Dwarfs, What can be done?

[noahtonkin]

You OG guys sure do have a strange meta. Did Dwarfs takes all 3 top places at MK then? Or just annoy someone on the way up / down?

As has been said, it's not that they place high, but that they make very boring games.

All they have is their stats and weapons.

Which are actually quite good. they're T4, ld 9, ws 4 minimum. plus almost all have heavy armour or better.
They're nowhere near as slow as they used to be due to random charge distance.

People forget there is no way of buffing a dwarf unit once it hits combat, it doesn't get hatred (except against 1 army), can't buff its strength ala mindwayzor, can't boost the stuff ala flesh to stone, can't add regen / wards to core units etc etc

But with dwarf magic there's no way that you're opponent can get any buffs, unless they risk a 6 dice irresistable, in which case no one else can defend against that either.

[Undead Dan]

That's just it, people aren't complaining because they're getting smashed in their games vs Dwarfs, they're complaining because they see the standard Dwarf army on the other side of the table, loaded up with warmachines, and end up playing a very dull game with no-one scoring many points. We'd love a way for Dwarfs to actually 20-0 us that doesn't involve us walking forward while getting shot to shit then chopped up by great weapon hordes...

[Andy GI]

But what other options are there?

Out of the 15 or so Combat weapons in Warhammer, dwarfs have access to 3 of them, only 1 unit has additional handweapons, the rest can take either HW/Shield or a Great Weapon.

Doesn't give you a whole lot of scope, either strike last and try and keep your boys alive through Parrys, or Strike last but whats left might kill some stuff in return.

T4 and Heavy Armour isn't great, most things hit at S4 or 5 these days.

The Anvil is a great piece of kit for a Dwarf Army however it is extremely expensive and rolling 2 ones in a row will give you a 500+ point swing in the wrong direction. ;)

If Dwarfs are boring to play, Its because they are lacking in so many of the choices available to the newer armies. GW has really fluffed themselves into a corner with the beardy ones.

[The Trampoline]

The Anvil should give them buffs, probably like the cauldron, just one automatic at the start of the turn to encourage combat troops over teh security of war machines.

[Dave]

Rumours has dwarfs as one of the next handful of books to be updated, I'm genuinely intrigued to see what they do to update them.  From my play experiences over the last year (having finally finished some alternative armies)  I can see why some people find them to be a bit of a negative play experience, though I think it's slightly overstated quite how bad it is, I've played against lots of other armies that have offered equally dull games.

The current book is fatally flawed, having only 2 different unit types in the whole book (3 if you count the gyro I suppose).  All dwarfs should really have GWs otherwise they are a bunch of average WS, low S attacks that will get shat on by the bucket of dice armies that now exist. 

They have no way of blocking up opponents and diverting as everything is too slow to position in a particularly helpful manner which won't just overrun the opponent into your remaining squishy parts of your army so you end up taking a small number of large blocks as the frontage is one of the few things that can help you control where people go.

They have 3 ways of dealing with fast cav/normal cav/skirmishers/scouts/anything that is maneuverable and unworthy of a cannonball to the face.  Those 3 ways are:
1. Gyrocopter
2. Organ gun - which everyone hates because it auto hits, but remove that and it's a worthless heap of junk.
3. Anvil - it''s a 4-500pts investment which screws up 1/6 and insta-dies to most of the '6 dice monkey' spells for the equivalent of a magic missile with a 2ndry effect or a extra move.

I pray that they make the normal infantry better at fighting such that a combat build can actually beat some of the other combat armies out there - DE, Daemons, Beastmen, WoC (actually they quite often beat WoC in combat for some reason, probably because they cost even more pts per model than mine!)

I also pray that they do something to make the warmachines a bit less of a no brainer, my initial though would be to remove the ability to tailor them so much, allow 1 rune per machine maybe or just simplify the whole rune system for them an awful lot (ie remove most of them).

Just give up on dwarfs not having magic, give them a magic phase and make it the same as everone else, call them runes of power or something and the fluff bunnies can believe it's all about the runelord beating his staff in the phase to unleash it's power or something, but please let's get rid of the nonsense of never having any buffs for the army when everyone else can overpower their units by tossing 6 dice at spells for the 1/4 chance of getting them off for a miserly miscast which 70% of the time does sod all impact on the mage/unit he's with as he's sat in a safety bunker at the back of the army and killing a few of them really doesn't matter.

Whilst we're at it please lets get rid of the fluff which says the engineers guild won't do change which restricts them to the same old 5 boring machines they've always had and prevents anything new being added.  I want weird and wacky constructions and big old airships/landships/tanks/rock golems/cavalry/bear riders/robots/chariots.  And please give me a missile troop which can move and shoot or something which can deal with skirmishers!

TK play exactly how I'd expected dwarfs to play for years, but now I'm playing the TK I'd rather dwarfs played a lot more agressively with lots of solid block running across the table and chopping the knees out from under their opponents.  Ever since the WS table moved to being capped at best you hit on is a 3+ and everything still hits you on a 4+ unless you're over double their WS dwarfs haven't cut it in combat relative to other combat troops as so many of them have had advantages such as hatred, ASF, buffs for rerolls.  Dwarfs have always had strike last (less of a disadvantage now but where great swathes of troops now die it can reduce your number of attacks back) and unless using GWs low Str.  Look at them vs Beastmen, less attacks, same ws, same T, same S no access to rerolls, 5+ AS but once you take some wildform/beast banner/bestigor(admittedly only 1 attack) into account they tend to come out second best.  Still at least they have  a higher ld, unless the general is alive and has the 1+ include banner of discipline which was abysmally faq'd to combine with the generals ld.  The fact that I compare them to beastmen who are generally recognised as being overpointed for what they can do (and also a one dimentional army) is not coincidence, don't get me started on them vs something decent!

Anyways rant over, safe to say the new book is eagerly awaited by this long term player.  By the way is it a coincidence that Ben Curry was asking for peoples old dwarfs on twitter recently, his name appeared as play tester type person on the last couple of new book releases could this be a sign they're now in development?  (he claims it is for ETC practice, I'm not so sure).

[fatolaf]

i can't understand what anyone would get out of playing them: surely they can't find it fun. there is a better way to spend two hr of gaming time than either sitting in a corner if you can't break them or trying to run over the top of them if you can.

This is the problem in a nutshell

[fatolaf]

Anyways rant over, safe to say the new book is eagerly awaited by this long term player.  By the way is it a coincidence that Ben Curry was asking for peoples old dwarfs on twitter recently, his name appeared as play tester type person on the last couple of new book releases could this be a sign they're now in development?  (he claims it is for ETC practice, I'm not so sure).

I would not be suprised if they were the next book, rumour has it that WE have been pushed back ,so it makes sense that the stunties would be next, as they are always a good seller historically, myabe not so much nowadays though..

Lest we forget that back in the day they had magic, I still have the model for the 3rd ed Magican.

Simple fix, some kind of (mech) cav, magic or rune buffs, sort out the warmachines, nerf auto hitting organs guns, make slayers good again (they were nails in 3rd ed)...

Hell I would be tempted again if they made a good book as I love the models (used to have a slayer army 20 years ago)

[shadownova24]

Bin em simples

[Happy Little Gekko]

lets see what tommy comp can do to get afighty army outof this