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So the title pretty much says it all. I've always admired the models and am pretty sold on getting into the game. I'd like something else to play other than WH40K. I was thinking of running mercenary dwarves and was hoping for a synopsis before I went out and dropped cash. I was curious as to how they stack up with the other factions, maybe some list ideas. Also was kinda curious on the strengths of the other factions. I'm not asking for a book or a lecture as I know people have lives. Something to the effect of:

Faction 1 - Shooty, High Mobility

I appreciate the input.

Thanks.

The rhulic forces are fairly stereotypical. Slow but hard to damage and hit hard when they get there.

I personally think that the dwarfs make a good second faction to play around with so that you don't overplay your main army. This is because if you only go for rhulic models then you are heavily limited in what you can take and what the army can do on the battlefield. If you take mercs as a whole faction and use the other options they have then you are asking to purchase a load of models to match what the other factions can do easily.

Details on the other factions can be found in this thread or more specifically, Beginner's Guide to Privateer Press by Mr. Grey .

Thanks I appreciate the link, its very helpful.

I play rhulics and they dont ever do well but are fun to play with, I dont think mercs are a good faction to start with as they or menoth are the hardest faction to use. But if you do want to start with them i would get the old metal magnus battlebox off ebay or somthing. His faction of mercs is very adaptable.

You may not have to go to ebay to find the old Magnus box, I found a brand new one in my FLGS yesterday. This may only be a European thing but according to the store owner, he'd only ordered it in the week before from the distributor who in turn had recently recieved it from PP. I guess there's some unsold stock sitting in a PP warehouse or something as I doubt they'd have put it back into production without telling anyone or indeed as a load of metal models in the old style box.

Yes I did buy it. Thats 3 warmachine armies (+1 hordes) on the go now, none are painted.

I happen to play dwarves as my secondary (or tertiary) faction to khador. I have actually won significantly more games than I have lost with them. Basically, the stereotype of dwarves apply perfectly. They are slow, all of their jacks and their infantry units have SPD4 which is basically the lowest you will find. However, their infantry also have very good armor for a standard cost infantry unit, in addition to having inherent abilities that increase their armor EVEN MORE basically makes them laugh at anything with low POW.

Their warjacks are similarly tough, they have very good armor, rivaling Khador's massive heavies in that department. They also have great strength and most of their warjacks hit fairly hard. Not surprisingly, their warjacks are as slow as their infantry, and have the worst DEF in the game, they will get hit by everything easily, and we do not really have any way to solve that low DEF that our entire faction suffers from, so, we dont. Instead our warcasters have some excellent support spells - Gorten has a fantastic upkeep spell that takes our warjacks from hitting hard, to being some of the hardest hitting models in the game. The other warcasters increase the range of ranged attacks, boost ranged attacks, add an area of effect template to ranged attacks, etc etc.

The solos for dwarves are excellent as well. We have Thor steinhammer who can control warjacks and makes them very dangerous as well as being able to increase a warjack's attack or damage rolls for an entire turn, almost makes him an auto include in every dwarf list, he also has a flamethrower. We also have the Ogrun Bokur - a massive hulking ogre with a polearm and tower shield who safeguards a model in your army and crushes anything that gets too close to his client. This guy is awesome, he has great stats, he is very difficult to kill, and he hits very hard for a solo infantry. In fact, he hits as hard as some heavy warjacks.

Overall, since the dwarves are a small piece of the overall mercenary faction, they have limited selections. You will find yourself taking the same units and models over and over again, but, I find that you can be very creative in playing them, especially with Gorten Grundback and the new warcaster - General Ossrum.

Dwarves can be very forgiving by having very high armor in general and hitting very hard. But, they can be difficult to work with by having low speed and low defense.

As another new Warmachiner also looking into Mercs I want to say thanks for the useful info in this thread guys! Awesome!