Playing against a friend? Because warmachines + ranged units sounds like a pure gunline to me and honestly while it might be fine for a friend to try it out once or twice it quite boring to play against. IF it's a friend I hope he realizes dwarfs can be played in other ways.
Regardless though the dwarfen warmachines are brutal, especially when runed up so it' s going to be an uphill struggle.
This is basically what one can expect from dwarfs:
- They'll dwindle our combat blocks with ranged artillery/units.
- Their close combat units are quite superior to ours (hello WS5, S5-S7 and potentially hatred).
- Their anti magic can eat one of our spells, but overall they have to invest quite a lot of points to deny our magic and they don't gain anything offensive in return. Their antimagic isn't as horrible as last edition.
- Their combat characters are better than ours, but they're limited in movement so they're somewhat avoidable.
- Since a lot of their units have WS5 our scar vets will be hitting on 4+. Which means that on average a single SV with GW will do 2 wounds, not counting their 5+ parry.
- Their combat units are never really big which means that removing 3-4 models a turn on the scary units can be crucial.
TBH if you KNOW that you'll be facing a gunline I'd probably take Tetto'Eko. If no special characters are allowed then bring a couple of skink priests with heaven and a slann with heaven. Heaven is generally speaking a great lore with a lot of S5+ spells.
You can do a "trick" where your priests roll first for the magic. This way you can sort of have them "pick" what spells you don't need for your slann. There are only 6 spells so chances are, if you it this way, that your slann WILL end up with the Comet.
Regardless of the opposing army I'd always suggest to get the following slann disicplines:
- Reroll first failed dispel attempt each turn.
- Turn a Dispel Dice to a Power Dice on a 2+.
- Channel staff combo.
On average this will, against dwarfs, grant you +2 PD. With 2 channels from the priests you can excpet to gain 2 additional PD/DD throughout the game (33% chance over 6 turns, if they live that long).
So statistically speaking you should gain 3 extra power dice every third turn or so. If the stars align and so on.
Point being: You'll be generating a healthy amount of extra dice and the dwarf player will have a hard time keeping up. There are 3 damage spells with heaven (thunderbolt, chainlighting and comet) so focus the comet on the warmachines and the other two on hit main damage dealing block, if possible. I believe both spells deals D6 S5/6 (or are both S6? can't remember) So you should easily be able to remove a couple of models with these spells.
Salamanders will be crucial two. Their S4 might not but everything (damn T4), but even a couple of well placed shots can generate quite a few kills and you need that.
Using terradons are a hit and miss. Unless I'm mistakening the dwarfen crew members are WS4, S3/T4 with light armour. So statistically speaking they should have 50% chance to wound your guys once (3 attacks -> 2 hits -> 1 wound -> 4+ armour save with LA, Shield and mounted). Or is it only the Rippers who are 4+?
Meanwhile I'm fairly certain our terradons cannot stomp and only two models are allowed to attacks. So you're looking at 4 attacks -> 2 hits -> 66% for 1 wound and 50% a good chance to bypass their light armour. That's not fantastic.
So all in all it's a pillow fight, but if you can distract just one of their warmachines and get of iceshard blizzard on another it's great.
Just be mindful that if he gets first turn you might lose you terradons to shooting.
Overall I think an army at 2500pts could look sometihng like:
Slann with mentioned discipline and BSB. (I prefer the slann oppose to tetto'eko).
1-2 skink priests (1 dispel scroll at least)
1-2 cowboys (optional) to take out small units suchs as gyrocopters and so on. (1 SV with armour of destiny, mounted and GW is 154pts).
a unit of 30 saurus warrirors.
4 units of 10-man skink skirmisher units.
Templeguards (30 strong. Slann here. DO PICK ironcurse icon (5pts, enchanted item).
2 unit of terradons.
2 units of 1 salamanders (both with extra snack).
From here on out there is 300pts left to. That's enough for 6 kroxigors, a unit of 6 ripperdactyls and a couple of more guards, a stegadon and some more guards or whatever you desire.
IF you care for it you could have both saurus units next to each other and an ancient stegadon with engine of the guards behind them (reaching both). Set the engine for lore of heaven and give both units the 6+ ward. It's not much and considered less competitive, but in return you have +5 casting value and the ward is also effective in close combat.
Use skinks to take our gyrocopters and generally screen your combat blocks, terradons to harass and salamanders to barbecue blocks (which I believe they can do from turn 2 with a little luck).
/end wall of text.
Oh and dwarfs are my least favored army to play against. Regardless of gunline or not expect to see a lot of your models to perish before they reach close combat. Where they'll die too
