I'm brilliant I am with those subject titles. Some famous comedian should come and pay me for my material. I'd have said someone like Chelsea Handler, but if you look, I stipulated comedian, or the requirement to be funny.
So, enough of making fun of people who think they have talent....
I'd say, the special choices may be where you'd need to make some hard choices. You have twice as many entries as core, and quite frankly, depending on your choices, it could define your entire army build. Again, leveling of points for generic additions means that your musicians went up in points, but, your standard bearers and champions went down in points, GW getting rid of some of the stupid prices and rounding to a whole number if possible.
Hammerers
+2 points each. +1 attack
Huh. This unit actually makes some sense fluff wise now. Hammerers are supposed to be the most elite warriors in the army and giving them that extra attack has just reinforced that. So, we have great weapon (S6) guys who now no longer need a lord or thane amongst them to be stubborn. What they have got is, if the dwarf General is in the unit, ANY model can issue or accept challenges. This just reinforces the protecting the general fluff they have going for them. I have to say, I think GW thought this unit through and implemented it well.
They also have more options. If they take a designated champion, he can take a runic weapon of 25 points value. This opens up a lot of options, always hitting on a 2+? Or maybe another attack? Ability to get to S10? And he comes with base 3 attacks?!
The unit can also take a runic banner of up to. 75 points in value. 75 points gives a lot of options for the unit in general. Either way, I'd say you might see a lot of these units hitting the table.
Ironbreakers
+1 point cost per model. +1 leadership
Again, I'm impressed with GWs thought process here. Ironbreakers are the main guards of the lower tunnels. The best gromril armour to better defend against the skaven and green skin incursions deep in the under dark. The extra point of leadership cements the fluff, showing how these stoic defenders can operate independently of the general. They also have access to a runic banner of 50 points, again, giving more options. They also always have shieldwall up. They don't need to be charged to have a 5+ parry save.
They've increased the equipment options as well for the champion. He can take cinderblast bombs, which, if he hasn't marched are a small template with a range of up to 8" treated as S3 stone thrower. It can misfire, but only the result of a 1 gives bad news. His other option is Drakefire pistols. Now, it's almost easier to list the rules these pistols DONT have. So, 12" range, dwarf crafted so no negative for standing and shooting, armour piercing, S5, 2 pistols, so 2 shots, flaming attacks and quick to fire, so no matter how close the enemy is, you can stand and shoot. Man, that's a whole lot of rules. You can also use them in close combat at your own strength with an extra attack. Now, this may seem like an optimal choice, but you have to get rid of your shield which means you no longer have the parry save option and your armour save drops by 1 to a 4+. Its nice to have the option, but I dont think its the best option for your champion.
Miners
1 point less per model. same stats
So, none of their rules really changed at all. I'd say, if you took these in the last book, you're more than likely take them in this book. In fact, with some of the runes and combos you can bring to bear now, You're probably more likely to take them because of their synergies.
It's now more viable to take an agressive Dwarf force that's in your face near turn 2. By turn 2, bringing on Miners (they're ambushers) you can threaten a lot of their warmachines and back lines early on, those this style of gameplay to me sounds a little like a win big/lose big type of force.
The cluster mines have also been amended from a flat rate of 30 points per unit to 2 points per model. The may see a little more use, but with only a 4" range, (10" threat range if you include their march) they may not be very useful. I'd see them more as a charge reaction with the quick to fire option.
I'll probably still look to running a small unit or two of these guys.
Slayers
+1 point per model. same stats
So, this unit is the one I've had the most discussion on. For the extra point per model what do you get? wel, you get deathblow, which means you get to perform one more attack per model killed. However, you lost the increased strength on attacks if you need it. You still wound on a 4+ no matter what, but you cant up the strength.
Slayers also get slayer axes, which means that before a combat they can choose to have an extra hand weapon or a great weapon. Unless its low armour save infantry, I cant see why Id want to take an extra attack at S3? and the deathblow doesnt benefit from the extra hand weapon, so it looks like my build with them is great weapons, and unless I run into a huge toughness opponent, my 4+ special rule is suddenly useless.
One bonus is that the unit can take a runic standard worth 50 points. It helps add some options to the unit.
Slayers are still all the same special rules however, so you can take any amount of champions who get an increase in attacks and strength, which still makes me want to take great weapons on them, theyre still also unbreakable. I'll probably look at a unit of 10 just to push a daemonslayer or dragonslayer into the combats I want him. I dont expect them to survive at all, but the 10 help try and survive any missile attacks that they may attract. Id say that a large unit of slayers are going to suffer from the better choices that you see in other books.
Cannons
30 points more. same stats
DO you see that? SAME stats. There was a huge stir on the interwebz about the rumour that Dwarf cannons were only cause D3 wounds per wound. However, the stats stayed the same. It might change in 9th edition, but we're still in 8th, so who cares right now right?
So, for 30 points more, what did we get? we lost the engineer option. All he ever did though was let you reroll on the misfire chart. So to lose that ability theyve charged us 30 more points. 120 points doesnt seem too high to be honest though. I could bitch about a higher costing, but it actually goes in line with some other warmachines. Yes, they may be able to do a little more, skull cannons, iron blasters, but with our runes, we can make our warmachines more reliable, and its the makeup of those runes that will make all the difference.
If I go the way of artillery train, I'll take 1 if not 2 cannons still. It's going to be a matter of army build though.
Bolt Thrower
10 points more. same stats.
So, we lost the engineer option here as well, and it's here that we might feel the pinch. Previously, an engineer had a higher ballistic skill, which could be used instead of the crews. It can still take runes, and again, this is where there might be another pinch. The rune of penetrating if taken multiple times in the old book allowed an increase of strength by 1 per rune, making your bolt throwers S9. Now, if you take 2 runes of penetration, you get +1S and can reroll any failed rolls to wound once per battle.
Again, if I'm looking at a full artillery train, I might take one or 2 of these depending on the restrictions.
I'd say that you'd see as many of these on the table as the previous book
Grudgethrower
same points. same stats
They lost the engineer option like above (same option as the cannon) and suffer from the same penetrating rune nerf as the bolt thrower. Stone throwers are still useful though, and I'd say although there may be less of these coming out on the table, they wont completely disappear
Gyrocopter
60 points less. same stats
There's a lot of buzz about these now. They used to be a rare choice but are now a special choice. They're a very low cost for what they can do. You can take a maximum of 6 gyrocopters in a normal sized army and you can pay for half of them to vanguard.
They come with a steam gun which uses the tear template which is S3 with a -1 save as it's armour piercing. You can look at changing this to a brimstone gun. This gun has d3 shots, S5, armour piercing, dwarf crafted, so no -1 penalty when standing and shooting, quick to fire so can stand and shoot as a reaction no matter how close the opponent and flaming attacks with a range of 18". I'd say this is a personal choice. I can see how both guns can be useful, depending on the situation. Since you can take up to 6, you could mix and match them.
Gyrocopters can, once per battle drop a bomb on a unit it has flown over in the movement phase. This hits automatically at S3 and causes an artillery dice roll number of hits.
Lastly, and something I think is vital to the performance of this unit. Gyrocopters are Relentless. This means they don't need to test to be able to march, they can just march. this means you have a 20" flyer every movement phase. This has huge movement potential, especially for an army that has such low movement. You cant however, march and shoot your gun
Now, on a NZ tournament scene, there's been a restriction on flyers per army and I'd say this may easily be the case for the Dwarf book as well, however, I'm going to try to use as many as I feasibly can. I'm thinking 4. The reason for this is the double flee tactic. With 3 of them, I can double flee and setup a steam shot and have one more spare. I can also work the double flee tactic on more than one unit, or more than one flank. I can also see using them to clear out chaff, something the Dwarfs have a lot of problems dealing with.
Out of all the units in the book, I'd say you'd see a big increase in these on the table.
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