Are Chaos Dwarves too good? (Tournaments Only)

Kamikaze Rudy · Post by **Kamikaze Rudy** » Wed Jul 16, 2003 3:40 pm

Tim wrote:Did you notice there was a loss to Halflings in there? Poor guy, Hashut will make him serve at the deepest furnace in hell!

Hey man, I pride myself on being a fairly competent Chaos Dwarf coach, but I lost to the Halflings in a tournament game. I was quite miffed and embarassed at the same time. His Halfling Chef stole 2 out of 3 of my rerolls each half and his front wall consisted of Deeproot Strongbranch, A rookie Ogre, and a rookie Treeman. I couldn't do anything.... I blitzed a halfling every turn and all I could get were knockouts if I was lucky enough to break armor. I ended with a 1-0 loss.

Hashut was displeased to say the least...

Skummy · Post by **Skummy** » Wed Jul 16, 2003 3:47 pm

Isn't that the roster that Galak is planning on taking to Gencon?

Grumbledook · Post by **Grumbledook** » Wed Jul 16, 2003 4:05 pm

neo, i don't think fouling comes into it that much, sure it can help and they are good at it but i hardly ever foul with them and still do really well

Darkson · Post by **Darkson** » Wed Jul 16, 2003 4:15 pm

Tell you what, if someone supplies the teams, I'll play Undead at CamCarn, and CD's at Spiky. With my coaching ability I bring their stats back down to normal levels.

Mestari · Post by **Mestari** » Wed Jul 16, 2003 8:30 pm

Grumbledook wrote:neo, i don't think fouling comes into it that much, sure it can help and they are good at it but i hardly ever foul with them and still do really well

Have to say the same. At low TR the team is competitive also with little fouling.

grep-v · Post by **grep-v** » Wed Jul 16, 2003 8:40 pm

I'll just pick out a few points to make my remarks

Tim wrote:- The team is the strongest when they start (tournament level) and go relatively downhill when the others start to gain experience and skills.

That is not matching with my experience. In the two tournaments I played with CDs (till now) I had one loss and one draw. All other games were better than that. The later in the tournament, the better the performance of my CDs.

Tim wrote:- It's a team that's very sensitive to dice rolls. Good Chaos Dwarf coaches know how to live with failure, a fact that helps in the low TR tournament environment as well, because with few skills and low RRs failure is present all the time.

Another thing I don't agree with at all. The team is more skilled than most others and the low RRs don't matter much to me. Waste a few turns to pick up the ball with the BC and smash some opponents with the Troll or Dwarves, the ball is pretty safe and the opponent has to be very lucky to get it. I happen to find CDs more forgiving to bad dice than other teams.

There is only one BIG weakness the CDs have: field control is pretty hard to establish. You have to take a few risks sometime or forgo some blocks/blitzes to achieve superiority in tackle zones and field control.
But if you manage to do that you can practically strangle any opponent and force him to roll more dice than you with a higher chance of failure.

grep-v · Post by **grep-v** » Wed Jul 16, 2003 8:46 pm

Sputnik wrote:Nevertheless back to the topic with another question: if CD do well in tourneys, why didn't we see a fair amount of various good performances with dwarfs then? Is it really the bull centaurs making the difference? The number of AG3 players is obviously not a factor, nor is the big guy.

BTW: Dwarves performed well in the RV BB (Redfang IIRC).
But Dwarves are less versatile and less suited to play against strong opponents. As soon as the opponent has 3-4 ST4 players plus Big Guy you have to double tag each strong opponent to be safe, which leaves you with less players to tackle the rest of the team.
Dwarves perform well against ST3 teams, but less well against ST4 teams.

Tim · Post by **Tim** » Thu Jul 17, 2003 11:50 am

grep-v wrote:
Tim wrote:- It's a team that's very sensitive to dice rolls. Good Chaos Dwarf coaches know how to live with failure, a fact that helps in the low TR tournament environment as well, because with few skills and low RRs failure is present all the time.
Another thing I don't agree with at all. The team is more skilled than most others and the low RRs don't matter much to me. Waste a few turns to pick up the ball with the BC and smash some opponents with the Troll or Dwarves, the ball is pretty safe and the opponent has to be very lucky to get it.

I disagree heavily here. The team has NO ballhandling skill as catch, sure hands or pass, unskilled and easily breaking AG3 Ball carriers and good, but only AG2 blitzers. The need of GFI to keep up with faster teams is a great source of turnovers as well. Other than in Dwarf or Norse teams, only half of the players have Block. Waste one turn to pick up the ball against an elf or skaven team and might be done.

grep-v · Post by **grep-v** » Thu Jul 17, 2003 10:12 pm

Tim wrote:
grep-v wrote:The team is more skilled than most others and the low RRs don't matter much to me. Waste a few turns to pick up the ball with the BC and smash some opponents with the Troll or Dwarves, the ball is pretty safe and the opponent has to be very lucky to get it.
I disagree heavily here. The team has NO ballhandling skill as catch, sure hands or pass, unskilled and easily breaking AG3 Ball carriers and good, but only AG2 blitzers. The need of GFI to keep up with faster teams is a great source of turnovers as well. Other than in Dwarf or Norse teams, only half of the players have Block. Waste one turn to pick up the ball against an elf or skaven team and might be done.

I will explain my opinion point by point:
- no ballhandling skills: ok, so what? You have to play without the ball to control the ball. From the impression I got in Paris you heavily rely on reducing the opponent's team. But there is another way: control the ball. You don't have to handle the ball often to control it and sometimes a ballcarrier is one player less to defend and one more source of risk.

- GFIs: the one big problem is to overcome the low MA of the dwarves. Simply slow the game down to an acceptable speed. If YOU control the ball your opponent almost always has to concentrate on it. His main focus is fixed, you can try to align him and fix him further. In this moment, the slowness of the dwarves doesn't matter anymore. They just have to move a few squares to establish field control around the ball. And the BCs have the potential to suddenly quicken the pace, break thorugh the aligned opponent's team, flanked by the hobgobs. GFIs sometimes are necessary, but you can cut the numbers down if YOU dictate the speed.

- only the dwarf blockers have block: ok, CDs have less blockers than dwarves and norse, so what? It is just a tradeoff, neither of them has ST4 players, norse have AV7.

- one turn is enough for skaven or elves to score: yes, and so it is against EVERY other team. The difference: CDs are much better in controlling the ball. Only the dwarves are nearly as good. Ok, maybe the ball lies around one turn longer than with humans or elves. In a pinch this is dangerous, but that's life. I didn't ever consider this to be a problem. Even elves fumble sometimes