My view on the Dwarfs (update)

Since there has been some recent discussion on the local blogs about the current state of Dwarfs, I thought I would 'quickly' (kidding, this might be long) add a little to it.

First off, let me just say that I choose armies on their fluff, and what their models look at the time, I don't or will never play an army solely based on the current "meta" or how powerful/OP/broken it is. Since I was little and to the present, while playing videos games, cards or reading books, if it had anything to do with a fantasy world, I was always hoping it would Dwarfs, I was always interested in them, what they did, where they live and so on. The thought of this stalwart warrior/craftsmen hammer wielding great bearded race living in mountain homes with great furnaces within them, Thanes, Kings and Lords leading them with special rune crafted Armour and Weapons was always very appealing to me. Side Note - As some of you may not know, I'm an avid World of Warcraft player, been playing that game for 6 years and bout 90% of my characters are Dwarfs. So when it came to Warhammer Fantasy, well, the choice was pretty clear, and besides, most of the other armies didn't appeal to me, maybe cept for the Tomb Kings and Chaos Dwarfs (MORE DWARFS!).

An example of a potential Dwarf Hold? (Image is really the Dwarf capital 'Ironforge' from WoW

Now on to how the Dwarfs are actually seen within the 8th Ed. Warhammer World. Well, their pretty much seen as the spare tire, most people think their boring, unappealing and just not fun at all. Why are they boring you ask, well we have restricted movement, everything in the book is M-3 we have no cavarly and one flyer that is very expensive and at the most, sub-par. So Dwarf players tend to stay behind (usually in the corner of the table) and then move very little through out the game or not at all. However, we do have a good shooting phase (not strong an OVER POWERED as some might say), just good. We have 5 warmachines (not counting the Anvil or Gyro) to choose from at which three are the most used and the other two, well, are shite. And most Dwarf players will tend to carry between 3-5 of these in a competitive list along with some Quarrelers (crossbowmen) along side them. Now with this very low movement and good shooting phase, this is where the Dwarf players resorts to the tactic of 'castling' or in my words 'The Soul Destroyer!'. Because naturally, you don't want to move your warmachines, because that will hamper their shooting capabilities so we resort to buying troops to protect these warmachines from certain destruction (they usually die anyways due to the hordes of poison missile troops that everyone and their mother has (besides the DWARFS!). And a lot of people get frustrated when playing against that type of army with that type of tactic, they push their models down the board while getting them shot off while not being able to really do anything about, which is a perfectly reasonable. But if we Dwarf players don't apply that tactic then we pretty much are dropping are pants, bending over and turning to the opponent saying "alright bud, make sure to put a little lube on it before you start!". What I really mean is that we leave are selves open to being flanked very easily due to our slow movement and if we screw up in the movement phase, there is no going back.

BUT! Our army is no more frustrating then playing against others, what we bring to the table is over costed infantry, heroes and lords and we have to manage to beat off a unit of, oh, lets say 40 Savage Orc Big Un's with a 5+ Wards kitted out with heroes and what not inside of it... you've got to friggen kidding me, that is not going to happen... EVER! Even our elite Hammer units struggle to go toe to toe against an average unit of Chaos Warriors (and lets say they have the Mark of Khorne). How can you expect us to compete with most other armies that can bring cheap costed, multi purpose blocks against out slow moving always strikes last dudes? Now that, is frustrating.

This is why we play the way we do. And some may ask "But isn't that boring to play with as well?", yes... and no, it is boring not being able to participate in 2 phases of the game, and annoying not being able to compete in another (combat). People tend to think Dwarfs as an aggressive race, that can put out the hurt and take it as well, this is partially true, however, Dwarfs are in fact, a very defensive race, they'd rather being mining for gold, crafting cool things or generally going about their own business within their mountain homes (Hell, they live in mountians! How much more defensive can you get for a settlement/town!?!?), but when they are attacked, that's when the Dwarfs start to turn bloody. I always imagined the Dwarfs being more focused on defensive tactics. Setting up huge gunlines, and after the smoke and ash settle, all that is left of the enemy is a fine red mist. I for one, don't see the Dwarf game play as boring, I rather enjoy it and generally see it "As to their lore" so whats to complain about, an army that sticks true to its fluff and behaves like their fluff says (besides that fact that they should be 20x better in the combat phase then they are at the present... *grumble* *grumble* *grumble*)