u/Re-Ky

Hi fellow dawi! I have a conundrum about what to do for my box of 20 hammerers/longbeards. From an old AoS box I have a couple hammerers painted and a couple longbeards done too. I'm just very set in my ways about a heavily armoured foot unit in the center being the spearhead, especially if they play some role in keeping the army together and hold the frontline.

For the time being I'm building a 1k grand army list because I like the versatility our war machines add. This is what it currently looks like, not the most optimised in favour of balance and I am open to suggestions about how to improve it.

Total cost of everything is 997 points. I used Old World Builder to make this list.

1 King with shieldbearers, great weapon, rune of gromril + rune of preservation at 259 points. Will be leading the Longbeards.

Runesmith with shield at 70 points. Will be leading the warriors.

15 longbeards with shields, veteran + standard bearer + musician at 213 points.

15 warriors with shields, veteran + standard bearer + musician at 150 points.

13 quarrellers with shields, veteran + standard bearer + musician at 145 points.

1 cannon at 95 points.

1 gyrocopter with brimstone guns at 65 points.

My main concern is how well a unit of Hammerers or Longbeards would fit into this army. The game plan is staying power with infantry and spell repelling with the runesmith while the King, siege engines and quarrelers deal the damage. Pretty standard stuff.

Here's my take on the two units for my list so far. Hammerers are definitely better in combat and would deal more damage, but having just a 5+ save makes them a weakpoint to be whittled down with ranged firepower and AP-1. Longbeards feel like they'd fit more because of their panic test reroll aura and being able to take shields, so everybody on the front has a 4+ save. And they can also be taken as core units since my general is a king.

So, should I stick with the longbeards or should I change to hammerers? Or should I put something else in the middle of the force instead?

I haven't done any posts here because I haven't felt there's any particular glaring issue other than the thing I'm about to talk about.

Lots of unit classes have very strong legendary tier charms. Supports have the bunny charm or Flashlight, Snipers the Bear charm, Shotgunners have Camera or Rubber duck, etc. Shooter legendary charms are either niche or underwhelming in use.

Creeper charm:

- The absolute worst legendary charm in the game because it only improves the damage of every 4th bullet fired. That's really not helpful for Shooters who have individually lower damage individual bullets and high firing rate.

- It is somehow an extremely common charm to end up with at least compared to the other Legendary charms. This wouldn't be such an issue for a legendary charm, but nobody wants this thing, everybody hates getting it. So stop giving it to us.

- It is outclassed by the Sunglasses charm which improves armour penetration and can be max ranked easy.

Music player:

- Seems useful with its shield, but that shield only procs if the unit takes melee damage. Shooters do not generally want to be in melee combat because they have pathetic melee attacks, only two of them kind of sort of can handle being in melee combat but pretty much every shooter prefers to sit at the back firing away.

- Niche in usage. Outclassed by the Casette charm in damage, outclassed by the Sunglasses charm in usefulness. Even in Skirmish not everybody runs teams with melee units.

How to fix these charms?

- Firstly; Do not nerf the other Shooter charms, make the legendary Shooter charms better. The devs are very keen to nerf our useful stuff without actually improving other things, it's happened before and I'm sick of it. So let me state again: Don't do that, do not touch the other charms at all, fix the Legendary Shooter charms. The other charms are fine and exactly where they want to be for such expensive items, they should not be nerfed at all.

- I think there's some hope for the Music charm. Just make its shield proc when that unit takes any damage, just like the Bunny charm. Easy fix. So why hasn't it happened sooner?

- If I'm honest, just remove the Creeper charm completely and give us something else. This thing's fundamentals are ass, adding some numbers to its individual bullet damage is almost pointless because that buffed bullet can still just miss. Nothing will do it aside from making that buffed bullet having 300% increased damage and that's obviously absurd.