention much about movement so I think that they move like before so freely without needing to wheel or turn. Heavy chariots however are lumbering so they move like units in close order formation so they can only move in a direct line, but as they are single models they do get a free 90° pivot after moving (only if they didn’t march though!). The chariots body is now affected by the Firing Platform rule which means that the crew or characters have a 360° vision arc for the purposes of shooting or casting spells but as far as I know both chariot types can still only charge against targets in their front arc, that certainly applies to heavy chariots due to their movement restrictions, but I can’t see anything that would make it different for light chariots either as the 360° vision specifically only applies to shooting and spells. There are a few other special rules that apply to chariots, but nothing major.
Bolt throwers are as usual mostly the same, but there is one very major change to how they work which changes their core mechanic that has been the same since 2nd edition! That’s how the penetration mechanic works, so far if you failed to wound any of the ranks with it, then the bolt would stop and no further damage would be caused. Now however you roll for each rank regardless, you still lose 1 strength per rank, but you roll for all rank whether the first or the second model is killed or not. I’m undecided on whether I like that or not, but it certainly makes bolt throwers more viable and removes a frustrating element on using them. For most bolt throwers it’s a 50–50 chance to hit a unit in the first place with their crew’s ballistic skill so in the past if you then failed to wound the first or second model after hitting it was always quite frustrating, now you know if you hit you can at least roll all the damage so you are most likely to get at least a few wounds which is nice in itself but I can’t comment on the wider implications of that in the game.
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