[Ganstalong]

Now I have been playing dwarfs for several years now (4 maybe?) and while looking through this forum I've read talk of dwarfs marching!?! Now in the games I've played my dwarfs just sit back and shoot them and their little weakling troops bounce of my troops. So what I'm asking is "IS marching your dwarfs normal and what are the benefits to doing it?"

 

[Arklite]

is it normal? hell no. are there advantages? many to be had >=]

the reason marching dwarves seems so common on L-O is probebly a lot to do with myself. i advocate it as much as possible and my articles do the same

the strength of the dwarf army is in its infantry units. our shooting (while scores above everyone else) isn't really going to win us games and more often than not its there to soften the enemy as they approach the battle line. i however play a significantly more troop heavy force and make it my goal to crush the enemy in melee, the shooting support is there to down big monsters like giants or dragons and to provide general support for my steam roller advance ;Y

there is nought that a cannon can do, that a dwarf with an axe cant!

 

[Ganstalong]

ahh soo your the culprit!!!

ive always felt that moving would just leave my blocks open too flank and rear charges and leave my valuable shooting to be snatched up by enemy troops.

 

[Nachtjager]

and what are the benefits to doing it?"

The biggest reward is the look on your opponents face when he realises he's brought an army tooled to warmachine hunt and kill equivically weak quarrelers and thunderers, but instead faces over a hundred dwarves, heavily armoured, armed for hand to hand combat, supported by some beefy characters and quite possibly rather annoyed. I've seen opponents faces wash white when a battleline of 5 blocks of 20+ dwarves has been put out in front of them supported by a few bolt throwers to knock out enemy giants etc.

As far as outflanking, a line like this is very broad, its only been when doing this that I've truely been able to outflank my opponent, with dwarves! God its been too long since I've had a game, working too much *grumble*.

Have a quick skim through this list Kristian popped together, the end results fairly similar to what I run for this kind of list except I use ironbreakers in place of slayers and a thane in place of the dragonslayer.

http://www.librarium-online.com/forums/dwarf-army-lists/108639-2000-pts-competitive.html

 

[MobiusPrime]

I love it when dwarf players march up the field to fight me. That makes it a fight.
The alternative is take a bunch of warmachines and gun lines and you roll dice and I pick up models as I move towards you (which isn't that fast as Tomb Kings can't march, and my most of my magic is stopped due to high dispel power of dwarfs).

Use your warmachines to soften me up, but make it a fight - meet me in the middle and let movement and strategy determine who wins - not your dice rolling skill.

 

[Quick]

the reason marching dwarves seems so common on L-O is probebly a lot to do with myself. i advocate it as much as possible and my articles do the same

Oh, that was you? This whole time I was blaming the GW design team. :rofl

...at this point, I would like to take credit for the Wood Elves' use of Treemen, because I was totally saying they were dead'ard before I ever even saw one on the table.

But seriously, folks...

Marching Dwarfs are more common among players who play for fun. It makes for a more even game, where the victor is determined by tactical knowledge, not shooting luck. Moreover, the game is more fun that way too, rather than, "I shoot, I shoot, I shoot, I shoot, and now your depleted forces have to run into my two ultra-hard Infantry blocks with their over-tooled Dwarf Lords of Dooooom."

In tournaments, however, where competitiveness is the name of the game, a Dwarf Infantry list is so uncommon as to be unheard of. Dwarf artillery is so effective, as is the power of the Anvil of Doom (particularly with Thorek Ironbrow) that the Thorek Gunline is most competitive list the Dwarfs can currently field.
This is unfortunate, but it's the state of the Throngs right now. The only tournament -grade armies I ever see that move are Brettonians with their "Max Pegasus, all-Knight" list.

(The Yu-Gi-Oh reference was not intentional.)

 

[librisrouge]

I may be a young beardling compared to the experience beards of my kinsmen but I like a nice balanced force. I want to meet my enemy with a smaller wall of warriors and longbeards after they had to weather a storm of fire from quarellers (with shields if I need the support) and warmachines.

 

[Nachtjager]

I may be a young beardling compared to the experience beards of my kinsmen but I like a nice balanced force. I want to meet my enemy with a smaller wall of warriors and longbeards after they had to weather a storm of fire from quarellers (with shields if I need the support) and warmachines.

I tend to go one of 2 ways, a balanced cc and balistics force with about 35-40% of points in shooting and the rest in my shieldwall, or the full steamroller, with all bar maybe 5-8% of points put into 20 dwarf + cc blocks. makes a lot of people quite worried after they've played it once.

 

[Arklite]

marching dwarves non competitive? BAH! i would rank them pretty darn high. we dwarves are one of the top combat armies in the game after all.

i mean, lets look at it on a model to model comparison with the average human and a chaos warrior

dwarf warrior

WS: +1 over human, -1 from chaos warrior
BS: equal to human (not applicable to chaos warriors really)
S: equal to human, -1 from chaos warrior
T: +1 over human, equal to chaos warrior
I: -1 from human -3 from chaos warrior
A: normal
ld +2 over human +1 over chaos warrior.

as you can see we're pretty damn good. we don't match chaos warriors in some areas but we match them in enough areas to make we dwarves pretty darn hard to get rid of. on the other hand we're also pretty cheap! 5 points less than a chaos warrior to be exact. and that’s without equipment

when we look at elite dwarves things get even better as we then match chaos warriors in WS and Strength too. And we’re still significantly cheaper.

Lets look at hammerers with shields. 20 with full command is 290 points.

similarly equipped chaos warriors cost 285 points for only 15 a significant bonus to us bearded compatriots with a whole rank extra, heck we’re even stubborn.

Let’s face it, we rock in combat.

The only major problem we dwarves have is our mobility, but what do you know? We have items to deal with that! The stollaz rune gives us an extra turns worth of movement for the entire army, and if we want to we can use the anvil to put our units at the same level as ogres for movement. More if the happen to have the stollaz rune. (18” blitz charge anyone?)

We dwarves in the top of the table for the combat armies, sure our gunlines might be OMGWTF powerful, more so if you use thorek as a crutch. But there is something more impressive about having your dwarf army in the enemy deployment zone at the end of the game >=]

Besides… marching dwarves came second in the L-O votewar. That’s pretty darn competitive I reckon

 

[Quick]

I never said 'non-competitive'. Dwarf Infantry is plenty competitive. The Thorek Gunline is 'non-competitive'. It's overwhelming. There is no competition in that it either obliterates its oppoent, or it is itself overrun.

 

[Ganstalong]

"sure our gunlines might be OMGWTF powerful"
made me laugh

 

[warpaintoz]

I ran the following at a tourney 6 months ago with some success:
Lord, BSB with Strollaz', Runesmith
Hammerers, Longbeards, Ironbreakers, Warriors, Small thunderers, Organ Gun and Gyro.

See the whites of your opponent's eyes when there are four big Dwarf blocks halfway across the table before they have their first move! Providing you anchor one end of the line with an Oathstone and the other with the table edge, its tricky for the opponent to defeat you. If they have flyers, deploy the Organ Gun behind the line of advance, and that will dissuade them from trying it. A MR of Challenge on the Lord is invaluable too, especially if you are playing against Brets, who'll have to charge your Lord in their first turn.

 

[Sir Theobold the Lame]

Ive always used almost all infantry dwarf lists- for the simple reason i like dwarf infantry models! i also use large blocks of slayers purely for the look of the thing.

I almost wish they would bring out a WHFB apocalypse style expansion- a 5000-6000 point dwarf army would be a thing of beauty, large blocks of rock hard infantry with an imposing gun line to boot- lawks!

 

[Nachtjager]

Ive always used almost all infantry dwarf lists- for the simple reason i like dwarf infantry models! i also use large blocks of slayers purely for the look of the thing.

I almost wish they would bring out a WHFB apocalypse style expansion- a 5000-6000 point dwarf army would be a thing of beauty, large blocks of rock hard infantry with an imposing gun line to boot- lawks!

I don't want to imagine my mates all goblin army at that points level, It'd just make me cry how badly outnumbered I'd be. Oh well, 5000 points = 5 flame cannons I suppose, lol.

 

[Sir Theobold the Lame]

I don't want to imagine my mates all goblin army at that points level, It'd just make me cry how badly outnumbered I'd be. Oh well, 5000 points = 5 flame cannons I suppose, lol.

You dont want to worry about goblins! plus at that points level half of them would have to be in reserve because they wouldnt fit onto the board! you could just kill them in waves

 

[J'tje]

dwarfs have to shorts legs to go to the middle of the battlefield. dwarfs wait and shoot, because dwarfs don't get the charges (maybe with the rune of slowness)
the only units that I always move are slayers. Because they can hold up 2 units, it is great to see that.

 

[Nachtjager]

dwarfs have to shorts legs to go to the middle of the battlefield. dwarfs wait and shoot, because dwarfs don't get the charges (maybe with the rune of slowness)
the only units that I always move are slayers. Because they can hold up 2 units, it is great to see that.

but it is hell of a boring to play. Admitted you're probably going to have to work and think harder to win if you take a mobile dwarf army, but surely thats the whole point? And when you do win its a lot more fun and you can garuntee your opponent will have enjoyed it more!

 

[Arklite]

i have to disagree with J'tje. While sitting back and waiting is a perfectly good tactic i find it bland and dull. Its a waste of dwarven potential! And we're better at moving than many think.

Lets look at the strollaz rune banner. It gives us 1 free turn of movement. Looking at it alone its not that great, '6", whoop de do' however you have to consider your first turns movement. At the end of turn 1 we're half way across the table! That’s ogre pace!, turn 2 we're 18" across the table, that’s just shy of elf speed. Turn 3? We have moved as far as a M4 troop would have.

And you can almost always be assured that the enemy is moving towards you at the same time, who actually expects dwarves to move after all?. Once we get within 8" of the enemy only cavalry can escape our assault thanks to our relentless rule, everything else will get caught eventually >=].

The other option is the anvil of doom, which puts dwarves higher up the scale than ogres with good rolls, enemy deployment by turn 2 is pretty much assured if you only want to move one unit . Throw in the strollaz rune and you can move 30" in 2 turns; some knights can’t even match that.

Dwarves aren’t that bad at movement, in fact we're pretty high up the scale with the right combo's.

 

[Nachtjager]

And you can almost always be assured that the enemy is moving towards you at the same time, who actually expects dwarves to move after all?. Once we get within 8" of the enemy only cavalry can escape our assault thanks to our relentless rule, everything else will get caught eventually >=].

This is what I find to be the fun thing about using mobile dwarves, as I always place my 2 supporting bolt throwers down first on the most convenient hill to make the opponent believe he's facing another static dwarf force, but then the 5 blocks of 20 dwarves start ranking up right on the edge of my deployment zone, anchored by the table edge. The look of confusion usually turns to a blank look of "oh [email protected]" by the time my 4th block of 20 goes down. So much fun to watch the opponents reactions as they scrabble to replan their Ideas of how to manage the battle! The fact the bolt throwers go down first usually means one or 2 of their units are quite poorly positioned to recieve 100 battle armoured and angry dwarves, and the opponent usually has to spend his or her first turn re-forming his army.

Its lovely how pre set most peoples Ideas of how dwarves work is.

 

[N1AK]

I just played in a 3 round 1500 point tournament using my Dwarves. As it wasn't a GT or anything I wanted to try out something a bit different and less boring to play against.
I took an army with 10 Thunderers, Organ Gun & Cannon with all the other points invested in 2 blocks of warriors and a unit of IronBreakers with characters including a BSB with Strollazs.

In my first game I played a combat HE army with no shooting, I didn't use Strollaz's used my limited shooting to weaken his ranks and then let his charge bounce off me. Great game, and a comfortable win.

Second game was against the one army type I knew I would have trouble with Gunline Dwarves (16 Thunderers, 20 Quarrellers, 2 Cannons and Organ Gun). If I had been playing for points I would of deployed behind the hill and forest and gone for a 0-0 draw, but I went for it and Strollazed right into the jaws of hell. Ended up losing by 500VP, and could of won with slightly less aweful dice when I got into combat.

Third game was Tzeentch Hordes. Although he had 12PD his magic had little effect. Again I didn't use Strollaz's instead holding the line, using my shooting to weaken the force then my blocks to break them.
My IronBreakers with 2 Characters in it managed to go through a unit of charging knights, Charging Mauraders and the Warriors they over run each in a single combat phase due to their starting CR of 6 (2 Ranks, Banner, BSB, RoBattle, Outnumber).

- - -
I would definitely say that combat Dwarf armies are good, unfortunately I can't say they are better than gun lines. Although my 2k list with 2 units of Miners and Thorik certainly makes light work of them!