I recently played my first game of War of the Ring and I definitely enjoyed it. A new friend had told me about the game and shown me the book and I couldn't resist but to go out and pick up some Dwarves! I've always played smaller, skirmish-style minis game systems and it was really fun to have a bunch of units of minis on the table.

We played a 750 pt. game and I proxied a model in for Lord Balin so I could field a hero and borrowed an Ent from my buddy to bring in as an ally and round out the list. The Ent performed the best of anything in my list, taking out a company of Orcs and a Cave Troll over the course of the game. Of course, if the dice hadn't betrayed me with the rest of my army, who knows...

I've got a couple boxes of the Dwarf warriors, Dwarf Rangers and one company of Khazad Guard with plans to get more of those nasties. I do not have the following items but am interested in getting ahold of them in the future:

Vault Wardens
Iron Guard
Dwarf Ballistas

I know for sure that I want the Vault Wardens but do you guys have any thoughts on the effectiveness of the Iron Guard and Dwarf Ballistas? I'm most interested in hearing from anyone who has used them in games.

Yay, first post!
- Lance

Definitely get more companies of Khazad Guard. And you want either Gimli or Dain to go with them due to the Epic Rampage being extremely effective with the Strength 5 Two-handed Axes.

Now since I have a Dwarf Army myself and play regularly against many different lists I can help you with your other questions.

I personally do not like the Vault Wardens, but this is due to bad personal experience. All the advice I can give you is if you are going to use them, watch out for Shatter Shields!

Iron Guard are not worth taking. You might aswell use the points on more Khazad Guard.

As for Dwarf Ballistas, I have 1 Formation of 3 Companies and they are ace. Even when deployed in defensible terrain I can shoot with 2 of them. Be careful where you set them up because the enemy can easily stay out of range if you set up too far left/right/back. The rip holes through formations of more than one company, and even against the single companies like Monsters, they do damage, but miss more often due to the -1 penalty.

I suggest trying to convert a King's Champion, these are extremely useful in a variety of roles. They can hunt down enemy heroes with Epic Challenge and Epic Duel due to their hight Fight Value. They also give Dwarves the much needed speed when attacking (Monsters strike first!).

Other than that if you want to be able to use magic you will have to ally in since the Dwarves don't believe in it. Also Floi can be useful, especially when he can cancel rules that you are finding particularly annoying in the game.

Good luck with your many new Dwarven Adventures!

Hey, thanks for the info. I plan to get at least one or two more companies of Khazad Guard because they are just nasty. I love the Vault Warden sculpts so I need a company or two of them to paint even if i don't use them much in the game, lol!

As for the Iron Guard, I had looked at them due to the fact that one version of them has Orcbane, which could be useful against my main opponent who has Mordor/Isenguard and Gondor as his options to play. Outside of that, they didn't look overly special.

It's good to hear that the ballistas work good because it would be very nice to have some artillery; I'll add them to my wish list.

I'll definitely try out the King's Champion; in my game, I learned of the nastiness of attacking order with Monster and Cavalry going before all my little Dwarves, grrr.

I got a good deal on Bartertown, so I have Gimli, Legolas and Radagast on the way so I'll have to try out one of two of them the next time I get a chance to play. The Dwarf Toss rule for Gimli sounds hilarious!

My Dwarf Rangers w/Bow and Dwarf Archer Kinband w/Shortbows both performed well below expectations; have you found them to be very effective?

One thing I've done with my dwarf rangers is that I will give my non-bow armed ones both the throwing weapons AND the 2hw for a bit of extra flexibility. I would skip on using the warriors with bows but do use the rangers with bows. However you need to put them in formations of 2 companies so you can get the weight of fire. I don't have my book handy but I believe the dwarf rangers have 1 better on the shoot value than the warriors anyway and regular bows so things are much more useful.

One thing you might want to do later on is eventually ally in some cavalry from another force (probably Gondor) and a some infantry with them to make it plausible

Yes that's correct.

And going back to the question of bow armed Dwarves, I find them to be a let down too, which is why I stuck to using 3 Ballistas. If you do decide to use just the rangers with bows consider taking them as Drar's Hunters since the Ambusher rule is useful if timed and used correctly.

The Dwarf Rangers definitly need to have both 2H Weapons and Throwing Weapons.

I knew my opponent would/will usually have cavalry and a siege ballista or two and that combined with the Dwarf speed of 5 was what encouraged me to try the bow-wielding Dwarves. The only time any of them did anything was when they charged into melee, lol!

Have you guys found Orcbane or any other 'banes to be very useful in the game?

I've not found them useful yet, but to be honest you have to either play Orcs or Goblins for them to be effective don't you.

Dang!!

My dwarven enemy has found allies

seriously had a good time and now Im afraid Tuesday night Im going to get smoked with all this research being done.

Oh yeah Steve, your Orcs better be tremblin' in their boots! I've got some shiny new lead to blind you with. The Dwarves are coming, and we will get there, eventually... and when we do there will be PAIN, lots of PAIN, MWAHAHAHA!!!

Lance