well i'll briefly explain myself here. it wasn't an attempt to say that your army was worthless... i just have fought armies that use your tactics as their core and flesh it out in their flavor. your army and tactics might defeat me with ease, who knows, i don't really care... i was just trying to voice an opposition to what many have thought to be nearly "unbeatable."
I know my army is not unbeatable. It's been beaten many times locally, but rarely in tournament. The reason being that at tournaments most people try to take a pretty tough army that can put a hurting on an opposing player. These types of armies, with a sledge-hammer unit of chaos chosen knights of Khorn led by an aspiring champion...or whatever...do not do well against a horde infantry army such as mine. Your army is commonly referred to as a "Gunline Army" because the tactics are to stand back and shoot the enemy into oblivion. That tactic works well against smaller/elite armies but does not work at all against my army.
i don't expect 4 DD to stop all spells, i just expect it (for being free) to stop a few of the important ones.
I don't really have any "Important" spells that I rely on to do anything special...Re-rolls are nice, and the occasional lightning bolt can be satisfying, but my magic is usually purely defensive, so when I get a chance to actually turn the tables and be offensive with it, it does not amount to much.
horde armies are not impossible to turn in a panic, so it is very possible for shooting to make them run... on a semi-regular basis, especially since they are foot troops.
But you stated that you would concentrate on eliminating my detachments (a HUGE threat to your small infantry line, and a wise strategy) but remember that detachments do not cause panic tests in my army, so getting them to run will not slow my main line at all. If you concentrate fire on a parent unit you will need to concentrate a LOT of fire each phase to force a test since my units are so large...which takes pressure off of the detachments...so that does not look very promising either.
cavalry in 5 man formations will pac soem punch but has to stay with the units typically or they will lose CR against a fully ranked unit of thunderers. so that gives me some time.
The cavalry are purely support elements in my army. Against your gun-line I would throw them forward on the first turn. You now get to decide whether you will shoot at them, or re-form to recieve the charge on my next turn. A dicey proposition either way you look at it. You COULD get lucky and kill enough to cause a panic test, which they MIGHT fail, or they COULD survive intact and slam into your troops, who now would only have a numbers advantage with no ranks...And all the time this is going on my infantry are slogging forward unmolested.
gyro does well if played soemwhat defensively and protected from cannons etc..
But you said that it would fly behind my lines and march-block while gunning down vast hordes of foot troops. To do that it has to expose itself to MY shooting phase.
hills that are determined to be sufficient to stop cannon balls is all the rules require to make a bounce up-hill impossible. many of the hills i play with are fairly high and rockty and easily assumed to stop a cannon ball, but it all depends on what you determine the sceneray will be.
I usually play on GW based scenery. No really impassible areas, lots of terrain but none of it cliff-like. At least I have never seen such hills at a GT as they would give my Empire lads and your Dwarf lads a HUGE advantage.
i've found miners do well agt denying VP's 120 for the unit since they typically survive and then gaining perhaps 100 VPs for a table quarter (or at least denying one) & another 100 VP's for a war machine. that's 300 or so VP's for a 10 man unit, i'd say they do a good job, worth taking note of.
I don't ignore anything...it's all a threat to my troops. But a miner unit that MAY or may NOT appear on any given turn will occupy 0% of my attention until it actually appears on the table top. It then will either get the full attention of my missile-armed troops, or be ignored as I move away from it.
you can outnumber me with men, but i'm still dwarves and without a good flanking force there will be problems.
I know that in a head to head match-up Dwaves will win every time. The high toughness, leadership, and armor save make them tough little nuts to crack. So I would simply not get into a head to head battle unless I wanted to. Being a Dwarf, you know that you hand the initiative of the battle to your opponent to do with as he/she pleases. A gunline army allows the enemy to dictate the battle even more.
all this is to say there can be a very tough fight on the hands of the TVI-style army against a dwarven gunline (a gunline that is extremely accurate and powerful) and here are some suggestions as to what you should watch out for.
I've fought NUMEROUS dwarven gunline armies, and rolled every one of them. ANY army of ANY race that allows a maneuver-based army to maneuver at will, is likely to lose, and lose badly. The only items that I MUST take out are the gyrocopter, and (something you have not yet mentioned) the flame cannon.
my origional post was not a bunch of bragging as so many assumed it was... i guess i have to be extremely clear when i criticise people's army lists and tactics or they get way too defensive.
I don't recall being defensive...I just disagree with your opinion. I think some people took offense to your tone...if there IS such a thing on-line...with statements such as these;
...slaughter the detachments with no trouble...
...my cannons and bolters easily kill those pesky knights...
...the gyro march-blocks while killing a load of swordsmen...
...crews are easy to slay with a nice large flame template...
...the miners take out the other flank of machines.
...once i've completed my slaughter of detachments...
...the infantry blocks are all low on men from gyro and gobbo hewer..
...they break like water upon my battle line...
...the enemy loses nearly the entire force to deaths or broken units!
...it is a pleasure for my dwarfs to have so many great targets...
...my 4 dispel dice stop everything...!
Can you see what I mean?
PS: i don't have the time or money to travel to play a single game, but if you do... i'm in dallas texas, if you are around these parts you could arrange to play me at a local GW store or hobby store. would be fun to have a tough opponent for a change. (just saying many of the players are not veterans, so it gets dull after a while)
I may attend a GT in Texas during the 2005 GT season. I have a friend who just moved to Texas and has offered to put me up for the weekend. If you attend the GT with your Dwarves maybe we could get a warm-up game in the night before?
The Village Idiot
p.s. Have you been to bugman's brewery? It's the best on-line dwarven site out there.