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Hello dakka, so come to you all looking for some input. In the building of my chaos army I found myself in the need of reliable range, which lead me to the chaos dwarfs. My list is going to contain some fireglaives 20 of them, and some of the legion an azgoth artillery.

Now I'm looking at running a daemon smith to buff said units, but while looking at it I ran into a conundrum.

Should I even run a magma canon if I'm not taking something to haul it around?

This is where the problem lies, all of their artillery pieces can only move 3" and can't run or charge. Units like the deathsheaker or mortor I'm not really to concerned about becuase they don't need LoS, and have a huge range. But units like the magma canon only have a 12 inch range, 24 if next to a daemon smith and need los. Which got me thinking if I run it, there is a good chance my oponants with just stay as far away as they could making it probably never hit anything. The only way to get around this would be to take a 220 point iron daemon war engine which can move 2d6 and has the ability to haul the magma canon around with it. But there is also a good chance the daemon smith won't be able to keep up.

So currently my artillery in my 2k army looks like this

Daemon smith 100 points
Deathsheaker 240 points (120 each)
Magma canon 140 points

The magma canon can do a lot of damage hitting on a 3+ and doing its to mortal wounds equal to its to hit roll, (roll a 6 to hit I cause 6 mortal wounds) but again I'm worried it will just be kept as far away from as possible.

Or should I run a 3rd deathsheaker which has a massive range but also a min range of 10" and with a daemon smith 3" away they all do 3 attacks hitting on 3+ wounding on 3 and doing d3 wounds at -1 rend. Which would make for a more formidable artillery group.

On the same side the magma cannon would be good at holding a position since it has no min range.

So TL;DR
What's more useful? 3 deathsheakers? Or 2 of them and a magma cannon that might not get to Hit anything but probably will be able to kee an area secured.

Btw link to their rules for reference

https://www.forgeworld.co.uk/resources/fw_site/fw_pdfs/aos_warscrolls/warhammer-aos-legion-of-azgorh.pdf

The Magma Cannon is nice, but for mortal wounds I would vote for a Hellcannon. I know those aren't Azgorh but the Daemonsmith (if he's the General and can pick his Command Trait) could give it +1 to Hit, on top of +1 to Hit if it hasn't moved, which it shouldn't need to as it doesn't need line of sight.

And thus I recommend a 3rd Deathshrieker over the Magma Cannon. I think many units are vulnerable to the damage it can put out, and those also do not need line of sight.

If you're wanting a more pure Azgorh army, and Iron Daemon or Skullcracker? might be worth while. Then you could haul around anything. Even make the Hashut Artillery Train! Both of those machines can do some nice damage and make everything more mobile, and also kinda bubble wrap them keeping enemies at bay.

Also for range, don't underestimate Drazhoath. Big fast scary monster, that can do a bunch of stuff.

If I could find some affordable big hat Chaos Dwarves I'd be down for making an Azgorh army!

The daemon smith is not the general, my general is a chaos lord on a manticore, doing a slaves and dwarf army.

Thats how i feel about the deathshreakers, i could park the thing in the backbehind some terrain, even if its just some woods then they are getting a 3+ save and hit one 3 wound on 3.