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So I bought some dwarves off a friend and picked some up my self and have had some real success with them at lower point levels (Not gonna lie Gorten's feat does a good chunk of work). But I know as I play more people and higher points were more stuff begins to come out of the wood works I may have some issues. So I was wondering if any of you dwarf merc players could give me some advice about running dwarves and what to look for. Also mainly are hammerfall shield guys good and should I go searforge or one of the big two, any advice is much appreciated.

I am not a dwarf player myself, but I was planning on starting with them at one point so I do know a little bit. My opinion is that running Gorten four star is preferable because Kayazi love Solid Ground very very much. (edit) forgot about Sylyus. He does very good things for Gorten...5 focus just hurts and Sylyus can make it hurt slightly less, especially with Gorten's spell list.

I won't set this in stone because it's only based on stuff I have picked up on the interwebs, but the shield guys are not the best things you could be running.

Gorten does good work in both contracts, but Solid Ground shines under 4 Star and Highborn. Searforge lacks the high DEF, low ARM or Tough infantry that really takes advantage of the spell. Kayazy, Nyss, and Boomhowler's are the best for that.

The Gun Corps are handy, though their short range and slow speed somewhat hampers their offensive capabilities. They're durable and Rock Wall can keep melee troops off of them. I like to take them with the UA and Ossrum because of Snipe and the mini feat.

Any way you go, you'll want Thor. He's too useful. I like giving him a Basher or a Blaster or two. And a Tuned Up Driller with Strength of Granite and full focus will destroy almost anything.

Since Gorten doesn't have, well, any disposable focus, I keep him with the all melee Driller and gun bunnies. Sylys helps make that focus go a little further, or you could look into the Minion Lesser Warlocks from Hordes. 4S, HB, and SF all have access to at least one, and they effectively replace a heavy warjack in your army, thus removing some burden from Gorten.

Personally, I prefer to take Gorten in Searforge because I really like that extra 4" of deployment (also, Gorten plus 3 Earthbreakers is a thing). However, the extra options afforded by the other two contracts are probably more powerful and certainly more versatile overall.

Being a dwarf player I can tell you that the searforge contract is useless besides being able to say that you played it. Highborn gives you all the same options plus many MANY more. Options that make dwarf centric lists much more competitive. 4star as well, but I usually use highborn. Gotten is a solid scenario caster but has the obvious drawbacks of shoddy focus and SPD. Highborn gives access to sylys who frees up a focus point which let's you upkeep SOG, max out a jack, and caster a 2foc spell.

Since I usually run highborn, I always take an arcane tempest unit instead of the high shields. High shields aren't bad but they don't really work with gorten and solid ground that well whereas arcane tempest gun mages fit perfectly with him and they are far superior at ranged combat than the high shields.

Thanks for the advice and I agree I have found tempest to be a better fit than highsheild who I think might work better with ossrum.

You'll want at least 1 unit of Horgenhold Forge Guard. They bring a credible melee unit that is also fairly durable to the table, which is good because Dwarf melee heavies are expensive.

Often, people run just a bunch of gun bunnies with Forge Guard to do the heavy lifting once melee starts. Gun bunnies are very focus efficient, you'll often run 3-5 of them at once.