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. 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 tabletop.
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 their heavy cavalry -- like the 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 Dwarfs.
The original one lurking about in White Dwarf was a mixed force of Chaos Dwarfs 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 paths to take, one would have the Chaos Dwarfs have various Orc and Goblin units, and the other be more like their 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 too similar to the normal Dwarf factions, so we can presume that the Chaos Dwarfs will bring their slave units along with them and 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, as other than the Greenskins 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 Doom Rockets and Hellcannons tear you to pieces. On top of that, unlike normal dwarfs they have precedents for fast units like Wolf Riders alongside the probably boar boy fast Bull Centaurs that normal dwarfs don't 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. In single player this 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. How multiplayer will deal with this stands to be a ticker question.
Also on a different bit of speculation: it'd be interesting to see if they make the Hobgoblins green like normal Goblins or if they are orange like their Age of Sigmar counterparts, the Hobgrots, which are the first models to actual be a Hob (Age of Sigmar trademark word for Goblin). Previous Hobgoblins used the standard Goblin kit, (Which may be why the Chaos Dwarves had slave options, it allowed them to buff out the army list without needing to make custom kits). Green would be classical but the Orange Grots are arguably their first actual GW representation.
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. Likely comes with the Lore of Hashut.
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.
Chaos Dwarf Lord:
Heroes
Legendary Heroes
Generic Heroes
Daemonsmith: Hashut's own mix between a caster and master engineer. By the Legions of Azgorh book they come with the Lore of Metal, Fire, and Death.
Units
Infantry
Missiles
Cavalry
Bull Centaurs:
Monsters
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. Lammasu:
Artillery
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. Death Shrieker Rocket Launcher: A much killier version of the Empire's Helstorm and Cathay's Fire Rain.
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