Tweaking the Dwarfs After the Battle Report
Sometimes the best army-building discussions happen immediately after a game report goes live. That was exactly the case for us this time: one battle report, a couple of screenshots from the list-building process, some well-aimed jokes, and suddenly the Dwarven Mountain Holds list was already evolving.
Michal first dropped the freshly published battle report into chat:
And, naturally, we immediately started circling around the details that only become obvious once the dice are put away and the post is online.
Stas then added an earlier screenshot to give some extra context to where the list had been before the latest revisions.
From there, the chat turned into exactly the kind of post-game debrief we love: half serious analysis, half friendly bullying. Ender immediately pounced on one bit of phrasing from the report:
“strategically” placed
That quotation mark did not go unnoticed. Neither did this gem from the writeup:
So the Warriors performed a neat little maneuver to solve a problem that did not actually exist. That feels very on-brand for Dwarfs, honestly.
Honestly? Fair. Painfully fair. Also very funny.
But beneath the jokes there was a real list-building takeaway. Ender summed up the actual update clearly: one Gyrocopter was cut, an Organ Gun was added, and the Rangers were swapped for Thunderers. The reasoning was simple and very dwarfy in the best possible way: the Engineer can support both the Thunderers and the Organ Gun with re-rolls of 1s when nearby, and he can also entrench the Organ Gun.
That gives the list a much tighter little shooting package. Instead of spreading support across pieces that do different jobs in different parts of the table, the revised version leans harder into overlapping synergies. We really like that kind of adjustment, especially in smaller-format games where every unit has to pull its weight and every character buff matters.
What changed, exactly?
In short:
- one Gyrocopter out,
- one Organ Gun in,
- Rangers out,
- Thunderers in.
It is not a massive rebuild, but it does shift the list’s identity a bit. The earlier version had a little more flexibility and board presence; the newer one looks more concentrated and more efficient around the Engineer’s support bubble.
Why this makes sense to us
The most interesting part here is that this does not read like a panic reaction to one game. It feels more like a refinement after seeing how the army actually behaved on the table. That is usually where the best army-building decisions come from.
A Gyrocopter is useful, sure, but trimming one of them to free up points for an Organ Gun gives the army another threat that benefits directly from support pieces already in the list. Swapping Rangers for Thunderers pushes that same logic further. If the Engineer is already there and already wants to stand near your shooting elements, then giving him better targets for his rules is a very sensible move.
And, maybe most importantly, it feels like a list becoming more honest about what it wants to do.
The fun part of post-game list tuning
This is one of our favorite parts of the hobby. Not just writing battle reports, but watching the army change because of them. A game happens, someone writes it up, someone else quotes the funniest line, somebody posts an old screenshot, and then suddenly the list is sharper than it was the day before.
That is the good stuff.
We are curious how this revised Dwarven Mountain Holds build will perform next time out. On paper, the shooting castle looks meaner, the support interactions are cleaner, and the whole thing feels a bit more focused. Which, for Dwarfs, is probably exactly where we want to be — even if some of our maneuvers remain extremely on-brand in all the wrong ways.