It has always seemed to me that the dwarfs are an easy race to play in Warhammer Fantasy Battles (WFB).

The dwarves have a number of advantages which make them particularly good when your opponent is unknown. Yet despite this it seems many players have troubles with the dwarfs and find them to be very frustrating. After all dwarves do have one major liability in WFB as they are slow. Often players fail to grasp the strengths of the dwarves and thus just succome to the weaknesses of the army. In order to understand the strategy of dwarves it is important to notice the strengths and weaknesses of the army. Most people playing the dwarves fall in love with the war machines, runes, and missile troops, but the real strength of the dwarves are their rock hard infantry. For their cost the basic dwarf trooper is the best deal in WFB. Leadership 9, toughness 4, and weapon skill 4, save 5 for 8 points is a deal. Point for point they should be able to deal with any other infantry and pass most random leadership tests. They also have an excellent assortment of elite troops with Ironbreakers, Hammerers, Longbeards, and Slayers. Besides excellent hand to hand troops the dwarves have one of the best arrays of missile throwers in the game. Dwarves can often beat players on the strength of the opponent's weakness. Too often an opponent will allow the dwarves to sit back and fire at will. When units close on the dwarf's well placed lines they have been severely weakened or are unsupported. This piece meal approach leads to an easy slaughter. While shooting is good it is tough to wipe a unit out with it and the dwarves do not shoot as well as the elves or empire. This strategy can also be beaten by a few kills and table quarters. This defense is also very vulnerable to being flanked or charged by a big unit of cavalry. To avoid this it is important to advance. The dwarves should reach the center of the board, at least, by the end of the game. This makes it harder for the opponent to ignore the dwarves and at least contests the table quarters. Shooting is important to the dwarf army. The role of missile weapons should not be to win the game, but to set up the victory. Shooting is a great way to weaken units. As combat is about combat results battles can often be determined beforehand by shooting rank bonuses out of the opponent units. Missile troops placed on the flank make excellent flank guards. Even though the center of your line may advance, crossbowmen and thunderers can often force break tests on the opponent's small but fast flankers. They can also advance to get the important flank on an enemy unit or to protect the flank. Even if opponents destroy these troops they seldom have time to turn around and punish the dwarven center if it has advanced and the points scored for the missle troops are not too great for the advanced warriors to make up elsewhere. In order to use the good dwarven infantry to their fullest potential it is crucial to have well built units. A quick check of the combat resolution table indicates this means large units, four ranks deep, with a banner, and a musician. These units start out with a plus 4 and may even get a bonus one for being larger. These are free wounds! Many players feel these troops are lost as they do not swing in combat but if they already score a combat bonus they do not need to swing. As a result the combat troops of an army should be in units of 20 minimum and probably larger. It is not uncommon for troops to be 25 or more models. With the command this is commonly only 200 to 250 points and worth every point. While banners and musicians are good, characters and champions may not be. With the dwarves slow movement and low initiative they will usually swing last. This means the opponent can swing at the champion in a unit before they can swing back and probably kill them. As they can take 2 swings at the champion (or more) the chance of survival is not great. Heros are great fun to play, but as they can be avoided if too powerful or killed if too weak. Usually I feel they should be used in a support role. If points are spent to make them survive the cost of characters spirals out of control. Then when you have constructed a 250pt killing machine the opponent can just avoid them. Unless the character can have an effect on the game without fighting they are of little use. As such runesmiths are good for dispel dice to stop the opponent's magic. Thanes are best as Battle Standard Bearers(BSB) as they add +1 to combat resolution, and reroll break tests within 12". Perhaps the best deal though is the Dwarf Lord. Although leadership 10 may not seem like a great improvement over leadership 9 it really is twice as good failing leadership tests only 8% of the time as opposed to 16% of the time. Further he makes the Hammerers immune to fear and terror and even has a few stat points. It is also important to arm and equip[ characters well. As cool as the axe with the runes of Skalf blackhammer and two runes of fury may be, it is important to remember this is a game of point totals. Spending 125 pts on runes means you are down half a unit of a full warmachine. While this will kill most enemy characters in hand to hand for less than half the cost you can make sure you live another turn. For dwarves defense is much cheaper than offense in runes. So protecting a character is inexpensive. Now the defensive character may never kill the opponent in a challenge if they reduce his wounds done from three to one he has had a effect on the combat resolution of +2. Equiping troops is also a tricky matter for dwarves. In the perfect world, every dwarf would have heavy armor, shield and great weapon for 11 points. But those annoying point limits keep getting in our way. To maximize troops totals it is important to understand what roll each of your units will have.. In many cases large blocks of troops are good by themselves. Sometimes you will need troops to hold up the enemy and their wound giving potential is irreleveant. Other times you will want units to kill easily so they should have great weapons. As a general rule I like to make sure there are at least two units with heavy armor and shield for every unit with great weapons. The ideal situation here is for your opponent to get held up on the heavy armor units and then to be flanked by the great weapon troops. With a cost of 9-10 points each

there can be 75 warriors in an army for only 780pts. Troops should generally be set up in a line with some space between them. The spaces allow for greater mobility as the unit can not turn unless there is space. Further these spaces allow for warmachines to fire through these gaps. Judiciously moving the units will move these gaps so the units never impede war machines. These spaces also spread out the units so they cover a larger front and make flanking harder for the opponent. The opponent can not even exploit these spaces if they are under 2.5 inches because units must stop if they move within one inch of an opponent unit unless the moving unit is charging. So not even skirmishers can sneak between these gaps. Finally units 2 or so inches apart can still flank charge into the combat next to them and are not likely to be multiple charged by one unit. With the units choosen and depolyed the question of tactics arise. Dwarfs standard strategy is to take a charge with one unit, stand fast and then charge the flank on their next turn. Sometimes the dwarves can not hold the opponent's charge up for a turn. This is often the case with cavalry. Thus one dwarf unit may have to flee allowing another unit to charge the opponent's unit while others move into position to flank on the next turn. As dwarves can march in the presence of the enemy they have greater manoeuverability in close than most opponents so moving into flank position should only take a turn. Always remember that flanking wins combats so try to arrange for flank attacks whenever possible. Some players like to use smaller sunits of flankers. I find this less acceptable as opponents can often charge which ever unit they want in a dwarf line., and when you flank and win the opponent runs the wrong way. If the larger unit is on the flank then the unit must run across you battle line. This means it is easier for your units to be in the way and auto destory the unit. This auto destroy is very important as dwarves slow running skills means dwarves are less likely to catch and destroy units on their own. The problem with the standard strategy is that requires move combat units than the opponent. This either may not be the case or may be impossible due to terrain. In these cases the dwarves have to create combat advantages other ways. Combat advantages can be created with shooting or by determining which opponent unit will have to fight which dwarf unit. Using the missile troops and warmachines a block of opponents troops can be shot to pieces leaving them without rank bonuses or giving the dwarves size. Dwarven heros can also be moved into position so they will get to swing on opponent troops and the extra wounds gained should allow the dwarves to have size and a kill advantage. Finally the dwarves can create opponent weaknesses using Rangers, gyrocopters, or miners. These troops have either special deployment or flying movement. They can get out and restrict the opponents movement threaten flanks, or stagger the opponents front. Either way the opponent is vulnerable to dwarven shooting for longer or pin and flank tactics. Despite the usefulness of the dwarf clansmen there are still problems which they can not handle. These are usually big single items like chariots, monsters, or fliers. In all these cases the dwarves have to use warmachines to solve the problems. Most dwarf players start out with a favorite warmachine as stick to it but over time your ability to guess ranges and handle problems will change so it is important to keep experimenting. In my opinion the best machine is the cannon because the line template of the cannon allows for shooting of units that are screened. The dwarves lack magic and speed so can not pick out individual models very well and even witht he best guesses flame cannons and stone throwers miss too often. The cannon can solve most of these problems as it can hit multiple things and fire through units to hit the hidden goodies behind. They destroy chariots, kill skirmishers, pick out independent characters, and can even grapeshot at close range. Problems like skaven ratling guns can be targeted by aiming at models in front of or behind the real target and guessing appropiately. Finally they can kill characters off the back of monsters and fliers when they get to that aweful behind the line situation. If there is nothing else to do warmachines can always fire at rank and file to get better combat resolution. The final warning is avoid the trap of the runes. Dwarves need to stop magic and with 4 dispel dice they do a fine job but some armies can get 12 or more casting dice and then four is just insufficient. This is the most common trap for runes as they seem like a good way to fix the problem but often these are lost points so beware. The problem is more accute with weapons and armor. As dwarves are slow your opponents will usually get to picks when and where to fight. As these points are only good when fighting it is important to get these characters into combat. Now this may be hard to do before turn 4. If that is the case you have wasted these points for half the game. I know runes are cool but the problem is they are also over priced except for those you use all the time. With these in mind go out and try out your dwarf army. Experiement with different ideas and try to keep a good battle line advancing but remember to never be afraid to flee.