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So I'm brand new to Warhammer. I've played 40K for a couple years but I'm just starting my dwarf army and I'll be having my first real game sometime this weekend. I was wondering if anyone out there had any tips for me as far as my strategy is concerned. I'll be up against Ogres and because I've just started my collection my list will be pretty limited. I'm hoping to board at least two thousand points, maybe 2500, but I'll be using at least a couple proxies.
Do you guys have any advice for me? Are there any obvious tactics for using dwarfs that I should know about, or is there anything specific I can plan for in fighting ogres that I can surprise my friend with?
I welcome all advise and I appreciate the help!

(I'm also new to the forum, so I'm sorry if this is in the wrong section or if I've already violated any of the rules.)

take warmachines and deep blocks of infantry with good armour. force alot of ld tests as most ogres have lf7

Yeah, I'm planning on fielding at least 3 cannons. My infantry will be 2 squads of warriors and 1 squad of long-beards each 4 ranks deep, plus two similarly sized quarreler squads.

tona7 wrote:Yeah, I'm planning on fielding at least 3 cannons. My infantry will be 2 squads of warriors and 1 squad of long-beards each 4 ranks deep, plus two similarly sized quarreler squads.

Take lots of Crossbows. All that you own. Give them great weapons.
Cannons misfire 1/6, fail to wound 1/6, and has the bounce stop if it fails to kill ogres, is not a great choice.

Crossbows are much better. With a shot at long, a shot at short, and a stand and fire, they're going to kill about as many ogres as a cannon would. The only difference is that the crossbows have a good shot in melee, with a hefty number of S5 attacks.


-Matt

If you can, do not let him charge. Ogre charges are devastating with a hefty amount of impact hits.

It can really depend on what he has.

I'd say flame cannon and organ guns > cannon and grudge throwers.

You can use Slayers and have a chance just duking it out. Depends on if it's an armored unit and equipped with what. But its close. Ironbreakers may also be able to hold them off, depending on whether or not they are GW Ogres and such.

It's a tough fight, certainly.

Take as many missile weapons as possable. They will actually do more damage then Cannons and Bolt Throwers.


Cannons have a pretty awful chance at bouncing through MI ironically enough. This is because the cannon ball has to kill an ogre before it can go to the next one, otherwise it lodges in the ogre's gut and stops right there.

it ends up being a 55.5% chance to kill a single ogre and go to the next one. This does NOT take into account the chances of Misfires or the cannon ball missing the unit completely. essentially a 44% chance of failure to do much at all.

Bolt throwers are even worse as they only do D3 wounds and need to roll to hit with BS.



Take as many Handgunners and/or Crossbowmen as possable if you wish to go shooty.

Thorek anvil and rangers with miners in support works well.

Yeah, I'm using a bunch of miners, I might proxy some of them into something else though, idk. The plan is to use heeeecka crossbowmen too.
I was sooo excited about cannons that I overlooked the whole monstrous infantry thing. :( but a grudge thrower sounds good. I like the flame cannon but it seems a little too close up for me. I feel like I want to be shooting for as long as possible.

The stone thrower for dwarfs is quite handy.
It is still muti wound so a direct hit should be taking out 1-2 per turn at least.
Especially with engineer and runes for getting to retarget it if it scatters.

I like the crossbows more than the handguns as the extra 6 inches of range lets you sit back those few inches to hopefully avoid a charge.

Great weapons n rank and file would be almost essential.

Also a horde of hammerers (30+ models), or GW armed warriors will make a hell of a mess of an ogre unit.

Grudge throwers are absolutely terrible against Ogres. They do 1 wound unless it's the center and it's str 3, unless it's the center. They base wound on 5+ not including any armor saves. On average you kill nothing (other than the center which is a max of 1 killed).

Grudge throwers are used against horde troops, or low T low W troops, which is exactly the opposite of Ogres. They'd shrug it off.

I stand corrected on the stone thrower, they have only ever hit my dragon dead on, or 1 wound rank and file, and had read the summary where it says Multiple Wounds (d6), the later description does indeed outline it is the whole only.

Aww, grudge thrower sounds interesting though. So the Str 3 hits wont do anything? I know they roll a 5+, but do they force enough hits to at least do a couple wounds?
I think maybe I'll go with the organ guns then.
But yeah, hella crossbowmen for sure!

Well, ogres have a 5+ armor save(Anyone who runs Bulls will be taking Ironfists) so they have a 1/3 chance to save the wounds you do cause, except the center hole.



A directly centered stone thrower will catch 9 ogres. 1 with the hole, 8 with the Str3. you could get more if you don't center it or you scatter, but you could easily get less.


8 str 3 hits will net you 3 wounds(rounded up) and the ogres will statistically save 1. The center hole will most likely wound and causes D3 wounds, equally likely.


So a direct hit with a Stone Thrower(IDK what the Grudge Thrower's special rules are so feel free to say if they change this) will net between 3 and 5 wounds on average. which only kills 1 ogre and may leave another with a couple of wounds on it.


It isn't bad, better then a cannon(the cannon ball has a pretty good chance of stopping short and not even killing a single ogre in addition to bounce and misfire variables)

You only get 9 hits on a direct hit (less than 1 in 3), and can only get 9 hits if ogres are ranked up deep.
My ogres have been doing fine going 4 or 5 wide, and 2 deep.
You'll cap at 6 hits, on a direct hit.

You can rune up that stone thrower to make it higher strength and more accurate, and add a master engineer for laser like targeting. But at that cost, you'll find that xbows kill just as many, and unlike the stone thrower, xbows with great weapons will kill a few ogres in combat. Possibly finishing off the unit.

-Matt

Like I said, organ gun I think is a lot better option. Even a flame cannon, but you're taking a big risk because of its short range.

The OG is onlygoing to get 5 hits on average and wound 2/3 of those, resulting in maybe 1 dead ogre. the Grudge thrower is upwards of 2. I usually run a pair of GT with Rune of Accuracy and Rune of Penetrating. Then it's about 5 hits (same) off of the hole, and one under, which comes to nearly one dead ogre there, and the almost assuredly dead one under the hole. The potential for kills is higher with the OG, but the averages are much higher with the GT.

A horde of slayers (30) would be great.

Go extra hand weapon... You get 2 attacks they always wound on a 4+ so will be great vs monsters as well.

I2 though, but that will be all dwarfs.

XHW is the worst equipment option for any horde as it only benifits the front rank. so you pay all those points fo 10 extra attacks.


Slayers can get GWs can't they? Take those, it benifits each rank.

I have a few recommendations.

1) Master Rune of Dismay. Ogres have fairly poor leadership. this rune can be a bit tricky to time right, but if you can really disrupt the enemies attack.

2) Master Rune of Challenge. Use this to sucker enemy units into traps. For example, take a deathstar Ogre charge on your Ironbreakers, then flank 'em with hammerers/slayers.

3) Cannons/Grudge throwers. Ogres use lots of monsters, so these can be great.

Grey Templar wrote:XHW is the worst equipment option for any horde as it only benifits the front rank. so you pay all those points fo 10 extra attacks.


Slayers can get GWs can't they? Take those, it benifits each rank.

Slayers can use both. The cost for it is figured into the unit. If they want to use AHW this combat, they do, and then can switch to GW for the next combat. If you are taking Giant Slayers then you may want to do AHW, as they will strike before the Ogres do. If there are characters in the unit, going GW is pointless, as the Slayer rule adds in the S bonus from GW to get to the T of the enemy. Therefore, against models of T5 or better, you ALWAYS want to take AHW, as you will wound exactly the same, but get more attacks.

i see

Thanks for the advice everyone! I ended up losing the game, but I think I did all right for my first game with dwarfs. In ended up being reaaaly educational.

So here's what went down. (excuse the newbie-ness of some of these remarks)

For troops I used 3 squads of 16 crossbowmen w/ shields and great weapons.
I also used 2 squads of 16 warriors each w/ shields and great weapons and a squad of longbeards w/ shields and great weapons.

My heroes were a Thane with a shield and great weapon and Master Rune of challenge, rune of resist, rune of stone. (he was with the longbeards)
Also I had a lone dragon slayer with a master rune of smiting. (he was by himself... )

My special was a squad of 16 miners with the steam drill and blasting charges.
My special artillery used an Organ gun, a cannon w/ a rune of forging, and a grudge thrower with a rune of accuracy and a rune of penetrating.

He used an 8 man squad of maneaters w/ dual pistols, an 8 man squad of leadbelchers, and an ogre train of bulls that were approximately 3 ogres wide and about 8 ranks deep. (I don't remember exactly). He also used 2 stonehorns.

My shooting was pretty good! I focused fire on the ogre train and was able to reduce it to just 2 ranks and some change. There the crossbowmen put in a good amount of work. The grudge thrower was reliable with the rune of stone increasing the strength of the template hit to 4. The organ gun did all right. I thought I needed to compensate for its lesser range by putting up closer, so a stonehorn broke it before I really got to see how well it would do. (it also sucks I can't put any runes on it.) The cannon did surprisingly well! the first time I shot it it made up for its points by killing at least 3 ogres. After that it became a target for the leadbelchers. it got in a second shot but I rolled a 1 to wound the first ogre and it stopped dead. :(

My close-combat was a flop. I tried to create a hammer and anvil kind of thing with the longbeards as the anvil and the slayer as the hammer. I used the rune of challenge to force the maneaters to charge, but they stopped short and decided to shoot the slayer dead instead. Then they charged the longbeards and beat them pretty quickly. None of my melee forces were very survivable, so when the ogres got into assault range my army just kind of fell apart. That was in part because of some stupid tactical errors I made and also in part because I wasn't sure how large to make my different squads.
Next time I'll make some larger, sturdier squads instead of a bunch of small ones that just died one by one.

What do you guys think?

Dwarf lord with a master rune of smiting. Swing into the rank and file ogres doing D6 wounds per hit, or teach an ogre character to fear the master rune of smiting.

Yeah, looks like you learned a lot for sure. I definitely would recommend no less than 20 for combat troops (your warriors). 30 is a better number, though.

Dwarves don't need quite as many per unit as some do, though, because they are pretty tough. My Gors need at least 30 to make sure they last more than one or two rounds of combat.

How many Long Beards did you take?

Oh, just noticed: shields and Great Weapons is not usually a great combo, because you don't get to use the shield at all in combat. Usually people like to drop the shields to save points and just use the GW because dwarves are slow to begin with. In that regard, if you want the Long Beards to be your anvil, I would definitely leave them as Hand Weapon/Shield. Especially against Ogres that are just as slow as you

Other than that...any model on its own is going to be really easy to kill, especially a slayer that doesn't have a save.

Yeah, I was almost embarrased by the slayer kill when it happened.
And I'll rethink the shileds next time at least on a couple things. Like probably none of my crossbowmen ended up needing shields because they were all situated under cover (either in a forrest or in a haunted mansion). And with the extra points saved I could have almost bought another cannon.

That's the big reason to only take things you really need; you can sometimes take more cool stuff

Sounds like a good game.

I'm glad you filled us in on what happened. Most of the time someone drops in for advice and never returns to let us know how it panned out.