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) in Total War: WARHAMMER. As the DLC isn't out yet and we know very little about how the faction will work. However, we can make some early guesses based on the table top.
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: If CA does you justice, you will be THE strongest gunline in the 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 so you will likely be 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?
- 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.
- Monsters: You got plenty of them, from Giants, 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
- Lacking Mid Tier Options: On the tabletop at least, you didn't have a lot of options that were strong while also affordable. Your options consisted either very strong but very few Chaos Dwarfs or plentiful but near useless Hobgoblins. In game, your army is probably going to lack effective mid tier units that can kick ass while still being an affordable price.
- Short range shooting: From your Infantry, lets make that clear. The Chaos Dwarfs always favored blunderbuss over handgun's. While dumping a whole unit of shotgun's 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. There is a decent chance you get Fire Glaives, but they’ll at best have the range of traditional guns so they’ll still be out ranged by a lot of other units. 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. If slave units and Hobgoblin allies make it into the roster, this weakness is mitigated substantially however, and one should be careful not to underestimate the strength of the heavy Calvary of a bull centaur unit.
- 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, chaos dwarfs will likely require 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.
Faction Traits
Speculation
There have been two army lists for the Chaos dwarves.
The original one lurking about in White Dwarf was a mixed force of Chaos Dwarves and various Goblin and Orc slaves. The more recent Forge World List had none of that and had only "Infernal Guard" as an elite Dwarf force with no slaves in sight. These are two very different possible path's to take, one would have the Chaos Dwarves have various Orc and Goblin units, and the other be more like there non-chaos Dwarf version. The former was more considered the proper "standard" Chaos Dwarf force whereas the secondary list used in Tamurkhan: The Throne of Chaos was a specialty list akin to Karak Kadrin slayers, Har Ganeth Executioners, etc. which specialized in Infernal Guard and war machines.
An all Chaos Dwarf army would be probably be to similar to the normal Dwarf factions. So we can presume that the Chaos Dwarfs will bring there slave units along with them with Infernal Guard making up a sort of tier 3 option, with normal Dwarves and maybe slave Black Orcs in tier 2, and Hobgoblins in tier 1. Still this does open up some problems. Giving a faction both cheap chaff and heavily armored units seems tricky to balance, other then the Green Skin's and Ogres no other faction has a mix like that as these are typically opposite traits needing different counters. You can't have your can-openers fight Goblins and your anti-chaff can't fight the Heavy Dwarf units, and you have to move quickly before there Doom Rockets and Hell Cannons tear you to pieces. And on top of that unlike normal dwarves they have precedent's for fast units like Wolf Riders alongside the probably boar boy fast Bull Centaurs that normal dwarves not really have.
On paper it's a difficult army to fight with a lot of tools and we can only hope CA is being careful with the balance. Could be mitigated by a mixture of the slave system the Dark Elves have and the Bretonnian Peasant Economy, in which slaves are earned by capturing foes to improve your own economy, but you can take some out to be warriors, however this risks reducing your income and making you less likely to support the upkeep of said army.
Lords
Legendary Lords
Generic Lords
Sorcerer-Prophet:
Chaos Dwarf Lord:
Heroes
Legendary Heroes
Generic Heroes
Units
Infantry
Missiles
Cavalry
Monsters
Artillery
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