Unofficial Warhammer Blogs

The dwarves control numerous amounts of artillery, some of which is amazingly powerful on the battlefield, while others are more situational. Knowing which and when to use each, and how to use each is very critical. For those who consider themselves pros on the subject of dwarven artillery, you can just skim, but the majority of dwarf players and people who play against dwarves, you should read this, because I am tired of playing brewery protecting scenarios, and it ends up me unleashing volleys of hell on my enemies where as my other dwarf companions unleash volleys of nothingness because they do not know their guns.

Bolt Thrower:
Amazing! What else can i say about this. It is incredibly cheap to build, has a range that is good enough to reach across the board to enemy units (assuming a standard 6ft long 4 ft wide table, you are on opposite widths). It has a a Str 6 attack already, D3 wounds, 48″, No armor saves! You can assume what that means. Put a Rune of Penetrating on it, and you have a chariot destroyer easily.

I always run two bolt throwers. Fielding 2x for 90pts, upgrading one with an Engineer for a mere 15pts, an having my Master Engineer on the other, gives me a bolt thrower that hits on 2s, another on 3s. I would always get the Engineer upgrade for a bolt thrower. Some may argue otherwise, but i prefer the percentages with 66%+ rather than 50%. Not to mention, i rely heavily on these guys. I believe its one of the best all around pieces of artillery, heres why.

Chariots- Rune of Penetrating, and you have a chariot killer. He moves once, now hes in range, and bam. Hits on 2+ to a 3+. End of story. No impact hits, no crazy flank charge. Just shattered wood.

Knights- Barded, heavy armor, shields, no matter, your firing a bolt that is the size of their horse. Metal wont stop that. Only ward saves can save your opponents 200-300+ investment of buffed out knights. The other bonus, is that your average smart player will run 5-6 knights per unit, but every now and again, you catch the lucky break where theres only 4 in a unit, like fast cav. Killing one can cause panic checks with the D3 wounds.

Infantry- Where the bolt thrower shines. Rank piercing, only a -1 str penalty per rank. This is why the Engineer or Master comes into play, with multiple Rune of Penetrating. Rolling with a BS of 3 hits on 4s, well, you don’t have to take Statistics 20 at UC Berkeley(like i so sadly did) to figure out that your going to not punch through as many as you would with a BS of 5, hitting on 2s. It means you have an 83% change of hitting every rank. Much better imo.

Cannon:
Ahh who can forget. 48″, Str 10, D3 wounds, with no armor saves. Another key destroyer of life for the dwarves. Rune of Forging nearly always unless your very strapped on pts. I read an article that said, guess the range between you and your target, then subtract 8. This accounts for a bounce hit as well. Now lets think about this.

You are going to reroll misfires on the artillery dice, so you will be adding 2 pretty much. You could get a misfire twice, but that is a little unlikely. 1/36. So back to it, your adding at least 2 on the guess, and 2 on a bounce. The average addition is going to be (10+8+6+4+2)/5=6. So on average, 6 will be added to the guess, the same with the bounce.

So thats 12, so we should subtract 12 right? Wrong. 12 might be the average, but it can be up to 20, or as low as 4. So if we do the math, and add up every possibilty we get 12 again, so why 8? Its the amount you want the cannon ball to bounce through. Say i subtract 12, the ball is gonna shoot and bounce and drop right at their feet. That is no good. That is why you subtract less than 12. Duh. For all the people getting turned off this article because i just stated the obvious, sorry, but I am tired of seeing dumb people firing and guessing the distance and using that.

IF there are units behind my targetted unit, then i will subtract less than the usual 8. Say 5-6. Then the cannon ball will theoretically land in the middle of my targetted unit, and bounce to other units behind it. You sunk my battleship. Find the distance, subtract 8. That is your guess. Subtact less to hit units behind it.

A cannon is just like a bolt thrower in many regards on what targets are chosen.

Chariots will crumble if you can manage to snag one, but its hard to get one. You have to be quite a Sharpeye, Dota anyone?

Infantry- Better. Such a big target, it creates nice slots in a block 5×4.

Knights- If you can manage to hit it is great, but if the player is keen on your tactics, he will align his knights smartly, and not run them across the battlefield perpendicular to your cannon barrel so you can kill all of them in one shot. Good though for its D3 wounds.

Stone Thrower(I bought mine before it became a Grudgethrower, so I am too stubborn to change):
HAVE TO have the Rune of Accuracy. No one will plant all of their troops in one gigantic blob and run across the field like that. Only during the set up is that quite true, if at all. This is why you need to reroll the scatter die.

This machine is a little…harder to use. Not only does the artillery dice change the movement of the stone a certain way, the scatter die changes direction. Granted, you get a small template, which is good because you can clip units, 4+ hit on a partial. Str4(8 poor guy heh). No armor saves. D6 wounds! 60″! Nice points, but again, you better have that rune. You also have to be good at guessing vast distances. 60″ range is great, but if your guy is 43″ away, you would have to be pretty damn good to just slam that number down.

Goal: Be able to guess distances to within 2 inch deviation at up to 60″ away. My best guesses come because, and this will sound weird, how big my shoe is. Think about it, you always see your shoes, and you know or can measure how long they are. Close your eyes and envision it. Now imagine it on the board. How many shoes does it take to get to the target? Childish? Oh most definietly. But hey, i make that damn ‘Look Out, Sir!’ rule effective quite a lot.

Stone Throwers are only really effective against anything they hit, ie, infantry. You are more likely to clip or hit a block of 5×4 foot soliders than a single unit, or a war machine. If they place their mages and war machines in a line, then its worth a shot of course, but your much better at going for big blocks of units. Remember you are dwarves, you can hold your own against most any unit, not against any more. Splatting one makes a big difference.

Organ Gun:
Wow…. Str 5, Armor Save -3(which is plenty enough for all but Knights), Wounds 3. The range is a bit lacking, only 24, but that is forgotten when you see how it shoots. Number of hits equal to the artillery dice, and you can reroll it. Again, should be around 6? Pretty good odds. You can add a rune to it to avoid the misfires, but those are usually one use only. So… if your up against heavilly infantry focused armies, i would go for for those, but otherwise, not really worth it imo. 120pts is a little steep compared to other tried and true guns. But again, it is great vs. infantry and low toughness/armor guys like fast cav. Again, the shoe idea on guessing range, its ok to be a bit over.

Flame Cannon:
This piece of artillery is good for two reasons. It can dish out quite a strong amount of damage with the flame template, auto hits baby! and partials on 4+. -2 armor save, D3 wounds, but a crappy 12″ range. The template is 8 and 1/8th inches long, and about 2 and 3/8ths long at the widest part. So lets see… it functions as the cannon. So you can theoretically place the template down at 22 inches, and hit a target up to 30 inches away from the barrel. Pretty good. Average bonus again is 6+8 inch template, so 14 inch bonus. I guess about -9 to -10 off of the actual distance if they are 12 inches away. If they are more than 12, remember the template is 8 inches, and you want a clean hit, so subtract 4. if they are within 20 inches.

The second reason, is it is highly toted as one of the most powerful guns in the game. Along with the Organ Gun. Not many generals are going to send their troops along that side of the board. So it nullifies a flank, or redirects enemy movement. Always a plus, since you can corral the enemy into your fire lane with your more tried and true artillery.

Beyond that, your gonna have to guess the full 12 or minus 1 or 2. Dont forget its flaming, and causes panic tests.

Gyrocopter: Ill discuss this in a later blog.
Goblin Hewer: Still tweaking, discuss later.

So a long winded summary. If you just breezed by my other writings, read this. The number at the end is the ranking of usability 1-10, bigger numbers= better.

Stone Thrower- ALWAYS get the Rune of Accuracy. Aim for the center of your target if its alone, other wise aim in the middle of their army. 5.

Bolt Thrower- Cheap as all get out. Upgrade bonus with engineers is must. Master Engineer target as well. In fact, only machine i suggest getting an engineer for. Rune of Penetrating for chariot killing. Amazing for versatility. 9. Over powered with a Master Engineer

Cannon- Strong and relatively cheap for the power it packs. Rune of Forging aids a lot on this machine. Target big units with it. Knights and multiple wound units, or units stacked deeply. 8

Organ Gun- Great for heavy infantry and light cavalry. Not much else imo. Range is too short to gun for much else. Strong 7, would be higher, but seeing as its a little more situational and only good vs. certain units.

Flame Cannon- Great for what it does, but again, the low range really hurts. And its quite expensive. I can take 3 bolt throwers for the same price and have a little change left over. Great for protecting a flank. 5.

A wise dwarf player at my store, (im sure it comes with age since he was like 45), had me rethink my strategies on what to target. Usually a general has his pride of the fleet unit where shots will bounce off, and is seen as public enemy #1. Well, sorry to say this, but you as a dwarf will probably be able to give it a black eye, maybe worse, but it will get into combat unless you just blast it to shreds by focusing all your fire power on it, and in the end, that might be what he wants or expects.

If instead, you target other units along the sides that are weaker(less toughness, armor, number) then you can force panic checks on the big unit. Also, if these units are either broken, or decimated by the time it hits your ranks of stalwart troops, you can easily win combat, and flank into the big unit.

Allocating shots is key and why range plays such a big roll in the worth of the dwarven artillery. Being able to be under fire from the moment the opponent puts his pieces down is big. Not to mention the d3+ wounds caused by the machines.

Depending on what the style of the opponent is determines what kind of firing pattern you want. If its more like a Skaven rush(So fun with Bolt Throwers), or more consolodated with Ogre Kingdoms or Chaos, your tactics change.

The more total units involved, ie like Skaven, the more you try to stem the tide. Slowly hitting each and every one, so when they get close, your crossbowmen or thunderers(which i approve more of) can take over and deal the final blows. If, since there are so many, they hit combat, your troops can easily take them and avoid getting flanked(a huge disadvantage of dwarves). Assuming you target the flank models more so than the others. Those units are priority. So target all, get your hits in, reduce ranks, then focus fire on flanking units, leaving your solid units in the middle to 1v1 theirs. You will win.

For more focused attacks, Big Bretonnian unit, chaos hordes, ogres, try to elimate one unit at a time so you can allow for a flank attack with your units. Ogres are slightly different, if they run the naked bull style with multiple units of 3 bull each, then kill 1 ogre an watch them break. Basically try to force panic attacks by wiping out units. You would think this would be a big more advantageous against Skaven, but your still facing a lot more units and risk getting flanked. With Chaos, you need to fight less of them. They wont flank you nearly as much as Skaven. If 3 units run up the gut, and you kill one off, which is totally plausible with concentrated fire. You are much better off than three dented units coming at you, because they are better in hand to hand, and you lose your number bonus, and possible flank charge.

So in conclusion, i firmly support the bolt thrower with an Engineer or Master Engineer. I believe it is the best all around warmachine or its range, punch, rank breaking power, and easy use not to mention lack thereof of a misfire, and its cheap and 2x can be fielded as 1x special choice.

The fancier it is, the more situational it gets, and turns into overkills or wasted points. Bolt throwers and Cannons are the offensive and defensive linemen of dwarven artillery. They are your staple. If i was to choose another, it would be the organ gun, for its vast amount of hits and big negatives on armor saves.

Note: These views are based on my expierence of artillery which is pretty vast. This article is meant for beginners and people playing against dwarves that do not know much about it. For more indept articles, contact me or post here. Please excuse any mispellings or bad writing as I was excited about writing this and just blazed away.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 4th, 2007 at 6:44 am and is filed under Battle. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.