Saturday Night Gaming: Total War: Warhammer– Twenty hours of Dwarfing around

“Here’s to dwarves that go swimming with little hairy women!!!”
-Gimli

This quote has informed my entire way of thinking when it comes to dwarves. Its merits are obvious, and its conclusions–grand.

The dwarves in Creative Assembly’s Warhammer game don’t go heavy enough on the “swimming with lady-dwarfs” bit, but they do quite nicely in other aspects. In my 209 turns’ worth of in-game time, I:

murdered a ludicrous amount of orks with hammers, axes, pickaxes, grenades, crossbows, siege weapons, and gyrocopters. As a result of that, I basically committed genocide against anything Greenskin, be it ork, goblin, or any other squeaky, violent what-have-you; and you know what? I’m not even sorry.
I turned my attention to the Vampire Lords. They’d been giving my fellow dwarven allies a fair bit of trouble; as High King of all the Dawwi, I do not take light of such violence. What was supposed to follow is a little trick I like to refer to as ‘GIVE ‘EM THE AXE!’
Which is what I would’ve done, had not the forces of Chaos come spewing forth from the hellish North; after that, it was one battle after another; bloody, scary battles, those. Dwarves have a problem with cavalry and monsters, being the sturdy tiny people that they are; Chaos is all cavalry and monsters and very nasty anti-infantry.
Many a short lad perished in those darkest of days; but all the free races united against the common threat. The Empire, led by Karl Franz, was in dire need of aid; Nuln, Franz’s new capital lay besieged by the powers of Norsca and Chaos, alike. His armies, having suffered a defeat at Altdorf during the sacking of Altdorf–the former capital–were but a shadow of the Empire’s might.
We little people had much to say about that. GIVE EM THE AXE, we cried in unison; and so we gave ’em the axe. They got the axe. They got it good.
After that, it was back to business; we got those stinkin’ vampires turned to dust and all, and we liked ’em better that way. Used the dust for nutrition of Castle Drakenhoff and Castle Templehoff. Tip for everyone? Undead really don’t do well against gyrocopter bombardments. Not even a tiny bit, turns out.
With humanity profoundly weakened, we wee lads settled into ruins of human cities, turning those into–you guessed it–dwarven settlements. And so it was, that dwarves inherited the Old World.
Archon the Everchosen died off-screen, killed by one of the two dwarven factions the High King did not confederate with. Bit anti-climatic; but that’s what dwarven life is like.

What you want to do, if ever you find yourself shoulder to shoulder with dwarves is–use your sturdiest, most well armoured dwarves to contain the enemy’s front lines; then, flank them with your fighters. Things’ll end up wonderfully. I made the mistake of using too many crossbow/riffler units for most of the game, and suffered a bit too many casualties, especially in the late game. Once that happened, however, I got some fresh new reinforcements and all was wonderful!

I also ended the game with 250000 gold, and way too much turn-based income. I played on Hard but it was too easy. Dwarves are, as you’d expect, a defensive faction that excels in lengthy combat and in slowing down enemies. You should try them, if you’re into grand strategy…or swimming with hairy little women.

P.S. I wanted to make screenshots, but kept forgetting to. I’m absolutely dreadful, I know. Words alone don’t do the game justice; its battles are a sight for sore eyes…especially once you turn the UI off and just enjoy the sight of dwarves hammering orks to death.

All that bloody gore, too!