Hello all and sundry, I'm coming back to the hobby after an absence of six or seven years and am keen to start building up a Dwarf army from scratch. I currently have myself a box of Erebor Dwarves which I am slowly putting together and painting, and have acquired the odd dwarven model from eBay.

As much as I enjoy the books and films, gaming-wise I find it difficult to get behind re-creating 'history' (as it were) with someone else's characters. Therefore I'd like to field generic heroes only - no risk of two Dwalins facing off across the battlefront.

So here I have two Dwarven captains leading a small expeditionary force come over from one of the lesser-known Dwarven houses to battle evil, as I believe some did in the Second Age. I understand that some players dislike the combining of Durin's Folk and Army of Thror, but I hope that the self-imposed lack of Gimli and Dwalin might allow me some leeway in getting a bit of variety in my army. A wide selection of units just seems a bit more fun to play with.

I'm not looking necessarily for a hugely competitive force, but I would like one that could give a good account of itself, falling in a blaze of glory as and when required. With the models at my disposal I can come up with a 350-point army, which should hopefully get me started off in the right direction.

Warband 1 - 155pts
Captain of Erebor with shield
5 Warriors of Erebor with shield
5 Warriors of Erebor with spear

Warband 2 - 195pts
Dwarf Captain with Shield and Throwing Axes
2 Iron Guard
5 Khazad Guard
4 Dwarf Rangers with Dwarf Longbows or Throwing Axes

I welcome all comments and suggestions. What might I change? What should I be looking to add when looking to reach higher point thresholds?

Well personally I'd get one of the lovely midrange Dwarf heroes in there.

I also see no issue in combining Durin's Folk with Hobbit Dwarves as they are all Durin's bloodline in some fashion.
And Dwarf Spearmen compliment the much harder hitting Durin's Folk elites for a rock solid battle line.

Rangers are great models, but kinda fall in the not much reason to take them field, besides theme or cool factor, better to load up on ironguard/ Khazad Imo.

Just a suggestion:

I would take off the ranger´s throwing weapons, they are bit more expensive than khazad and considerably worst in overall effectiveness.

if you can find that extra point(if not its ok) give shields to those spears, having all D7 bulkward will make your oponent relutant on preference going for spears cause the´re D7 just like majority. (a bit nasty thing if you´re facing S4 troops - try to cut off their focussed targets right off the bat).

If this helps on the Durin´s force you might be tempted to get a sshieldbearer over that captain.
I know the captain its pretty standart and the shieldbearer lacks of might/will/fate, but consider the shieldbearer got 2 awesome skills.

1- can call an heroic combat for free within 3" of the other protected heroe, that its huge for the small point range game.
2- all dwarves(including heroes) re-roll failed courage tests. On this case you got 23 models, at 12 you break (if the shielbearer is alive till then) he can let the dwarves re-roll courage for quite some things, including terror caused models.

In which overall spares you 10pts to let you:
- a) field another dwarf with shield + the last shield option to that spear
- b) field another khazad and only let you get 3 spears with shield option.


** you can proxy shieldbearer to test him out 1st, if you like him, you then can purchase one** be advised that for him having only 1 might and no fate, can be a bump sometimes, you just need to act carefully, but I would give a BIG try out at this point since small games allow to field less used models and overall impact wont be that great.


If not... remove the throwing axes from your captain and give those 5 pts to those spear/shield dwarves while the remain list keeps the same.

I like the look of it.

I’ve been putting together my own expeditionary force at the moment, based on the books and it has:

Warband 1

- Balin the Dwarf
- 3 Erebor Dwarf Warriors with shield
- 3 Erebor Dwarf Warriors with shield and spear
- 6 Grim Hammers

Warband 2

- Grim Hammer Captain
- 3 Erebor Dwarf Warriors with shield
- 3 Erebor Dwarf Warriors with shield and spear
- 6 Grim Hammers

Warband 3

- Oin the Dwarf
- Ori the Dwarf

It comes in at just under 450 points. I know you said you prefer unnamed heroes but thought it may give you some ideas.

In fairness, I did toy with the idea of putting together a force to represent the group led by Thrain in his last days wandering Middle Earth (accompanied, I believe, by Balin, Dwalin and Gloin), but I'm more drawn to the freedom to slot in at any point in Middle Earth history allowed by nameless characters.

The Shieldbearer is an intriguing option, one that I'd completely overlooked. Points-wise he'll fit in without a problem, and he'd add a nice bit of variety over another run-of-the-mill Captain.

I'm then tempted to just pool those points into another dwarf and shield, which I can just about accommodate model-wise. I won't have quite enough shields after captain conversions - maybe something to aim for with a future purchase...