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So I bought some dwarf goodies, including the Battle of Skull Pass.
I now have a little list which sounds like a good deal. I might start a tourney with them, but it adds up from 500 to 2000, in parts of 500.
So I was wondering how to do this, especially wondering what things i still need to buy.

As it is now, I have:

-36 parts for warriors (not yet modelled as I am in doubt) and 12 'one-piece' warriors.
-10 'one piece' thunderers and a box of 16.
-8 miners, one piece
-one cannon
-one organ gun
-one grudge thrower
-one gyrocopter
-10 hammerers
-10 slayers
-1 standard bearer
-2 thanes (shield/hand wpn)
-1 runelord
-1 master engineer
-1 ridiculous plastic slayer lord

So yeah, this is what I'm going to be working with. I am going to give the skull pass thunderers a shield, though. Other than that, I will at least buy two bolt throwers, ten hammerers and ten slayers. I am liking the idea of a thane with shield bearers. Are there any other musts, or do people strongly suggest to not buy something specific? And how would I best use these troops in an army list?
I was thinking to have the hammerers as the anvil, the warriors for HtH support and thunderers for decent ranged damage. The bolt throwers for war machine control and the gyrocopter for marchblocking. Maybe one of my other warmachines, maybe even two when i start to get 2000 pts.  I'm not sure if i want any ironbreakers at all, at least not any time soon, as I'm running through my budget.
Other than that I don't feel like wasting too many warriors. So I'm not sure what to use them for. At least a shield, and other than that I'm wondering if I'm going to use longbeards or not, and if I am going to upgrade to rangers. If I try to think about it, a warrior is 8, shield is 9, longbeard is 12, with heavy weapon is 14, ranger is 15 and throwing axes make 16. And that might be too expensive, but I won't settle for any other kind of rangers. Any comment on that?

So I'll be narrowing my questions down and ask one thing at the time:
Starting = my 500 pts dwarf army.

I'm thinking:
-5 hammerers with shield;  65 (my one special slot)
-1 organ gun;                      120 (my one rare slot/warmachine)
-10 warriors with shield;     90
-5 thunderers with shield:   75
-5 thunderers with shield:   75
-1 master engineer              70
                                               495

I was wanting to go with a lot of shooting, but thunderers are too expensive and I don't
feel like wasting my models on quarrelers.
 For small bands, the organ gun seemed perfect to me.  As 2-10 always seems like a nice number of wounds, especially with an average of 40-ish models on the other side.  The thunderers will be able to do their share of the damage and to temporarily hold (i hope) offensive units, there's the band of warriors + the tougher hammerers (which are definitly my favorites). 
The master engineer is to entrench the organ gun, but has no equipment, I still have 5 points to consider heavy weapon or something else (i don't think runes are allowed).
I am starting to have doubts about my war machine/hero choice, what would be adviced?

Check the rules... I know in the "LunchHammer" rules you cannot take a model that costs more than 100 points, so no organ guns, Helblasters, Dragons... not sure about the Warbands rules.

I'm not aware of the Lunchhammer term, nor where to find it :p.
As for rules, I reckon they take the 7th ed warbands rules to be found on the official homepage, or the "less than 2000" from the codex. Other than that I am aware of no other rules and the tournaments are quite sloppy in ruledescreption, as they only add 'the normal rules for said points apply'.

LunchHammer- excuse me, 'Warhammer in a Flash'- was in WD357, I believe. It was the recent precursor to the Warbands rules.

Just read the updated warbands rules on the GW website... Wow. That organ gun is going to be so overpowered in a 500 pt game.

according to the warbands rules, there's no restriction on the unit points, heroes have a max of 125, even when individual models may only have max 125 I can easily put that one out. So yeah, the organ gun would be a stayer, now how about the Rest? :p

Well, I would argue for replacing a unit of your Thunderers with some Quarrellers, but the new Rangers no longer get crossbows, right? So you can't use the figs as Rangers down the line, and the extra 6" of range (i.e. extra turn of shooting) probably isn't worth losing the armor-piercing.

Without my new Dwarf book (still hiding 8 months after the move!) I am not comfortable giving a lot of advice. However, I would recommend dropping the shields from the Thunderers, and using those points elsewhere. Another Thunderer, or a couple more Warriors, or giving the Engineer some runes, or upgrade a Warrior to a unit champion.

I could always change the hammerers with slayers... That would be 6 slayers, if i loose the shield on the thunderers, that would be 8 slayers. They're pretty nice, eventhough they lack armour, and in these games, I rather see the armor value.