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Sorry if this is posted in the wrong forum, I'm posting it in the General Discussion forum too just in case.

Anyways, my girlfriend and I are just getting in to WHFB. I have the Lizardmen Battallion and she's thinking about buying Battle for Skull Pass to play Dwarfs. I've always heard that Dwarfs are a very defensive race and should be played defensively. However, after comparing the stats of a Dwarf Warrior and a Saurus Warrior, I noticed that the Dwarfs aren't better in any aspects than my Saurus. The only differences I could see were that my Saurus have M4 (Dwarfs at M3), have S4 (Dwarfs at S3) and have 2 attacks each (Dwarfs at 1). Everything else is the same, so how does this make Dwarfs a defensive race? If there's something I don't know about Dwarfs (which is probably the case seeing as how I'm just getting in to the game and know very little) could someone please enlighten me? What makes Dwarfs a viable race? And are they really a defensive race?

Thanks.

What makes Dwarfs a defensive race is that they tend to rely on shooting to weather out the first couple of rounds of combat before the opponent reaches them (rare for a Dwarf player to get the charge off on an enemy unit).

The army book as it is really encourages a shooty build, and such lists tend to sit back and dig in until the enemy reaches their lines. Dwarfs for the most part have very good armor-saves all around, and T4 is nothing to sneeze at.

Also, keep in mind that LM are a new army book, and there's always a bit of power-creep as newer books roll out.

I've heard other people say that Dwarfs work very well within the parameters of Empire, Dwarfs and Orcs and Goblins. These three books were released fairly close together and in a rare display of GW consistency, complement each other fairly well.

Then followed High Elves (ASF and dragons, lots of dragons), Vampires (Super hard characters and unending supply of troops), Daemons (core troops that can be made damn near unkillable), Dark Elves (Eternal Hatred and unending supply of power dice) and Lizardmen (customisable Slann and stegadons, lots of stegadons).

None of these are unbeatable, but are considered a notch (or several notches in the case of DoC) above the first three in terms of army composition and options.

coops409 wrote:The only differences I could see were that my Saurus have M4 (Dwarfs at M3), have S4 (Dwarfs at S3) and have 2 attacks each (Dwarfs at 1).

Well, Elves and Humans are 90% all S3 T3 with 1 attack. This isn't like 40k where you get all these bonus attacks for charging, everything within 2" gets to attack, etc.

What you get is what's in btb. So just for a front line fight, your saurus warriors should get to charge (attack first) with 10 attacks, hitting on 4's, wounding on 4's. The dwarves/saurus probably have the same save (4+?), so game wise you probably killed 2 dwarves. Now the D get to hit back with 5 attacks, hitting on 4's, wounding on 4's.

As you can see there is quite a bit of difference, which is why the points difference per model and which is why combat resoulution, ranks, banners, etc are so important.

So to compensate, the dwarves are going to shoot the hell out of you while you treck 8" across the board to get to them. That's why they're defensive. They know they're not going to get the charge, so they are going to dis-spell all your magic and cause you to come.

I like Dwarves just because they like to drink beer and have Gyro-copters But I play Empire, which is all S3, T3 just like elves and most of Fantasy.

I see, I see. Well I did forget to mention that I run my Saurus 6 wide and give them spears, so first round of combat (if I charge) I get 13 attacks, and second round I get 25. But I see why they're defensive now, thank you very much.

The biggest problem with Dwarfs is that what they do to be competitive most players (Dwarf players and opponents) find to make a boring game.

They tend to be very static and one dimensional. They have a good selection of Heavy Infantry, ranged infantry, and artillery, but nothing else. Also, your opponent will always choose where he fights you, due to M3, no cavalry, no Skirmishers, and no flyers.

You also ought to compare the cost of 20 Saurus Warriors to the same cost of dwarf warriors. You'll find you're outnumbered like 2-1

For all the so called "Boredom" that dwarves bring, I like to think that Dwarf playing is smart playing.

Why get into a costly, perhaps deadly close combat when you can fill your opponent's skull full 'O lead. Quarrlers and Thunderers can easily remove Flyers and Skirmishers. and Cavalry will die to Organ Gun Fire.

Crazy_Carnifex wrote: ...and no flyers.

Besides Gyrocopters with their fast-cav style flee & rally rules?

They are terrible and I would recommend you stay away from them.

I started the game with them. This is how bitter I have become.

If you are going to play "competitively" or are going to play a game to try and win, your opponent can very easily beat a Dwarf Player.

Quite simply, kill the Dwarf missile troops and the Warmachines, and then avoid the blocks.

Most armies can be on you in two turns, and more than likely you can not kill enough of them before they hit your softer missile/WM units - at this point they can just move away from your blocks that they can't beat (or just force a flank the ones they can), and then get a win.

An anvil changes this significantly in the Dwarf players favor, but even then against the hardest armies, it will not work and makes the game exceptionally boring.

Bottom Line You have to play dwarfs because you WANT to play the army, know how it's played, and are willing to live with the limitations that are inherent to a M3 army. If you and your group are going to be remotely competitive, and you are going to play games with the intention of winning them as opposed to just pushing models about and having a beer, then I would wholeheartedly recommend you stay far, far away from Dwarfs, because in that environment playing them is like banging your head against a wall.

Didn't a Dwarf Player make it in the top ten?

Probably not.


Dwarfs aren't awful. They have problems when you don't understand target priority.

Top 10 of what?

I think the issue is that the build with the best chance at really, really hanging with the big dogs (anvil gunline) is generally considered pretty boring to play with and against. You can take a different build, but you're going to accept that it's something of an uphill battle at that point.

RZ

From what I've seen Dwarfs can be tooled to beat just about anything, but they don't do well in a tournament environment because they can't tool up against every list.

I tried playing them once but got bored as I couldn't deal with their movement.

I remember that a thorek anvil of doom list placed top 10 in a tourney. Just can't remember what the tourney was. All I remember was the majority were daemons in top 10 and one dwarf.

That was heat 2 of the british GT if i am not mistaken.

O ye of little faith.

Dwarfs are actually a very good army, better in a tournament as opponents won't drop all their magic when they face you.
They have a few good things going for them.

1) Dam near no-one can go toe to toe with a dwarf lord. A decently built lord will kill any char out there with the exception of a dark elf with the power fist (forget name) and a thirster. Both of these chars can be easily beaten by taking the item that limits their str to 5 (an expensive rune though).
My personal build - shield bearers, rune of stone, great weapon, rune of 'i get to have a greatweapon', rune of fury, rune of '+1 to hit', and rune of 'reroll failed armor saves'
This gives the guy a rerollable 1+ save and 5 str 6 attacks that hit on 2+ against rank and file, 3+ against ws7 chars. And he is immune to killing blow to boot.

2) All other chars are sturdy.
Dwarf thanes pack a 1+ or 2+ save all the time and can be easily geared to murder rank and file troops as well as give chars a hard time.

Even the dispel scroll caddy can pack a punch with a 2+ save and runic weapon or a great weapon.

3) tough troops
Your scrubs are WS4, T4, 3+ save.
This puts your elite infantry on par with most other infantry/cav.

4) high leadership and greatest access to immune to fear in a non-fear causing army.
You can have up to 4 units that are immune to fear if you want it. More can be virtually immune by way of having double US and on a 20 man unit that is a lot of guys to outnumber.
While on the subject of crazy banners, you can have three units with the warbanner (or its equivalent). How cool is that?


5) crazy good shooting.
Dwarfs have access to the most customizable war machines out there.
Cannons that don't misfire.
Flaming stone throwers that reroll misses.
Organ guns that mow down any sort of heavy cav and/or skirmishers.


Dwarfs have one downside
They are slow
Now, granted this is a HUGE downside with your fastest guy after the gyrocopter being movement 3.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Wops, hit submit. Well continuing on.

So you have this huge downside. But it can be mitigated.

1) you have to have some shooting. This is just a fact of life. Dwarfs cannot allow the enemy to sit around and setup the perfect charge. They must convince the enemy to come to them quickly. This is only accomplished by convincing them that another turn spent pointlessly standing around taking damage is not a good idea.

2) protect your flanks. This is even more important with dwarfs as if your flanks start to crumble you cannot move your army to fix the problem.
Fortunately you have the perfect solution. Dwarf hammers are stubborn, can be immune to fear, and you should always have a BSB.
This rule really should go for your entire front line army. Protect yourself. Make sure that all units can take a charge and live. This is usually accomplished through the use of stubborn or sticking a combat char in the unit. Dwarfs are actually pretty good at taking a charge one turn and throwing it back the next.

3) Don't needlessly sacrifice your shooting elements. This is actually the cause of almost all of my loses when using the dwarfs. Don't stick the war machines so far out you cant protect them, keep them between units, behind units, in a forest, anything to prevent the easy points from dying. They may be stubborn but in this day and age it isnt enough.


4) Remember, you aren't gonna flank em. Since you are so incredibly slow you probably wont be flanking the enemy any time soon. Keep this in mind when building your army. Make sure you can take out most units in a head to head fight with most of yours. Use characters to supplement your units when you need to (you have three combat char slots if you don't take an anvil).

I personally take three combat units.
Two are hammerers, one with the lord, one with a thane.
The third is a unit of longbeards with the BSB and runesmith. This army is incredibly tough and will not fold to anything less than the hardest of combats. Its flanks are always protected due to being stubborn/warmachines and it is immune to fear throughout.

What difference does it make if your Dwarf Lord can go toe-to-toe with any other character out there, when any other character out there can simply not fight the Dwarf Lord and his unit?

Master Rune of Challenge? Great, half the field or more is now Immune to Psychology and it doesn't work on them. And if you're building the Dwarf Lord no one can stand up to, you can't take the Master Rune of Challenge and the other kit, so that's two characters in one block. That's M3. That will be avoided all game.

Shooting Elements mean very little when you can do nothing to really redirect or intercept enemy chargers.

Elf shooty lists work because they can re-direct you, charge or cut off your offensive units with Cavalry or other faster units.

With Dwarfs, you can line up lots of Cav up against the Dwarf shooting, and they can't kill it all.

If I take 3 units of Chaos Knights, or Flesh Hounds, or Brett Lances, or *insert heavy hard to kill cav here* then they can simply win the game by just charging headlong at your missile units and Warmachines.

You can't kill them all, or not enough of them, and your missile units and WM's will give up enough points to win the game for your opponent, and your blocks can just sit there looking for a way to get a charge off that will never happen.

Dude, they are dwarves. Learn your lessons, collect your grudges and take the fight to the enemy! Oath stones, baby.

I never considered before the Rune Smiths get a decent armour save at least, even if they are only two wounds. Score.

Sad voodo...

Sure, if i place my guys in a position to allow you you can charge across the field and kill my war machines.

First off, chaos knights and brets aren't immune to psych, so rune of challenge (i gave you my lord build). Half the field you mentioned is all of vamps and daemons. Those are the armies that have no shooting and will have to kill something in combat to win the game. How many hound units do you field? How are you gonna kill enough to win without killing the blocks. will sacrifice all of 120 pts on one flank or the other, you gonna kill both and not take any damage - thats a tie.

Or, i could march my blocks forward a little, keep a couple war machines protected by my blocks (in between the blocks cannot be charged). and hang farther back with the shooty guys.

And with most of those units if i kill half of it I paid for the points of the war machine it is going to kill (bolt thrower is 60 pts with engineer).

All I have to do is not sacrifice the war machines and you will have to take out at least one of my blocks or accept a tie. And if you piddle around trying to get the perfect flank charge the organ guns will own you.

In the two turns it takes you to cross the table I can do enough damage you will not win by just killing shooty guys. That's the key, if you divert your heavy stuff to kill my war machines that leaves your light stuff to kill the blocks (light guys will rarely kill dwarf war machines).

cypher wrote:Sad voodo...

Sure, if i place my guys in a position to allow you you can charge across the field and kill my war machines.

First off, chaos knights and brets aren't immune to psych, so rune of challenge (i gave you my lord build). Half the field you mentioned is all of vamps and daemons. Those are the armies that have no shooting and will have to kill something in combat to win the game. How many hound units do you field? How are you gonna kill enough to win without killing the blocks. will sacrifice all of 120 pts on one flank or the other, you gonna kill both and not take any damage - thats a tie.

Or, i could march my blocks forward a little, keep a couple war machines protected by my blocks (in between the blocks cannot be charged). and hang farther back with the shooty guys.

And with most of those units if i kill half of it I paid for the points of the war machine it is going to kill (bolt thrower is 60 pts with engineer).

All I have to do is not sacrifice the war machines and you will have to take out at least one of my blocks or accept a tie. And if you piddle around trying to get the perfect flank charge the organ guns will own you.

In the two turns it takes you to cross the table I can do enough damage you will not win by just killing shooty guys. That's the key, if you divert your heavy stuff to kill my war machines that leaves your light stuff to kill the blocks (light guys will rarely kill dwarf war machines).

Your lord build doesn't have the Master Rune of Challenge, and if you're playing in an open list tournament (ie. most of the US GT's I've ever heard of or been to), then his unit will be given a wide enough berth by anything susceptible to it. In a worst case scenario, the opposing player will flee with whoever you challenge; but if they're playing smart they're going to rush every fast thing they've got straight at your missile units and try to break through your lines, at which point they're in the back field and are lining up shots on your Warmachines.

And I fail to see how you can't place your guys in a position to be charged, they're missile troops, they will be in a spot to shoot, which means they're in a spot to be charged. You dont' have fast cav or easy redirectors to fly out in front of them at the last minute and pull the chargers out.

You can place some WM's in between blocks which makes getting at them hard, but not all of them can go there unless you're only taking two (since you have three blocks).

As far as WM's go, you can get 60 Point Bolt Throwers, but they'll usually be 85 and 90 Points to get S7 and then a S7 one with Flaming. Then there's always the 120 point Organ Gun, and likely a fourth Warmachine, probably a Cannon or maybe a Grudge Thrower. They start near 100 points and are likely runed, so they can cost upwards of 125 (Cannon with Rune of Forging).

As a Dwarf you're FORCED to take shooting, as you and others pointed out; otherwise your opponent can spend all day lining up the perfect charge and force a flank opening with multiple units. It's likely you'll have upwards of 240 points minimum thrown into missile units (2x10 Quarrelers), likely more, and then points in War machines. It's not hard to get enough VP's from just that to build enough of a differential to win.

And yes, people who play hard lists will take 3 units of Flesh Hounds, and probably some flamers (who will shoot at your war machines, because it works). Plenty of lists can take more than enough Cav to ruin your day and it's likely you only have one Organ Gun that is priority target #1 for nearly everything. Other units like Fel Bats, Carrion, Gorgers, Shades w/ Great Weapons, Tunneling Teams, Scorpions, Tomb Swams, Furies, Harpies, soley exist to kill enemy warmachines and are cheap enough to be taken in multiples.

That and with the fact that many armies must take more shooting in general now, and given how hard Dwarf blocks are, the best target for said shooting and magic would be Dwarf Missile units and Warmachines.

This argument doesn't go much further than:

Dwarfs need to spend points in shooting.
Dwarfs can't threaten things in combat/movement without an Anvil.

Enemy armies best strategy is to bum rush dwarfs shooting units and war machines with multiple units of WM Hunters and Heavy Cavalry, as well as any shooting or magic they have.

At the end of the day, that's still the best way to get a win over Dwarfs and it's exceptionally easy to do with any army that's been optimized for tournament play.

VB's telling it like it is.

Dwaves without an anvil can't get in combat.
Dwaves with an anvil (and no fighting Lord) can't win combat.

That's why the list you see Dwarves take is the Thorek gunline. It tries to win without shooting, wrath and ruin at over power level every round to keep the enemy away from the shooters, then the haste rune to get the countercharge. It loses because the modern armies shrug off the shooting and destroy the easy points of the dwarf shooting, to say nothing of the chance that something goes wrong, either with the anvil or the dwarven war machines.

Well...
As a dwarf player I tend to disagree.

How about this, wait a few weeks and the so cal slaughter will be up and running (5 game GT style tournament)

Ill take the dwarfs and try to post battle reports.
I would post stuff from the previous tournament I went to but that was months ago and memory gets a bit fuzzy (it tells in a battle report).

By the by, i hide two organ guns between my blocks, or on the same side of the blocks to deny flankers.
I then take two unruned bolt throwers (60 pts, 65 if i want one flaming)
and 20 cross bow men

thats 335 pts in easy kills (well, as easy as T4 stubborn guys can be).

Forgot to put master rune of challenge on the lord. It is there.

Mainly, its there for high elf dragons, hydras, disk riding lvl 4 sorcerers, etc. The kinds of guys you don't want to have free reign on you. And dragon riding lords do NOT want to flee much in a game, epically when they are near a board edge.

And how much shooting do you guys see these days? A few flamers or dark elf crossbow men? I see very little over here from the newer armies. Enemy shooting doesn't bother me at all.

Red_Zeke wrote:

Crazy_Carnifex wrote: ...and no flyers.

Besides Gyrocopters with their fast-cav style flee & rally rules?

Let me rephrase that... No Good Flyers.

A guy at my local store actually just put together an all combat dwarf list without an anvil. its got two oathstones on the flank, the fun extra move banner, hammerers and rangers, or miners, on of the two. No missile troops or warmachines. The only game Ive heard of so far was against an all khorn daemon list. Believe it or not the flesh hounds and bloodcrushers (ie heralds riding with one blood crusher) didnt do too well.

Flesh hounds do terrible against dwarfs
They just don't cut it against T4 WS5 troops

Heralds on juggernauts are still very good vs dwarfs though.

cypher wrote:Flesh hounds do terrible against dwarfs
They just don't cut it against T4 WS5 troops

Heralds on juggernauts are still very good vs dwarfs though.

Which would be why they don't charge into the front of an elite unit, unless it's in tandem with a Bloodthirster or Jugger Herald.

But as stated, they make a bee-line for your Quarrelers and try to break through there.

That's the problem, you don't get to decide in any combats and all you can do is to hope to shoot down the opposition. Or take an Anvil.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Leith wrote:A guy at my local store actually just put together an all combat dwarf list without an anvil. its got two oathstones on the flank, the fun extra move banner, hammerers and rangers, or miners, on of the two. No missile troops or warmachines. The only game Ive heard of so far was against an all khorn daemon list. Believe it or not the flesh hounds and bloodcrushers (ie heralds riding with one blood crusher) didnt do too well.

And did the Bloodthirster then have a field day rear charging the rest of his Warriors?

That's the problem with Combat Dwarfs with minimal shooting:

You can't control the flying large targets who can get behind or in the flank of your vulnerable, expensive blocks (if you're playing all Combat Dwarfs, you have to start taking Warriors).
You come to find out people who CAN shoot and magic you, will, and then you learn that being redirected sucks a LOT more than it already does.

I'm surprised to find myself opposite Cypher on this one. I always thought your understanding of the game was similar to my own. I read your tacticas when I was first getting into this game. Its odd that we disagree on this.

I think VB is saying what I'm thinking here.

I think the SoCal slaughter will be won (in terms of Battle points, dunno bout soft scores) by a DoC list, a DE list, or a VC list.

@cypher,
If you do take your dwarfs then please post the battle reports! I love my stumpy little guys and they absolutely give all comers a hard fight. I love the anvil/'ere we go move!

By all means Cypher, I wish you the best; but I'm telling you that in a tournament experience Dwarfs have a terrible time of it.

They can do well enough against Daemons if they get lucky in the shooting phase and/or bring an Anvil, but in general I've found they have too many bad match ups.

It is possible, and the army has a place near and dear to my heart, so I wish you well.

um... the thirster... i dont know if there even was one. i think it may have tried to fight the lord or walked through the army while the other daemons just died to stuff. Tell the truth neither of the players involved in this story are very good players.
At any rate i think dwarfs and O&G are very competitive lists. Dwarfs do tend to be a bit boring in the shooting aspect, and O&G need nasty goblin tricks to beat nasty elf tricks, but overall i hold to the belief that (with the possible exception of Daemons) all armies are equal and some just appeal to a broader style of play.

I should mention that the dwarfs won the game agains khorne