Grombrindal

From 2d4chan
Revision as of 20:48, 10 December 2014 by 1d4chan>ThatOneBruvva
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This angry motherfucker right here.

Grombrindal, a.k.a. "The White Dwarf", is a unique special character from Warhammer Fantasy Battle associated with the Dwarves army. On a meta-level, he is the iconic character for which their gaming magazine White Dwarf is named. In-universe, he is a mysterious dwarven warrior with an impressively long, white beard who sometimes appears when dwarves are beset by a particularly great and terrible battle, hurling himself into the fray and assuring the eventual victory of dwarfkind.

Who 'The White Dwarf' is nobody knows, but a theory that many fans share and which Games Workshop heavily teases is that he is the spirit of Snorri Whitebeard, last High King of the Dwarves before The War of the Beard.

In essence, before Malekith got his douchebag ass burned to a crisp by Asuryan, he and Snorri were best buds, so much so that when Snorri lay dying, Malekith was invited to see him on his deathbed. Snorri asked Malekith to agree to his dying oath that dwarves and elves would always be friends, and Malekith agreed. As we all know, Malekith later broke that oath by manipulative the dwarves and the elves into a hugely destructive war that ruined both races. The theory goes that this heinous betrayal of a sworn deathbed oath between two once-best friends was so mystically powerful it hauled Snorri's soul out of the dwarven afterlife, and ever since he has been determined to exact vengeance upon all enemies of dwarfkind. One must wonder how Malekith would explain this to his dwarf bud now that he got to be king of all the Elves evar, and thus isn't as much of a vindictive asshole.

In a meta sense, he serves as a living example of the lost vision of Games Workshop as a company, as Grombrindal was invented back in the days when creativity was touted above marketing (and before they decided to focus on their cash cows). Rules weren't pointlessly overcomplicated for the sake of dosh, and armies didn't cost entire organs and limbs. In short, Games Workshop GOT SHIT DONE, and the dwarf was a strong figure. However, soon GeeDubs fell for the allure of the money and began exploiting all sorts of methods just to gather more, and in these days, the Dwarf just...vanished, and the magazine followed some time after. Some say this was the dwarf attempting to abandon ship as the world he knew got sold out for more money. With the 2014 reboot of the magazine, Grombrindal was found once more, but now he is just a hollow shell of his former glory, used only to answer tedious questions, practically all of them being about a universe in the far future, answered by the powers of the corporation. In a similar way, Geedubs tries almost too eagerly to appeal to everyone, but consistently missing the bigger goal by making things more costly, even if thing became more streamlined.

On the Tabletop

His last official posted stats appeared in White Dwarf #348, where he was described as being a Lord choice for a Dwarves army. For 500 points, you get a melee monster with Movement 3, Weapon Skill 7, Ballistic Skill 4, Strength 4, Toughness 5, Wounds 4, Initiative 4, Attacks 4 and Leadership 10. In addition to the Ancestral Grudge, Resolute and Relentless special rules, he has No Fear (Unbreakable, plus will stay and fight even if the unit he is with breaks) and Disguised (can appear in any non-warmachine Dwarf unit the player wishes instead of being played in the open). For his gear, he sports the Rune Helm of Zhufbar (fleeing Dwarves within 12" automatically rally), Armor of Glimril Scales (1+ Armor Save and 4+ Ward Save), Rune Cloak of Valaya (Magic Resistance 3) and Rune Axe of Grimnir (+2 Strength, re-roll failed To Hit rolls and To Wound rolls, enemies hit must re-rolls successful armor saves).