Lance LaGroue- Lonewolf Quick Summary
The Dwarfs went to war over the weekend resulting in a 2-2-1. Perhaps the question is why adopt an army that is so ill suited to tournament play, that rarely achieves tournament objectives, and opponents can play you conservatively for a draw in nearly every encounter? The answer is that for 2010, I wanted do a bi-polar approach to Warhammer whereby the two armies I utilized represented extremes. I adopted dwarfs as the pillar of defense and Bretonnians as perhaps the manifestation of pure offense.
My list included the following:
Runelord (general)- great weapon, gromril armor, Anvil of Doom, shield, and rune of spellbreaking X2. Total- 374 pts
Thane- battle Standard Bearer, gromril armor, rune weapon with rune of might, and rune of fire, rune armor (Rune of Iron X2). Total- 150 pts.
Thane- great weapon, crossbow, runic armor- master rune of gromril and rune of resistance, and master rune of challenge 149 pts.
Core-
10 Quarrelers- 110 pts
20 Quarrelers with standard bearer and shield- 250 pts
20 Dwarf Warriors with standard- 190 pts
Special-
Bolt Thrower- engineer upgrade 60 pts
Bolt Thrower- engineer upgrade + Rune of Penetrating and Rune of Burning 90 pts
Bolt Thrower- engineer upgrade +Rune of Penetrating 85 pts
Bolt Thrower- engineer upgrade + Rune of Burning 65 pts
18 Hammerers with full command, standard has Rune of Courage- 276 pts.
15 Miners with prospector and standard, prospector has steam drill- 210 pts.
Rare-
Organ Gun- 120 pts
Organ Gun- 120 pts
Total: 2,249
The strategy was overtly simple, namely shoot the large targets that dwarfs can’t handle in combat, followed by reducing enemy combat blocks in order that ranked dwarf infantry can fight. Due to such a tactic, the dwarf army is completely dependent on the first two turns of the game to effectively ‘even the odds.’ This plan is coupled with the anvil to delay part of the enemy’s hardest hitting unit. Moreover, since I have so few drops, I have to anticipate my opponent’s deployment in order to better arrange and position my artillery to threaten my opponent’s battle line.
The games I played were extreme in dice results in nearly every capacity. It is hardly worth recalling every game, but to give a quick summary of the effects of the strategy. In games one & four my dice were extremely hot. In the first two turns I did not miss once with a bolt thrower, the crossbowmen hit, and organ guns and the anvil did not misfire. By turn three in game one I dropped two stegadons, two characters, and 50% of two saurus blocks. In Game four, my Chaos opponent lost 70% of his army due to my hot dice by turn three.
The reverse also held true in games two & three. In game two I sent nearly a dozen bolt thrower shots at a steam tank before a single wound was inflicted. Four Strength seven bolt throwers shots failed to put a wound on a war alter. Three strength eight combat attacks failed to bust the altar. I failed a restrained pursuit roll on an eleven to pursue a unit of knights that opened a flank charge, in one instance I just need above snakes eyes to escape from combat but I failed that roll, I failed two stubborn nine combat checks…the list goes on. My anvil misfired so many times in games two, three and five that it actually only worked a total of 5 times out of a potential of eighteen times with each game resulting in self destruction…sigh.
In each of these games, I failed to hurt the key combat units to any significant degree- the steam tank hit my line with a wound, the altar had only one wound, almost no dead knights, hardly any phoenix guard or dragon princes killed, etc. Moreover, the dwarfs lacked the combat power to repel such troops with their stats resulting in defeat. I am really curious to know how all five games would have played out if my dice were much more average.
On a different note, all my opponents were really great both in terms of personality and their play ability. They made very few mistakes in their strategy, with nothing particularly game changing. I think my personal weakness barring wacky dice was my own list design more than deployment or tactical movement. I think I would drop the miners for a second unit of hammerers as I needed more flank protection, split the 20 crossbowmen into a unit of 10 crossbowmen and 10 dwarf warriors as scouts to delay enemy movement.
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