HEROES
What you'll notice is that the heroes wont change too much from the Lords on their sypnosis. There's more of a change in the extra items you can take, but more often than not you may not be taking these items, wether runing them up or just not needing them. Either way:
Thane
Same price. +1 Leadership
That last point could easily make the Thane the go to 8 out of 10 times. less than half the price of the Lord you get a leadership 10 model. At 65 points I cant think off the top of my head any model in the game that can boast that same stat (go on smart ass, name some! be warned, I'll more than likely just ignore you) Now, admittedly, everything else he could take has gone up in points except a shield. You're most likely taking one of these as a battle standard bearer, but the question will be, will you take him over the Lord choice? The Lord gets that beautiful shieldbearer choice which the Thane doesn't. Both can go on Oath stones, it's a matter of the stats you're giving up to take a thane as a general. 1 less Weapon skill, Wounds, Attacks and Initiative, but you save 80 points? you could bring another Thane for that amount? in fact, you could bring a naked BSB for that amount?!
What might happen is the Dwarf bus. Lord on shieldbearers tooled to kill everything and a thane on an oathstone tooled to withstand damage. I'd say that the Thane is a very strong choice. Like lift weights with their manhoods strong. Big weights.
Runesmith
10 points less. same stats
Again, the changes that happened to the Runelord, happened to the Runesmith as well. Interestingly, he gives the unit he is in Armour Piercing as well, though he only grants Magic Resistance 1. I still think he is a good choice. The shield option went up by a point, but again, this wasnt a bad thing. With the lowered Anvil, I'd say you'l see a lot more Runesmiths around than Runelords, at least in my lists. Magic Resistance 2 is nice, but I think the main reason I'll take them is the dispel rune and the Armour Piercing gift, which a Runesmith can do just as well.
Dragonslayer
20 points more. same stats
Again, the slayer characters are the ones that increased the most in points. So what do you get here? You deal d3 wounds per wound. Now, lets couple that with the slayer stuff. You now always wound on a 4+ if you needed a higher amount, though your strength doesn't increase because of this, so your opponent still takes saves at your base strength. You're unbreakable, have no save and can switch between an additional hand weapon or great axe before at the start of a combat. You also now get Deathblow. When you die you get 1 free attack back. With slayers this may not do much, but with the Daemon slayer, this may help drastically, it's one more chance to cause D3 wounds to that multi wound creature.
Although these make okay snipers or speed bumps, I think the attempt by GW was to have them in the units now. A daemon slayer backed up by 10 slayers means even if they take the charge, they are still guaranteed 11 deathblow attacks, one causing d3 wounds. The points increase though maybe something that stops the lone dwarf torpedo speed bump from not being taken. Like I said, if the Daemonslayer got this AS WELL as making them rerol sucessful ward saves, would make the Lord choice much more viable.
Master Engineer
Same price. 1 less ballistic skill
That last one may have been the one nerf the Dwarfs didn't want. Don't get me wrong, it's more balanced now, especially since there is now one more thing that would like that higher Ballistic Skill. All his items have gone up in points. This impacts him more than the other heroes and lords as he'd be more likely to take handguns or pistols.
His special rules have pretty much stayed the same as the last book and I could still see him being used, but that depends on your build. A nice new addition is that if he is within 3" of a warmachine he can take a look out sir roll, which can make a big difference since warmachines are harder to wound.
All in all, I'm not too sure how much you'll really see of the engineer. It depends on wether you're going to war machine train it, in which case an engineer or two would be perfect, but if you're only taking the one (depending on the one) whether youd take him at all.
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