8th Ed. 4000 pt Grand Army v Dwarves, new (old) player

[Jivetyrant]

Good morning Lustria!

I recently got back into playing Fantasy after a long hiatus (like, since 6th) and I've been having a great time, but I often feel a little lost since the game plays so much differently than it did back then. I really only play against 1 person, my friend who runs a balanced but tough dwarf army. We have been playing 2500 points and our games typically end up in draws or wins in his favor. We recently decided to scale up to 4000 points so we can play with more of our toys, but I've been having trouble getting together a 4k list that I'm really happy with with. Here's what I have so far.

Slann 247.5 ss
Focus of Mystery, Harmonic Convergence, Reservoir of Eldritch Energy, Soul of Stone, Channeling Staff, BSB with Standard of Discipline, Egg of Quango

Oldblood Cowboy 142.5 ss (maybe I'm better off saving the points and using a second Scar Vet Cowboy instead?)
Cold One, Light Armor, Great Weapon, Sacred Stegadon Helm, Talisman of Preservation, The Other Tricksters Shard

Scar Vet Cowboy
Cold One, Great Weapon, Armor of Destiny

Tetto'eko

Gor-Rok

Chakax (unsure about him, he strikes me as effective v Dwarves but he is pretty pricey. I would probably run a second Scar Vet with a Crown of Command and put him in a Saurus unit instead)

Skink Priest
lvl 2 Heavens, Cloak of Feathers

30 Saurus, HWS, full command

30 Saurus, HWS, full command

30 Saurus, Spears, full command (I know HWS is better suited, but these are already built)

Skroxigor bus for Tetto, 24 skinks, 3 Kroxigors, full command, poisoned (I feel like I should ditch the Kroxigors and poison and just use the unit as protection for Tetto. It seems like the Skroxigor units speed and hitting power would be wasted, I don't want Tetto near combat. Maybe I should keep the Skroxigor unit and buy another cohort unit to put Tetto in?)

8 Chameleon Skinks

8 Chameleon Skinks

25 Temple Guard, Full Command, Razor Standard

3 Salamanders

Other units I have available:
Cold One Cavalry, up to 8 if I still include both heroes on Cold Ones
Stegadon (old, ugly one)
Carnosaur
3 Terradons
3 more Salamanders
Bastilodon
various skink priests and chiefs on foot
20 skinks skirmishers with blowpipes


His typical 2500 point list is as follows, to the best of my memory.

Belegar Ironhammer

Thane

Master Engineer

Burlok Gunnerson

25 HWS Warriors

25 Great Weapon Warriors

25 Ironbreakers

20 Miners

20 Thunderers with command and shields, Burlok goes in here (brutal)

smaller units of basic thunderers

2 cannons

Organ Gun

Flame Cannon

He will be adding an Anvil of Doom, another cannon, another flame cannon, a 20 man unit of longbeards and some other stuff.


I would love to run my big dinos, but I don't feel like I have the target saturation needed for this point level. 3 monsters would probably get gunned down by turn 2 or 3, and if he goes first I'm at a major disadvantage. I think I've been spending too much time and energy trying to bust up his war machines in previous games. Once I deal with the organ gun and flame cannons I don't need to worry about the cannons as much if I skip out on monsters, I can focus on bringing down his vicious Thunderers unit or chip away at the damn Ironbreakers. The Thunderers might actually be the biggest issue, they dish out a LOT of damage, especially with Burlok in the unit and I can't reliably break them with a cowboy because of the command, shields and special character.

Last question, how do people generally rank up their Saurus units? I'm used to running them 5x5, that always worked well in my old meta but things have changed a lot. Obviously I added an additional rank to each Saurus unit and the Temple Guard to help out with the punishment they will take while we cross the board.

Thanks for your help in advance, everyone!

 

[n810]

For Saurus, against standard core troops, run them wider than your opponents block, so you can get more attacks,
against great weapons and extra hand weapons, run them 5 wide to mitigate incoming attacks.

 

[Scalenex]

Be sure to take Resevoir of Eldritch Energy. Apart from that I have no solid information on what you should do versus Dwarves at that points level. I did play a 6000 point game versus Dwarves. It may or may not be applicable to you.

 

[Jivetyrant]

It's funny, I have fairly limited experience with a more combat oriented army (my other army is Clan Skryre focused Skaven) so the idea of ranking up any other way but with minimum frontage often doesn't occur to me. Even my old Lizardmen army was relatively shooty, I ran boatloads of skinks, lots of salamanders and heavy magic. My infantry was basically there to mop up. Unfortunately it doesn't seem like that army model is as effective these days.

 

[lordkingcrow]

I've got a pretty sizable dwarf army and still use them pretty regularly. I've only got a bit of time, but here are a few quick suggestions. I would get some cavalry in there. Some people don't like them, but it gives him something to think about, target wise. Dwarfs hate getting flanked. Just shoot those Ironbreakers with sallies. I would pour so much fire on them there would be nothing left but burnt out armor husks. Getting into a grind with a unit that has 3+ armor and 5+ parry (even when flanked) is nasty. The Anvil of Doom is a point sink. Completely worthless. Take it out for the unholy amount of points that it requires, but it isn't really a threat. If you want a unit to have some extra protection against those nasty organ guns, just place a cheap skirmish unit in front. That gives your important troops -1 to hit. Monsters are, as you know, a waste against artillery. Well, got to run. If I think of anything later I'll try to remember to post it.

 

[Jivetyrant]

Thanks for the advice! I dropped the kroxigors and poison on the skinks and I trimmed the unit down to 20. That freed up enough points to add a unit of 5 cold one cavalry and a 10 man skink skirmisher unit to use as an organ gun/thunderer screen for my temple guard. I'd really like to add another unit of 3 salamanders, but I don't know where I'd get the points. I'd probably have to drop Chakax, that would give me enough points plus some. To be honest it's probably better to take the salamanders, Chakax is just too damn expensive and he's really not killy enough...