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So, after 6 years of 40k, I've decided to start collecting a Dwarf army!

So far all I have got is the battalion box set, which for those of you that don't know contains:

- 32 Dwarf warriors
- 16 Thunderers (Well I assembled them as thunderers anyway)
- A cannon/ Organ gun

I'm pretty new to Fantasy in general, but dwarves were a natural choice as a starting army since the 40k universe is lacking in small stolid humanoids at the moment!
So what should I get next? I would like to play using a lot of artillery, but I'm not sure how organ guns and cannons measure up to other races, or which are better than the other. Any help and advice would be much appreciated.

One thing is that I'm not a fan of trollslayers. I might take a unit, but I definitley would not want my entire army to be made up of them.

My experience playing against the half pints.
Hammerers are a pain the fight could have been my luck but they did some damage and it hurt a lot i would use them if i played dwarfs.

Cannons are great take those for sure lots of damage lots of killy (not like 40k 1 hit this stuff kills lost of rank and file guys and heroes and everything it shoots def a good choice).

Those catapults are pretty good templates are really effective try rune of burning (the one that makes its attacks flammable).

Thunderers are good for sure so nasty str 4 and armor piercing so that does -2 to armor saves so most things dont get an armor save that way.

Lots of big guns but also possibly a cc unit or 2 just in case.

Dwarf warmachines can generally take runes hat make them very reliable and hurtfull, thunderers are powerfull and can kill loads, id say a cannon is better for small point games, because if they take a monster, your screwed otherwise.

Anyway, longbeards are brilliant if you can afford them, but the standard setup for warriors is great weapons, hell ini 2 means your going last anway, why not hit back with force!

Welcome to Warhammer Fantasy and the Grudge Bearers.

As for recommendations , I would say it would depend on what you are building and for what reason. You will notice that most tournement lists contain just about the same stuff.
Hammerers + Iron Breakers (awesome units) A unit of warriors or longbeards (with Lord) followed by a Rune Lord .

Magic you will find will often tip the scales in battle from one phase to the next . Dwarves though lack the cursed art. Have great chances in dispelling them. They also tend to make up for the lack of spellcasting with mass firepower.
You will find that most cannons / guns are special choices so you can load up on them!

Back to recommendations.

Depending on the points . I would proxy experiment with unit types . Units that stand out again . Rangers , Hammerers , Iron Breakers , Rune Lords .I also love quarelers as they can use great weapons in combat.

Hope this helps

A few thoughts:

The Anvil is sheer awesomeness. I think that every Dwarf army over 1500 points should have one.

Dwarf engineers, war machine runes and war machines are also sheer awesomeness. There's one rune ("penetrating?") that adds +1 to the strength of the shot...and they STACK.

With that stackable rune, you can pump up your Grudge Thrower catapults to S5 pie-plates that hit EVERY model under the pie plate. Zowie! Plus, you've got bolt throwers and cannon, too. Blaze away!

Lastly, Dwarven infantry should take 2H weapons whenever possible. Their Initiative score sucks anyway, and they'll rarely get the "charge" off, so why not have 'em hit like a ton of bricks when they finally DO get a chance to bash something - even if they swing last?

I haven't played dwarves, so take this with a grain of salt

I have seen miners used to great effect.

You don't need a magic phase of your own when you completely shut down your opponent's. Seriously, my friend starts with five dispel dice BEFORE winds of magic are rolled.

Other than that, everyone else has made very sound suggestions. I2 v I1 +2S? Yes, please!!!!!!

Last thing: slayers aren't very useful when they don't have a save and half of them are dead when they do get into combat. So I guess you're in luck!

I posted a pretty good guide on this thread on starting to collect dwarfs: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/363667.page

Start small or you will get overwhelmed. Make the warriors 2h warriors convert them to have 2h hammerers so they can be hammerers or warriors. I would make the initial shooting units quarrellers. And make a cannon not an organ gun. All you need from there is a Runesmith and BSB and I personally would grab a grudge thrower, they are that awesome. So this gives you:

Runesmith (RoResistance-Reroll AS, RoStone-+1AS, Shield) - 102
Thane (BSB, MRoGromri-1+AS) - 115
29 Warriors (Great Weapons + Full Command) - 315
16 Quarrellers (Great Weapons + Full Command) - 233
Cannon (Rune of Forging-Lets you reroll any misfires, Rune of Burning-flaming attack) - 130
Grudge Thrower (Rune of Accuracy-reroll scatter dice) - 105
1000

You can probably move RoResistance to the Thane, but I wrote this list a while ago and don't have my book handy to move around values. If you can get a Battle For Skull Pass dwarf army for about $50 then do it, but if you plan on buying the characters already mentioned and 3+ battalions down the line I would not bother.

Also I saw cost and longbeards noted above, if it's a personal choice buy the more expensive models but if you are looking for a cheap alternative, paint the longer bearded warriors beards white/gray and they can double as a longbeard.

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Sorry went back and reread you already made thunderers, so just swap out some Quarrellers for them and then maybe shave off a warrior and a thunderer to make room.

All i can say is get more organ guns and a grudge thrower or 2. I have 3 organ guns, a grudge thrower and a cannon and i can tell you my opponents are always scared of the organ guns. REMEMBER: organ guns auto hit and the amount of hits is re-rollable!!!!!
Also consider getting the anvil of doom as this will allow you to slow your enemys advance and give you way more shooting time. Finally, dont get just shooting units you need a few blocks of about 20-25 dwarfs to help hold the line when the enemy actually reaches you

I did the maths and for the costs of runing up a grudgethrower you can have almost two empire mortars for the cost, which also fire a large template.

A quick look at the dwarf list shows :

-Quarrelers and handgunners are too expensive. A 20 man squad of crossbows will deal 4.5 wounds against t3 at long range and costs 200+ points. That is not very imppressive.

-Ironbreakers are pointless. They are almost the cost of a chaos warrior with significantly worse stats.

-Hammerers are pretty decent, compared to empire greatswords they are only 2 more points for +1ws, +1t, +1s and +1ld.

-Rangers and Josef Bugman are actually pretty decent choices.

-Slayers are witch elves with worse stats.

If you want you can try out some small games (1000-1500) online first to see what kind of list you want to run and what models to buy. www.universalbattle.com

Question wrote:I did the maths and for the costs of runing up a grudgethrower you can have almost two empire mortars for the cost, which also fire a large template.

A quick look at the dwarf list shows :

-Quarrelers and handgunners are too expensive. A 20 man squad of crossbows will deal 4.5 wounds against t3 at long range and costs 200+ points. That is not very imppressive.

-Ironbreakers are pointless. They are almost the cost of a chaos warrior with significantly worse stats.

-Hammerers are pretty decent, compared to empire greatswords they are only 2 more points for +1ws, +1t, +1s and +1ld.

-Rangers and Josef Bugman are actually pretty decent choices.

-Slayers are witch elves with worse stats.

If you want you can try out some small games (1000-1500) online first to see what kind of list you want to run and what models to buy. www.universalbattle.com

Yes handgunners are expensive, but they can do a lot of damage at range, and natural dwarf resilience (t4) means they stick around longer than other races missile troops.
And ironbreakers, yes they are vastly worse than a chaos warrior but they offer somthing that nothing else can provide in the dwarf codex, a effective anvil, T4 and a 3+ save and parry mean they stay around in any combat. The okay stats are just a bonus.