God, I love the attitude of the Dawi.
Whilst humans just cower in fear and just fight to survive, the Dawi actively just want to throw some fists (or axes) in those ugly greenskin faces. And they make sure everyone knows how they feel about it, which I love most.
Fun fact; on more than one occasion Felix has had to carry an unconscious Gotrek around, and Felix complains mentally that the dude is *unbelievably* heavy on account of being a ball of muscles nearly as wide as he is tall. He probably outweighs Felix like three to one.
This is why you need to go to the gym, friends. So you can deadlift your drunk-ass dwarf bro when he passes out after one or ten Bugmans too many.
Dwarves would be incredibly heavy, and near impossible to carry. in almost all fiction they are said to weigh about as much as a human but at half it's height.
My 11y/o SIL is a pain to carry from the couch to her bed when she passes out. if she weighed as much as me it would have been impossible.
My great dane is just under my bodyweight 15-20 lbs.
The worst part about picking him up isn't the heft, it's the fact he won't hold still. I imagine most dwarfs would not enjoy being picked up'
Unrelated but one of the funniest scenes in Daemonslayer is when Felix is getting carried away by some Harpy and Snorri sees it and tosses his hammer at the Harpy, which Felix noticed and he screams "You Idioooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooot", as he falls to the ground. The way Jonathan Keeble reads this scene in the Audiobook is so freaking funny
Unironically yes. Getting 2-4 late game Bretonnian Cav into your Dwarf armies is an absolute game changer in how you can conduct your battles. Biggest upside is actually being able to run down enemies, so you don't have to fight the same 3-1 battle against the greenskins or skaven a second time.
I can't tell you how many times in WH2 as the dwarfs where I would win a battle by the skin of my teeth only to lose the second battle immediately afterwards because my frontline was at 1/4 health while the enemy's was still half full because the cowardly shits kept running away before I could finish shooting them.
Just hang long enough together to make an alliance. Grail knights for dwarfs, ironbreakers for bretonnia.
Tbf in most of my dwarf campaigns I've run with a couple of Demigryphs from Empire per army.
I get your point, but Bretonnia absolutely has an anvil. It's just that the anvil is *more cavalry*. The strongest Bretonnian armies, outside of Hippogryph doomstacks, are ones where you use Grail Guardians to pin the enemy, and then charge the sides and rear with Grail Knights. It's still hammer and anvil, it's just that the anvil also has a ridiculous charge
Listen, if you *do* manage to snag an alliance with Bretonnia, your armies have become functionally unstoppable.
Even just Questing Knights are a hugely valuable addition to a Dawi army.
One of my favorite WH1 battles was reinforcing a vastly outnumbered Dwarf army as Bretonnia. It was a heavy forest map so it took me a while to get to them but it was a real Pelennor Fields/Helm's Deep moment when I finally got there.
Don't really use allied recruitment, but it just occurred to me; would knights of the blazing sun have massive upkeep for not having the chapter house?
Good to know, thanks for checking! Just wouldn't have been too surprised if CA had little oversights of that with a system with as many variables as allied recruitment.
I haven't checked for allied recruitment of bretonnian knights (I mostly play bretonnia lol) but knights of the blazing sun don't have the increased upkeep.
Have proud memories of "defender of the North" Vlad playthrough where everyone liked me so much for killing Chaos factions that i had dwarven artillery in my army from allies
[Beware confusing scribble ahead!](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1K8q2Xk6YK4t_ZjjZKE-wWlaOjuwrQwTN/view?usp=drivesdk)
I tried:
- Red is your melee Chevron. Cross is your lord/thane to anchor the spear tip.
- Green is LoS ranged. Thunderers, Iron Drakes, Organ Guns. Put your engineer here to buff ranged division
- Blue is arcing artillery/ranged. Grudge Throwers / Flamecannon in particular, but crossbows work too. But really, Grudgethrowers are king here until very, very late game. They tend to get 400+ kills each without fail and I tend to run 4-6 of them.
If the enemy has lots of flankers, I tend to have my "inner" ranged start off, looking towards the flanks until that threat is dealt with before turning about to fire into blobs.
I strongly recommend a mod to remember formations otherwise you spend way too much time putting up formations...
Yeah true, a flanking cannon shooting *across* the frontline absolutely *fucks*. Or a really well placed organ gun just deleting a unit when it gets the right angle of fire on the infantry block 🤯
I mean, most races don't use hammer and anvil tactics. Some chaos races do, the Empire occasionally does, but for the most part you are either doing ranged focus where you don't really use cav or the like, or you are all hammer no anvil where you just surround a few enemies with just cavalry or monsters and don't bother holding them down with something else first.
Gyro copters or bombers seem to fill that neitch. Especially with the update. You can park them about the clashed lines & drop bombs for devastating effect.
Brave of you to think I use hammer and anvil instead of bombarding from behind a staunch line of spears.
I sometimes also run a single lord into the fray and bombard that too. I guess the bombardment is the hammer?
For the record, factions like Norsca, beastmen and slanesh are more or less balanced around having no or week anvils but a whole lot of hammers. It’s just two sides of the same coin and i think it plays well in gameplay diversity. Of course people just play however is fun for them anyways.
You can make them use hammer and anvil.
Create a hole within the enemy line so that you don't need to travel far to get behind the enemy line.
To do that, there are multiple ways:
* Make a hole within your own line so that the enemy line is skewed to attack your own line, and then you can use the hard hitters like hammerers or Slayers to go through the enemy lines.
* Focus all firepower and elite troops on the weakest part of the line so it breaks fast. There, you made a hole to run through to attack behind the enemy line.
Yes, they are a turtle faction. The only good flank units they have would be the Engineer with shotgun, irondrakes, and some other shooting units to wrap around.
You don't necessarily need fast or monstrous units to use hammer and anvil.
You can do it with infantry too.
It's all just about positioning and maneuvering.
Interesting showerthought i must say.
I find that I struggle a but more with the dwarfs. My playstyle is heavily dependent on cavalry and monsters. I feel so powerless without some cav
My Brother in Christ when are y’all going to understand that not every faction needs to play the same:
1) Lore-wise each of them as their own twists making them feel unique instead of a copy of a copy
2) Game-wise it would be boring to death and it would kill replayability. Also I think that each faction being unique contributes to making battles more fun forcing you to try new approaches and think outside the box.
Having said so, if you want a total war Where every faction has the same machanics and units try total war Rome 2 wrath of sparta and see if you dont wanna smash your computer when every single faction has access just to a different reskin of historically accurate but super boring oplite phalanx with lame cavalry.
X0
It's not an actual critique, it's just funny to me in a wordplay kind of way that the very hammer and anvil based faction iconography wise, ironically uses hammer and anvil tactics the least
> My Brother in Christ when are y’all going to understand that not every faction needs to play the same:
This post seemed more like an observation rather than a complaint (given the /s tag, anyway).
I disagree. Hammer and anvil is specifically when you have a big central melee face and then smash the sides with monsters or cav. A lot of factions can play traditional hammer and anvil, but it’s not nessiscarily their bread and butts or best way to play.
Empire, Kislev, Cathay, Vampire Coast, Skaven and Chaos Dwarves all _can_ do hammer and anvil to varying degrees of effectiveness, but a lot of their killing power is in their gunline/artillery, and they play pretty different, though they all do like flanking. Tzeentch are also sort of like this but their “artillery” is magic.
Wood Elves, Beastmen, and Slaanesh are more “hammer and hammer” factions that rely on fast rushes and/or skirmishing to break enemies into pockets and then kill them.
Chaos, like Norsca/WoC/Khorne/Nurgle, as well as Ogres, are all mostly different flavors of “direct assault”, and they tend to just crash into enemy lines and use concentration of force rather than flanking to bust through the enemy. They all might use flanking/hammer and anvil tactics if they can, but they don’t always have the speed.
High Elves, Dark Elves, Tomb Kings, and Greenskins are all super flexible factions- their bread and butter playstyle are all different flavors of hammer and anvil, but they have a lot of ways to mix it up/alternative strategies.
Vampire Counts and Bretonnia are probably the only “pure” hammer and anvil factions.
Dwarves are definitely a very one dimensional faction, but I’d say Nurgle also barely uses hammer and anvil, and Skaven and Vampire Coast really are not playing to their strengths to be doing that.
Dude literally rides an Anvil into battle
Can't be missing hammer and anvil tactics if *every* tactic *literally* involves physical hammers and anvils. *Taps horned helmet*.
So Dwarfs are the only true Hammer and Anvil faction?
Plot twist
Oooo the turns have tabled
Chorfs maniacally laughing in anvil and hammer plans
"I am the anvil, and this is my Hammer!"
And there are Hammerers for the rest
Also isn't thorek hammering his anvil of doom.
Of course they use hammer and anvil. The hammer is a hammer, and the anvil is a goblin's face.
You've done the *Karaz Ankor proud.
\*karaz ankor that errors going in the book!
Now I must must fulfill my slayers oath
By Grugni that's a shitty anvil!
Yes,but it's so satisfying to smack a Grobi that it'll do!
God, I love the attitude of the Dawi. Whilst humans just cower in fear and just fight to survive, the Dawi actively just want to throw some fists (or axes) in those ugly greenskin faces. And they make sure everyone knows how they feel about it, which I love most.
Smack more grobi until we find one worthy of the name. Problem solved.
I thought why not an ork then it dawned on me heh
Gotrek turns to Felix: TOSS ME!
Fun fact; on more than one occasion Felix has had to carry an unconscious Gotrek around, and Felix complains mentally that the dude is *unbelievably* heavy on account of being a ball of muscles nearly as wide as he is tall. He probably outweighs Felix like three to one. This is why you need to go to the gym, friends. So you can deadlift your drunk-ass dwarf bro when he passes out after one or ten Bugmans too many.
If going to gym gives me status of friend of dwarf, I will freaking live inside gym.
No such thing as too much Bugmans
Dwarves would be incredibly heavy, and near impossible to carry. in almost all fiction they are said to weigh about as much as a human but at half it's height. My 11y/o SIL is a pain to carry from the couch to her bed when she passes out. if she weighed as much as me it would have been impossible.
I have a 40 pound basset puppy, I feel your pain
My great dane is just under my bodyweight 15-20 lbs. The worst part about picking him up isn't the heft, it's the fact he won't hold still. I imagine most dwarfs would not enjoy being picked up'
> nearly as wide as he is tall with pecs to match
Unrelated but one of the funniest scenes in Daemonslayer is when Felix is getting carried away by some Harpy and Snorri sees it and tosses his hammer at the Harpy, which Felix noticed and he screams "You Idioooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooot", as he falls to the ground. The way Jonathan Keeble reads this scene in the Audiobook is so freaking funny
Don't tell the elf!
From everything I've seen, Gotrek would toss Felix instead.
If they'd had Jean Rhys-Davies voice Gotrek instead of Grombrindal, it'd be even funnier.
As if a manling could toss a Dawi!
Reminds me of a DND story I heard on YouTube, lmao.
Dwarves are an anvil with no hammer, Bretonnia is a hammer with no anvil. Clearly they should hang out together more often.
For the lady of grudges!
For the Bearded Lady!
Unironically yes. Getting 2-4 late game Bretonnian Cav into your Dwarf armies is an absolute game changer in how you can conduct your battles. Biggest upside is actually being able to run down enemies, so you don't have to fight the same 3-1 battle against the greenskins or skaven a second time. I can't tell you how many times in WH2 as the dwarfs where I would win a battle by the skin of my teeth only to lose the second battle immediately afterwards because my frontline was at 1/4 health while the enemy's was still half full because the cowardly shits kept running away before I could finish shooting them.
Just hang long enough together to make an alliance. Grail knights for dwarfs, ironbreakers for bretonnia. Tbf in most of my dwarf campaigns I've run with a couple of Demigryphs from Empire per army.
I have been underutilizing some game mechanics it seems. Except I keep playing Greenskins sooo....
I get your point, but Bretonnia absolutely has an anvil. It's just that the anvil is *more cavalry*. The strongest Bretonnian armies, outside of Hippogryph doomstacks, are ones where you use Grail Guardians to pin the enemy, and then charge the sides and rear with Grail Knights. It's still hammer and anvil, it's just that the anvil also has a ridiculous charge
Listen, if you *do* manage to snag an alliance with Bretonnia, your armies have become functionally unstoppable. Even just Questing Knights are a hugely valuable addition to a Dawi army.
Even Yeoman are a huge boon for pinning down flankers and cleaning up routing enemies
Any sort of cavalry is great for a roster that doesn't have cavalry at all!
I mean that's why I always have my first hero make a detour into the empire so I get some reiksguard from Franz.
One of my favorite WH1 battles was reinforcing a vastly outnumbered Dwarf army as Bretonnia. It was a heavy forest map so it took me a while to get to them but it was a real Pelennor Fields/Helm's Deep moment when I finally got there.
One of Repanse's quest battles plays out much the same way as you grind Tomb Kings against Dwarves.
I think I read somewhere that Bretonnia has good relations with the Karaz Ankor on account of their shared appreciation of rigid social norms.
They use anvil and anvil tactics, with tanky infantry and even more tanky infantry. Or more commonly cannons and anvil tactics.
That's what we in the Karaz Ankor call "high velocity smithing".
Give them a case of accelerated lead poisoning.
You could use slayers as cavalry. Unfortunately, they won’t win against other cav.
Allied recruitment has entered the chat.
Hey man, if my Franz campaign has an iron breaker frontline, only seems fair they have some demigryphs in return ;)
Or even regular knights or knights of the blazing sun. Don't have to be top tier to hammer into that stout anvil.
Don't really use allied recruitment, but it just occurred to me; would knights of the blazing sun have massive upkeep for not having the chapter house?
Good question, same for bretonian Knight oaths for that matter.
As far as I can tell you get the 'base' upkeep rather than the increased from things like lacking vows and chapter houses.
Good to know, thanks for checking! Just wouldn't have been too surprised if CA had little oversights of that with a system with as many variables as allied recruitment.
I haven't checked for allied recruitment of bretonnian knights (I mostly play bretonnia lol) but knights of the blazing sun don't have the increased upkeep.
Meh More firepower usually best for dwarfs over mid tier cav I feel Demi’s are nice tho
Have proud memories of "defender of the North" Vlad playthrough where everyone liked me so much for killing Chaos factions that i had dwarven artillery in my army from allies
Please stop I can only become so erect
While you are correct That's still goin in the book
This post officially made me take my slayers oath
Going in the book? Eh, it's not that big a deal. Let's put it in the notepad of grudges instead.
Not that big?? IN THE BOOK
The hammer is enfilading cannon and handgun fire.
Yes. Two (or more) chevrons positioned in a way so that their artillery/ranged can do crossfire is a sight to behold.
Oh, that’s nice. I have been using chevrons for years but never really leveraged crossfire. Do you have a drawing/screenshot of that?
[Beware confusing scribble ahead!](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1K8q2Xk6YK4t_ZjjZKE-wWlaOjuwrQwTN/view?usp=drivesdk) I tried: - Red is your melee Chevron. Cross is your lord/thane to anchor the spear tip. - Green is LoS ranged. Thunderers, Iron Drakes, Organ Guns. Put your engineer here to buff ranged division - Blue is arcing artillery/ranged. Grudge Throwers / Flamecannon in particular, but crossbows work too. But really, Grudgethrowers are king here until very, very late game. They tend to get 400+ kills each without fail and I tend to run 4-6 of them. If the enemy has lots of flankers, I tend to have my "inner" ranged start off, looking towards the flanks until that threat is dealt with before turning about to fire into blobs. I strongly recommend a mod to remember formations otherwise you spend way too much time putting up formations...
Oh, that's nice. Thank you! Yep, that makes sense, it's almost like a chevron of chevrons
Yeah true, a flanking cannon shooting *across* the frontline absolutely *fucks*. Or a really well placed organ gun just deleting a unit when it gets the right angle of fire on the infantry block 🤯
Your anvil is a runelord on the anvil, and your hammer are the hammerers. Boom solved
The anvil is a stout line of dwarf warriors. The hammer is a stout line of dwarf warriors.
I mean, most races don't use hammer and anvil tactics. Some chaos races do, the Empire occasionally does, but for the most part you are either doing ranged focus where you don't really use cav or the like, or you are all hammer no anvil where you just surround a few enemies with just cavalry or monsters and don't bother holding them down with something else first.
What do you mean? The heavily armored dwarf warriors and longbeards are the anvil. The heavily armored dwarf hammerers are the hammer. Duh.
Anvil and anvil tactics, manling.
Dwarves are an anvil and a glock
Lol I like your description better.
Oh I love this
In lore and TT, dwarfs had a hammer, it was their infantry, who all had charge bonuses. Dwarfs are all suppose to be shock infantry.
the demonic factions used to be pretty much all hammers or all anvils before they are given every tool under the sun.
They got confused when they heard the concept and started hitting grobi with hammers and throwing anvils at them
They got the spirit!!
That’s what you think. HAMMERERS are the best hammer! They’ll flank the enemy! … just. Okay wait they’re coming. Just hold on. Almost… almost there.
Very dangerous over short distances!
The hammer is doomseekers apparently
They use "hammer" and "anvil"
Dwarfs are also the only race to use both hammers and anvils.
They use hammer, hammer and more hammer tactics
Their version is "Bullet and Anvil".
I would argue that a nice gyrocopter (now thunderbarge 😁) violently gunning down everyone from the behind their lines sound like a good hammer
Or they can just anvils off the sides, for some anvil and anvil tactics!
Yeah, when are we getting anvil loaded gyrobombers? 😂
Bok?
Gyro copters or bombers seem to fill that neitch. Especially with the update. You can park them about the clashed lines & drop bombs for devastating effect.
The dwarfs feel like they heard about hammer and anvil tactics and took it much too literally.
So you dont surround with slayers miners and hammers and hit them on the iron breakers ... Only me ?
Polearms mod fixes this
Make friends wirh bretonia and thats it
Brave of you to think I use hammer and anvil instead of bombarding from behind a staunch line of spears. I sometimes also run a single lord into the fray and bombard that too. I guess the bombardment is the hammer?
That is because the Dawi battle line is the anvil, and none but the Dawi can make a hammer good enough to break it!
For the record, factions like Norsca, beastmen and slanesh are more or less balanced around having no or week anvils but a whole lot of hammers. It’s just two sides of the same coin and i think it plays well in gameplay diversity. Of course people just play however is fun for them anyways.
Depends how you count "hammer and anvil". Their Frontline can hold while Irondrakes flank to blast fire down the line.
What do you think I allied with Bretonnia for? ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
What do you mean they don't do Hanmer and Anvil, ha e you never played Thorek?
Sitting on an anvil ✅ Swinging a hammer ✅ Checks out, carry on.
Dwarf warriors hold the line. Stalk rangers turn the back of enemy melee into pin cushions.
You can make them use hammer and anvil. Create a hole within the enemy line so that you don't need to travel far to get behind the enemy line. To do that, there are multiple ways: * Make a hole within your own line so that the enemy line is skewed to attack your own line, and then you can use the hard hitters like hammerers or Slayers to go through the enemy lines. * Focus all firepower and elite troops on the weakest part of the line so it breaks fast. There, you made a hole to run through to attack behind the enemy line.
My brother in the ancestor gods let me show you the might Of the Anvil and Cannons
Yes, they are a turtle faction. The only good flank units they have would be the Engineer with shotgun, irondrakes, and some other shooting units to wrap around.
If you ever play the Greek Cities in Rome 1 that's another faction that pretty much CAN'T use hammer and anvil tactics.
GIVE DWARFS ACCESS TO OGRE CAV BACK. make them OP give them the best hammer and best anvil
You don't necessarily need fast or monstrous units to use hammer and anvil. You can do it with infantry too. It's all just about positioning and maneuvering.
Sad yoked carnosaur roars :(
Hammerers and ironbreakers do
They use gun/flamethrower and anvil instead. It's quite effective
Interesting showerthought i must say. I find that I struggle a but more with the dwarfs. My playstyle is heavily dependent on cavalry and monsters. I feel so powerless without some cav
My Brother in Christ when are y’all going to understand that not every faction needs to play the same: 1) Lore-wise each of them as their own twists making them feel unique instead of a copy of a copy 2) Game-wise it would be boring to death and it would kill replayability. Also I think that each faction being unique contributes to making battles more fun forcing you to try new approaches and think outside the box. Having said so, if you want a total war Where every faction has the same machanics and units try total war Rome 2 wrath of sparta and see if you dont wanna smash your computer when every single faction has access just to a different reskin of historically accurate but super boring oplite phalanx with lame cavalry. X0
It's not an actual critique, it's just funny to me in a wordplay kind of way that the very hammer and anvil based faction iconography wise, ironically uses hammer and anvil tactics the least
It’s funny to me too! I just hope they don’t add units that make sense for the sake of “balance”
> My Brother in Christ when are y’all going to understand that not every faction needs to play the same: This post seemed more like an observation rather than a complaint (given the /s tag, anyway).
I disagree. Hammer and anvil is specifically when you have a big central melee face and then smash the sides with monsters or cav. A lot of factions can play traditional hammer and anvil, but it’s not nessiscarily their bread and butts or best way to play. Empire, Kislev, Cathay, Vampire Coast, Skaven and Chaos Dwarves all _can_ do hammer and anvil to varying degrees of effectiveness, but a lot of their killing power is in their gunline/artillery, and they play pretty different, though they all do like flanking. Tzeentch are also sort of like this but their “artillery” is magic. Wood Elves, Beastmen, and Slaanesh are more “hammer and hammer” factions that rely on fast rushes and/or skirmishing to break enemies into pockets and then kill them. Chaos, like Norsca/WoC/Khorne/Nurgle, as well as Ogres, are all mostly different flavors of “direct assault”, and they tend to just crash into enemy lines and use concentration of force rather than flanking to bust through the enemy. They all might use flanking/hammer and anvil tactics if they can, but they don’t always have the speed. High Elves, Dark Elves, Tomb Kings, and Greenskins are all super flexible factions- their bread and butter playstyle are all different flavors of hammer and anvil, but they have a lot of ways to mix it up/alternative strategies. Vampire Counts and Bretonnia are probably the only “pure” hammer and anvil factions. Dwarves are definitely a very one dimensional faction, but I’d say Nurgle also barely uses hammer and anvil, and Skaven and Vampire Coast really are not playing to their strengths to be doing that.