Mosk:
I know this has been discussed before, but with my search-fu I found it has not been discussed since 8th edition has come out (please please please correct me if I am wrong.)
Now the question is, Are great weapons worth using? Would I be better using hand weapon and shield? Is it worth it to bring handweapon, shield, and GW so you can have a lot of flexibility?
What are the pros and cons to each type of build, when do you use each type of build?
Thommy H:
You don’t have flexibility - if you have a great weapon you must use it. So it’s very much an either/or proposition. Obviously the benefits of each choice are obvious: hand weapon shield means you survive longer in combat, great weapon means you kill more while you’re there.
I think, in 8th Edition, consensus seems to favour the great weapon more. Because everyone strikes in Initiative order, Chaos Dwarfs don’t lose out much by having ASL, and because of stepping up, taking a few casualties isn’t going to prevent you from hitting back at Strength 5. High Ld means that, even if they get beaten, they’ll probably still stand their ground to keep grinding away. A big unit to take advantage of Steadfast is probably the way to go, as well as BSB in there somewhere.
Bassman:
Exactly like Tommy H said. Go with GW. In 7th edition I used only hand weapon+shield, now all my units switched to GW.
Da Crusha:
check out these statistics. i found it over at bugmans brewery when 8th first came out, it’s for dwarfs but chaos dwarfs share the same profile. you can see that great weapons are statistically better against most troops.
I posted this before here at cdo but nobody really showed any interest. you’ll probably find it more useful.
Thommy H:
Wow. People know you can, like, paint these figures, yeah? If they want to waste time on something totally unproductive to do with Warhammer, the least they could do is make sure it isn’t mind numblingly boring.
Great weapons are a better option in 8th though. I’m just astonished that someone felt they needed to make a spreadsheet to explain that.
Da Crusha:
well, when 8th ed first came out, whether great weapons were better or not was a real question and this useful spreadsheet answered it.
Sanguinarian:
Now while that spreadsheet is useful I actually disagree with it’s conclusion that great weapons are the better choice. This is simply because sometimes the kill ratio simply doesn’t matter to your tactics. A shield unit takes less casualties and sometimes that’s all you want.
My personal opinion is that you need at least one anvil and so shields are the obvious choice. For every shield using anvil unit though you’ll need 2-3 great weapon units to do the actual killing (unless you’re playing points denial). Just my personal experience with vanilla dwarfs, but I hope it helps.
Baggronor:
I am astounded, when visiting TWF usually, that people feel the need to make spreadsheets about Warhammer. I suppose they do make things clear but lord knows I get enough of spreadsheets at work, I certainly don’t want to involve them in my hobby lol.
The fact that these charts can’t take things like magic, enemy casualties from your war machines, etc, into account indicates their lack of real value though, as those are big factors in-game. There’s a big difference between Dwarfs with great weapons on their own and Dwarfs with great weapons with war machine support; if you can end the combat swiftly with great weapons against an enemy who has been depleted by your artillery, then it makes far more sense to maximise your damage and just soak up the casualties as the combat will be over fast. And I find that’s pretty much the way it goes with Dwarfs, either the artillery knocks off enough enemies to make them manageable or it doesn’t. Either way, you need to cause damage to win combats in 8th and killing the enemy faster yields better survivability than a shield in my experience.
If you just want to take a charge and not flee, a large steadfast unit of Hobgoblins is more reliable (if its a big enough unit, its going to be steadfast) and cheaper and expendable. Chuck in a bit of shadow magic and they’re awesome.
Thommy H:
Now while that spreadsheet is useful I actually disagree with it's conclusion that great weapons are the better choice. This is simply because sometimes the kill ratio simply doesn't matter to your tactics. A shield unit takes less casualties and sometimes that's all you want.Yes, and as Baggronor says, considering units in isolation is pointless anyway. But the OP was just after opinions about which was the better choice and, in general, considering both the 8th Edition combat rules and the prevailing metagame, great weapons tend to be a better choice now. That's not to say that there's no place for hand weapons and shields - an army shouldn't just be composed of the most efficient units to go one-on-one with the greatest variety of enemies - just that, within the context of the question (paraphrased: "I must have one or the other, which should I go with?") great weapons are the best choice.
cornixt:
What that spreadsheet ACTUALLY says: An option that costs more points is worth more. Which doesn’t tell you as much as most people think.
You have to weight up how much the extra kills are really worth compared to the extra cost of the unit. If you are adding 20% to the unit cost but only getting one extra kill per turn, it might not actually be worth it, especially if that unit’s role is not to kill things.
Thommy H:
What that spreadsheet ACTUALLY says: An option that costs more points is worth more.Shock! Shows how much I paid attention to it that I didn't even pick that up.
Da Crusha:
well, I guess you guys have some points, but that’s not to say that the diagram is completely useless.
ps. I love mathhammer!
Mosk:
Looking at the above posts, and also thinking about it a little bit more, it seems to me that a large unit of say 5 wide and 6+ ranks back of hob goblins has seemed to replace how I used to play shielded chaos dwarfs. I mainly used shield chaos dwarfs as a way to hold the enemy there. Now I can do that with hob goblins.
So seeing that my army can easily contain 6 bolt throwers, 2 earth shaker cannons, and 3 death rockets, I can do the killing with those, and finish off the enemy with my blocks of infantry. (I know that seems a little bit cheesy, but my local meta is the local meta of the guys at yesthetruthhurts.com and they look at only competitive lists, so I have to at least be able to survive against them.)
Fallen246:
Now, I’m kind of bad at this mathhammer chart reading stuff, so I’ve probably not understood it, so here’s a question:
Does kill differential cover how many models you lose as well as how many models you kill?
Da Crusha:
the kill differential is the difference in kills between your kills and your opponent kills. black is in dwarf favor and red is in opponents favor.
Baggronor:
Looking at the above posts, and also thinking about it a little bit more, it seems to me that a large unit of say 5 wide and 6+ ranks back of hob goblins has seemed to replace how I used to play shielded chaos dwarfs. I mainly used shield chaos dwarfs as a way to hold the enemy there. Now I can do that with hob goblins.Yup. Its similar to the way Skaven do it really; massed ranks of chaff backed up by weapons of mass destruction. Only down side is we can't fire into combat with Hobgoblins ;P
So seeing that my army can easily contain 6 bolt throwers, 2 earth shaker cannons, and 3 death rockets, I can do the killing with those, and finish off the enemy with my blocks of infantry. (I know that seems a little bit cheesy, but my local meta is the local meta of the guys at yesthetruthhurts.com and they look at only competitive lists, so I have to at least be able to survive against them.)
Sanguinarian:
Yeah that's a fair point, if it was a choice of one or the other I'd say go for great weapons (well actually I'd say find the points to fit in a unit of each, but nevermind :cheers). I also hadn't factored in things like hobgoblins as I've only used vanilla dwarfs so far, so perhaps a hobgoblin swamp* with a chaos dwarf hammer would be the most efficient option?
Yes, and as Baggronor says, considering units in isolation is pointless anyway. But the OP was just after opinions about which was the better choice and, in general, considering both the 8th Edition combat rules and the prevailing metagame, great weapons tend to be a better choice now. That's not to say that there's no place for hand weapons and shields - an army shouldn't just be composed of the most efficient units to go one-on-one with the greatest variety of enemies - just that, within the context of the question (paraphrased: "I must have one or the other, which should I go with?") great weapons are the best choice.
Thommy H
Da Crusha:
well actually hobgoblin “tarpits” can sometimes cause your hammer to break because HGs die so easily
Sanguinarian:
well actually hobgoblin "tarpits" can sometimes cause your hammer to break because HGs die so easilyAren't chaos dwarfs immune to panic from hobgoblin units? Or am I misunderstanding you here?
Da Crusha
Da Crusha:
I mean in close combat, the tarpit takes the charge and then the hammer unit hits flank. sometimes because so many HG die, the hammer unit ends up breaking from combat.