Boldo's Armory | dwarven artillery

Dwaven Artillery Often the only real difference between two dwarf armies is in their artillery. Every dwarven general knows the value of artillery and every general has a favorite piece they can never live without. Every piece of dwarven artillery is good and they all seem to have a fair cost but every piece has something that it does better than the other pieces. In a tournament where both the opponent and the scenarios are unknown which of the pieces is the best.

To approach this problem I considered first what opponents could have in their army. It seemed that there were only six types of units that an opponent could field: warmachines, skirmishers, ogres, troops, cavalry, and chariots. In this group warmachines are any seldom moved item which is worth destroying. Ogres are any large models that are formed up into troops and have more than one wound by are not cavalry. Troops are any one-wound model formed up into units that are not cavalry and they are considered to be formed into blocks with 4 ranks T3 SV4+. Cavalry are assumed to be in 2 ranks and have an armor save of 1. Chariots are any multi-wound model that moves and is a complete unit by itself including ridden monsters. Warmachines can also be good in a scenario and thus valuable in winning a game. This considered I tried to calculate the average number of wounds each warmachine choice could do a turn without runes cast on it. This created an expected wound number that I organized into the chart 1.

Chart 1

warmachine

Flamecannon
Cannon
2 Bolt Throwers
Stone Thrower
Gyrocopter
Organ Gun

warmachine

.5
1.667
.8333
.8333
1.25
0

skirmishers

2.5
2.5
.8333
1.663
3.5
4

Ogres

6
4
4
4.5
.8333
3.5

Troops

7
3
2
2.33
5
4

Cavalry

1
1.667
2
.5
0
2.5

Mission

2
3
5
4
1
6

Chariots

.166
.8333
.25
.833
0
.5

With this information I then ranked the number of wounds each machine did. This created a number between one and six for each machine. This gives a rank for each machine, which is the relative usefulness of the machine against that type of foe. When the totals for each machine are added up this gives a total score for each machine that can be used to determine the overall usefulness of the machine. It is possible that some of these numbers may be a bit rounded or even wrong but they are close enough for comparison. The category of missions is the most difficult one as this is purely subjective. It is generally based upon the ability of the machine to either kill a particular model or do something other than kill troops. The Gyrocopter is my choice for the best in this category as it can slow down a huge section of the army, get off the board, make sure the dwarves run down a particular foe, or even engage a messenger. The flamecannon's ability to force break tests make it the second best item in scenarios. Cannons are better than anything else at picking out a particular enemy model and can fire grapeshot so they are the next best choice and from here it is really down to killing power.

Artillery Rank Chart

warmachine

Flamecannon
Cannon
2 Bolt Throwers
Stone Thrower
Gyrocopter
Organ Gun

warmachine

5
1
3
4
2
6

skirmishers

3
4
6
5
2
1

Ogres

1
3
4
2
6
5

Troops

1
4
6
5
2
3

Cavalry

4
3
2
5
6
1

Mission

2
3
5
4
1
6

Chariots

5
1
4
2
6
3

totals

21(19)
19(16)
30(25)
27(22)
25(24)
25(19)

From the results the regular cannon is the best machine as it has the ability to be best against any foe. This does not mean the cannon will be the best machine and in particular there may be no kill difference between an Organ gun and a gyrocopter, but over a number of games this order of usefulness should remain true. In parenthesis I have included the score of each machine without the mission category so the overall kill ability of the machine can be rated.

Boldo: Brother Boldo
Webmaster: Patrick Ludwig
Website Design: Roger Wink

Last Modified on Tuesday, 31-Jan-2006 11:31:57 EST