A Cannon, a Rock, and a Very Good Reason to Bring a Sapper
We had one of those very good army-building exchanges recently: a list file got thrown into chat, somebody said “I’m not even sure this makes sense”, and five minutes later we were already excited about dwarfs riding… a rock.
It started with an .owb file
Michał asked End3r to throw over the owb.json so it could be imported and poked at. End3r delivered the file and summed the list up in the most relatable way possible: it was basically similar to the previous version, plus a cannon.
Honestly, that already sounds like a solid direction.
When we got into the details, the immediate highlight was not even the artillery. It was the discovery that dwarfs can apparently have KAMIEŃ as a mount. A rock. We love Warhammer for exactly this kind of energy.
Dwarfs somehow have to cope.
Especially when they already get runes instead of magic.
That one exchange pretty much set the tone for the whole discussion.
Then the actually useful tech appeared
The more interesting part came a bit later, when Michał suggested swapping the regular Engineer for a Sapper for +20 points.
That upgrade gives access to Dig In!, which lets him entrench units after passing a Leadership test. On that character, with Ld 9, that sounded very reliable — even taking End3r’s legendary relationship with rolling ones into account.
Once a unit is entrenched, it gains Entrench, which means:
An Entrenched unit is considered to be behind partial cover and to be defending a low linear obstacle.
And that matters because:
For the purposes of movement, low linear obstacles are treated as difficult terrain.
So suddenly this stops being just a cute rules interaction and starts looking like a genuinely nasty defensive tool.
Why we liked it immediately
The internet interpretation Michał found was that this works similarly to the Defensive Stakes used by Bretonnian Peasant Bowmen. In practice, that means a unit can become much more annoying to charge and much better at holding ground.
For a gunline-style or defensive dwarf setup, that sounds extremely on-brand.
And then came the real selling point: Michał added that he knows End3r is not exactly a fan of fanatics.
At that point the reaction was immediate:
Instant delete on the guy. From now on I’m always taking it!
Which, honestly, is exactly the kind of army-building moment we enjoy most. You start with “I clicked together something like last time plus a cannon”, and you end with a list tech piece that suddenly feels mandatory because it solves a very specific problem you hate dealing with.
Current verdict
So where did we land?
- the list got a cannon
- dwarfs continue to be incredible because apparently rock mount is a thing
- the Sapper looks like a genuinely strong upgrade
- and if it helps ruin a fanatic’s day, that is apparently enough to make it an auto-include
We love these little list-evolution moments. Not a full rewrite, not a grand theorycrafting session — just a small tweak that suddenly makes the army feel smarter, meaner, and more ours.
If this makes it onto the table soon, we’re very curious whether the entrenchment trick feels as good in practice as it does on paper.