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The premise of this list is 14 war machines.

edited to fix rule of pride

Heros:
Runesmith, shield, spellbreaking, balance, 147
Thane, BSB, RotFurnace, MR Gromil, Ro Resistance 145
Master Engineer, RoWarding 85


Core:
10 quarrellers, GW, shields 140
10 quarrellers, GW, shields 140
29 warriors, shields, full command 346
total core: 626


Special
x3 Grudge throwers, all with rune of accuracy, 2 engineers, all w/rune of penetrating, 1 w/rune of fire, 1 w/reloading 435
x3 cannon, 2 with rune of forging (1 of those w/fire) 375
x6 bolt throwers (3 engineers), rune of burning on three (1 w/valiant rune, 1 w/rune of seeking) 365

total special: 1210

Rare:
x2 organ guns 240

total: 2453

I think its just a matter of figuring out how much clean-up counter punch the dwarves need.

A LOT of people are just completely discounting the fact that empire/dawrves and orcs can take twice as many warmachines as before, and those warmachines got better without getting more expensive.

They certainly can't table an enemy army by themselves, but those armies will need a lot less in the way of combat units, considering how decimated the enemy will be.

At 2500 could you sneak in a shield rider and the anvil? I'm pretty sure he hits hard, a few units with great weapons sprinkled around your lines could be just the cleanup needed. With step-up, they won't be able to fight big blocks, but you can just use the grudge throwers to make big units into medium units

IMO gunlines got a lot worse for one reason.

BSB's let you reroll panic checks. You will be seeing a lot more units get into combat quicker, especially since the original gunline strategy was knock enough off a unit to panic them then move on. Your going to have a harder time panicking units off the table.

Will it be twice as hard to panic people?

Because there are twice as many war mahcines in the list.... And no one is guessing, and partials are gone.

As all this info comes together it is looking like the new paradigm for fantasy is going to be something like this.

gunlines
combat armies with blocks
fast cav based MSU

cavalry took a major hit in terms of its effectiveness against blocks of infantry. But it is still insanely fast with a phenomenal armor save. Blocks of infantry got tons more resilient against that cav, but with two new missions with VERY deep deployment zones, a gunline could just set up 40" away, let their war machines shoot until they misfire, then pick off remaining units with bow/handgun fire.

The three elements seem to have a paper rock scissors relationship. The more speed you've got, the better you do against shooting, but the worse you do against blocks, the more blocks you've got the more resilient you are against speed, and the more shooting you've got, the more blocks just hate slogging across the table.

Dwarves have to throw speed right out. An army that mixes the right blend of gunline and block combat will do very well against both speedy warmachine killer armies and against slogging infantry blocks. Empire can bring speed and gunline, ut can't really do the blocky gunline that dwarves can do. And orcs can do both, but their gunline is the weakest of the three.

All three seem viable if well constructed, but each will have a weakness.

Shep wrote:I think its just a matter of figuring out how much clean-up counter punch the dwarves need.

A LOT of people are just completely discounting the fact that empire/dawrves and orcs can take twice as many warmachines as before, and those warmachines got better without getting more expensive.

Yes, I'm quite worried about what to do to counter this . My army already doesn't panic (immune to psychology for every unit) so that wasn't a problem, but getting shot to pieces was. I had trouble surviving walking across the field with enough punch to still take on dwarf blocks in 7th edition, the few times I played them. Now... it looks much, much scarier! Especially if they know I'm coming and make a lot of their artillery flaming attacks

RiTides wrote:Especially if they know I'm coming and make a lot of their artillery flaming attacks

I promise I'll take at least a couple of dragon prince units in every game just to keep them honest.

Lol... Cheers for that . It might be some small consolation as I watch my army burn...

With a rune of accuracy and an engineer a grudge thrower has the potential to reroll both the scatter and the artillery dice (unless the errata says otherwise).

Um...yes. I don't imagine that will change from 7th to 8th.

Honestly, I feel like people aren't looking at the whole Gunline thing correctly. Sure there are more of them, and sure you don't guess, but how often was guessing that big of a deal? Where I play, the guys with the stone throwers and the cannnons get to within at least 2" of where they want to be, though often 1/2" or even less. I don't think it will matter that much. The scatter die and the artillery die are what stops war machines from being killing machines. A 1/6 chance of a misfire, and at least a 1/6 chance of rolling something else that's useless (like a 2 or a 10), which means that a minimum of 33.3% of your shoots will still go wild. Bolt throwers got better in that there's more of 'em, but that's it.

And with the emphasis on big infantry blocks, it will be harder to panic them. Will it all balance out? I dunno. I have some (emphasis on some) faith in GW.

The loss of partial hits also helps guess artillery, though... GW is believing in large blocks, but with magic possibly making a unit disappear from the board in a single phase, and more and more artillery, I'm not sure how many big blocks of expensive troops we'll see. Goblins, of course... but anything more than that? It will probably depend on the gaming setting.

Or maybe the erratas will put a limit on the number of artillery each army can take (I can dream, right?)

Gunline dwarfs are going to be overpowered, grudgethrowers with rune of accuracy are going to hit more often than not if you have a master engineer ure unlikely to misfire also. No partials now so unit of 20 =18 hits who cares if you can re-roll panic tests if theres 2 guys left in your 20 man unit. Indirect fire is also an option now and with master engineer if you roll 2/4/6 -5 to scatter so your gunna still land where you want.

Shooting in 2 ranks is very nice aswell now you can castle up alot easier.

All in all and from the few games i have had with new edition i think dwarfs have benefited alot.

Ok grudge throwers now hit on str 3 with armor saves.

So you hit say 16 T3 models
8 of those will wound
They have a 5+ armor save (not uncommon for cheap core RNF)
They save 3 of those
you get 5 wounds.

Now lets look at T4
16 hits
about 5 wounds
they have a 3+ save
about 1.75 wounds...

Armor saves REALLY hurt stone throwers, and thats assuming you hit smack in the middle of the unit.

Well, dwarf gunlines have benefitted. And I hate gunlines. Damn turtle armies.

Sure, partials will help. But I think partials will help more against things that aren't rank n' file. Ever see a guy try to hit a Dragon, or a Chariot, or even just a unit of knights with a stone thrower? It was stupid (hmmm...looks like you got...one partial hit on my chariot with your flame cannon. Or perhaps three partials on those knights with your grudge thrower).

And yes, the G.Thrower that is Accurate and has a Master Engineer in the works will be quite accurate. A 1/36 chance of misfire is basically non-exsistant on a game-by-game basis, but that scatter die is still up in the air (technically an infinite number of possibilities, but basically eight). But you can still roll a 6, 8, or 10 on the artillery die...and how many points is this thing worth, now? I think the correct way to look at it is that it will be able to make up it's points.

Don't forget, though, that those rocks are only S3, and allow normal saves. So 18 hits on empire spearmen = 9 wounds and maybe 8 with saves, so you've gained 40 points this turn. Not bad. Good even. But not devestating.

ShivanAngel wrote:Ok grudge throwers now hit on str 3 with armor saves.

So you hit say 16 T3 models

Well a grudge thrower is S9(3) and can be made S9(4) with a rune. The models under the round template take the S9 and the partials would take a S3 or S4 hit.

olympia wrote:

ShivanAngel wrote:Ok grudge throwers now hit on str 3 with armor saves.

So you hit say 16 T3 models

Well a grudge thrower is S9(3) and can be made S9(4) with a rune. The models under the round template take the S9 and the partials would take a S3 or S4 hit.

No the model under the central hole takes the S9, everything else takes a S3

ShivanAngel wrote:

olympia wrote:

ShivanAngel wrote:Ok grudge throwers now hit on str 3 with armor saves.

So you hit say 16 T3 models

Well a grudge thrower is S9(3) and can be made S9(4) with a rune. The models under the round template take the S9 and the partials would take a S3 or S4 hit.

No the model under the central hole takes the S9, everything else takes a S3

You sure about that? If so that does suck for the grudgethrower even if it is bumped to S4.

olympia wrote:

ShivanAngel wrote:

olympia wrote:

ShivanAngel wrote:Ok grudge throwers now hit on str 3 with armor saves.

So you hit say 16 T3 models

Well a grudge thrower is S9(3) and can be made S9(4) with a rune. The models under the round template take the S9 and the partials would take a S3 or S4 hit.

No the model under the central hole takes the S9, everything else takes a S3

You sure about that? If so that does suck for the grudgethrower even if it is bumped to S4.

Yeah im sure.

You can add rune of penetrating for +1 strength so it would be strength 4 for any model not under the hole you can even add 2 or 3 rune of penetrating but 2 wid accuracy is your best bet.

The Rulebook says strength 9 under the hole and strength 3 for the rest under the template, so you can still add strength to it with dwarf runes.

So it's got 14 artillery pieces and a big block of warriors to secure a flank. Runesmith should provide some magic defense to keep the war machines alive. The grudge throwers are all S4 and one of them is flaming. I'll need to proxy this list a few times before I break the bank on all the pewter siege weapons!

For fun drop the warrior unit and the thane/runesmith and get thorek and another unit of quarrellers or thunderers and go pure shooty. =)

bennyboy6189 wrote:For fun drop the warrior unit and the thane/runesmith and get thorek and another unit of quarrellers or thunderers and go pure shooty. =)

Originally I had planned an anvil runelord and just shooting core units. That may be the way to go after all.

Im throwing down against some Dwarves today at 2250 pts. I'll be useing my WE's so it should be interesting. Then again maybe Ill use my empire and see who's gunline is better.

If your going runelord just get thorek hes such a beast and as you can always strike on 2+ wid re-roll, there going to be coming at you very slowly combined with 14 warmachines its not gunna be nice lol.

If your playing wood elfs i think you might struggle i think using empire would be a better choice against dwarfs.

First, doesn't the Errata say Thorek can only re-roll once/game or something? Second, yeah, he's better. But I know a lot of people prefer to avoid special characters because the game can get so one-sided (and a lot of tournaments 'round these parts don't let ya' bring 'em).

As for the whole Grudge Thrower thing...yeah, not S9 under the whole effin' template. C'mon. No partials is a good boost, but S3 w/full saves makes it not broken.

I still don't think they're going to be as devastating as some say. They will be better. But I doubt they'll win hands-down.

Regardless to say dwarves got a heck of alot better, the guy I played against today pull a 15" charge against my spearmen, too bad my int is higher, I had more attacks and a 15 man detachment of helbrediers. His gunline was more effective then mine but mortars rock hard. Plus cav isnt nearly as good as it once was, got bogged down by a unit of longbeards for three turns until I broke and finally ran.

Warpsolution wrote:First, doesn't the Errata say Thorek can only re-roll once/game or something? Second, yeah, he's better. But I know a lot of people prefer to avoid special characters because the game can get so one-sided (and a lot of tournaments 'round these parts don't let ya' bring 'em).

As for the whole Grudge Thrower thing...yeah, not S9 under the whole effin' template. C'mon. No partials is a good boost, but S3 w/full saves makes it not broken.

I still don't think they're going to be as devastating as some say. They will be better. But I doubt they'll win hands-down.

No dwarf players gunna leave there grudgethrowers with no runes strength 3 means you need 5's to wound against half the armies. The minimum there going to use them at is strength 4 maybe strength 5 if there taking 3 of them as you need different rune set ups. Grudgethrowers are now perfect for light armoured units and big multi wound guys, lord on dragon aint gunna last long vs 3 grudgethrowers d6 wounds at strength 9 to rider and mount.

Well, of course they're gonna' put the runes on them, but that's 25pts/strength. 50 more points for S5...it's devastating, alright, but it still allows a -2 armour save now, and it is 50 points more than another war machine without getting any more durable.

It's good, sure, but not broken.

155 points for grudgethrower at strength 5 and reroll scatter dice is well worth the points when you can kill 18 swordmasters/ any other unit with 5+ armour in 1 round.

It sounds very deadly indeed, but 155 points per machine is still quite expensive. 3 of those would already be nearly 25% of a 2000p army. What the Dwarf army will do however is absolutely wreck any monsters / monster riders. Bolt throwers took a small nerf though in the fact that monsters in cover are at -1 to hit and there is no large target bonus anymore.

I actually prefer the Empire Mortar to most war machines, because it shoots the large blast template at -1 AS modifier, hitting every model of practically every unit, for a bargain price of 75 points each.

War machines are easily the deadliest ranged weapons in the game now, especially as they can now nearly always see their targets because of true LOS, hit more accurately than before, and don't suffer from to-hit modifiers like every other missile troop now will.