Two Small Old World Lists, Two Very Different Ideas
Army-building evening: Orcs & Goblins vs Chaos Dwarfs
Sometimes our list-building chats start with one small tweak and end with a completely different army concept. This time was very much one of those days.
We ended up with two Warhammer: The Old World lists at around 1000 points, and what we like most is that they go in very different directions. One is a more board-control, pressure-and-support style Orcs & Goblins list from Stas, and the other is Michał’s much more elite, weird and experimental Chaos Dwarfs build.
That kind of contrast is exactly why we enjoy army-building so much. Even at a small points level, you can already see the personality of a list.
Stas tweaks the greenskins again
Stas started with a whole sequence of changes:
- the Weirdboy joins the Black Orcs
- the Night Goblin on Giant Cave Squig gets the Ruby Ring of Ruin
- the Boar Boyz were briefly going to lose Big Un’s for the Banner of Swirling Wind
- the Night Goblins were considered with bows
- and instead of a bigger filler unit, he looked at 5 Wolf Riders to screen the boar cavalry
And honestly, this is exactly the kind of discussion we always end up having with greenskin lists: how much utility is enough, and when are we just making units worse at their main job?
The biggest doubt was the bows on the Night Goblins. Stas pretty quickly talked himself out of it: paying extra points and losing shields on a unit that probably wants to survive long enough to clog up the middle of the table just didn’t feel right. In the end, the bows were cut and Big Un’s came back to the Boar Boyz.
That feels like the kind of correction that happens when a list stops being theoretical and starts looking like something you’d actually want to put on the table.
Final Orcs & Goblins list
311 - Black Orc Warboss, Great Weapon, Shield, General, Wyvern, Trollhide Trousers
130 - Night Goblin Bigboss, Cavalry Spear, Light Armour, Battle Standard Bearer, Giant Cave Squig, Enchanted Shield, Ruby Ring of Ruin
100 - Orc Weirdboy, Wizard Level 2, Battle Magic, Earthing Rod
219 - 15 Black Orc Mobs
• 1x Black Orc, Great Weapon, Boss
• 1x Black Orc, Shield, Standard Bearer
• 1x Black Orc, Shield, Musician
• 7x Black Orc, Shield
• 5x Black Orc, Great Weapon
60 - 5 Goblin Wolf Rider Mobs, Shortbow, Reserve Move, Musician
115 - 20 Night Goblin Mobs
• 20x Night Goblin, Shield
• 2x Fanatic, Standard Bearer
210 - 8 Orc Boar Boy Mobs, Cavalry Spear, Heavy Armour, Shield, Big Un's, Boss, Standard Bearer, Banner Of Swirling Wind, Musician
105 - Doom Diver Catapults
• 1x Orc Bully
What we like here
There is a lot going on in a relatively compact list:
- a Wyvern Warboss gives it reach and threat projection
- Black Orcs provide a reliable central block for the Weirdboy
- Night Goblins with Fanatics create board-control and punish careless movement
- Wolf Riders are there to screen, redirect and generally be annoying
- Boar Boy Big Un’s are the hammer
- and the Doom Diver gives the list at least one piece that can influence the table from range
It feels like a list that wants to force awkward decisions. If the opponent respects the Fanatics, the boars and Wyvern get more room. If they focus on the fast threats, the Black Orcs and goblins can take over space.
The one thing we immediately noticed is that at this points level, every unit has to work hard. There isn’t much redundancy here. If the boars bounce, or the Wyvern gets pinned down, the list probably starts feeling very thin very quickly. But that also makes it interesting.
Michał goes elite with Chaos Dwarfs
Then Michał dropped something with a very different vibe.
His first version changed almost immediately, because he noticed he had forgotten one thing. After the correction, the list became this:
++ Characters [615 pts] ++
Infernal Castellan [298 pts]
(Darkforged weapon, Full plate armour, General, Bale Taurus)
Daemonsmith Sorcerer [235 pts]
(Darkforged weapon, Heavy armour, 1x Blood of Hashut, Wizard [Level 1 Wizard], Lammasu [Mace tail + Sorcerous Exhalation], Daemonology)
Hobgoblin Khan [82 pts]
(Hand weapon, Ranged weapon [Shortbow], On foot, Ruby Ring of Ruin)
++ Core Units [360 pts] ++
18 Infernal Guard [252 pts]
(Great weapons, Heavy armour, Deathmask (champion), Standard bearer, Musician)
24 Hobgoblin Cutthroats [108 pts]
(Hand weapons, Shortbows, Light armour, Boss (champion), Standard bearer)
++ Special Units [275 pts] ++
Iron Daemon [275 pts]
(Steam Cannonade, Hand weapons)
Stas’s immediate reaction was basically the same as ours would have been at first glance: “Oooh, locomotive instead of a Deathshrieker?” and also “That’s not many bodies.”
And yes — it really isn’t. But Michał’s answer was the key point: the list has a different idea behind it.
What makes this one interesting
This is not a “fill the table with stuff” Chaos Dwarf list. It’s much more about a few heavy, unusual pressure pieces:
- Infernal Castellan on Bale Taurus
- Daemonsmith on Lammasu
- Iron Daemon
- one solid unit of Infernal Guard
- and Hobgoblins as the cheap support layer
At 1000 points, double monster-mounted characters plus an Iron Daemon is a very specific kind of statement. This list probably doesn’t want to trade resources evenly across the whole board. It wants to leverage a few hard-to-answer threats and see whether the opponent can actually manage all of them at once.
It also just sounds fun to test, which is often the most important criterion in these early list experiments.
Testing plans: table or TTS
The natural next step was obvious: we need to test these lists.
Michał said he’d happily give it a try when Stas has time, and if meeting up turns out to be difficult, Tabletop Simulator may be the easiest way to get games in. There was also a nice practical point there: one of us can set up a real army on the table, and use placeholders for the other list just to simulate movement and interactions.
Honestly, for army-building and first-pass testing, that’s a great approach. Especially when the goal is not “perfect tournament practice” but simply checking whether the list actually behaves the way we imagined.
And in this case, both lists raise exactly the kind of questions we want to answer on the table:
- do the Wolf Riders screen the boars well enough to matter?
- are the Night Goblins with shields the right call over bows?
- does the Banner of Swirling Wind earn its place?
- can the Chaos Dwarf elite package function with so few bodies?
- is the Iron Daemon the right call at this level over a more conventional artillery choice?
First impressions
What we like most here is that these aren’t two generic small-point lists.
The greenskins feel like a proper patchwork of threats, tricks and disruption. The Chaos Dwarfs feel like a compact experiment built around a few expensive, high-impact models. Both have obvious risks, and that’s exactly why they seem worth trying.
We’ll definitely want to come back to this once these lists hit the table, because right now we’re still at the best stage of army-building: the moment where everything looks either clever or completely cursed, and only the dice can decide which one it is.