Vs Dwarfs

[ManekiNeko]

Greetings noble elves commanders

Could anyone give me any advice fighting against 6th edition dwarfs?

I have only played two times against them and they are a very difficult match to win.
Their firepower is superb, they dispell almost all magic and their infantry is too resistant and aggressive.
Gyrocopters, gyrobombers, organ guns, Irondrakes, etc, etc, etc, and all at good prices… looks like a 40k army!
I think it is not a balanced army , dwarfs were favored this time…

Anyway, any advice please?

[sparkytrypod]

if you are just playing dwarfs...

lvl 4 death inside in a banner of the world dragon unit.

you get a 2+ ward against their runed up war machines.

4 bolt throwers to take care of the gyros

purple sun your way to victory

not much fun for anyone

[Curu Olannon]

I assume you mean 8th ed Dwarfs.

Personally I don`t consider them to be OP. They certainly have some powerful choices and builds, but nothing we can`t handle I think. BOTWD is a godsend here

[pk-ng]

Is this a tailored match? In which case I don't think the Dwarf will bring that many runed war machines.
How many points?

[Count]

Only combo charges. Single combat elf brick cannot kill equal (in points) dwarf unit in close combat. PG can stay but thats all.
Also gyrophobia

[pk-ng]

Only combo charges. Single combat elf brick cannot kill equal (in points) dwarf unit in close combat. PG can stay but thats all.
Also gyrophobia

Nope PG with Razor Standard can smash any equally pointed Dwarf Combat unit.

[Curu Olannon]

Won`t Swordmasters win 1-on-1 as well?

[Prince of Spires]

probably yes. But they die like flies on a windscreen vs dwarf shooting...

Rod

[ManekiNeko]

Here we play 2999 points matches.

I use to have 3 units of 24 Swordmasters, most of them are killed by dwarfs´shots. The few of them reaching combat die fighting against bigger numbers of dwarfs.

Allmost all my cavallry is killed by shots too (1 Silver helms and 3 ellyrion).

I use an Archmage lvl 4 with lore of life, but they dispell me allmost all.

My bolt throwers (3) dont make a good job killing the gyros.


I think im going to change Swordmasters by Phoenix Guard to resist shots. But that doesnt fix the problem at all.I still have those gyros flying arround me and all my cavalry dead.

[Tethlis]

The key to success versus Dwarves is to apply appropriate pressure with your quick units, making them waste a turn (or more) of shooting just to keep their machines alive. If you have multiple units of Reavers, Silverhelms, Eagles, etc. then you're going to be able to move them into a position to either charge Dwarf machines by Turn 2, or park close enough to them that you block their Line of Sight and seriously restrict their ability to accurately target anything else in your army. The Dwarf player then has to use his shooting to deal with these threats, which gives your primary combat units a turn of "free" advancing.

Shooting is also very helpful here. All it takes is a few 6s to Wound to remove an Organ Gun, so put your longbows, Sisters of Avelorn, Reaver Bow + Potion of Strength, etc. to good use.

If you play infantry heavy, it's important to have the cavalry and shooting you need to properly support your blocks and help get them into combat.

[cptcosmic]

target saturation and combo charges always worked for me, I play a MMU/MSU list though.

[Lord Anathir]

The key to success versus Dwarves is to apply appropriate pressure with your quick units, making them waste a turn (or more) of shooting just to keep their machines alive. If you have multiple units of Reavers, Silverhelms, Eagles, etc. then you're going to be able to move them into a position to either charge Dwarf machines by Turn 2, or park close enough to them that you block their Line of Sight and seriously restrict their ability to accurately target anything else in your army. The Dwarf player then has to use his shooting to deal with these threats, which gives your primary combat units a turn of "free" advancing.

Shooting is also very helpful here. All it takes is a few 6s to Wound to remove an Organ Gun, so put your longbows, Sisters of Avelorn, Reaver Bow + Potion of Strength, etc. to good use.

If you play infantry heavy, it's important to have the cavalry and shooting you need to properly support your blocks and help get them into combat.

I disagree here. Against a noob this works, but the experienced dwarf players will block pathways to machines with their own units/characters and keep firing on elites. Machines will be screened. Units that can't be blocked like eagles will be shot by xbows or whatever auxiliary shooting he has packed (like drop bombs).

The best strategy is 6 dicing purple sun every round and running a single large unit of elites with banner of world dragon so only realistically organ guns can kill them. That or try to rush with double phoenix towards missile units and hope to make ward saves, then breakthrough into back-lines. HE have the advantage of list flexibility and can tailor their list to match dwarfs, whereas dwarfs can't really change the core parts of their list.

[Tethlis]

I disagree here. Against a noob this works, but the experienced dwarf players will block pathways to machines with their own units/characters and keep firing on elites. Machines will be screened. Units that can't be blocked like eagles will be shot by xbows or whatever auxiliary shooting he has packed (like drop bombs).

Even if a Dwarf player does achieve a perfect castle, your Eagles and Reavers don't have to reach the machines to be effective. They just have to run up and park themselves right in front of the hostile machine or screening unit, without ever reaching it. If they do this, they still block/obscure LoF and force penalties, making Organ Guns and cannons far less effective. Chaff doesn't have to charge a machine to do its job.

That being said though, a hard Dwarf castle breaks down because you can always argue that an obscured Organ Gun suffers the -2 penalty for having its own troops in the way. No matter how much Dwarves might argue otherwise, screening an Organ Gun obscures its LoF and creates a -2 penalty. Similarly, a cannon with Dwarf units in the way cannot see a point on the table for its initial bounce. This is the reason why the Greenskin castle works, but is a major problem for Dwarves: Rock Lobbas and Doom Divers can fire over their own troops without penalty. For Dwarves, only Grudge Throwers and Flame Cannons remain unaffected in a Dwarf army, and neither of them are as dangerous to Elves as an Organ Gun.

So unless the Dwarf player gets to deploy on a hill in a corner every game, it's pretty much impossible to achieve a 100% impermeable castle that still gets to fire at full effectiveness. Even if they do, chaff can be used to block their LoF and screen your own troops for protection. Add in the points spent on redundant Spellbreakers, Gyros, or Rangers to block Vanguard and suddenly you start running out of the points you need to completely wall of your machines from outside troops.

[Lord Anathir]

It doesnt work like that. When shooting at the organ gun you look from the view point of the missile troops and see if you can see 50%+ of the model. So if you see 30% of the organ gun it counts as screened. In the same situation if the organ gun is firing you measure line of sight from the firing point of the machine (pg 109) so from the nozzle. It will be able to see over the screening dwarfs and fire without penalty. Borrow models from a friend to see what I mean. Even if you were correct front organ guns almost always have accompanying master engineers nearby, who will entrench. This also debunks your reaver/eagle comment because xbows/bombs will flush them out before shooting. AND theres 5++ bubble somewhere in the castle.
Cannons can also see over dwarfs screening a few inches in front of them, because again LOS is from the nozzle.





Rangers are useless.

[Curu Olannon]

Obviously SLoS and TLoS play a big deal in this, so let`s leave this discussion be. The question is what the OP plays and my guess would be TLoS. In this case, it`s a lot easier to put pressure on the WMs as Tethlis points out. Regardless however you need your infantry intact to fight the Dwarfs, which is the main issue here. To properly evaluate what the OP can do I think we need a better description of the games (preferably BRs) as general advice can only do so much (doubly so if lists are tailored)

[Lord Anathir]

Care to explain please?

[Lord Anathir]

To conclude this thread (since there are no rebuttals), purple sun your way to victory.

[pk-ng]

To conclude this thread (since there are no rebuttals), purple sun your way to victory.

Assuming you IF it on the 1st attempt...otherwise 50% chance of saying bye bye to that spell...

[Curu Olannon]

Still waiting for the OP to clarify stuff before moving on, hence conclusions are a bit early, LA.

[ManekiNeko]

Thanks for the advices!

I have decided these changes on my list:

• I put 2 eagles to hunt gyros. They will not can hunt them all, but it is better than nothing.
• I exchanged reavers for silver healms. I love reavers, but they are exremly vulnerable to dwarfs shots. 3 units of 6 silver healms. They have more armour so they will resist more.
• I exnchanged my spearmen for archers. Spearmen can not resist shots. Archers instead will kill some dwarfs bowmen from the distans.
• Phoenix guard instead of Swordmasters.
• High magic instead of lore of life. Cheap spells and lileath blessing. They cant dispel all! Casting walk between worlds and Hands of Glory on my Phoenix Guards to engage close combat as fast as I can!
• 1 unit of 5 dragon princes to kill irondrakes