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After reading these two I'm really not sure which'd make the best artillery in a dwarf army, bolt throwers are half the points cost of a cannon while and seem to be a little more reliable when it comes to hitting things since you just use to shooter's BS for the roll rather than guessing and risking a missfire. While you could roll a 1 which I have a bad habit of doing and not kill anything further and a cannon allows you to roll a dice for each troop, which do you guys think is the best out of the two?

The cannon is vastly more reliable as you can reroll your misfires with the proper runes. Makes for a great gun.
Clocks in at arround the price of three BT though.

Depends what you need in your army. Kill rank and file - bolts. Kill monsters - cannon (str 10 vs str 6)

I also would throw in my support for the cannon, but bolt throwers with proper runes are still quite as if not more deadly than a cannon if used correctly.

Cannons are easier to do more damage.

Compared to the bolt throwers (which should always have engineers), cannon (which should always have rune of forging) is a bit pricey. The best use for master engineer is to pair him with cannon to make the best ranged monster hunter in the game. If one doesn't run a master engineer, it's not a bad idea to limit the warmachines to bolt throwers and organ gun(s) only as you can rune up the bt's for chariot busting with str 7. The 2-1 for bt's also helps with the limited special slots so you can use miners/hammerers for example.

don't engineers give dwarven cannons the ability to do d6 wounds instead of d3? I think that alone would make them the hands down choice for monsters and ogre-sized creatures.
I have to say though, bolt throwers only seem to impress me if they catch cavalry with a flanking shot.. Against my clanrats I just go "pfft, whatever.." and lose 3-5 five point rats..

themandudeperson wrote:don't engineers give dwarven cannons the ability to do d6 wounds instead of d3? I think that alone would make them the hands down choice for monsters and ogre-sized creatures.
I have to say though, bolt throwers only seem to impress me if they catch cavalry with a flanking shot.. Against my clanrats I just go "pfft, whatever.." and lose 3-5 five point rats..

Runed up bolt throwers work pretty well hunting monsters too, altough vs. Skaven spesifically cannon is certainly a better choice (even without master engineer) as it can snipe weapon teams behind units.

At tournaments here in Australia I think I've seen 2 cannons in the last 3 yeaars.

Bolt throwers and organ guns are all that is usually taken.

my normal setup for my dwarfs:

bolt thrower
engineer
rune of +1 str
rune of immolation

bolt thrower
engineer
rune of +1 str

cannon
rune of reroll misfire

organ gun

i always run one master engineer. i entrench the organ gun and then put the ME with the cannon, making it do d6 wounds. just yesterday i played against OnG who ran 2 giants, and i took one giant down with a single 6 wound cannonball.

i place the immolation BT on a far flank, so when it gets charged it usually kilsl or really hurts whatever charged it.

Yeah, that poor giant never had a chance. Poor big fella. Yeah and I do like the rune of immolation for the war machine on the flank. It will almost always be charged by fast elements, and hurts them when they do. I like 1 cannon and 2 bolt throwers. Gives you a little of everything.