Apparently I play Dwarves now...

[CylonDorado]

O.K. well this is an odd situation. On a trial basis of about a month, I've traded my roughly 1200ish point Eldar army for a 2000 pont Dwarf army. He already had a fantasy army he likes better, and some of my friends have been trying to get me into fantasy, and I don't have any spare change lying around to get a whole new army (especially since I've considered using a battle of black+2 battle of macragges worth of marines to start a Smurf army). I think I'll probably ask for a back at the end of the month, because I like them quite a bit (something he agreed to do if we both were not completly satisified), but I've got a month to muck around with 'em.

I do like Dwarves pretty good, like how they live in big fortress holds, and have guns and stuff, but I know very little about how to play fantasy. I understand they have 3" movement and are T4. All I've done is play battle for skull pass, but I havn't used any of the special stuff, like the cannon, or the ogre thing.

So has anyone out there had any experiance with Dwarves, good or bad? Or any interesting stories of awsome epicness about them?

[WestRider]

I played Dwarves back when I played Fantasy. They're pretty fun, and their fluff is, of course, awesome, but the lack of mobility can get pretty frustrating sometimes.

Long story short, you're going to be the one getting charged most of the time, but most Opponents, up to and including things like Grail Knights and Chaos Chosen, will pretty much just bounce off a substantial portion of the time. Built Dwarf Tough! Learn to lure and counter-charge, and you're well on your way.

My one story of Awesome Epicness is regrettably a bad one, but it's somewhat amusing nonetheless. There's a Rune they can purchase for a Bolt Thrower called the Master Rune of Skewering. Once per game, it hits on a roll of 2+, with no modifiers, whatsoever. I stopped taking it after I missed with it 17 games in a row. That's odds of approximately 16 Billion to one against.

Oh, yeah: for this post title, I award you one Internet

[ErA | zoe)ender]

I HATE playing against dwarfs... they are so boring to play against. They all follow this pattern:

Turn 1: Dwarfs fire you with artillery, I advance toward you.

Turn 2: Dwarfs fire you with artillery and anything else that is in range, I advance toward you.

Turn 3: Dwarfs fire you with artillery (misfiring) and anything else that is in range, I advance toward you.

Turn 4: I am FINALLY within charge range. They charge me.



I never play against dwarfs, they play all the same and have no tactics involved. They just shoot at you whistle you move up the board... FOR them... and finally after all of that blood and sweat, they charge you. It's beyond lame. It's.... FLUBBER!!!!

[Elaitor]

Oct 26, 2008 6:38:49 GMT ErA | zoe)ender said:

I HATE playing against dwarfs... they are so boring to play against. They all follow this pattern:

Turn 1: Dwarfs fire you with artillery, I advance toward you.

Turn 2: Dwarfs fire you with artillery and anything else that is in range, I advance toward you.

Turn 3: Dwarfs fire you with artillery (misfiring) and anything else that is in range, I advance toward you.

Turn 4: I am FINALLY within charge range. They charge me.

I never play against dwarfs, they play all the same and have no tactics involved. They just shoot at you whistle you move up the board... FOR them... and finally after all of that blood and sweat, they charge you. It's beyond lame. It's.... FLUBBER!!!!

Sounds almost like Space Marines to me, but truth be told you can't really blame them for exploiting their strengths.
As Westrider pointed out, they are a more defense-oriented army and they make up for their lack of mobility with long range weaponry.

It would be very unusual for dwarves to come forward, but their lack of mobility is also their weakness; they can get outmaneuvered fairly easily. That is something Cylon will have to take into account when deploying; if he leaves his gunners in too much open space, they risk getting chomped up easily.

[CylonDorado]

WestRider: 17? Wow. I think I do have a bolt thrower, hopfully I can avoid any such curses. But the guy did say that t4 was really good in fantasy. I hope that's true ;D. And I can't believe I finally won an Internet, it's an honer just to be nominated ;D.

@era: Well, I don't know. The dwarve's origional owner also plays Wood Elves, and another guy saw I was getting his dwarves and said he was looking forward to a "real" battle again. Something to do with how the guy does something similar to what you discribed with his wood elves .

Elaitor: Yeah, manouverablility does seem like a problem. But I do have quite a few miners. Can't they do some sort of deep strike-esque thing or some such? Pretty soon I'll take an inventory of what stuff I have.

[Elaitor]

I'm not sure, but if I remember correctly Miners didn't do anything special, other than having a really big, heavy two-handed weapon to beat the lights out of their opponent

[ErA | zoe)ender]

They can come off the side of the board, like flanking.

[UnseenOne]

If you really want to win at warhammer fantasy, just build a model time machine and take a 40k army to play with.

[CylonDorado]

Lol, I can just imagine black templars blazing through vampires. "I've come to destroy you" ;D.

Ok, here's what I got. It's a battle of skull pass (or two?) and there seem to be a few missing guys.

I've got a thane and a slayer.
13 hammerers + a banner guy and a musician.
2 cannons with 3 cannon crew members each. (from the battle of skull pass).
2 bolt throwers with apparently NO CREW and the SAME part missing (the right part that gets drawn back to fire the bolt.)
12 thunderers + a champion and a banner guy (missing musician, and a random extra 4 normal guys...)
Only 5 miners+ a champion (missing musician and banner guy)
17 warriors + 2 musicians + 2 banner guys + 2 champions (1 warrior is missing).

And there's 3 models I can't put my finger on...
1 plastic guy with a huge banner, and I don't know whose squad he goes with. And one guy with a hammer and some strange contraption in the other hand (some sort of instrument perhaps?). And lastly a guy with wings on his helmet, one arm, and a hammer. Another thane perhaps?

And in addition to this I have my own complete battle of skull pass. (a thane and a slayer, another cannon w/ crew, 10 thunderers, 16 warriors, and 8 minors. All of which have a champion, a musician, and a banner guy).

[speiread]

I have been playing Dwarves for a few years and I love them. They are a fantastic army, but are not for everyone. They are so completely unlike Tyranids, that I enjoy the change of pace. If you want some tips/pointers, I can send you a PM, so just let me know. I have only lost two games with my Dwarves, both against Orcs/Gobs. A few tips to keep in mind:

- Regular Warriors are your bread and butter. Multiple squads of 20+Champ/Musician/Standard will suit you well. Longbeards are fantastic units.
- Avoid Hero Slayers, unless they fit your theme. Very expensive and lack survivability.
- Don't give your thunderers musician/standard. Keep them shooty and cheap.
- Multiple Bolt Throwers and Cannons are great. Take time to practice guessing ranges. You can be unstoppable if you are good at guessing distance. Engineer UAs are almost mandatory.
- Organ Guns are disgusting. Always field one, if you can.
- Outflanking Miners always save my bacon. They come in from a table edge and are very good at destroying warmachines.
- Give everything a shield that can have one. Since they are so slow, they need the extra armor.
- I would invest in a squad of 10 slayers. They are an excellent tarpit.

[3ff3ct]

Oct 26, 2008 6:13:36 GMT WestRider said:

Long story short.......

Unfortunately I laughed out loud at this before realising it was unintentional......

I played WFB with the dwarves the other day (in the box set) and found them quite fun.

[WestRider]

Hey, man, unintentional puns still count

[meeki]

I played dwarves for about a year.

Basically you have a few choices for a "theme".

The most common being the dwarven Gun Line. This is what was being addressed in a few threads above. You sit there and shoot. A few units of armored foot sloggers protect a very wide line of thunderers/crossbows as well as the maximum amount of war machines. Engineers are important in this list and often an anvil is included because it's CHEAT'N!

Another option is the dwarf infantry army. This one is heavy on infantry, using blocks of warriors as its backbone with smaller, more hittier units to hammer in the flanks of the enemies (Hammerers, slayers, etc). Artillery and ranged are there to soften up the enemy and take out the big baddies (treemen, giants, etc). Usually an anvil is added into this list or/and an uber general in hammerers (making them stubborn).

There are also a few other flavors or variants. Such as the slayer army or some strange ranger army. I haven't played dwarves in a few years so there may be new, strange things about.

I would figure out what type of dwarf army you want to play. Browse through the book and write a few sample lists.

[CylonDorado]

Yay, I just won my first game ;D. We were playing a 515 point battle (we were both over by about 10 points, and didn't want to mess with it). I had 10 thunders, a thane, a slayer, and um.... 15 warriors with a command group, and a cannon. The Cannon did really well, killing a guy or 2 every turn (untill it exploded). That was about as good as I could have expected, since he was playing a 100% skirmisher wood elf army. I think he kind of skewed it in my favor, since he put a house on my side that I could put my thunders on, and a hill that I could put my cannon on.

Oh yeah, he had a squad of dryads, 2 squads of scouts, a lord, and some.... dancer.... people.

I tabled him, and I had 9 thunderers, my thane, and 2 warriors left. He assures me it was a serious battle, but I don't know. He did make my list, and I did take his advice most of the time, because I was pretty much learning the game as I went along. But it was a lot of fun ;D.

But what really irked me, was that I was the only one playing Warhammer, and everyone else was playing monsterpocolypse... Just like 40k night last thursday . It does look pretty fun, but there's no modeling, or painting, and it looks like I'd get tired of it pretty quick.