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I don't think i've really experienced it too much but i lack the experience you guys have against top tier players. That said i'm curious about why people hate corner castle so much. I get the point a little but can't you just deploy all in one flank so that they can't shoot everything at you. I mean just look at the arc of sight on each unit. They'll be forced to reform and move with often crappy dwarf movement in order to fix their lines and give up shooting for an entire unit for one whole turn. When you think about it in theory it should help tremendously.

Also if you beat them in the chaff deployment in numbers you should be able to figure out where they're going.

Honestly what i'm more surprised with is when facing elite units why people don't form with their backs to the board edge in a reverse corner castle in a sense. You can focus fire on a smaller area sure but that's everybody being able to shoot in that given area and given enough re-directing units and fighting off the enemy harassment units it should kill off the main force much better. Then again i'm not a dwarf or empire player and this is all theory rather than experience. I just tend to do that in 'total war: shogun 2 fall of the samurai' when i have a lot of gunmen vs a much smaller and elite force. It allows more of them to shoot at one unit that way. It works for me in that game so i feel like it should work here as well though the whole move and shoot thing is a pain. It's basically a 'V' formation or a '\_/' formation which is similar in a sense to a 'cup' or even a 'U'. If things go badly it should even allow for some pretty nasty flanking opportunities as a last ditch effort for your gunners which should be even better for dwarfs.

Anyway it's just a question and then some suggestions. Somebody here enlighten me as i tend to be in the dark about a lot of this stuff.

Fighting a corner castle is like solving a maze, instead of playing chess.
The solution changes very little during the course of the game, so it's a little boring.

-Matt

Cornerhammer hate spawned from dwarf armies mostly.

Imagine a dwarf gunline which sits in a corner dropping templates, organ guns, and cannons on you all game.

This often led to a game of you pushing your models at them and taking them off.

It's boring. Just because it's easy to figure out & dismantle doesn't mean it's fun to play against.

it feels like I'm playing a game & menuvering while my opponent is just picking the nearest target & rolling dice.

+1 that it's just boring.

A corner-castle player makes one decision re: deployment and movement...namely "left" or "right." After that they just sit there rolling the artillery die at you, praying to take enough stuff off before you hit that you can't threaten their lines effectively. It's the same game every time, the only variance being how hot those artillery dice are rolling. If you've played this game once or twice before then it's just deja vu all over again.

What's worse is that those "lines" are usually 2-3 big bricks of sturdy, stubborn dwarf infantry who you have to kill to the last man to take out, meaning that if you fail to do that they still win.

As for "why corner," because it's just objectively the best way to play a gunline army. It prevents your opponent from surrounding you, protects your warmachines by blocking angles of approach with table edges, and generally gives you an extra round of shooting as your opponents' bunch up around terrain pieces or their own units trying to get at you.

I exalt all of the above. Everyone of them made the same point. It's boring, thats why I am vanguarding dwarfs!!!

But is it actually effective?

 koooaei wrote:
But is it actually effective?

Who cares? If you are so concerned about winning that you need to play a style that ruins the fun for your opponent well... edited by moderator. To clarify I said "you're an <impolite word>" I think it was because I said it in russian, more as a poorly delivered joke due to the above posters locational flag, but it bypasses the filters & is a violation, I apologize for breaking said rules.

To actually answer your question, it can be. If your dice are hot it's very effective. If you misfire & blow up a cannon or 2 you're boned.

Dwarfs and empire always get to re-roll their cannons with engineers though. Ugh if only skaven paid heed to safety just a bit but nope. We have warlocks sure but we don't allow them to super-charge a warp lightning cannon or to fix it in case of a misfire.

I have to say engineers in both empire and dwarfs have given me so much false hope for a misfire.

But remember skaven cannons don't just do the line. They have the smalll template at the end. Makes them more useful for hitting blocks of troops.

 Shas'O Dorian wrote:
But remember skaven cannons don't just do the line. They have the smalll template at the end. Makes them more useful for hitting blocks of troops.

True and it's also good vs monstrous infantry. I actually got much better at aiming the freaking thing vs units. It's also fantastic for hitting a couple units with one in front of the other. All that said it's artillery dice strength and is usually strength 6. Against some things that's fine but against anything super tough (like other cannons or super powerful monsters) it is not always enough.

 koooaei wrote:
But is it actually effective?

Built correctly, from a competitive standpoint, it can be very effective. However, the effectiveness of such an army is directly proportional to how much your opponent will complain about it.

I have a no-fun-wanna-win Dwarf list that involves around 95 shooting troops and five warmachines coupled with four Gyrocopters to clog up charge lanes and increase the number of turns the gunline can shoot before combat. Typically, if I go first, each unit will get 3 turns of firing before combat, plus a stand and shoot. Sixty of the shooting troops are armed with Great Weapons, so can usually mop up whatever's left of any unit that reaches them. And, honestly, this army isn't even optimized because I take Bugman and a large unit of his upgraded Rangers instead of just more Quarrelers and one or more Organ Guns.

I'll admit that it's not fun to play against, and only bring it out when asked for a spin. It does tend to win, though.

You know, it's interesting stuff. For example, in 40k gunlines used to be very effective with old missions and killpoint system - like in FB. But than the new tactical objectives were introduced. They favor board controle a lot. To the point when gunline players start complaining: "I've killed 90% of his army and he's still winning cause he was rolled around the field capturing objectives and not letting me go midboard".

I see how FB gunlines can be effective. Many opponents are focused on mellee. And when you go 100% shooty, you force him to attack cause only kills matter for the final score and you outrange him. Attacking is often more difficult. Furthermore, you're using board edges for 'terrain' advantage.

 koooaei wrote:
You know, it's interesting stuff. For example, in 40k gunlines used to be very effective with old missions and killpoint system - like in FB. But than the new tactical objectives were introduced. They favor board controle a lot. To the point when gunline players start complaining: "I've killed 90% of his army and he's still winning cause he was rolled around the field capturing objectives and not letting me go midboard".

I see how FB gunlines can be effective. Many opponents are focused on mellee. And when you go 100% shooty, you force him to attack cause only kills matter for the final score and you outrange him. Attacking is often more difficult. Furthermore, you're using board edges for 'terrain' advantage.

On the other end there's the watchtower mission type that favors factions like warriors of chaos and some heavy melee armies last i checked. Basically if they get in that building they're super hard to gak. Warriors of chaos tend to live almost all characteristic test or die weapons and magic so that's also an issue.

I played a 'dawn attack' game with skarsnik as my enemy's general on saturday. Basically my abomination, one warp lightning cannon and one small slave unit and a big slave unit didn't come in. Then if that wasn't bad enough my general was forced to deploy on the left flank and my rat ogres had to deploy on the right side. Basically it's a poor leadership unit that needs the general and needs to be near him esp. with frenzy and also stupidity if all their packmasters die. They did worse than nothing. I was about to do ok on the right side of my board till they failed frenzy and were forced to charge through 3 fanatics and die and thus panic my clanrats or weapons team (i think it was the weapons team). That weapons team was needed so badly and stupid dawn attack with skarsnik was such a bad combo to face.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:

 koooaei wrote:
You know, it's interesting stuff. For example, in 40k gunlines used to be very effective with old missions and killpoint system - like in FB. But than the new tactical objectives were introduced. They favor board controle a lot. To the point when gunline players start complaining: "I've killed 90% of his army and he's still winning cause he was rolled around the field capturing objectives and not letting me go midboard".

I see how FB gunlines can be effective. Many opponents are focused on mellee. And when you go 100% shooty, you force him to attack cause only kills matter for the final score and you outrange him. Attacking is often more difficult. Furthermore, you're using board edges for 'terrain' advantage.

On the other end there's the watchtower mission type that favors factions like warriors of chaos and some heavy melee armies last i checked. Basically if they get in that building they're super hard to gak. Warriors of chaos tend to live almost all characteristic test or die weapons and magic so that's also an issue.

I played a 'dawn attack' game with skarsnik as my enemy's general on saturday. Basically my abomination, one warp lightning cannon and one small slave unit and a big slave unit didn't come in. Then if that wasn't bad enough my general was forced to deploy on the left flank and my rat ogres had to deploy on the right side. Basically it's a poor leadership unit that needs the general and needs to be near him esp. with frenzy and also stupidity if all their packmasters die. They did worse than nothing. I was about to do ok on the right side of my board till they failed frenzy and were forced to charge through 3 fanatics and die and thus panic my clanrats or weapons team (i think it was the weapons team). That weapons team was needed so badly and stupid dawn attack with skarsnik was such a bad combo to face.

Watchtower favours any army with stone throwers and cannons so much it isn't funny.

Dawn Attack is one of the only well written scenarios in the book as it forces you to adapt to the situation. Last time I played it, I started with 5 dark riders on the board.

Basically people piss and moan about a lot! They'll happily run around avoiding combat with their fast cavalry shooting your units and 6 dicing spells that kill units easily but counter that by not playing their game they have a cry!

bertmac wrote:
Basically people piss and moan about a lot! They'll happily run around avoiding combat with their fast cavalry shooting your units and 6 dicing spells that kill units easily but counter that by not playing their game they have a cry!

This post is so narrow-sighted. It's ridiculous, your argument is that ''People moan about my extreme, so i will justify it by comparing it to another extreme and assume everyone does that''. Fast Cav is not fun in an noncompetitive meta, neither is Corner Castles, if you bring either your actively trying to reduce the fun for the opponent. In a competitive meta, it doesn't matter as much, but your point is still terribly biased.

 thedarkavenger wrote:

Watchtower favours any army with stone throwers and cannons so much it isn't funny.

I'm by far the least worried about cannons and stone throwers. D6 hits at S9/S10 isn't going to do much to my block of 60 infantry.
I'm far more worried about 10 chaos warriors of khorne, who get 30 attacks at S5 when attacking/defending a building.
I'm the most worried about the unit of zombies in the building. Once characters join into the zombie block in the building, it isn't going to get shifted out. Curse of Years does wonders at thinning down big blocks in buildings, and wind of undeath is murder to units that collect around the tower. Outside of skaven who can destroy the building, not much else is going to matter.

Recently went up against wood elves with a ton of true flights, and the zombie bunker and summoning was more than a match. I was gaining models faster than he could shoot them dead. By turn 3 he conceded with no real way to shift the zombie blob out (red fury vampire, vampire hero, 2 banshees, 2 necromancers and a tomb prince had all joined in). It was pretty fun to beat down wild riders with zombies (no spear bonus in building, no mount fighting in building, only hitting on 4+ since zombies were WS5).
On the flip side, the elves did not have a single unit to hold the tower. Rangers would have been nice.

 HawaiiMatt wrote:

 thedarkavenger wrote:

Watchtower favours any army with stone throwers and cannons so much it isn't funny.

I'm by far the least worried about cannons and stone throwers. D6 hits at S9/S10 isn't going to do much to my block of 60 infantry.
I'm far more worried about 10 chaos warriors of khorne, who get 30 attacks at S5 when attacking/defending a building.
I'm the most worried about the unit of zombies in the building. Once characters join into the zombie block in the building, it isn't going to get shifted out. Curse of Years does wonders at thinning down big blocks in buildings, and wind of undeath is murder to units that collect around the tower. Outside of skaven who can destroy the building, not much else is going to matter.

Recently went up against wood elves with a ton of true flights, and the zombie bunker and summoning was more than a match. I was gaining models faster than he could shoot them dead. By turn 3 he conceded with no real way to shift the zombie blob out (red fury vampire, vampire hero, 2 banshees, 2 necromancers and a tomb prince had all joined in). It was pretty fun to beat down wild riders with zombies (no spear bonus in building, no mount fighting in building, only hitting on 4+ since zombies were WS5).
On the flip side, the elves did not have a single unit to hold the tower. Rangers would have been nice.

In all honesty, none of those examples you listed bother me. Those 60 infantry can't start in the building, and that gives me a turn to drop them to a number where the summoning will bring them to a point where I can comfortably engage them in the building.

 ALEXisAWESOME wrote:

bertmac wrote:
Basically people piss and moan about a lot! They'll happily run around avoiding combat with their fast cavalry shooting your units and 6 dicing spells that kill units easily but counter that by not playing their game they have a cry!

This post is so narrow-sighted. It's ridiculous, your argument is that ''People moan about my extreme, so i will justify it by comparing it to another extreme and assume everyone does that''. Fast Cav is not fun in an noncompetitive meta, neither is Corner Castles, if you bring either your actively trying to reduce the fun for the opponent. In a competitive meta, it doesn't matter as much, but your point is still terribly biased.

Point is though that other such tactics get nowhere near the amount of moaning as castling does. I never really bothered with it except against ogres and woc lists i liked the old anvil rules for giving me a way to speed up my dwarves although apparently that was broken too and i now own a lovely display model as it wont see any more action sadly!

bertmac wrote:

 ALEXisAWESOME wrote:

bertmac wrote:
Basically people piss and moan about a lot! They'll happily run around avoiding combat with their fast cavalry shooting your units and 6 dicing spells that kill units easily but counter that by not playing their game they have a cry!

This post is so narrow-sighted. It's ridiculous, your argument is that ''People moan about my extreme, so i will justify it by comparing it to another extreme and assume everyone does that''. Fast Cav is not fun in an noncompetitive meta, neither is Corner Castles, if you bring either your actively trying to reduce the fun for the opponent. In a competitive meta, it doesn't matter as much, but your point is still terribly biased.

Point is though that other such tactics get nowhere near the amount of moaning as castling does. I never really bothered with it except against ogres and woc lists i liked the old anvil rules for giving me a way to speed up my dwarves although apparently that was broken too and i now own a lovely display model as it wont see any more action sadly!

If you think that corner dwarfs aren't as bad as fast cav, you need to get your priorities right.

One of those options provides your opponent with a game, and it isn't dwarfs.


A fast cav list will punish you severely if you make a mistake, to the point where a single mistake to the degree of pushing a unit a few inches too far forward, a turn too soon can cost you a game. Corner dwarfs have one drawback, the dice rolls.

 HawaiiMatt wrote:

 thedarkavenger wrote:

Watchtower favours any army with stone throwers and cannons so much it isn't funny.

I'm by far the least worried about cannons and stone throwers. D6 hits at S9/S10 isn't going to do much to my block of 60 infantry.
I'm far more worried about 10 chaos warriors of khorne, who get 30 attacks at S5 when attacking/defending a building.
I'm the most worried about the unit of zombies in the building. Once characters join into the zombie block in the building, it isn't going to get shifted out. Curse of Years does wonders at thinning down big blocks in buildings, and wind of undeath is murder to units that collect around the tower. Outside of skaven who can destroy the building, not much else is going to matter.

Recently went up against wood elves with a ton of true flights, and the zombie bunker and summoning was more than a match. I was gaining models faster than he could shoot them dead. By turn 3 he conceded with no real way to shift the zombie blob out (red fury vampire, vampire hero, 2 banshees, 2 necromancers and a tomb prince had all joined in). It was pretty fun to beat down wild riders with zombies (no spear bonus in building, no mount fighting in building, only hitting on 4+ since zombies were WS5).
On the flip side, the elves did not have a single unit to hold the tower. Rangers would have been nice.

That actually reminds me of the hilarity of decent ranged shooting/magic attacks from a buildings. Oh hey you know how you're cavalry and you have to worry about my building? Yeah well you gotta dismount now ;P. I totally understand the hate for jezzails in a building for that very reason. No charge bonus, no lance/spear charge bonus, no horse attacks and no armor for being mounted or having barding on the horse. It's pretty funny when weak shooty skaven after stand and shoot may have an entirely good chance to win that fight. It's lame yeah but anything as a good 'F U' to cavalry and some other units. That said there's still a chance that as cavalry they take the flaming attacks banner. Still shouldn't matter much.

Fast cavalry lists are dumb esp. magical elf fast cavalry. It's forced people to be very mobile, very magic heavy or very shooting heavy. In the case of skaven i often have to advance in a big line and try to get the enemy trapped and unable to move if i can somehow get passed the wizard bunker with a 2+ ward vs magic due to magical elf cavalry with magic resistance 2. The only other option is shooting and most skaven shooting that's powerful enough dies easily as most skaven units that do good damage are very fragile with the exception of the abomination. The only real choices with skaven for shooting are slaves with slings or nightrunners with slings and nightrunners cost too much. That and kill off the rest of the non-magical fast cavalry with warp lightning warlocks which as it turns out are pretty good at it (though not great). Clanrats and slaves make good bunkers. At the end of the day when being shot at it's still a toughness 3 model with a wound. Some have armor or a ward but the biggest point is how easily each one dies. For 2 points toughness 3 on a slave is incredible and taking casualties for miscast and similar is also really nice. I mean so what they're just slaves. Not like you don't have a bajillion more for really cheap.

bertmac wrote:

 ALEXisAWESOME wrote:

bertmac wrote:
Basically people piss and moan about a lot! They'll happily run around avoiding combat with their fast cavalry shooting your units and 6 dicing spells that kill units easily but counter that by not playing their game they have a cry!

This post is so narrow-sighted. It's ridiculous, your argument is that ''People moan about my extreme, so i will justify it by comparing it to another extreme and assume everyone does that''. Fast Cav is not fun in an noncompetitive meta, neither is Corner Castles, if you bring either your actively trying to reduce the fun for the opponent. In a competitive meta, it doesn't matter as much, but your point is still terribly biased.

Point is though that other such tactics get nowhere near the amount of moaning as castling does. I never really bothered with it except against ogres and woc lists i liked the old anvil rules for giving me a way to speed up my dwarves although apparently that was broken too and i now own a lovely display model as it wont see any more action sadly!

because even against avoidance fast cav I feel like I'm playing. my opponent is moving & while difficult I still can try to box him in or shut him down. It's a difficult & annoying game but corner castle is worse imo as it's just so stagnant. With avoidance you need to set proper flee lanes & have a chance to fail to rally or if you make a mistake you get caught & smashed. Corner castle you sit there & play averages just rolling dice and going "ok your turn again"

Corner hammer for the opponent of the corner army consists of nothing but pushing forward, and taking handfuls of models off.

Or, measuring 61" from the war machines for 6 turns.


If you think that's fun, play MTG, as you clearly hate yourself.

 thedarkavenger wrote:

bertmac wrote:

 ALEXisAWESOME wrote:

bertmac wrote:
Basically people piss and moan about a lot! They'll happily run around avoiding combat with their fast cavalry shooting your units and 6 dicing spells that kill units easily but counter that by not playing their game they have a cry!

This post is so narrow-sighted. It's ridiculous, your argument is that ''People moan about my extreme, so i will justify it by comparing it to another extreme and assume everyone does that''. Fast Cav is not fun in an noncompetitive meta, neither is Corner Castles, if you bring either your actively trying to reduce the fun for the opponent. In a competitive meta, it doesn't matter as much, but your point is still terribly biased.

Point is though that other such tactics get nowhere near the amount of moaning as castling does. I never really bothered with it except against ogres and woc lists i liked the old anvil rules for giving me a way to speed up my dwarves although apparently that was broken too and i now own a lovely display model as it wont see any more action sadly!

If you think that corner dwarfs aren't as bad as fast cav, you need to get your priorities right.

One of those options provides your opponent with a game, and it isn't dwarfs.


A fast cav list will punish you severely if you make a mistake, to the point where a single mistake to the degree of pushing a unit a few inches too far forward, a turn too soon can cost you a game. Corner dwarfs have one drawback, the dice rolls.

There is a right & wrong way to make that argument. I agree with you but you your way makes you seem like an and clearly shows that you play / favor fast cav heavily. The right way would be to actually discuss why the wrong way is to insult the persons way of thinking, then overly simplify.

Played dwarfs vs chaos dwarfs the other day. Chaos dwarfs started sitting in a corner and there was a gigantic hill in the middle of the table so I sat in the opposite corner. It was actually really fun; he had to try and come and get me and I sent my gyros and rangers to try and take out his WM.
I also played the dwarfs against DE fast cav army the other day, and demolished it, mainly with shooting and carefully out manoeuvring much faster units. (It's true if you mess up with a fast cav army you're in trouble)
I haven't played in a boring coner castle game in a long time, knowing how to beat them very quickly turns it into an interesting game for me. Also every time I've tried to do it with my own dwarfs I screw it up and get rolled by a phoenix or something.