Specialist Arms Forum
Warmaster => [WM] Warmaster Fantasy Discussion => Topic started by: pw on June 11, 2009, 11:10:37 AM
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Hi, I'm hoping someone can give me a sense of how dwarf armies play in WM. Having looked at their stats and played out some theory-WM in my head they look like they'd be no more/less fun than other armies but having been horribly bored by Dwarfs in both Warhammer and Blood Bowl I don't want to get an army only to find that they lean towards static gunlines in order to be competitive. If it makes a difference my current armies are Lizardmen and Empire (and a slightly less impressive force of Orcs).
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I have most of the armies and as a consequence only play dwarves a few times a year.
I find that you can tweak most armies to suit your individual playing style.
But dwarves benefit from heavy shooting (artillery & infantry) especially when hiding the infantry in woods or other such terrain.
also trying to dig out a unit of entrenched dwarf warriors is not fun :(
They do however suffer from a lack of any cavalry and no magic.
If you can find them there are a number of very useful articles on Dwarf tactics.
They are maily held in the warmaster magazines but these can be obtained from various sources.
Hope this helps.
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Thanks. As a follow up (the essence of my question) If you were likely to play with/face them fairly often would you be pleased?
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I actualy play them prety frequently.
And yes you could opt to set up a firebase and prety much set-up for a defensive game should you ellect so, but you can also play Dwarfs prety aggresivly (check the results of Alex Janeway while playing dwarfs 8)), having a Ld 10 general prety much allows you to take the fight to the enemy. In either case (but that is just about true for all WM armies) avoid large open spaces against a cavalry heavy army ::), but even there the dwarfs might give them thier moneys worth
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Definitely avoid cavalry at all costs. I agree w/Lex: Terrain is your friend on that point.
They are difficult to play; I'm not sure anyone in my group has won with them yet, although at least two games (vs. chaos and vs orks) came down to a difference of one unit between the opponents (i.e. the drwarves reached breakpoint just slightly faster than the opponent).
Their shooting is great - there was a famous "pork roast" incident in which my flame cannons rolled very well for their attacks when charged by some boar riders, and actually won the combat. I don't believe there were any boar riders left afterwards. However, given that shooting (as opposed to charging) in WM isn't really meant to be decisive, the dwarves' strength can be a bit overrated, IMO. Rangers can pursue cav, but in my experience it is a tricky thing to engineer a situation in which that would be useful/practicable. plus its hard to get past the infantry vs cavalry base width problem. You just can't get a lot of attacks into cav that way...
So, you really have to hide your army in terrain into which cavalry can't go, and attack the enemy's weaker units to try and get his breakpoint.
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One thing that I think could help dwarves greatly would be if the "2 rounds of combat" rule from WMA was added to WMF. It's something that I'm going to try to get a playtest of sometime in the near future.
That being said. I like my dwarves, even through they have gotten their tail handed to them every time I've played them. The lack of cavalry is brutal.
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One thing that I think could help dwarves greatly would be if the "2 rounds of combat" rule from WMA was added to WMF. It's something that I'm going to try to get a playtest of sometime in the near future.
That being said. I like my dwarves, even through they have gotten their tail handed to them every time I've played them. The lack of cavalry is brutal.
This is true -- dwarves have an advantage in attrition combat, which the WMA rule tends to emphasize.
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I am not very long player of wm, but in my experience my dwarf amy has won frequently. (it is true that we make list not very design to maximize the power of the army, we play the armies searching the flavour of the scenario or with the painted figures available -always respecting max and min-).
I have very fun times winning and loosing with the dwarfs and is an army I will suggest to play.
Maybe if you face a well design army of an experience player you could not have any possibility of win... but in my opinion, who cares if the games is funny and you enjoy the day!
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I would say that Warmaster dwarfs are bit tricky to play. But they have their strengths.
First they count among the few armies that have a general with a command of 10. That's a big advantage and with it dwarfs are far more fast moving in Warmaster than in Warhammer or Mordheim. And you can rely upon their moving (most of the times ;)).
They have very tough infantry units with very good armour. A brigade of Clan Warriors is a force you should not ignore especially if they are waiting in defended position. And Rangers are able to pursue cavalry.
Then they have very good shooting of course. Cannons are the most effective piece of artillery that exists in Warmaster.
Gyrocopters tend to dissolve in smoke if you throw them in the near of the enemy too lightly and too many units of Troll Slayers already lost a lot of games if they survived and lost a lot of games if they were killed (because they give the opponent victory points if they survive and they count towards breakpoint if they are killed - I only use one unit per 1000pts to prevent that).
There are two disadvantages I see.
First dwarfs as a high quality army have a low breakpoint so every unit you lose hurts very much.
And second every army in Warmaster has to be able to deal with cavalry. And that's not so easy with dwarfs. Rangers help a bit there but their numbers are few and they only have a 5+ save. One tactic you can use there is to stay in defended area where cavalry and chariots may not move in and if you attack then surround the enemy cavalry so that it is destroyed when losing in the first round (or mix one unit of rangers into the combat so they can finish the riders off in the next round.
I personally like them a lot but they do not promise easy winning...
Greetings,
Gerald
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YMV - I haven't played in a few years, so the 2.2 revisions may alter some of this... but this was an article I posted on Bugman's as a counterpoint to the typical gunline.
Warmaster is arguably one of the best games Gamesworkshop has ever made. In scale, it is to Warhammer what Warhammer is to Mordhiem in scale. Just like with real life conflicts, when you start getting to the larger scale, Command and Control is much more important then practically anything else that is measurable. There are three basic considerations when playing Warmaster, at any point value: 1. Break Point; 2. Command and Control; and 3. Shooting doesn�t do anything.
Break Point:
There are two victory conditions in Warmaster- either kill the general of the enemy or kill 50 % of his units before he kills 50 % of yours. Characters are completely different in Warmaster then �Herohammer.� Sure, 3rd edition changed Warhammer from Herohammer into more core based... but compared to Warmaster its still Herohammer. The ONLY purpose of characters in Warmaster is command and control. Even your general, tooled up with magic items and a monster mount if appropriate, will only have 1/3 the combat power of an unit. Think about that. In Herohammer, the typical lord will have the same combat effectiveness as an unit... and a monster mounted lord IS your army.
Characters can only enter close combat if attached to an unit. Keep your characters out of units, and they are pretty much immune to anything. Unfortunately, this means that the wise commander will only attach his general to ANYTHING only in a do-or-die, last ditch effort to avoid defeat. Any other time you are only asking to lose, as the enemy throws overwhelming force on the one unit that the general is in...
So, against anyone that has played Warmaster more then once, the real goal of the game is to eliminate 50 % of the enemy�s units.
While obvious, it is important to note that a weak human cannon crew counts for victory purposes just as much as a unit of chaos knights... Concentrating on killing the *weakest* half of the enemy�s forces is a highly effective way to win.
For Dwarves, for now it is enough to emphasize that a warrior unit with 4 wounds a stand and a great armor save counts as the same number of units as a flame cannon or a gyrocopter... which has practically no armor and no wounds in comparison.
Command and Control
Forget everything you learned about speed and the use of heros in Herohammer. As noted above, characters don�t belong in units. They few attacks they add to units is nothing compared to the usefulness of their leadership. Nothing moves in a controlled fashion in Warmaster with out a leadership test- that gets worse the more losses, the more moves and the farther from your commanders you are.
This is why Dwarves shine in Warmaster- despite no horses. Welcome to the Dwarven Foot Cavalry. With leadership 10, your infantry blocks can outmaneuver any unit of knights other then Elven. And elves are just a bunch of pansy tree huggers right? So who cares about elves!
Most Dwarven armies are just fine with just a general and a Runesmith. The Runesmith is just a good a commander as a hero, and his antimagic rocks. One leadership 10 general is more then sufficient for a 2,000 point army.
On a tactical note, units can form up in brigades. This is great as it reduces the number of orders a commander has to issue to move a given number of troops. Always form up your units in brigades of 3-4. Three warriors and unit of rangers work well...
Shooting Doesn�t do Anything.
Technical aside: In Warmaster, most units contain a number of stands (typically 3), and each stand contains a number of wounds (typically 3 for close combat units, 4 for Dwarves). In order to actually reduce the combat effectiveness of an unit, you must remove a stand. Wounds do NOT carry over from phase to phase. Therefore, you must inflict whole number of stand-wounds on an unit to do *ANY* damage to it.
Since shooting only has an extremely small number of attacks, and you *MUST* shoot at the closest target, it is extremely difficult for any actual damage to be inflicted in a shooting phase.
Summing Up:
Putting everything together, the Dwarven Foot Cavalry army is born. Since shooting doesn�t do anything, only the break point matters, Dwarven close combat infantry is rock hard and missile units are weak- you want lots of warriors and rangers. Gyrocopters, cannons, and thunders only role on the battlefield is supplying your enemy with weak units to rack up the break points on.
The typical Dwarf army is a general, a rune smith, warriors and rangers in a 3:1 ratio (3 warriors per ranger unit). With leadership 10, these infantry blocks can fly across the table and demolish anything in four turns.
I am a very experienced Warmaster player, playing Empire and Dwarves. I�ve never been defeated against the Dwarves as an Empire player- because every Dwarf player I�ve come across has taken far to many weak, easily destroyed units. Playing as the Empire, I concentrate my knights on the weak units- typically only then needing to destroy one or two warrior units to win.
I�m quite successful as a dwarf player with the above tactics- I�ve swapped armies with Dwarf players to teach them, and tried it against the high elves and tomb kings (arguably the top two armies in Warmaster). I�ve made grown men cry as my Dwarven infantry blocks raced across the table in two turns and hammered his out of position and out maneuvered army into snot... laughing off the few shooting hits.
Remember the goal is not kill the most points of the enemy- but to kill half his units. You can lose 75% of your point value and only 25% of the enemy�s and win... if you kill half his units and have more then half of your own.
Random Thoughts:
Aside- always have an odd number of units, if possible. It gives you the same break point as the higher even number.
Magic- I�m sure one or two of you are wondering why I haven�t discussed magic items or magic spells. Welcome to Warmaster- if your enemy gets more than one spell off the entire game, its abnormal. And since you can autodispell (no irresistible force) on a 4+; no worries no the magic side. Though, if you have the points, its not a bad idea to grab a scroll just in case you play undead or high elves... whose magic is bit nastier.
Magic Items- 99% of them are a waste of points. The orb, before the revision, was a must take item. With the revision [which is mandatory in official events], the orb is back into the waste of points category. Only take magic if you have a fraction of 110 points left and you have no idea what you want to do with your list... and have already spent 20 min on army building trying to cram another warrior unit into the list... :)
Magic swords can be useful on a character, as 5-10 points is not that much. But in a Dwarven army; your general should never see close combat, and your Runesmith should have a scroll.
Though a banner for the hammers or ironbreakers could be fluffy... if not effective.
Conclusion
Engrave this on your army list, your forearm and any where else handy: Remember the goal is not kill the most points of the enemy- but to kill half his units.
Have fun! Warmaster is great game, and the Dwarven Foot Cavalry rock! :)
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Engrave this on your army list, your forearm and any where else handy: Remember the goal is not kill the most points of the enemy- but to kill half his units. You can lose 75% of your point value and only 25% of the enemy’s and WIN... if you kill half his units and have more then half of your own.
Some very good points about how to use dwarfs effectively, afterall they do have the 2nd hardest infantry unit in the game..
But this bit isn't accurate. If you break your opponent but they have scored more VP points than you then its a draw. Basically you cannot score more VP's than your opponent if you are broken or lose your general. Indeed Warmaster is one of the few games that actually has a properly defined mechanism for defining a draw, other than merely calling small differences in the dead pile a draw...
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Good point - I removed two sentences containing those statements.
Not sure if I was going off the old rulebook, and there has been a change; or what.
Serves me right for editing it and posting with no rule book handy :)
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YMV - I haven't played in a few years, so the 2.2 revisions may alter some of this... but this was an article I posted on Bugman's as a counterpoint to the typical gunline.
I tried to register at Bugmans Never did get the valdation email. Are they haveing problems?
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Cannons do actually have a good place in the Dwarven battleline. Because they give the enemy no save. They work very well at breaking up brigades via drive back. That being said, a couple flame cannons on a flank can do very well at denying that flank.
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The hardest dwarf list I played against was an all infantry (without any machines) list. Especially against cavalry heavy armies there is nothing better than putting all your dwarfs into defended terrain.
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I agree - the scariest Dwarf army I ever played against was a warrior heavy one. If I was buying Dwarves, I would spend 70% of my points on warriors and the rest on rangers/characters. The rest of the army is just too vulnerable. I would play them agressive, roman legion style with brigades of heavy infantry in waves of checkerboard formation.
Saying this, you will still struggle against knights in the open - terrain is your friend against knights!
Dave
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I am not saying two cannon units at 2k isn't useful - the ability to pick off some chaos knight stands and murder infantry blocks is worthwhile.
What I am saying is that against light horse or flyers, a canny enemy will pick off those cannon... even if you do substantially escort them. Any every unit/point you spend on shooting, or escorts is an unit and points not spent on the main battle line - where the game will be decided.
A large battleline makes it harder for the enemy to flank you, and may mean you can actually overlap his. Getting a full infantry brigade of dwarves into a flank of a battleline puts you a long ways towards victory. 8)
Not to mention the break point - two units of thunders and two cannon units are much easier to kill than three warrior units. In a typical 2k game, killing the gunline means the enemy merely needs to kill one or two warrior/ranger units.
Pure warrior/rangers means at best the enemy can trade a knight unit for a warrior unit. Moving quickly with a command 10 general a dwarf army has a decent chance to plow through enough enemy infantry to win.
A gunline also ties you down - pure warriors can go offensive or defensive at will and stay together. A gunline risks defeat in detail if you go offensive.
A defensive position might win a game against an enemy who cooperates; but in a campaign game or tournament you need to win, not play for a tie.
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I am not saying two cannon units at 2k isn't useful - the ability to pick off some chaos knight stands and murder infantry blocks is worthwhile.
Though there wont be that much opportunities to shoot at heavy cavalry if you play against an experienced player.
The best thing about cannons is not so much their firepower, but the abillity to control your enemy because rarely will someone march willingly into an area that is in range of cannons.
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Effectively use of escorts can allow you some degree of targeting flexibility - if you want to run the risk of failing a command roll. Lothaire's article over the yahoo group is an excellent discussion of the mechanics.
Frankly, outside a siege, the cannons will stay home 2/3-4/5 of the time. I will take them out occansionally just to shake up my opponents.
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Still mentally debating Trollslayers.
They do get almost double the attacks of anything else in the dwarf army; but I dislike having to get myself halfway to break point merely to avoid giving up alot of VPs. The always charge thing result can allow the enemy to lead them into a flank charge easily.
The always charge on initiative makes it easy for the enemy to set up favorable match ups.
What are other people's thoughts?
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Still mentally debating Trollslayers.
They do get almost double the attacks of anything else in the dwarf army; but I dislike having to get myself halfway to break point merely to avoid giving up alot of VPs. The always charge thing result can allow the enemy to lead them into a flank charge easily.
The always charge on initiative makes it easy for the enemy to set up favorable match ups.
What are other people's thoughts?
Look at the trollslayers as per the Trail Army list.
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Still mentally debating Trollslayers.
They do get almost double the attacks of anything else in the dwarf army; but I dislike having to get myself halfway to break point merely to avoid giving up alot of VPs. The always charge thing result can allow the enemy to lead them into a flank charge easily.
The always charge on initiative makes it easy for the enemy to set up favorable match ups.
What are other people's thoughts?
I suspect Trollslayers, like most things, play very differently on a dense board with restricted lines of sight.
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One thing that I think could help dwarves greatly would be if the "2 rounds of combat" rule from WMA was added to WMF. It's something that I'm going to try to get a playtest of sometime in the near future.
That being said. I like my dwarves, even through they have gotten their tail handed to them every time I've played them. The lack of cavalry is brutal.
FYI in France most Paris-based players have been playing to Warmaster with the rules of Warmaster Ancients (we call it WMMF).
This includes the "2 rounds of combat" rules, and yes it makes a lot of difference. We have playtested this with most armies now and find it to work fine. We also find a lot more fun, strategic and fair.
I played a 2000pts dwarf vs dark-elves battle yesterday with those WMMF rules. And yes, this "2 rounds of combat" makes a big difference for those small guys. As does the WMA rule allowing infantry to pursue cavalery if flanked and infantery supports being counted before casulaties. This gives the darwves a real chance to stand against cavalery when properly played, and makes the game more strategic.
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I have to confess that I do now much prefer the WMA combat rules in this regard, it's just much more satisfying to know that even rubbish infantry such as in my Empire army can actually do something other than just be a speedbump for my opponent's cavalry...