Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Chaos Dwarves

This is the general tactics page on how to play Chaos Dwarfs (that's DWARFS with an FS at the end, ignore the title of the page, the author shall be sacrificed to Hashut) in Total War: WARHAMMER.

Why play Chaos Dwarfs?

• Because you like seeing things go BOOM!
• While everyone else is in the Renaissance at best, you will show the world the glory and horror of the Industrial Revolution.
• Because you love the shameless evil of the Dark Elves but don't like the actual Elf part.
• You love to artillery box and shoot things with giant fuck off guns.
• Because you feel like every single villain should use an exceptional amount of fire.
• You wanted to play dwarves but you are tired of the classic honorable mining fellows.
• You have a high tolerance for silly hats.

Pros

• Gunpowder: Your guns are some of the most powerful in the whole game. Expect to win in a straight up shoot out against pretty much any other faction that relies on guns. Combine that with some of the strongest artillery in the game and no enemy will want you shooting for long.
• Armor: At least for the units you actually care about. Even the lowest Chaos Dwarf has strong armor comparable to the Dwarfs when it comes to durability. Of course your Hobgoblins won't be great in this department, but you don't really care about them now do you?
• Melee Grind: What? You thought that just because they are good at shooting they must stink in melee? Nope! Chaos Dwarf infantry is very strong and hard hitting and their monsters are quiet good at turning the enemy into pasta sauce.
• Fire: Not only do you have lots of it but you have lots of units resistant to it. Anything weak to fire is going to burn and anything that uses fire will feel damn near useless against you. You also have plenty of ways to give fire weakness, leading to some cool combos.
• Monsters: You got plenty of them, from K'Daai, Lamassus and Great Tauruses you have plenty of monsters to throw around.
• Versatile: You got a unit for more or less any occasion. Yeah you prefer to shoot but you got strong Infantry, Cavalry, Fliers and magic as well. It's possible to pull out all kinds of tactics, especially compared to your Dawi cousins.

Cons

• Insufficient Mid-Tier Options: You don't have a lot of options that are strong while also affordable. Your options consist of either very strong but very few Chaos Dwarfs or plentiful but near useless Hobgoblins. In game, your army lacks effective mid-tier units that can kick ass while still being an affordable price.
• Short-ranged infantry: The Chaos Dwarfs always favored blunderbusses over handguns. While dumping a whole unit of shotguns into somebody is going to hurt, longer range units can kite away from you. Your other possible option, goblin archers are... not great if we look to the orcs. Fireglaives have decent range but they are also highly expensive and you have limited recruitment. So if you want to really touch somebody at distance you'll have to rely on your artillery.
• Slow: Chaos-corrupted Dwarfs are still Dwarfs, and you still curse the day the Old Ones gave you stubby legs. Sure you're faster than the Karaz Ankor Dwarfs but that's like saying you're faster than your 4 year old nephew, not something you should be bragging about. Even Bull Centaurs are rather slow for Cav and while Hobgoblin cav is quick, it’s not good for much outside of killing skirmisher and artillery or chasing odd routing units.
• Cost-inefficient: The big one: Chaos Dwarfs don't like fighting in armies as there is too few of them to risk their lives consistently compared to their western brethren. As such, the Chorfs have high upkeep for units like chaos dwarf warriors, infernal guard, etc. and will be reliant on slaves, which you will likely only be able to get by fighting and winning battles. Don't expect anything to go cheaply unless it is a slave with low morale or a hobgoblin.
• Artillery Duels: This might sound weird, but your artillery isn't that efficient at dealing with other artillery. Most of it is designed for infantry, and they each have a single large model making them easy targets. So any army that has good snipping artillery like cannons can flatten them unless you get lucky and take out the crews.
• Anti-Large? What's that?: You don't have super cost effective Anti large options. All your AP missiles cost a pretty penny and anything with Anti Large is in the elite camp, so monsters might actually be a problem for you.

Faction Traits

• Contempt: All Chaos Dwarf race units (so excluding Hobgoblins and K'Daai, but including Bull Centaurs) will only suffer morale penalties from watching friendly units rout if they also have the Contempt rule. This means that if your Greenskin or Monster units run away, they aren't going to give a hit, allowing your Dorfs to stay in the fight a bit longer than other units in the same situation.

• Malign Authority: The ability of your Greenskin sla- oh, I'm sorry- LARBOURER units. They gain extra leadership when a unit with the Contempt rule is nearby, allowing them to stick around for just long enough to drop another volley onto their faces while they hold the enemy in place.

• Backstabbers: Common to all hobgoblin units, increases both melee and missile damage if above half health.

• Fire Resistance: All Chaos Dwarf race units have some degree of fire resistance, in the 15%-25% range, varying by unit.

• Hellbound: Common to all war machines and artillery besides the Hellcannon, this passive grants Magical Attacks, 20% Physicel Resistnace, and perfect Vigour for as long as HP is >25%. Oddly enough, can be removed in multiplayer for some extra funds.

• Hell-Forged: Common to the same units as Hellbound, simply allows them to be healed by the Daemonsmith's Reforge ability, which is given even more importance by the buffs gained from keeping Hellbound enabled.

Lords

Legendary Lords

Astragoth Ironhand: An ancient, partially petrified Sorcerer-Prophet with machinery grafted to his limbs to move, and de facto the faction leader. Comes with a mix of the Lore of Hashut and the Lore of Fire.

Zhatan the Black: Melee lord. Can mount a Taurus or a Lammasu.

Drazhoath the Ashen: Lore of Hashut caster lord. Can mount a Taurus, Lammasu, or Bale Taurus.

Generic Lords

Sorcerer-Prophet: Based off of the Legion of Azgorh they can use the Lore of Hashut, Fire, Death, or Metal. Anyone who's seen chorf speculation has heard this a thousand times, but your generic magic lord may have a mechanic to represent the curse of petrification.

Overseer: Melee lord

Heroes

Legendary Heroes

Gorduz Backstabber: Hobgoblin melee hero, can buff Hobgoblin units. Can mount a wolf.

Generic Heroes

Daemonsmith: Hashut's own mix between a caster and master engineer. Come with the lore of Hashut, Fire, Metal, or Death, and can heal War Machines.

Infernal Castellan: Missile Specialist

Bull Centaur Taur'ruk: Melee specialist pseudo-cavalry with anti-large

Units

Infantry

Goblin Labourers: 180 models of the most expendable of expendable meatshields.

Orc Labourers: 140 models of slightly more useful expendable meatshields, with a bit more health and armour piercing, relative to their diminutive counterpart.

Hobgoblin Cutthroats: Close but stronger to the Greenskins' Goblins. Also benefit from Malign Authority and Backstabbers. Because of Contempt, you can use them just as disposably as the Labourers. With 140 models, makes for good tarpitting.

Hobgoblin Sneaky Gits: Stalk, poison precursor ranged attack, poison anti-infantry melee.

Chaos Dwarf Warriors: Tier 2 heavy infantry, across the board superior than Dwarf Warriors, but used in essentially the same way. Comes with axe & shield, or armour-piercing great weapons.

Infernal Guard: Tier 3 heavy infantry, comparable to Longbeards. Come in axe & shield or AP great weapon varieties.

Infernal Ironsworn: Heaviest infantry available to the Dawi Zharr. Charge defense vs all and broadly similar stats to Dwarf Ironbreakers, magical & flaming attacks.

Missiles

Hobgoblin Archers: Closely analogous to Greenskin Goblin Archers.

Chaos Dwarf Blunderbusses: THE standout member of the present roster, a frontline of Blunderbusses can on it's own rout many armies, and with charge defense vs large even the stuff that reaches them will have a hard time getting through them. Comparable melee stats to Dwarf Warriors, and their ranged weapon does an ungodly amount of damage to anything that enters it's 90 range. Prepare for the possibility of this unit getting nerfed like Ogre Ironbelchers.

Infernal Guard Fireglaives: Tier 3 hybrid infantry, with a 145 range repeating rifle. Very capable melee combatants to boot, one of only two Chaos Dwarf units with anti-large. Will lose bad in a 1-to-1 shootout against Blunderbusses.

Cavalry

Hobgoblin Wolf Raiders: Superior Goblin Wolf Riders. Come in spear & shield and bow varieties, and have the unique ability Cowardly Despoilers granting +25% Weapon Strength when attacking a unit from behind or the flank.

Bull Centaur Renders: A bit like tankier Dragon Ogre Shaggoths. Come in axe & shield, anti-infantry dual axe, and anti-large great weapon varieties, all with armour-piercing. Similar to Blunderbusses, Bull Centaurs with great weapons are absurdly overtuned and will beat practically every other cavalry unit in the game and will likely be hit with the nerf hammer in upcoming patches.

Monsters

Great Taurus:

Lammasu:

K'daai Fireborn: Daemons summoned from the burning depths so they may then be bound into armour and turned into the Dawi-Zharr's brand of Monstrous Infantry.

Bale Taurus: Pretty much a Cow Dragon.

K'Daai Destroyer:

Artillery & War Machines

Magma Cannon: Single unit anti-infantry fire artillery with a range of 450. Upon hitting something, its projectile makes a fire field on the ground that continuously damages and stuns anything in it, which breaks up a unit's formation on the advance. If the enemy is coming towards you in a big blob, target the front ranks of the blob, the other guys will walk into the fire patch.

Iron Daemon: Fat single unit, powerful collision attacks and two fat blunderbuss cannons. This and the Skullcracker's primary melee attacks are anti-infantry steam cannons mounted on all sides of the chassis, so this thing can do a lot of damage whether it's sending rounds into the enemy's flanks or rolling straight through it. See also: Dreadquake Mortar.

Hellcannon: The classic artillery piece using the souls of the damned as homing ammunition. Not much to be said, just the WoC unit returned to their fellow countrydwarfs. Lacks the unique traits of the faction's other machines, and is the only crewed unit on the roster.

Skullcracker: The dedicated melee counterpart of the Iron Daemon that for some reason has the exact same stats as the Iron Daemon minus the guns. Despite this, it costs more than the Iron Daemon. Lords do have redline skills that improve the Skullcracker's melee stats, but this just isn't a thing in multiplayer battles. Probably needs some stat adjustments to differentiate it from its ranged brother.

Death Shrieker Rocket Launcher: A much killier version of the Empire's Helstorm and Cathay's Fire Rain. 420 range, can fire both anti-infantry airburst rockets and anti-large direct detonation rockets (Two direct hits of the latter will break Big Bess). Important to note that the anti-large rocket will only ever hit a single entity - shooting it at anything that isn't a single or very low model count unit is hugely inefficient. This is the most specialised of the Chorf's artillery, it loses out in the anti-infantry department to all other options available and the single-fire rocket is lacking in accuracy. It does have an extremely high firing arc that lets it ignore most terrain in between itself and its target.

Dreadquake Mortar: CHUNKY 380 range mortar. Single hit will cut a lot of unit's model count in half, but the slow speed of the projectile can make it a little situational. The damage number doesn't count the AoE earth tremor effect that persists for a few seconds after the shot lands. While highly inaccurate, a direct hit will decimate all but the most heavily armoured units and it will stop anything in its tracks with its -60% speed debuff. Be careful though, as the Dreadquake doesn't discriminate, and a poorly aimed shot will decimate your frontline as quickly as it'll decimate the enemy's. But that's what your greenskin units are for, ay? Can be taken by itself, or can be pulled into battle by an Iron Daemon or a Skullcracker, for all your war train needs - benefited further by it's 360° firing.

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