Vs Dwarves

[Ogre]

Ok, So Im going to take my shiny new grey plastic VC for a test drive this weekend. It seems I have dwarf players lining up to shoot at me(All the armies are War Machine Heavy.) Any ideas on how to address dwarves. My concerns are:
1. Magic Cannons
2. High Leaderships

Any ideas? My current plan is to hope to use a VG and a TG to try and get to the warmachines, and tie up any great weapon units with zombies. I was thinking of doing a zombie screen...

 

[Marius]

Ask me once I've finished with Archy's organ guns

Any advice I could give you will really depend on what war machines they're fielding:-

Cannons will be using their D6 wounds ability to take down any lone characters & large targets

Grudge throwers will be targeting your largest blocks to try & maximise the splash damage they can inflict.

Flame Cannons will be going for anything with regen, plus trying to flame more than one unit at a time.

Organ Guns will target whatever the hell they want.

They're also likely to try & use any terrain to their advantage - hills for getting better los, rivers & forests as defensive points.

Be careful about entering buildings - If the building gets hit, everything inside will get hit with (probably) a high strength attack.

It's also likely that they'll sit & wait with whatever troops they have & wait for you to go to them.

Finally, be aware that if you see an anvil - you're going to be really up against it when attempting any spells.

Good luck

 

[Ogre]

Organ Guns, Grudge Throwers and Cannons are what most of the Dwarf players field down here. Their shooting phase can be pretty gruesome for me.

 

[Wojmir Von Carstein]

Organ Guns, Grudge Throwers and Cannons are what most of the Dwarf players field down here. Their shooting phase can be pretty gruesome for me.

Same here. I find that my Varghful always dies because all his cannon (usaually two) are flaming. (he also takes flaming bolt throwers). Blood knights get ripped apart by organ guns. I find that he usually places two bolt throwers one at each end of the battlefield. This means that if I run a unit of knights on a flank then one of the bolt throwers can shoot at their exposed flank... nasty. Also, my magic does nothing since he has a runelord + runesmith with rune of balance. This measn he gets + 4 dispel dice and I lose one power die. On average I have 6 power dice and he has 8 dispel.... invocation does not go through. Basically I march up to him losing about 1/3 of my army and then I have to fight his hordes of great weapon warriors and hammers. I have not defeated him yet. Any suggestions? I don't have any terrorgheists although I do not think that they would be useful. He usually does not take any grudge throwers so my big block are relatively safe although cannons and bolt throwers can make a mess of a unit of they concentrate their fire. On top of that, his heroes have the rune which give him strenght 8 against toughness five or more. He also keeps a few dragons slayers near his machines. What this does is make it almost impossible to destory his war machines with fellbats/dire wolves. Usually it works out like this: I charge with my fell bats, kill one crew, lose one wound on fell bat then he passess his leadership test. Then his dragon slayers charges in and kills my fellbats/direwolves. On top of all this my opponent says that his dwarves are weak and need to be tweaked (ie. made stronger!!!). While I agree with him that his longbeards/thunderers/slayers/ironbrears are too expensive/not good enough, he never actually takes any so this "weakness" can be avoided in any dwarf army. His list usually looks like this:

RuneLord
RuneSmith
2 Thanes (one BSB)
2 dragon slayers
Rougghly 600-700 points

2 cannons
2 bolt throwers
1 organ gun
Roughly 400-450

2 hordes of 40 great weapon warriors about 900 points
1 unit of hammers 25 about 350 points
1 unit of tunderers/quarelers about 160

Total comes out to 2500

Help needed please!

Rant over/

 

[Dklyn]

@OP: I don't think single monster models like VG or TG are good choices to deal with cannons... as cannons themselves are great counters to lone models . High ldr doesn't mean too much unless you were planning on fear bombing.

@wojmir My "nemesis" plays dwarves and hate to tell you, but that is a fairly weak dwarf list. 1 organ gun is very generous but no grudge throwers is a true blessing . Anvil is a major headache.
Some things though...overall I would focus on downing his units and not stress his siege too much. Once you get into CC, it all rusts anyways.

1) he can't take the same pattern of runes among his siege. That means that only one can be only flaming, the others must be flaming + something else (I think it's called jealous runes).
2) I don't have the book, but I want to say that rune that gives him str 8 (I actually think it's 2 higher than T, making it 7 but...) is a master rune, meaning he can only take it once? Have to ask my friend about that. In any case, if his BSB has it then that means it's pretty squishy since he can't have a shield and BSB (something my friend complains about often).
3)If you want to have a snowball's chance to cast, consider black periapt since it's free +2PD (no use of DD). I don't recommend MotBA since any increase you get will also likely increase his DD, which is not fun. Plus you'll like red fury in CC
4) Let's see, low init units only sporting heavy armor, and ASL? Let's give him a red fury ASF combat lord with str6+... you'll hit on reroll 3, wound on 2 and no saves... may as well be fighting goblins . Even a thrall with +1str (hit 3+, wound 2+ no armor) would do fairly well. Vamp heroes/lord can (in my xp) eventually carry a combat against warriors. If you're worried about retaliation, consider nightshroud as it will negate GWs. Keep a champ around to accept challenges etc.
5) Lay off the smaller groups against this list. All of his siege excel against small units, so don't give him quite a hayday with it . If you must use small groups, keep them behind units/terrain that can give cover to deny bolt thrower. Make the cannons do the bulk of the work as they can miss/misfire. Big blocks of infantry force him into attrition fights which you should ultimately win (while his core > yours, your special should > his).
6)I don't know your core, but don't horde it. This will deny him extra powerful attacks. I personally like skeletons as they are cheap (meaning a LOT can die) and their parry save will come through for you when taking heavy losses.
7) Of course, the real middle finger move is to take master necro with death and grab purple sun (90%+) and miscast it. A bit unsportsman like, but I'd say so is taking heavy magic resistance against a magic reliant army. My friend once brought anvil of doom (adds DD), banner that adds +2Dispel attempts, and rune of balance. So next time, I showed up with my wife's Bret army and made a list with no casters whatsoever. Since then he's kept anti-magic to a minimum.
8) As I recall, GW GG should trump his hammerers. Nom through those and then head for the backlines or support your dying core against his warriors.
9)Funny enough, ethereals may not be a bad choice here. While I usually don't take them against dwarves, it's because of the grudge throwers aoe smashing an entire unit. In this case, cannons can only take out one at a time, and if you keep them in combat/use units to get cover then bolt throwers shouldn't do too much either. Organ guns can't have runes and so I don't believe their attacks are magical. This is brainstorming, but hexwraiths may work well as they can move through the lines and take out the lone slayers (if they have magic attacks, then opt to move through them to get your damage in). CWraiths are another option as they are easy to give cover and with 3 str 5 attacks, would probably do nicely.
10) Since he splits his bolt throwers so far away, have you thought about having bats dive for one of those? I imagine his slayer isn't close to them and their stubby legs can't move fast enough to defend it...

That's all I can think of off the top of my head.

 

[Ogre]

So played my new army against a dwarf player last night. I focused all of my energy on 2 of his units. A Longbeard unit with Great Weapons, and a unit of Hammerers.

The Terrorgheist died first turn but took all of his shooting to do it. My Varghulf ran up the side and into the longbeards by turn 2. The Skeleton unit had both of my vampires and was equipped for fear bomb(which actually worked!). The Hex Wraiths moved up the side and took out a grudge thrower and organ gun, and moved through the Shield warriors. Zombies and Crypt Horrors tied up hammerers for a while.

In the end it came down to turn six, the Hammerers fled after I killed their General in a Duel and I could not catch them which ended the game in a draw. My magic was shut down, and I only managed to get one Invocation off the entire game. The Hammers continually failed the Fear Bomb against the skeleton unit.

Thoughts on some of the units:
Terrorgheist, really cool but I dont know how to use him just yet. Ive never really played any armies with anything flying before.
Hexwraits - Completely not worth the points. Will be replaced by black knights.
Varghulf - Holy crap that thing is mean!
Hybrid Vampire Lord - Combat Monster! But Im not sure if I like playing heavy handed or if I should spread more power around the army.
Corpse Cart - Did nothing all game except die to a cannonball in a bid for points.
Mortis Engine- MVP! My dice were hot and I was making Re-Gen saves all over the place. Coupled with Crypt Horrors they were almost unkillable(until combat res...) When the Mortis Engine died in Turn 5 it did more damage to me than my enemy.
Wolves - Need more units of them to be effective.
Zombies - Better pit unit than my goblins in my Orc army simply for IoN.
Ghouls - I think I screwed up their stats, so they were not as effective as they should have been.

I think i fudged some rules, but so did he, so it all equaled out in the end(I think he was cheezing me on targeting, need to look that up.) He was really rushing me through the game, so I know I forgot some things.

 

[Bune]

for your mages make a bunker behind your other units make it broad.. against dwarfs align most of your army in lines of 1 or 2 depending on how many he has and how big your units are. so he can't get as many kills with warmachines preferable so most are in range of ION. then reform once you get close'ish stay in the middle of the table to avoid miners and anvil charges i find that having a line of 20 zombies on the edge of the table is effective so his miners cant enter from there.