Battle Report - Skaven v Dwarfs - The Dwarf View

Here are Tane's comments on the game. Gives an insight into the other point of view

G'day everyone, I was the Dwarf player, and here's my 2 cents.

In short, I played very badly. I had some very poor luck with the dice in my shooting phase, but that wasn't the cause of my smashing (and it was a smashing). Pete also had below average luck with his shooting, and he did all right.... I might appear somewhat pessimistic in my outlook on this game, but to be honest, I can't think of anything I did right. Here's some of what I did wrong;

DEPLOYMENT

This is the biggie. It is essential as a Dwarf player that you don't cock this up, as you normally lack the relative mobility to remedy a poor deployment. I cocked it up, and against a player of Pete's skill and experience that's fatal. The first mistake was the loose deployment of the war machines, allowing the Gutter Runners into their rear, exactly what I didn't want. I should have deployed them tighter and on the table edge, with the Hammerers and Warriors to their front, forcing the Gutter Runners to come on from the sides, outside the cordon. The second problem was the Longbeard Rangers. These should have either been on the Skaven table edge, allowing an attack on one Slave unit at a time, or even better, back on my side, next to the Hammerers, ready to help out the battleline. 400+ points of Longbeards spent the game killing 150 points worth of Slaves. The third problem was putting the Hammerers on the right, with W2 in the centre. The Hammerers were aimed at the Furnace, their S6 hammers ready to smash it, while their Stubborn kept them in the game against the massive casualties they were going to suffer. The W2 unit with the BSB's Flaming Attacks were the backup should the Cannon fail to kill the Abomination (which it did, not a single wound on it....). I tried to get W2 round the back of the Hammerers, hence the mindless meandering, but they did SFA. My fault, not theirs.... Finally, W1 is way the hell away from any support. I'm still not sure what I was thinking.

SHOOTING

I won't blame the dice, but as the Dwarfs are only a 2-dimensional army (no magic, poor relative movement), you need a backup to the war machines to those times they don't work. This was one of those times, my 450 points of War Machines did sod all (mainly due to the Bell inflicting 2d3 auto-wounds on them, and that old favourite, the Storm Banner). That was my BSB and the Hammerers, but as noted above, they were in the wrong position to carry out their missions.

DITHERING

The only thing worse than a bad plan is failing to execute it properly. You can see this when I didn't charge W2 in with the Hammerers, or when I reinforced failure by committing the Miners to help out the Longbeards.

POOR USE OF DIVERTERS

The 2 Dragonslayers and the Gyrocopter were in the list to help block charges and/or divert them. I'm still learning about this arcane art, and that shows in this game. My first Dragonslayer did hold the Abomination for a turn, but that's it; I needed a unit nearby to try and take advantage of that and didn't . The Gyrocopter spent it's game making up for my appalling deployment by shooting Gutter Runners.

Those are the main points I can think of. It was as always a great game against Pete, and I'm hoping that I've finally learned some of these lessons. I do find Skaven (along with WOC) to be my bane armies, mainly I think because my shooting has to be spot on to attrit or kill their shock troops before combat. If it's not, Dwarves get hammerered (and not in a good way). Skaven can easily handle Dwarf shooting with the Storm Banner, Gutter Runners and (as I found out) the Screaming Bell, making it very iffy once the Furnace, Abomination etc make contact. Well, it makes for a challenging game eh?!