Wow.. Dwarves are T-O-U-G-H!!!

[Niko White]

I'm not extremely familiar with the undead, but that sounds potentially really effective.  Swamp them down with the zombies + aboms that take forever to kill, and use the cav to take advantage of the dwarves being immobilized.

[ApokalypseTest]

THAT job can even be done by Ghouls - it does not matter that much if they run away from a pinch or if they get delayed one turn by missile fire followed by a rout. And they are much cheaper then your cav. 250 points is a lot in a 1000 point game.

[paradox22]

Thanks for all the info guys... really good stuff.  So, theoretically, is it possible to take out the dwarves with ranged fire...  possibly corner camp and force them to close?  Would this require 2000pts?  Undead catapults?

[Niko White]

Ranged fire can definitely hurt Dwarves, but they tend to have pretty good morale and lots of morale boost cards, so you're unlikely to break up the formations much.  It can be successful to use a giant catapault firebase sytle army (1-2 GCs screened by aboms and zombies) but it is hard to pull off if the Dwarves see it coming, and sometimes doesn't work regardless.  Honestly, the best way to take down any tough infantry units is going to be pinching -- it gives the biggest inherent bonuses in the game.

Not to say Dwarves are immune to shooting, or that you can't get good stuff done with the GCs, but even in those cases often what you're trying to do is create pinches: soften up a line unit with shooting so it breaks and you can pinch in, etc.

I'd say 2000 points is also the time to try it, yeah, or at least 1500 -- 1000 is smaller than I've ever played, I'd imagine those games are tiny.

[paradox22]

Good Info...

So in your expert opinions, can any of the armies take out the dwarves by out manuvering them?  What is your prefered army for killing them?

[Hannibal]

As a Dwarf player, I'll say that they can be beaten but they are a difficult army at first glance.  The Rune of Uruz, their natural toughness, and the number of hit boxes they have can be brutal.  My thoughts:

Fast, outmanuvering units:  yup, everyone's right about that one.  Take something that can whip around his flanks and he has to pay attention to it or suffer later.  I'd recommend takign two cheap, throw away unit to do this (if you can).  You're just looking for pinching, not for the flanking unit to do anything.  Why two?  Because if he's smart he'll take the Antonians.

Missile Fire & pinching:  This is really one and the same here.  You're trying to punch a hole in his line so you can pinch.  What I'd suggest is do this against Militia, Axemen/miner, and Crossbowmen.  They have a lower Def (usually) so you can whittle them down that when you charge, you can hopefully bust a hole is his line and then starting rolling him up.

Crossbowmen are especially vulnerable to this.  Missile fire is their great weakness because they have a lower Def until they're engaged.  I'd suggest putting one archer unit on either corssbowmen or some other unit with lower than normal Def, heck maybe two if he's only got one weak spot in his line.  Usually Dwarves pad their line with militia or take crossbowmen, so you have the opportunity to assign an archer unit to each.  Then, they're weakened when they charge and if he's not paying attention, can be busted by your charge and now he's got 2 holes in his line.  If you really want to bust his ine, put your beefy unit against that "weak" unit of his.  I beat Dwarves with Elves just that way:  bears against militia softened up by bowfire. 

[ApokalypseTest]

I think Hannibal put down the important points.

Also notice: Easy flanking only works at your very small point allotment. In a 2000 Point game the dwarf will almost certainly have a full 7 unit wide line, probably even some antonians to secure the flanks - and they are tough.

Always remember: You are faster then the bulk of his army, so you can decide where to hit and when. It might even worth charging in a wedge so that his stronger units engage later the n the weak ones. The only true weakness of dwarves is their low speed. Make use of it.

[Niko White]

So, one thing to remember is that no Battleground armies totally railroad you, though some do to a greater extent than others.  Dwarves are actually pretty flexible -- what I've been talking about here is a sort of "obvious" Dwarf build, made entirely or mostly of strong, tough front line units.  In fact, the Dwarves have a couple of reasonable ranged options on the list to try for a firebase list, and they also have one of the best basic light cavalry around, in the form of the hard hitting, incredibly speedy, difficult to shoot Antonian Horsemen.  So, in short: any army is able to outmaneuver the Dwarf melee line because that is one of the least mobile armies in the game.  But being able to do that doesn't mean you can always beat the Dwarves, and indeed you could make a Dwarf army to beat that strategy.

In general, I don't feel there's a strong faction matchup game in Battleground.  Specific armies are strong and weak to other specific strategies, but you can generally get several of these strategies out of any given faction's available units.  So if I'm going up against Dwarves I know they'll almost certainly have tough, stubborn line units, but I also have to recognize that they might have some pretty powerful shooting (especially against tough targets like big monsters) and that they might also have a couple of cruise missiles in the form of the Antonians.  This will only get more pronounced in a few months when the Monsters and Mercenaries come out and give everyone access to some basic role-player units they might have lacked in the past.

Overall, though, I don't tend to try to rely on matchup stuff to win my games; I'm much more a fan of coming up with lists that I think give me a good chance to use good generalship and wise use of command cards and army abilities to let me address the opponent's plans.  The strategy of "how do I deal with this list?" is good to think about, but part of the reason I listed a variety of units to try with the factions you asked about is that I'm trying to underline that you can often use your things in a variety of ways.  Against Dwarves, your skeleton cavalry or stags won't do well charging in from the front in most cases, but their line might have trouble stopping some crafty flanking action.  Against a mob of Hawks with peasants or Umenzi, the board is likely to be too clogged to move around the flank, but those units might do enough hurt on the charge to just start mowing down the chaff.  And so on.

I think the overall point is, don't let your opponent get complacent with one strategy.  Even if you only own one army, chances are good that you can give yourself a good chance against it.  A big advantage of Battleground is that since you can easily get all the cards you'd ever use, you can shift your army a lot each time you play, unlike miniature games where army changes represent a significant amount of money.  I find I and my opponents tend to bring slightly different lists to every battle, either swapping out something they think will perform badly against that army as a whole, or just tinkering with new things.

Sorry, this is really wordy -- final note: matchups in general, I find, are rarely near the whole story in this game like they can be in some minis games.  I don't think I've played a list on list matchup where I felt the lists themselves were much worse than 60-40 unless one of the lists was just bad.  So if you find yourself losing all the time, it would also be wise to think about other aspects of your game.  Army ability and command card use are two big offenders; you don't want to use either needlessly and risk being without when you really need them.  The one I'm least sure about in my own game is order changing and direct control in responding to changes in the line; I'm trying now to come up with a more nuanced way of deciding when I want to do that as opposed to what "feels" right, which sometimes steers me wrong.  The command action system is a great example of restrictions building a greater decision tree: using them wisely or poorly can make a huge difference.  Ditto command cards.

[paradox22]

Very good info guys.  Thank you.  I will do my best to put it all to good use...and... hopefully... CRUSH SOME DWARFS!   LOL