Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Chaos Dwarfs

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This is the general tactics page on how to play Chaos Dwarfs in Total War: WARHAMMER.

Why play Chaos Dwarfs?

  • Because you like seeing things go BOOM!
  • While everyone else is in the Renaissance at best, you will show the world the glory and horror of the Industrial Revolution.
  • Because you love the shameless evil of the Dark Elves but don't like the actual Elf part.
  • You love to artillery box and shoot things with giant fuck off guns.
  • Because you feel like every single villain should use an exceptional amount of fire.
  • You're a fan of clan Skryre and their tactic of dropping high explosives into the ranks of your own slave fodder
  • You wanted to play dwarves but you are tired of the classic honorable mining fellows.
  • You have a high tolerance for silly hats.
  • You're a Victoria 3 player but also want war in your game

Pros

  • Gunpowder: Your guns are some of the most powerful in the whole game. Expect to win in a straight up shoot out against pretty much any other faction that relies on guns. Combine that with some of the strongest artillery in the game and no enemy will want you shooting for long.
  • Armor: At least for the units you actually care about. Even the lowest Chaos Dwarf has strong armor comparable to the Dwarfs when it comes to durability. Of course your Hobgoblins won't be great in this department, but you don't really care about them now do you?
  • Melee Grind: What? You thought that just because they are good at shooting they must stink in melee? Nope! Chaos Dwarf infantry is very strong and hard hitting and their monsters are quiet good at turning the enemy into pasta sauce.
  • Fire: Not only do you have lots of it but you have lots of units resistant to it. Anything weak to fire is going to burn and anything that uses fire will feel damn near useless against you. You also have plenty of ways to give fire weakness, leading to some cool combos.
  • Monsters: You got plenty of them, from K'Daai, Lamassus and Great Tauruses you have plenty of monsters to throw around.
  • Versatile: You got a unit for more or less any occasion. Yeah you prefer to shoot but you got strong Infantry, Cavalry, Fliers and magic as well. It's possible to pull out all kinds of tactics, especially compared to your Dawi cousins. The flexibility of the Chorfs on launch puts many other factions to shame. It's almost absurd just how well all different parts of the Chorfs' roster work together. You have plenty of sources of Flammable to complement your plenty of sources of fire damage, your four lores of Fire, Metal, Death and Hashut give you every buff, debuff, and direct damage you need. Enemies charging your frontline? Drop an Ash Storm and give your Blunderbusses Flaming Sword of Ruin and even the strongest units will disintegrate before your eyes. Need to tarpit something? You have plenty of expendable greenskins to hold things in place while your artillery rain death on them. You have a tool for virtually every situation.

Cons

  • Insufficient Mid-Tier Options: You don't have a lot of options that are strong while also affordable. Your options consist of either very strong but very few Chaos Dwarfs or plentiful but near useless Hobgoblins and Labourers. In game, your army lacks effective mid-tier units that can kick ass while still being an affordable price. In multiplayer, you're all but forced to bring expensive elite units which your opponent will immediately target with magic or units like jezzails.
  • Single Entity Artillery: Your artillery is fearsome but they're all single-model units. You can actually get into trouble during artillery duels as many other ranged factions can bring units of cannons with four shots to your one.
  • Short-ranged infantry: The Chaos Dwarfs always favored blunderbusses over handguns. While dumping a whole unit of shotguns into somebody is going to hurt, longer range units can kite away from you. Your other possible option, goblin archers are... not great if we look to the orcs. Fireglaives have decent range but they are also highly expensive and you have limited recruitment. So if you want to really touch somebody at distance you'll have to rely on your artillery.
  • Slow: Chaos-corrupted Dwarfs are still Dwarfs, and you still curse the day the Old Ones gave you stubby legs. Sure you're faster than the Karaz Ankor Dwarfs but that's like saying you're faster than your 4 year old nephew, not something you should be bragging about. Even Bull Centaurs are rather slow for Cav and while Hobgoblin cav is quick, it’s not good for much outside of killing skirmishers and artillery or chasing off routing units.
  • Cost-inefficient: The big one: Chaos Dwarfs don't like fighting in armies as there is too few of them to risk their lives consistently compared to their western brethren. As such, the Chorfs have high upkeep for units like chaos dwarf warriors, infernal guard, etc. and will be reliant on slaves, which you will likely only be able to get by fighting and winning battles. Don't expect anything to go cheaply unless it is a slave with low morale or a hobgoblin.
  • Anti-Large? What's that?: You don't have super cost effective Anti large options. All your AP missiles cost a pretty penny and anything with Anti Large is in the elite camp, so monsters might actually be a problem for you.

Faction Traits

  • Contempt: All Chaos Dwarf race units (so excluding Hobgoblins and K'Daai, but including Bull Centaurs) will only suffer morale penalties from watching friendly units rout if they also have the Contempt rule. This means that if your Greenskin or Monster units run away, they aren't going to give a shit, allowing your Dorfs to stay in the fight a bit longer than other units in the same situation.
  • Malign Authority: The ability of your Greenskin sla- oh, I'm sorry- LABOURER units. They gain extra leadership when a unit with the Contempt rule is nearby, allowing them to stick around for just long enough to drop another volley onto their faces while they hold the enemy in place.
    • Expendable:The other ability all your "Laborers" have, this means when they run only other Laborers will care, Hobgoblins won't care and Chaos Dwarfs have contempt so they don't care if Either Hob Goblins and Laborers run. So yes CA managed to accurately put the three castes of chaos dwarf society into the game in a fusion of Crunch and Fluff.
  • Backstabbers: Common to all hobgoblin units, increases both melee and missile damage if above half health.
  • Fire Resistance: All Chaos Dwarf race units have some degree of fire resistance, in the 15%-25% range, varying by unit.
  • Hellbound: Common to all war machines and artillery besides the Hellcannon, this passive grants Magical Attacks, 20% Physical Resistance, and perfect Vigour for as long as HP is >25%. Oddly enough, can be removed in multiplayer for some extra funds.
  • Hell-Forged: Common to the same units as Hellbound, simply allows them to be healed by the Daemonsmith's Reforge ability, which is given even more importance by the buffs gained from keeping Hellbound enabled. Also works on K'daai.

Lords

Legendary Lords

  • Astragoth Ironhand: An ancient, partially petrified Sorcerer-Prophet with machinery grafted to his limbs to move, and de facto the faction leader. Comes with a mix of the Lore of Hashut and the Lore of Fire. Despite being a caster lord, he can hold his own against melee beatsticks like Vlad and Malekith thanks to his high melee stats and his special ability that increases physical resistance at the cost of mobility over the course of a battle. And while he doesn't get a mount, that's not a problem when his mobility suit allows him to run at heavy cavalry speed.
  • Zhatan the Black: Your dedicated melee beatstick. He's not the strongest melee lord in the game, but he's well armored and shielded, making him fairly tanky. He's also got decent maneuverability if you take the Lammasu or Great Taurus mount. His most powerful ability is his "Sadistic Snare," a single target net that allows your ranged units to turn that target into mincemeat.
  • Drazhoath the Ashen: Lore of Hashut caster lord. Can mount a Taurus, Lammasu, or Bale Taurus. Drazhoath isn't bad in melee thanks to his mounts but he's nowhere near as good as Astragoth. He's the closest thing you have to a dedicated caster lord. In most cases you'll want to keep him away from the enemy and only bring him into melee on choice targets and rear charges. If you bring his magic item his spell mastery increases with kills, so a little bit of time in melee can pay dividends down the road.

Generic Lords

  • Sorcerer-Prophet: Based off of the Legion of Azgorh they can use the Lore of Hashut, Fire, Death, or Metal. They're very much a support lord with a ranged flaregun attack that applies the Flammable! debuff to enemies, as well as an aura that boosts the missiles resistance and reload speed of war machines. He can take all of your big flying monsters as mounts, giving him added flexibility.
  • Overseer: Your dedicated melee lord, the Overseer doesn't have a lot that makes him stand out other than Expert Charge Defense. He can take the Great Taurus and the Lammasu as mounts but not the Bale Taurus. Overall the Sorcerer-Prophet is probably a better choice in most circumstances.

Heroes

Legendary Heroes

  • Gorduz Backstabber: Gorduz is a Hobgoblin melee hero with a Giant Wolf mount. In campaign he can buff any Hobgoblins in your army up to terrifying levels. Chaos Dwarfs have a tough early campaign but he can carry you if you have a Hobgoblin stack. In combat he's very tanky with a heal when his health is low and his "Lucky Dice" item which has three random possible results including more armor, a ward save, or physical resistance. Take Slippery to make him even harder to kill. Very useful in Domination battles where he can be quite hard to get off of a capture point due to his durability.

Generic Heroes

  • Daemonsmith: Hashut's own mix between a caster and master engineer. Come with the lores of Hashut, Fire, Metal, or Death, and can heal War Machines and K'daai. Essentially a weaker version of the Sorcerer-Prophet with the same mounts, flaregun attack, and war machine boosting aura. If you're planning to bring a lot of war machines or K'daai you want one or two of these guys to keep them going.
  • Infernal Castellan: These guys are members of the Infernal Guard who have redeemed themselves and had their mask removed, revealing the scars beneath. They're missiles specialists who wield a Fireglaice, which in addition to an armour-piercing ranged attack grants them damage reflection, charge defense, and anti-large in melee. They also have the "Dig In" ability which only kicks in if they stand still for 25 seconds, after which their range and missile resistance are increased and their charge defense becomes Expert Charge Defense. These guys are a cheaper alternative to a whole unit of Fireglaives but can play a similar role, plinking away at enemies from a distance. A good choice for sniping enemy heroes and lords. In the campaign, these guys get Restock as an ability at the end of their skill tree.
  • Bull Centaur Taur'ruk: These guys your big melee beatstick, arguably better at this role than the Overseer is. They hit hard with lots of armour-piercing/anti-large damage, give Guardian to other nearby character units, and have respectable speed and durability. If you're up against an army with lots of monsters or you want to form a goon squad to beat down the enemy lord, bring one of these guys.

Units

Infantry

  • Goblin Labourers: The worst of the worst infantry in the game, the only thing they beat is peasant mobs and that should say something, luckily like peasant mobs they're a damn cost-effective meatshield. Have a chorf unit near them and, well, they still ain’t very good but at least they won’t rout immediately.
  • Orc Labourers: Your other trash unit, orc laborers are only good as cannon fodder against heavily armored factions, otherwise goblins are more cost-effective. They're so bad they lose to goblins (the non-Labourer kind), makes one wonder what the chorfs put their laborers through that make even orcs suck ass at fighting.
  • Hobgoblin Cutthroats: Similar to but stronger than the Greenskins' Goblins. Also benefit from Malign Authority and Backstabbers. Because of Contempt you can use them just as disposably as the Labourers. With 140 models they for good tarpitting.
  • Hobgoblin Sneaky Gits: Stalk, poison precursor ranged attack, poison anti-infantry melee. Has mediocre melee stats and no armor piercing so use them as a cheap sneaky tarpit like night goblins.
  • Chaos Dwarf Warriors: Tier 2 heavy infantry, across the board superior to Dwarf Warriors, but used in essentially the same way. Comes with axe & shield or armour-piercing great weapon options, have silver shields which their honorable cousins still don’t have, this has… led to more than a few popped veins
  • Infernal Guard: Tier 3 heavy infantry, comparable to Longbeards. Come in axe & shield or AP great weapon varieties.
  • Ironsworn: Heaviest infantry available to the Dawi Zharr. Charge defense vs all and broadly similar stats to Dwarf Ironbreakers, magical & flaming attacks. Like Ironbreakers they get a ranged grenade attack but unlike Ironbreakers this grenade is armour-piercing and will devastate even elite infantry.
    • The Immortals: An elite double axe Regiment of Renown which can turn basically any other infantry they face into rump roasts.

Missiles

  • Hobgoblin Archers: Closely analogous to Greenskin Goblin Archers, but with Flaming Attacks added. Can be surprisingly good if Weakness to Fire is abused (or absolutely useless against Dragons).
  • Chaos Dwarf Blunderbusses: THE standout member of the present roster, a frontline of Blunderbusses can on it's own rout many armies, and with charge defense vs large even the stuff that reaches them will have a hard time getting through them. Comparable melee stats to Dwarf Warriors, and their ranged weapon does an ungodly amount of damage to anything that enters it's 90 range. Prepare for the possibility of this unit getting nerfed like Ogre Ironbelchers.
  • Infernal Guard Fireglaives: Tier 3 hybrid infantry, with a 145 range repeating rifle. Very capable melee combatants to boot, one of only two Chaos Dwarf units with anti-large. Will lose bad in a 1-to-1 shootout against Blunderbusses but are better at outshooting longer-ranged foes your Blunderbusses can't reach.

Cavalry

  • Hobgoblin Wolf Raiders: Superior Goblin Wolf Riders. Come in spear & shield and bow varieties, and have the unique ability Cowardly Despoilers granting +25% Weapon Strength when attacking a unit from behind or the flank.
  • Bull Centaur Renders: A bit like tankier Dragon Ogres. Come in axe & shield, anti-infantry dual axe, and anti-large great weapon varieties, all with armour-piercing. Similar to Blunderbusses, Bull Centaurs with great weapons are absurdly overtuned and will beat practically every other cavalry unit in the game and will likely be hit with the nerf hammer in upcoming patches. They're slow for monstrous cavalry however, and are vulnerable to kiting.

Monsters

  • Great Taurus: The basic doom cow and your cheapest monster. It has respectable stats, it flies, it causes terror, it gains physical resistance and reflects melee damage the longer it's in combat. Drop it on a backline and watch it go moo.
  • Lammasu: An odd flying monster with some tricks up it sleeves. It has Enfeebling Foe and The Withering as bound spells, which can be useful as the only access to Shadow spells in the roster. Compared with the flying cows, it has far less AP damage, lower melee attack and substantially less charge bonus, but higher melee defence and magical attacks. Besides its spells, the unique feature of the Lammasu is it has an aura that nullifies enemy unit's magical attacks. This would be very useful... if the Chorf's roster actually had any units that relied on high physical resistance to survive. Really, the only non-RoR units that rely on physical resistance are the K'daai, which if you're babysitting, it's better to just stick a Daemonsmith on a Lammasu rather than bring one of these by themselves.
  • 'K'daai Fireborn: Daemons summoned from the burning depths so they may then be bound into armour and turned into the Dawi-Zharr's brand of Monstrous Infantry. K'daai have a few attributes that make them tricky to use. They gain physical resistance and damage reflection the longer they're in melee, and they're Unbreakable as long as their health is high but as soon as it dips too low they start taking damage from Daemonic Instability. They have an anti-infantry bonus with most of their damage being AP and can buzzsaw through even elite infantry... so long as their health is up. Once it drops the Fireborn die fast. Since they benefit from a Daemonsmith's Hellforged ability they're one of your few units that can be healed but you have to keep an eye on them or they'll be gone as soon as you blink. They suffer a bit from filling the same role as dual weapon Bull centaurs but being far more fragile.
  • Bale Taurus: Exactly the same as the Great Taurus but with better stats and the addition of a flaming breath attack. This steak wants you well done.
  • K'daai Destroyer: The big monster from the trailer and the ultimate work of the Chaos Dwarfs, the K'Daai Destroyer is a massive metal-wrought prison for a raging fire daemon, and it is here to rip and tear through your enemy's frontline. Flaming magical attacks with a whopping 680 weapon strength will pulverise any man-sized thing it gets its claws on, and its animations are designed for it to rip through even the most elite infantry in seconds. On top of being Hell-Forged allowing your Daemonsmiths to repair it, it's a Bound Fire Daemon like the Fireborn, it has Blazing Body, and its unique Hellish Frenzy buffs its damage, charge bonus and melee attack while it's above 75% health, although it also has Daemonic Instability which means once that Unbreakable wears off it can die quickly. If you want a giant monster to throw at your enemy, look no further than the K'daai Destroyer. Just keep it away from anti-large monsters.

Artillery & War Machines

  • Magma Cannon: Single unit anti-infantry fire artillery with a range of 450. Upon hitting something, its projectile makes a fire field on the ground that continuously damages and stuns anything in it, which breaks up a unit's formation on the advance. If the enemy is coming towards you in a big blob, target the front ranks of the blob, the other guys will walk into the fire patch.
  • Iron Daemon: Fat single unit, powerful collision attacks and two fat blunderbuss cannons. This and the Skullcracker's primary melee attacks are anti-infantry steam cannons mounted on all sides of the chassis, so this thing can do a lot of damage whether it's sending rounds into the enemy's flanks or rolling straight through it. It's melee attack/defense are mediocre, so it won't perform optimally if you order it into an infantry blob and forget about it. See also: Dreadquake Mortar.
  • Hellcannon: The classic artillery piece using the souls of the damned as homing ammunition. Not much to be said, just the WoC unit returned to their fellow countrydwarfs. Lacks the unique traits of the faction's other machines, and is the only crewed unit on the roster.
  • Skullcracker: The dedicated melee counterpart of the Iron Daemon that for some reason has the exact same stats as the Iron Daemon minus the guns. Despite this, it costs more than the Iron Daemon. Lords do have redline skills that improve the Skullcracker's melee stats, but this just isn't a thing in multiplayer battles. Probably needs some stat adjustments to differentiate it from its ranged brother.
  • Death Shrieker Rocket Launcher: A much killier version of the Empire's Helstorm and Cathay's Fire Rain. 420 range, can fire both anti-infantry airburst rockets and anti-large direct detonation rockets (Two direct hits of the latter will break Queen Bess). Important to note that the anti-large rocket will only ever hit a single entity - shooting it at anything that isn't a single or very low model count unit is hugely inefficient. This is the most specialised of the Chorf's artillery, it loses out in the anti-infantry department to all other options available and the single-fire rocket is lacking in accuracy. It does have an extremely high firing arc that lets it ignore most terrain in between itself and its target.
  • Dreadquake Mortar: CHUNKY 380 range mortar. Single hit will cut a lot of unit's model count in half, but the slow speed of the projectile can make it a little situational. The damage number doesn't count the AoE earth tremor effect that persists for a few seconds after the shot lands. While highly inaccurate, a direct hit will decimate all but the most heavily armoured units and it will stop anything in its tracks with its -60% speed debuff. Be careful though, as the Dreadquake doesn't discriminate, and a poorly aimed shot will decimate your frontline as quickly as it'll decimate the enemy's. But that's what your greenskin units are for, ay? Can be taken by itself, or can be pulled into battle by an Iron Daemon or a Skullcracker, for all your war train needs - benefited further by it's 360° firing.

Tactics

You army is very flexible but suffers from specialization. You have mid-ranged bow units or short ranged armour-piercing shotgun units. You have heavy monstrous cavalry with armour-piercing but you don't have fast heavy melee cavalry. You have very fast light cavalry but it's fragile and lacks armour-piercing. Your best all-arounder units are expensive and are meant to support an army rather than define it, unless you're very late in the campaign. The good news is you have an answer to almost everything and it's hard for the enemy to predict what you're going to bring. They may prepare for you to bring a fearsome gunline when instead you rush them with Bull Centaurs, Wolf Raiders, and Iron Daemons. Alternatively they may prepare for you to bring a bunch of big monsters and instead you bring enough firepower to level a mountain.

If you bring the right mix of units you can do very well and effectively respond to unexpected threats. Your biggest weakness is probably the "all or nothing" aspect of your army where you have very expensive and powerful elite units and very cheap and plentiful chaff but not that much in between. If you lean too heavily on one or the other and your enemy prepares accordingly you can get shut down hard and fast.

Multiplayer Strategies

With their mix of powerful artillery, single entities, elite infantry, and ranged, Chaos Dwarfs have a flexible and powerful roster. They also have a very EXPENSIVE roster, and unlike campaign where their best units are at least somewhat spammable once you accumulate enough resources, the price tag is going to matter in multiplayer. This all means you have to consider your matchups carefully if you want to win, even more so than other factions. Your chaff is some of the worst in the game, and you'll have to bring some in nearly every battle just to avoid being completely overrun. While it might sound odd given your slow moving infantry and artillery, the Dawi-Zharr shares some design philosophies with other rush factions in the game. They can put out terrifying damage very quickly both in melee and at range, but if your enemy can outlast your onslaught, the battle may turn. Also, seeing as this DLC released quite recently (at the time this was written anyway), expect some nerfs to come in for the tall-hatted Bablyonians, as they are quite strong right now. All that aside, here's how to make slaves of the other factions in the game:

Campaign Advice

Mechanics

Chaos Dwarfs have a large number of mechanics at their disposal, more than pretty much any other faction in the entire game. The good news from a comprehension stand point is that a lot of them are from other factions, so if you are familiar with how those factions work than you can implement the same thing into the Chorfs. As for what is unique to them however, it may seem very complicated at first but honestly once you start playing you catch on pretty quick.

Firstly, Chorfs are focused around economic development, and have three different building chains that produce three different types of incomes outside of normal gold. There are Outposts that produce Raw Resources, Factories that consume Raw Resources to produce Armaments, and Towers, Regional capitals that produce Conclave Influence. Outposts and Factories both have building chains that produce the Raw Resources and Armaments, where as Towers produce Conclave Influence naturally.

Your Raw Resources consume Labour to produce from your Labour Economy. Labour are your totally fairly treated, well paid and not at all enslaved workforce that are gained from winning battles, raiding, use of your Military Convoy system (basically Cathayan Caravans, where you sell Gold or Armaments in exchange for Gold, Raw Resources or Labour, encountering battles and new chances for units as your convoy travels the map) or from random events. Once you have two provinces you can manage your Labour with a tab that allows you to see where your Labor is, move Labourers around to other parts of your empire, and stop Larbourers from going to provinces you don't need them anymore. It's important to make sure your Provinces all have the Labour they need because if they don't your Outposts won't produce the Raw Resources you need as efficiently. You can also sacrifice Labourers in order to gain money, control, Conclave Influence or instantly construct buildings.

Raw Resources are extremely important in the early game as you need them to upgrade your towers, certain buildings and produce Armaments. Armaments are used for The Hell-Forge mechanic to help you get decent armies. Any unit in your army that isn't a Hobgoblin or Labourer is restricted by unit caps, and you can spend Armaments in the Armoury in order to raise said cap. You can also spend Armaments in the Manufactory in order to upgrade your higher end units, though this will cost you Armaments up front and an upkeep of them per turn. You can also trade them with the Convoy system, which will get you better and more resources than with pure gold. Finally, Conclave Influence is used in the Tower of Zharr system, where you can secure seats in the tower and steal seats from other Chaos Dwarfs for buffs and bonuses, all the way up to confederating the other Chaos Dwarf factions. Influence can also be used to upgrade towers to higher tiers when you conquer a city.

I know, I know, big scary wall of text, so let's break it down.

Treasury: Normal gold earned from income buildings, used to upgrade Outposts, recruit and maintain units. Can be traded in Convoys

Labour: Totally not Slaves got from battles, raids and Convoys used to make Raw Resources, instantly construct building or sacrificed for buffs

Raw Resources: Made from Outposts' Strip Mine buildings. Consumes Larbour. Used to upgrade Towers, Factories and certain buildings and produce Armaments

Armaments: Made from Factory's Gunsmith buildings. Consumes Raw Resources. Used for upgrading units or selling on the Convoy

Conclave Influence: Got from Settlement Buildings, certain buildings and events. Used to upgrade conquered towers and secure seats in the Tower of Zharr.

Looks very complicated at first but you catch on fairly quick. If you play Victoria 3 you might be laughing at someone calling this system complex but by Total War standards it's a fun and in depth evil economy simulator.

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