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I get the idea that people want as many units in this game as possible and want to fill holes in the rosters of the factions. However, I draw the line at filling in holes that aren't supposed to be filled in. One of the big weaknesses of the Dwarfs is their lack of mobility and big scary monsters, making up for it with insanely good defense and ranged firepower. By giving them a monstrous infantry unit and a single entity monster, you get rid of a major weakness that the faction is supposed to have. To me, it would be like giving the Vampire Counts an easily recruitable ranged unit or giving Wood Elves heavily armored infantry, you're plugging weaknesses that are supposed to be there. Every time I see people asking for these units I just kind of end up shaking my head because not only do the Dwarfs not need them, I feel like plugging them takes away from the asymmetry that makes this game fun.

I am now going to argue that Dwarfs are the worst designed faction in the game that actually receives content updates. This is not to say they're in a worse position than WoC, WE or Beastmen, this is not a discussion about that or who is more hard done by.

I'm going to prove that despite Dwarfs being two dimensional in army roster, having no magic, cavalry, limited flyers and poor movespeed, that CA focused their design around Dwarfs on solely these elements without ever making them the slightest bit interesting to play on the battlefield.

All 4 Dwarf playable LL are just variants of the same melee grind hero. Belegar being the most tanky, Ungrim and Gromby doing more damage, but also still massively durable. So how do you distinguish factions or LL within a one dimensional race with zero mount options? Give them different lord buffs and alternating battlefield playstyles via faction effects.

Jokes, how about leadership instead?







Cool. So now all my troops that are practically fighting to the death anyway, now practically fight to the death.

This is further exaserbated by almost nothing in their skill trees to enhance playstyle. The White Dwarf just gets his flash bomb and some melee defence when defending. I mean it's okay but not exactly adding to any kind of tactical diversity.



I heard you liked leadership buffs, want more? Just in case your 90LD hammerers decided to have second thoughts. (Jokes, who fields hammerers anyway, not Thorgrim, he doesn't buff them enough) Again, why aren't his hammerers cheap as chips or OP?



Now lets look at the worst offender, Belegar. So because he gets some weird ethereal heroes he doesn't get a single custom lord skill for buffing... anything? The closest thing he gets is a bonus to charge (charging as Dwarfs, that a joke?)



He's meant to be a master tunnel fighter and one of the major underway players. Where are the bonuses to Miners? Ironbreakers? Irondrakes? You don't get any. Because Dwarfs and **** you.

Let's compare this with a lord that was release before the fabled "Dwarf rework" at the launch of WH:2. Kroq-Gar.







Now keep in mind. This is post "Dwarfs have already had their rework" that everyone keeps going on about. Wow, the faction is so interesting now. Grudges were always "ok" but never exactly rocking the world with interest. As if I'm not going to kill raiding armies and retake lost territory. The penalty/buff incentive isn't bad, but I'm certainly not excited about grudges.

I am aware Belegars campaign gameplay is interesting, but why does that preclude him from getting interesting battle buffs/mechanics as well?

The only decently designed Dwarf lord for unique battlefield gameplay is Ungrim. And he likely only avoids a leadership buff because his units are unbreakable.

Great buffs to slayers and a properly fleshed out skill tree.





A nice deep skill tree that buffs him and his army/faction. It's thematic. Exactly what you want in a lord.

But everyone here accepted this poor game design because Dwarfs were strong on campaign map and painted it blue a lot, or because you think they're two dimensional so it's fine. Well so are Lizardmen, but that didn't stop them getting cool buffs to units to make interesting and thematically stronger armies.

Aside from Grudges, their only campaign mechanics was ripped right from the TK and it isn't even as good.

Greenskins now have more unit customisation with scrap than both Dwarfs and WoC, who should have the most with runes and marks.

I discussed scrap and how it could be given to Dwarfs as a runic system here: https://forums.totalwar.com/discussion/263900/in-depth-look-at-reworking-scrap-runeforging-for-the-dwarfs#latest


Dwarfs have 4 options for future LL that could make for interesting and altered gameplay.

Bugman to buff rangers.
Grimm to buff gunlines
Malakai for slayers/gunlines/tech.
Thorek for runes/smiths and Anvils. (Side note, can we get an anvil of doom that actually does something? You know, like it's supposed to. Give it a bunch of damaging runic bound spells please or interesting buffs. +armour is a meme when you have Hammerers/Ironbreakers)

That being said, there's no reason the ones we have need to stay mundane. As I mentioned above belegar should buff underway fighting units. The White Dwarf could be turned into an offensive melee army buffing Rangers, Warriors and Longbeards with GW etc.


TL:DR. The Dwarf lords except Ungrim are poorly designed, given no interesting battlefield buffs or niches and just enhance how two dimensional the race is instead of finding ways to mitigate it with theme and roster diversity.

P.S Dwarfs don't need more boring melee LL.