NOTICE:
This was meant to be a stop gap, but since nobody is stepping up to fill in the rest, I'm going to be reorganizing. There'll be blank sections while I fill them in.

Okay, everybody knows the basics of dwarves, you're short, tough as nails, and stubborn as hell. You also have guns. Warhammer Fantasy doesn't deviate from this.

The things to remember about Dwarves are these things.
1) Dwarves are tough as nails. Use it. Your melee units are nigh unkillable, and will simply outlast most folks. Don't even bother to counter charge in most cases, just take the charge and then swing in some miners, or gyrocopters, or hammers to smack into them from the flank. Let your Warriors, Iron Breakers, and Long Beards eat the damage. Use your Miners as a flexible defensive line or a flanker, and use your slayers as the mother of all flankers and precision killers. The point of melee is to BOG THE ENEMY DOWN so your devestating ranged units can do their job.

2) Dwarves can, with proper positioning, win 9 times out of 10 against anybody else even when out numbered. Don't try 3-1 odds against, but when teched up and with enough artillery? You'll be able to hold off enemy forces and even beat the tar out of them even when the autobattle thing says you should be annihilated. Note: You will get phyrric victories in many of these outnumbered cases unless you use abilities and terrain perfectly, and even then. But it can be worth it as long as you don't lose any units, and you force an enemy to run. It always pays to make Orks lose, the bigger the victory, the better it is. But try to annihilate their armies whenever you can, but don't be afraid to eat a phyric victory and retreat to a hold to replenish your units, so long as you didn't have any units completely cut down.

3) Dwarves don't break. Really. They just don't. Okay, that's a lie, but by the time they're ready to break they're usually almost dead anyway. So really? They're just saving you the cost of rebuying those units if you can rally them or win the map before they run off it.

4) Dwarves don't move. Miners, Slayers, Hammers, and Gyropters should be the only three guys you move outside of siege battles. Dwarves play a WAITING game. Even during Sieges, use your cannons (you have cannons right?) to blow away the towers that threaten you, and then just sit back and let your artillery empty themselves obliterating the enemies up on the walls. Eventually they'll either run, or sally forth, or just abandon the walls and let your dudes up close to bash down front gates and walk in. But in all other battles? Don't move. Set up your formations in a nice, neat little C or L of melee fighters around your ranged units up on one corner of your deployment zone. Then just turn your artillery and ranged units to open fire on the enemy as they close. Keep a nice gap between your ranged units and your melee units, so the ranged units aren't drawn into melee themselves. That said, once you get good at this, there are units that it pays to move on occasion, thunderers especially can be used this way, as can quarrelers, but their deal is often 'moving to the flanks of enemies' or 'moving back through your lines to let your warriors take the charge instead.

5) Preserve your ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ experienced units. I don't think I made that clear enough, so let me say it again. PRESERVE YOUR ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ EXPERIENCED UNITS. Dwarven units are nigh unkillable, and they only grow MORE SO as they level up. They can retreat in an orderly fashion, even opening their backs up to being attacked by enemies, and STILL avoid breaking as they retreat to safety. This should only ever be an issue when besieging cities however. If you're on a default map and you're not in formation, you have screwed up, and you're probably going to take heavy losses before your ranged units can continue pounding the foe. Anyway, the point I'm making is that there is never an excuse for losing a experienced unit as a Dwarf player, unless you are enormously outnumbered and can't flee.

6) Don't buy battering rams. Just bring a couple of miners along to break the gate down. But do buy siege towers. Mother of god, buy at least 6 siege towers (build siege towers 3 times, will take you 6 turns). It makes sieges go so much faster and dwarven siege towers are rediculously tough from what I can tell since I've never had one die, even against enemy capitals with significant defensive upgrades.

The Art of Not Moving (More than Once)
The most important thing to remember about dwarves, is that they are at their weakest when they are moving. They have no speedy units at all, no cavalry, and this rule only stops applying for two units: Slayers and Gyrocopters (in all three forms). You should set up your formations as quickly as possible, and once the battle has been joined, you need to move them as little as possible.

Sometimes, however, the enemy will not be accomodating to this fact. Especially when they are defending, they do not HAVE to come to you, and as long as they can play the clock out without losing, they will end up winning (I suspect that if you manage to do some damage to them and the bar is in your favor then it'll work out the other way, but I can't be sure.) The surest fire way to draw the enemy AI into charging you is to get your artillery into range of them, forcing them to come after you.

They will do so even if you are just setting up all of your formations for this purpose, and this is the most dangerous time. The single time you should be moving your force across the field of battle. You will likely use the drag tool to set up your formations in a defensive pattern, and on default settings, this makes them charge. The problem is that artillery cannot charge, and thus it will be left in the dust by your army, leaving it vulnerable to AI cavalry flanking maneuvers. It always pays to leave a few groups behind just to deal with the cavalry that will inevitably come after you. Miners, especially with blasting charges, are great for this, as they're more expendable, and their armor piercing makes them great for dealing with heavy cavalry who are, in turn, perfect for dicing up the heavily fortified Dwarvish artillery units. Often, they will charge your artillery to disrupt it rather than to actually kill it, since Dwarvish Artillery is fragile only by dwarven standards, and can even hold it's own fairly well in melee combat, though obviously you want to stop that from happening since if your artillery is in Melee, it's not pounding the daylights out of enemy forces.

Your one move, the one necessary to draw the enemy into attacking you, is the most important move you can make. It will be a CRITICAL move in the cases where you are dealing with a battle involving reinforcements coming onto the battlefield. Pause button is your friend, use it, set up the plan, and get everybody moving. Make sure the guard you leave behind with the artillery pieces as they move is set to walk, not march.

Another thing to keep in mind, Dwarves are slow, but they are also tough as nails, and they take a while to tire out. That said, they still can't charge even a moderate length of the map without exhausting themselves. Exhausted dwarves are still nigh unbreakable, but you need every advantage you can get as Dwarves since most often you'll be outnumbered. It helps to take on the leadership skills that increase dwarven stamina and resillience against battle fatigue for this purpose. Barring times when you REALLY need to get your army (such as a reserve force) up and close to the enemy and bring your second force to bear upon the enemy, you should always march rather than charge your forces across the battlefield.

The Almighty Box
In the original lets play videos, you will almost always see the developers set up their dwarves in three basic ranks. Melee at the front, then missile troops, then artillery, usually with melee at the foot of the hill, missile troops on the slope, and artillery at the crest. This basic theory is the core of the box, but it's missing a few critical assets, that you really MUST include to not be cut to pieces.

1) You need to have forces guarding your flanks. Everyone except dwarves uses cavalry, you must have at least a token force to bog down the inevitable cavalry circling around your back. I prefer to place my miners here, as miners are JUST enough faster than normal dwarves that on fast movement they can redeploy from the flank to the rear and intercept cavalry trying to get at the artillery. Always, always, always, make sure your flanks are guarded at least to the back corner of your artillery.

2) Guard stance is your friend in all cases. All. Cases. The moment your formation is in place? Set everybody into guard stance. Especially your artillery and anybody in your melee line. Frankly, I think guard should be your default stance for everyone in your force, except Gyropters and MAYBE slayers.
The reason for this is simple. A dwarf unit alone is a dwarf unit that is dead. Dwarves support one another, back each other up, and their biggest asset is their defense. Do not let your formation crumble to pieces because your over eager dwarves were chasing down the enemy. Let your quarrlers and thunderers do their job and blast the fleeing foe to cinders. That's their job since it's unlikely they'll get any hits in on the enemy after they've joined into the melee crush unless they're at the back of said crush. Point remains, you are almost always out numbered. Keeping your ranks closely together and supporting each other's flanks is key to keeping dwarves from being surrounded and breaking. If your lines fall apart, your dwarves will almost certainly fall apart as well.

3) Spread your leadership units out. Don't clump them together. Lords, Heroes, and Longbeards all qualify for this, and you want them spread out along your line. Get them stuck into the combat TOO though, as they are really some of your best units for combat. Don't be afraid to have them bring the pain while also buffing your friends. Getting atleast Rally on your lords also helps a ton, but isn't absolutely necessary. I'd say it's all but required for your High Lord as he should always be where the fighting is thickest and things look most dire. Try to make sure that any enemy lords or heroes are intercepted by your own. Early game, and even late game, Dwarven lords and heroes will trounce anything except maybe a chaos lord in single combat. Even Ork heroes get their butts handed to them.

Friendly Fire and How to Avoid It
Terrain. Use it. Love it. Put your force on the high ground, or at the very least, on the far side of the ditch. A common map you'll fight on will have a super massive hill in the center. You can't -possibly- claim it before the Orks do on a map, ever. It just can't happen. You'll also have terrible choices on where to deploy if you're the attacker, as you have to be really close to entice the orks into charging you, setting up at the higher elevation corners simply won't work. In this map, set yourself up directly opposite the hill, force them to go up it, and then to run DOWN the really steep hill, into the ditch, and all the while making such lovely targets for all of your missile infantry and artillery against the hillside.

As a dwarf, you must always think with terrain. Get your artillery, especially your cannons and anything that shoots in 'straight lines' higher up than your other stuff. Put your grudge throwers right at the back as they're the most expendable artillery, and more importantly, can hurl their shots right over the other artillery without ever being blocked. Down the slope, stick your thunderers, then your quarrlers. If the slope is too gentle? Stick your thunderers right out in the front, then retreat them through your front liners right before the enemy charges. The best thing however is using elevation to your advantage. Even if the the enemy is more elevated than you. You don't care. You're not running up that hill. Sure, it gives his missile troops a better shot at your guys, but if you position yourself right, it allows YOUR missile troops to shoot at his over the heads of your own. Dwarves will only rarely win a charge on charge melee scrap, but if you're losing a missile troop slug fest, you had better be outnumbered 3 to 1 and have no shielding troops.

Miner Scouts
Fun fact. Miners can hold themselves out against just about anything that can chase them down, and they're fast enough that they can outrun anything that's not cavalry over long distances as long as they get a head start. DEPLOY THEM FORWARD AND GET THEM LOOKING AROUND OBSTACLES FOR YOU. You can even do this during deployment to reveal otherwise hidden foes, and miners are also great as spotting those sneaky units that start off hidden. Having miners at the front, even if you have to sacrifice them down to the last man, is simply too useful not to put one of them, if you can spare them, out front and watching the enemy approach. They can also spot for your artillery, which is a bonus on forest heavy maps.

Greenskins, are in many ways, your antithesis. Dwarves don't move if they can help it, Orks should always be on the attack. Dwarves are strongest with their artillery, Orks are strongest in their melee. Dwarves are few in number, Orks numbers are endless. Dwarves have a nearly unbreakable spirit, Orks will fall to pieces the moment their leadership is dead or they take slightly too much damage at one time.

Keep all of this in mind when you fight orks. They will surround you, their cavalry units hit hard, and while slower than almost every other cavalry in the game, are still faster than your own guys. You will be overwhelmed, and this makes holding your formations all the more important. Luckily, Orkish moral is so fragile that you can break them over your knee if you hold fast.

The most important thing to remember about Orks is that your opening move should always be to let them inevitably attack you, then to strike back after they break on you. The first battle should be tactical, the second one should be an autobattle in almost every case, as the Orks should be so heavily bled by breaking on you that you can smash them down as they retreat and wipe out the force that is unable to run away any further. Use supporting armies, or garrissons, to back up your initial fight when you can, and try your best to hold the line in every case. Orks will steam roll you if their fightiness gets up, and as such, you should make it a priority to kill, wipe out, or at least just bleed, any ork army that has gone unmolested for longer than 10 turns. Do not give them the chance to build up a chain of victories, or they will start growing exponentially stronger.

Vampire Counts are pretty much the easiest foe you will ever fight as Dwarves. They have magic, numbers, cheap units, and endless moral. But their weakness is that when their moral breaks, they start taking attrition damage, and their leaderships magic is not nearly the best magic in the game. Further, Dwarves are already resistant to magic and psychological effects, the big aces in the hole for Vampires.

Vampires have to close with you. They will take advantage of forests, terrain, and cover to deny your artillery if they can help it, so try to always set up in places that deny them this as much as possible. You won't always have that option, and in those cases you will have serious trouble. Luckily, their lack of range means they cannot capitalize on this as much as they might otherwise be capable. You can out attrition the Vampire counts in most cases. The biggest issue with Vampire counts is that if they bring lots of ethereal and cavalary units to the field, it can be very, very, very difficult to kill them off faster than they can kill you. In such cases, you must throw as much of your forces as you can at their leadership units, while also keeping these other units tangled up. Monsters and fliers will also cause you to have a really bad day if they are in serious numbers, as they can land in the middle of your forces. In such cases, have your quarrlers pull out their axes and shields and crush said fliers between them and the warrior's front lines.

On the campaign map, their most annoying feature is their ability to quickly replenish their forces if they have even moderate levels of magic. They will also be significantly faster than you on the campaign map, so unless you set up your forces to trap them, they can keep dodging around, and making it nearly impossible to actually kill their army off unless you can force them into an underground skirmish where you have a significant chance of wiping them out entirely. (I've noticed that while non-ork armies can catch you underground, if they attack, then there is not a 100% chance of annihilating them, while Orks seem to have a 100% chance of being wiped out even if you are the one being attacked)

Chaos is everything you should hate as a Dwarf player. Tons of monsterous units, the advantage when they are in diffused formations rather than tight rank and file, lords and heroes that are as tough and destructive as yours in duels, and fast, hard hitting units. The one thing to be thankful for is that they don't have much in the way of fliers or artillery. Though the one artillery unit they do have is deadly and scary and you should devote significant effort to destroying it if at all possible when it appears on the field.

Chaos will have numbers and lots of hard, fast units. Tons of cavalry, or cavalry speed large monsters. Bring slayers along any time you are worried about chaos trolls, hounds, or anything monsterous because the slayers can make all the difference. Keep to tried and true dwarven methods, kill the chaos leaders as best you can, and just don't give into their aggression.

On the map, Chaos will be appearing in places you simply can't compete. Your allies will be to busy fighting back against them to reclaim territory, though you sweeping in on chaos' flank will enormously relieve them of pressure, as long as the norsican raiders aren't also keeping them busy (I find shipping an army or two by sea to Norsica is a fun way of bringing down the pain on noriscans raiders, who, unlike chaos, seem to be dependent on settlements for their economy like everybody else).

Recovery will be slow as chaos corruption rises, but you can avoid the worst attrition with a combination of rune priest deployments and moving underground at every opportunity (which will also mean that you expose your armies to one on one underway ambush battles, which is enormously helpful against the chaos forces when they're all bunched up. But they are a grueling set of battles where you will feel the pinch in any case. You should try to leverage your superior economy against them hit them with multiple stacks of armies on multiple fronts, force them to break up their forces or risk having them all pinned in one major battle with tons of reinforcements on your side.

Thankfully rare except against the factions that don't like artillery. Humans are more numerous than other dwarves, but far shootier than Orks, and with some of the best cavalry in the game short of Chaos. The worst part about them however is the extreme amount of artillery. They have far more artillery units and breadth of ability than the Dwarves do, though inferior in the quality of that artillery. That said, they don't have to be fantastic, as dwarves are, ironically, far more vulnerable to artillery than any other faction due to how tightly packed you must make your formations to survive battles.

Humans, while tactically much more flexible than any other force on the field, have possibly the weakest starting position in the entire game. If you are being fought by an enemy faction of Humans, your best bet is actually to leverage your economy, and the slow rate of having to buy new units as a dwarf (due to your dwarven units rarely, if ever, being wiped out), to just pump funds into one of the other human factions that don't like them or are even actively at war with them. All human factions have much weaker economies than dwarven ones, and you should leverage this against them at each and every opportunity, buying them off to fight your enemies. If you can throw enough cash at them, you can even tease them into going to war with the other human faction you don't like if they already don't like that faction, and you have enough money.

Fighting dwarves is just the most annoying thing you will ever experience. Dwarf v. Dwarf should, thankfully, be rare, unless the relationships on the map have made the alliances strange to say the least.

Dwarves will bring artillery to the field, and be nearly as unbreakable as you. Kill their leadership if you can. Their leadership will be as hard to kill as your own is, and it's a coin toss who will win. Bring superior units and numbers, and try to force them to be the one to move and attack so that you can force them to come to you or watch you win as the clock plays out. Anything else is just going to result in a painful, painful, painful slugfest.

On the campaign map, Dwarves are probably the only group capable of easily taking dwarven cities. And the Dwarves will have all the problems you have in terms of speed. Be warned, they can come from underground just as you can, so a defensive wall of mountains is no garuntee of safety. Thankfully, you should be well primed for this by the time you fight Dwarves as the Orks will have been reminding you nearly constantly until you wiped them out.

Beastmen are annoying, but not overtly threatening to Dwarves. They're basically chaos fused with Orks, and that makes them annoying as hell, but they lack armor, lack moral, and will usually be more of a nuissance than anything else. That said, underestimate them at your own peril. They start off in some areas that are uncomfortably close to your own, and they spread chaos corruption. They also are a horde faction, meaning that they have to survive almost exclusively off a raiding income. They also require growth, and they can get both most efficiently from destroying settlements. They can also get to your location quickly and bypass terrain using beastpaths, which won't even let you fight them in terrain that'll favor you like underways would

This is not the most annoying thing about them however, the fact that they have no need to swap out of Ambush Stance, and their encampment stance is hidden, means that rooting them out can be a serious pain. If the AI or player is stupid, then you'll have no issues, but most of the time, barring a lord or hero kitted out for detection of ambushes (something not plentiful for dwarves), it means that you'll almost always be on the backfoot of ambush scenarios, AKA: The worst possible thing for a dwarven army, and part of the reason this guide encourages, heavily, that you should be letting the enemy come to you before you then march on their remaining forces and kick them to death on the follow up. The actual armies aren't going to hurt you in a straight up fight, but getting a straight up fight with them is not going to be a common event if they decide to swing south rather than north.

Wood Elves are not a massive problem -if- you can fight them on your own terms. The issue is that Wood Elves, built right, are very good at forcing you to come at them. They have some of the best ranged infantry in the game, and half decent cavalry. Further, unlike other non-gunpowder using armies, they have access to early/midgame armor piercing ranged infantry. Combined with the fact they get a ton of bonuses to ambushes, and that they have an actual incentive to compete with you for territory unlike almost everybody north of Bloodriver Valley? And this can lead to some nasty situations. If you end up fighting them, do your best to tar-pit them, and use your artillery to maxium effect. You can outlast them -if- you can actually force them into a direct confrontation rather than them dancing around pelting you with armor piercing arrows. Their melee line is nice, but it's basically got the same strengths and weaknesses as Orks with higher leadership and fewer numbers.

In the campaign, they're suitably far away from you that you shouldn't have much difficulty dealing with them, but for campaign goals you might need to stomp on their faces a little to reclaim the grey mountains. If they start flinging outposts across the sea to the Badlands, then just let them have it. Sure, you lose out on having that cushy 100% control of the entire southern half of the world map, but it's not like those places were the most valuable to you anyway. Set up some alliances, let them help you out with any remaining Orks, and feed them the Border Princes' territories. It's not like anybody except the Beastmen want those territories anyway.

Brettonia is a toughy to beat for Dwarves. Their easy access to buff magic, the range on the trebuchet, and the hard hitting line of their cavalry, especially their flying cavalry, all makes them a tough nut to crack. The trick to them is to focus on target priority, and do your best to not get bogged down in their peasantry if you can help it. Luckily, getting bogged down by their peasantry is not a likely thing, if you got a gyro bomber or two, drop some bombs on them and it should very nearly perma-route them almost instantly. The biggest issue, as ever when facing Brettonian forces, are things like the Grail Knights. Grail Knights hit hard, never tire, and have buckets of HP. Your best bet is to bog them with something like Ironbreakers followed up by Hammerers, after softening them with Irondrakes or Thunderers. Also, make damn sure to kill their casters. The lore of life and their high hp bucket units can very easily turn the tide if you don't take the tricksy human magic users down.

Thankfully, it's not like you're going to run into them often, and they don't compete for resources in the same way that orks and wood elves and beastmen and chaos do with you. Thankfully, their dependence on chivalry means they're unlikely to raid you out of the blue either. Don't be a ♥♥♥♥ to them, and chances are, they won't be an enemy to you. If you do end up in war with them though, your best bet is to raid, raze, loot, and generally cripple their economy as best you can. Let the Wood Elves, if they're still around, fill in the gap, but chances are you'll be siding with Brettonia over the Wood Elves.

Leaders
Highking Thorgrim Grudgebearer
Unlock: Clear 8 Grudges

My personal opinion is that this guy is the best one to start with. He gives you a spare set of quarrlers, and a grudge thrower. The hammerers aren't fantastic, but they're not shabby either. His base line bonuses are badass, and he's generally just good at reving the dwarven economy. That said, he's also very easy to unlock in the early game.

Let's look at his unique skills:
Axe of Grimnir
A simple quest, you get it almost right out of the gate if you're throwing him into enough battles.
Not only does this thing enormously increase the capabilities of Thorgrim, it reduces upkeep and recruitment costs universally. Something essential to any dwarven army. Getting this out of the gate should be essential, and getting a set of gyrocopters made (often the hardest part) should be a priority for you.

Armor of Skaldour
This legendary artefact is perfect for keeping the Highking safe, both in battle and on the campaign map, even from assassination attempts (though if you're like me, and disabled aggressive agents through a mod, then that's not really a priority). He also recovers from wounds faster using this.

The Dragon Crown of Karaz
This one gives a basic boost to attack and defense, but most importantly out of everything it gives, is a universal +5 public order, not just where you are, but to your whole empire. Given how grumbly your long beards are, this is perfect. It also boosts xp gain for longbeards in battle, which isn't bad, since the moment you can get long beards, you should.
It also gives immune to psychological, but that's not nearly as nice as High King, though it is ALWAYS active.

The Great Book of Grudges
Another slight boost to fighting skills, and the ability to majorly down on corruption, and most importantly, a REALLY nice aura skill that boosts melee attack skill by 8 for all those in range, along with a further reduction in upkeep costs globally.

High King
This only activates when the leadership of your dwarves if flagging, but it's still a really nice skill to have, and should be grabbed the moment you can get it. It gives a massive melee attack buff, boosts charge power, and makes everyone immune to psychological effects, stiffening dwarven spines and generally kicking all the asses. Also it's range is ridiculously large at 250m.

Slayer King Ungrim Ironfist
Unlock: Own Karak Kadrin.
This guy is pretty much unbreakable under any circumstances, and I've had him literally win entire maps by himself when the rest of his army has broken and fallen if he can kill the enemy leadership fast enough. His civ wide bonuses aren't as nice as Thorgrims, but on the battlefield he is a monster second to none. At later levels, if you've unlocked even one of his abilities, it simply would not surprise me if he was capable of ripping apart late game chaos champions by himself, especially if you give him the right set of banners and a healing potion item.

Normally I argue against running with a lot of slayers in your armies, but Ungrim Ironfist is the exception. Put in 2-3 of them in his army and his buffs will make them scary strong.

I won't be going into much detail about his abilities, except that you really just want to double down on him as a personal combatant. There's very little reason to have him tooled for anything else, especially as he gains his personal items through quests. Further, his "Slayer" skills are all must grabs, for flavor if nothing else, but mostly because they make him into a late game destroyer of all that oppose you, and one of the few guys who can readily and easily take on pretty much everything Chaos has to throw at you.

Grombrindal- The Grey Dwarf
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Belegar Ironhammer
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Dwarf Lords
Short of a Chaos Lord, the Dwarven Lords are probably the single strongest front line melee combatants in the game. You want them in the thick of the fighting, bringing down the pain at every opportunity that you can manage. When it comes to one on one duels, they can punch well outside their weigth class level wise, so always try to throw them up against enemy lords and heroes whenever you can.

Important Skills
Personal Combat Skills

• Ancestral Grudge: Not bad early game, but almost pointless except for quest battles once you've wiped out the greenskins.
  
• Foe Seeker: Really good at just smashing through enemy formations to get at somebody in particular, like that squishy sorcerer who came too close to your lines. Use this to get to grips with the enemy characters.
  
• Wound Maker: Very good for just breaking down chunks of enemy health. Probably the best thing you can buy from its tier.
  
• Relentless: Plays into Foe Seeker's purpose. Dwarven Lords need to be able to move to come to grips with enemy characters and prevent them from duing too much damage to your own units.
  
• Deadly Onslaught: The Upgrade to Foe Seeker, grab it whenever you can.

Army Skills

• Lords of the Deep: Always buy leadership buffs for Dwarven Lords. The entire point of the dwarven front line is to be a wall that the enemy breaks upon, no matter what magic, weaponry, or monsters are deployed against it. This helps that.
  
• Tactician: Even if you phase out Thunderers and Grudge Throwers, you are incredibly unlikely to ever stop using Quarrelers. For that reason alone you want a point or two of this.
  
• Obstinancy: Tired units are easier to break and don't hit as hard in the charge or in the melee. Obstinancy helps your units remain full of energy when pressing the attack or on those few occasions when you do need to move.
  
• Rally: The essential Lord skill. Never leave home without it. An absolute must buy since it can turn a failing dwarven line back into one that's ready to take on all comers.
  
• Brass Lunged: The more of your dwarves covered in the aura of your Dwarven Lord, the better off you are, and the longer the range of your Lord's leadership aura, the larger a box you can make to force the enemy to spread out.
  
• Thunderer: Less nice than tactician, though they both apply to thunderers. You grab this for the bonus to cannons, another unit you'll be using almost throughout the entire campaign once they are unlocked.
  
• Thwoppa, Thwoppa: You might laugh, but getting that extra bit of survivability out of the fragile Gyrocopters is incredibly important.

Campaign Skills

• Route Marcher: One of the first you should buy on any lord, to increase the striking distance and viability of chasing enemies for your forces. It won't do much, but every little bit helps.
  
• Miner's Instinct: I have no idea if this increases it for when you are moving via Underway and trying to trigger battles or not, but it certainly helps with dealing with Orcs that are either trying to run away, or trying to invade.
  
• Pure Beard: Helps with corruption, as stated later on, anti-corruption skills are very useful for dwarves due to the expense of anti-corruption structures.
  
• Mason: Good for defensive lords, but honestly I never really saw the point except in those few cases.
  
• Lightning Strike: The first non-lack-luster Campaign skill for lords. Being able to fight enemy armies one on one for dwarves is always incredibly useful, and increasing your reinforcement range with your slow armies, and thus hard to bring to bear reinforcements, is always massively helpful. Grab at least one point in this every time.
  
• Inspirational Leader: Dwarves do not take well to casualties, their armies are already the smallest of any in the game, and you really do need the extra boost in unit replenishment each turn.
  
• Inquiring Mind: Dwarves love their research. It really helps having lots of lords with this skill.

Runelords
Runelords are actually interesting, they lose out on the direct battle line of normal Dwarflords, and have a slightly adjusted Campaign Line from what I can tell (going to be doing a compare and contrast soon), but they make up with it lots and lots of buffs. A Runelord is probably not going to be going toe to toe with the enemy champions like a Dwarf Lord would be, but in return he'll buff his companion units with runes like a Runesmith would. He can also unlock a special chariot, the Anvil of Doom, which I've not utilized yet, but will be updating with as soon as I get some hard info on them. The most important thing to remember though, is that the addition of the Runelord flips my assessment of the Heros on it's head, Thanes actually are much more useful in a battlefield role with this, as they can act as a backup to the Runelord, letting the Runelord hang back and buff folks, while the Thane acts as the threat prevention leader unit right on the front lines, and Runesmiths are much more worth it to invest into as campaign map units, especially as the introduction of Beastmen and Regiments of Reknown for the Vampire Counts have made both far more agressive, and you'll find that having additional corruption prevention is way more worth it.

Runelords are also superior to Dwarf Lords in that they get all of the general skills, and none of the close combat skills. Sure, that means they're not going to be beating chaos champions down, but their runic line more than makes up for it, giving Dwarves some serious casting power surprisingly. Plus, a charge when they get their mount can do some serious hurt when backed up by their abilities and some iron breakers.

Heroes
When discussing skills, you will find that almost none of the ones I picked are siege related. This is very simple in reasoning. Dwarves really do not need help when laying siege to the enemy. You don't need to reduce siege times, you don't need to harm enemy cities, and in fact, you probably shouldn't in the case of ork settlements since you want them as intact as possible for when you occupy them. If it's siege or settlement attack related, it's a safe bet that you can just pass by it for something else.
I also always mention chaos reduction abilities, because Dwarves kinda depend on their lords, heroes, and edicts to reduce corruption more than any other race, since the Slayer Shrine tends to be outside of your pocket book range until late-mid to late game.

Thanes
Melee Hero
Thanes have some really nifty abilities for just carving through and harassing enemy armies and enemy settlements. I'd argue that given this, and the already nearly unbreakableness of normal lords and dwarven infantry, a Thane is actually wasted on the battlefield. Instead, spec them for campaign map harassment, and have them leave a trail of terror as they scout outwards so you can level them up. That said, if there is an enemy character who absolutely, positively, must die on the battlefield. Only the slayer-king of karak kadrin is a better tool for the job than a leveled up Thane. They're great character killers on the battlefield when tooled right, and putting them in an army that expects to fight multiple enemy armies at once can really help turn the tide.

Argument for the Battle Thane: Now, I might personally feel that thanes are better suited for campaign map deployment, but it's important to note that the Battle Thane is one of the scariest units on the field if kitted out properly. He's basically another Dwarven Lord on the field of battle. He can cut down enemy characters with ease, and can almost single handedly fight off entire enemy elite groups by his lonesome. If you aren't fussed about enemy heroes messing with your forces, then kit the Thane out for battle and have him utterly destroy enemies in the front lines while you use your Lord's rally abilities to hold onto weakening sections of it.

Important Skills
Battle Skills
Almost literally the same as the standard Dwarven Lord Personal Combat skill line. Follow the same rules, but honestly, I wouldn't bother in most cases. This isn't where Dwarven Thanes shine oddly enough.

Campaign Skills
Martial: Great for defensively deployed thanes, combine with the army harrying skills.
Patrol Ambusher: Your meat and gravy for a Thane. Boosts damage to enemy armies. This is probably what he should be doing when he's not smacking other heroes around like ping pong balls.
Inspirational: Great for the offensively focused thane, have him out there, reducing global recruitment costs of armies in the field.
Champion: Grab it, hold it, do not ever let it go. Every little bit helps in killing enemy heroes.
Exemplar: Another offensive thane grabber, have him marching along side your armies, harrying the enemy forces, while still helping bolster their experience gain.
Iron Willed Defiance: Helpful for defensive Thanes. Another corruption reducing ability.

Rune Priests
Magic Hero
These heroes are equally good deployed or not. On the battlefield their runes can really be tide turners of situations that would otherwise be doomed, and like all dwarven characters, they can hold their own in duels, though they are far from the best hero for the job. Only Engineers are worse at duels. On the Campaign map, a deployed Rune Priest with the right skills can seriously clear our corruption for your armies, lowering attrition, though this is mostly useful for denying the enemy the ability to move or to help out allies, as your underway stance bypasses corruption attrition. They can also be used to deflect the abilities of enemy heroes in friendly territory, which is useful, but until AI controlled agents are significantly balanced, I don't see the point even of stacking the odds in your favor this much.

Important Skills
Battle Skills

• Rune of Oath and Steel: This can seriously help improve the survivability of units, and when applied to things like Iron Breakers, it makes them practically unkillable.
  
• Damping: Dwarves are already magic resistant, but against magic heavy enemies, it really helps to be able to kill off their magical abilities.
  
• Forge Fire: Especially useful when fighting chaos or late game orks. But can remove any protection at all from lower armor units.
  
• Rune of Wrath and Ruin: The only magic attack dwarves get. It's not too shabby either. Use it on troop formations, and don't expect it to make Pyromancers or Sorcerers so much as raise an eyebrow.
  
• Rune of Negation: The "Oh you thought those great weapons were going to do jack to me?" rune. Straight up damage reduction. Pop it right before monstrous units or things with great weapons, or heavy cavalry hit your lines. Especially funny if you pop it on slayers and watch them carve up the enemy in those few precious seconds of damage reduction.

Campaign Skills

• Rune of Fortitude: One of the two big reasons why you'll be hard pressed to decide to put the Rune Priest into an army or just hanging around your own provinces. Public Order, especially when you're having trouble dealing with settling grudges, is always loved.
  
• Stalwart Rune: The other big reason of the aforementioned conundrum. Dwarves depend on their entrenched infrastructure based economies more than anybody else, and they're fairly slow to grow I've found, maybe because they're all so grumbly. The point is though that this really helps those slow growing provinces thrive.
  
• Rune of Warding/Ancestor Rune: One is passive and effects your own territories, the other is for reducing chaos in territories held by other factions. If you're having a lot of trouble dealing with corruption, pick these up.
  
• Rune of Preservation: Pick this one up if you're expecting your Rune Priest to be walking out and about by themselves a lot. Pick it up with the other 'reduce enemy action success' abilities. It's just insurance.
  
• Master Rune of Valaya: Pick it up for the same reason you want Damping. It's just really funny to see magic dependent armies have nothing to draw on.

Master Engineers
Ranged Hero
Master Engineers are theoretically very useful on the campaign map, but I find bundling them in with armies and keeping them up close and near your ranged units is significantly more useful. Especially if they get the explosive powder skill, which turns pretty much all of your artillery and your missile troops into splash damage dealing explosive ammo. Engineers are far superior on the battlefield to anywhere else, though deploying them to your home territories just to reduce the costs on a LARGE project can be very useful, especially combined with a defending lord focused on construction cost reductions. They're not great as personal fighters however, and you'll just want to sit them down near your artillery or missile troops to add their own fire to the barrage. That said, while they won't be doing serious damage to any lords, they do enough damage, per shot, to put down a single person from a block of soldiers at a time. By themselves they can quickly wittle away almost anything that doesn't try to engage them in melee.

Important Skills
Battle Skills

• Standardized Firing Drill: Always your first buy, there's no excuse to not take this one as your first ability. It enormously increases the firing rate of your missile troops, which is always a good thing. Faster firing rates mean more dead enemies of the dawi.
  
• Requisition: Ammo is critical to any dwarven army. You literally can never have too much of it. The more ammo you have in your army? The more you can pound the enemy, either as they flee or as they approach.
  
• Triangulation: More missile damage from artillery. Always a great thing to have, as it also translates into higher damage to moral, which is really where Artillery shines.
  
• Ballistic Calibration: An amazing ability that you should pop the moment that the enemy enters into the artillery range of the guns that you should have put your master engineer next too.
  
• Overseer: While a basic stat boost, having wider ranges for your character auras is almost always a must buy for any hero. They make your already tough to break dwarves almost unbreakable.
  
• Ballistics Instructor: The longer the range of your artillery, the more time you can spend pounding the hell out of the enemy. I always max this one.
  
• Sapper: This is sorta an optional one. Moving your missile units about can be critical, especially as quarrelers make good stand in warriors when times are tough.
  
• Extra Powder: The end line of the battle abilities for the Master Engineer. Explosive damage is always great. In my experience it means knock backs, extra damage, and even more shock and awe against the enemy. No idea if it effects quarrelers at all, but the ability's requirements only list that they have to be missile fire capable, not that their weapons actually use blackpowder. Should also work for the missile attacks of Miners and Iron Breakers.

Campaign Skills

• Master of Works: Very nice for defensive focused engineers, and really, the main reason why you might want to march your engineer around your own provinces rather than being part of an army making your missile and artillery troops something like five times more deadly.
  
• Prospector: Gets you a nice, cushy extra trade resource bonus. Very nice early game when you need that extra trade income. More trade resources means more trade income.
  
• Karak Blood: Constant, passive, corruption reduction. Truly not a bad thing to have especially in mid-to-late game.
  
• Damage Control: Special mention because you might like sticking your engineers in cities, not a bad idea especially when combined with Master of Works, but hardly necessary. Honestly only take this if you want to ferry your Engineer around your newly conquered territories to take the edge of the costs of making those provinces viable.
  
• Logistical Engineer: This right here is why you wasted points in the previous bracket. Dwarven armies are the slowest in the game, especially when laden down with artillery, every tiny bit counts and having 3 points in this can help even the gap. Usually not enough to actually close to grips with the foe, but enough.
  
• Confounder: Again, when using Engineers to slow down enemy movement, perfect for that. But never take it at the same time as you take Logisitical Engineer, as they're basically mutually exclusive. Pick one, and run with it.

Leveling Up Heroes
Leveling up your heroes, especially early game, can seem like a chore. And it often is. The thing about your heroes is that they need to be thrown at enemy settlements, and set to raid them over and over again, it's one of the fastest ways to level them up, and has the lowest chance, I've found, of actually having them die in the attempt, even if they fail. Keep your heroes out at arms reach away from your armies, hammering enemy settlements, even the settlements of factions you just don't particularly care if they live or die, like Tilea or Estallia or Brettonia, and then march them back to join up with your armies later on. Also a great way to gain intelligence about the rest of the world map so you can be kept apprised of what is going on and who is about.

You will either start off with the ability to build these units, or be capable of achieving the capacity to build these units before turn 10 rolls around. These will be the bread and butter for almost all of your armies, even into late game.

Dwarf Warriors
Your bread and butter for the majority of the game. You will probably never stop using these guys, as they are incredibly tough, durable, and I've only seen them break when outnumbered 3:1 and having taken 80% losses, even with a goblin shaman tossing hexes onto them. And all this only after the Lord broke.

Dwarf Warriors are your front liners. They will take a charge, and then hold it. I've seen them hold out against everything short of giants (This is why you have slayers). Artillery? Missile Troops? As long as they're in range of their lord they will hold the damn line to their dying breath and they will often give better than they get. Even in battles where I've been out numbered 6:1 they tend to take down at least 2 orks for every one of their own people to go down.

(With Great Weapons)
Dwarf Warriors with Great Weapons are still tough, but without shields, and without their special to take even monsterous charges without a problem, they are no longer your initial front line troops. These guys are the ones you bring in from behind after the vanilla warriors take the charge, or you swing them in from the flank. They will tear the enemy to pieces, making them perfect defensive offense units. Don't throw them into the charge, but use them on the counter charge once the enemy's own charge has stalled.

Quarrelers
Another unit you'll be using even into late game. They are tough as nails, they come with shields as well as their bows, meaning they can act as a poor mans warrior if push comes to shove. And most importantly, they can arc shots over your soldiers, meaning that they are great at harrying the enemies at the rear of the frontline crush and while your warriors chew through the guys trying to get their charge on. You can also leave them to defend Artillery as their defensive hardiness and not-too-shabby melee ability will buy time for your other forces to fall back and protect your all too precious artillery.

(With Great Weapons)
They get a two handed weapon rather than axe and shield. This increases their damage when in melee, but is otherwise inconsequential unless you want them to be a poor mans Great Weapon Warriors. That said, this can be very useful for taking down cavarly or speedy monsterous units, so it's a toss up between praying your squishier gw quarrelers will kill those things faster or if you just want to bog them down away from your artillery and the back ranks of your front line?

Miners
Keep two of these in your attacking/sieging armies at all times. They lack in shields, but they make up for it in numbers and the ability to pierce armor, making them perfect for holding behind your main line or holding a flank and then sweeping around into the flanks of heavily armored enemies or against heavily armored cavalry (even if the cavalry charge will give them a black eye). More importantly, they're ever so slightly faster than anything above, making them able to be used to quickly react to a developing situation. Even with their low speed, if you're playing dwarves right, your army should be fairly compressed, and thus, they don't have to move MUCH faster to be good at this.

(With Blasting Charges)
Blasting Charges are actually pretty awesome, and you can get them even if your gunsmith workshop and your sparring grounds are in different settlements from what I can tell, which is a rarity as far as unit production is concerned (Having a smith in a different city does NOT allow you to make great weapon quarrlers and great weapon warriors for example). Blasting Charges do massive amounts of moral damage upon impact, and make Miners really good at breaking charges. That said, barring upkeep prices, if the Iron Breakers actually do have this too (rather than throwing axes like I might suspect would be their alternate), then I don't see much reason to go out of your way to make these guys.

Grudge Throwers
Your earliest artillery, and if your beginning armies don't have at least two of these (and then keep them for almost all of the game), then you're just not playing dwarves right. They are fantastic at breaking light infantry, and when combined with cannons, make perfect tools for cracking open cities. They are slow as molasses though, but this is counter acted by their great splash damage and the fact you can stick them right behind your other units and never fear about a misfire slamming into the back of your too close formation. You do sacrifice accuracy from this however, and their slow shots can be dodged by a REALLY canny player who is ON THE BALL.

Placeholder: Bolt Throwers
Bolt Throwers are cheap, fire faster than the Grudge Throwers do, and most importantly, have anti-armor ability to combine with the Grudge Thrower's anti-infantry. I won't say you shouldn't phase both of these out once you start getting cannons and organ guns, but they do the job nicely and are a decent monster-slayer unit early game. They also aren't too shabby at picking targets off of siege target walls. They're best of all against large targets however, so bring some to any battles that are likely to include giants.

These are units that are fairly deep into the tech trees, but don't really require you to have multiple building types over all to grab them.

Long Beards
These are vanilla Warriors^2. With leadership buffing abilities. I wouldn't replace ALL of your warriors with them, due to upkeep, but making them the core of your defensive formations is probably a wise move. I'd probably use them to replace about half your inexperienced warriors when your economy can take the strain.

(With Great Weapons)
Same as above, only for warriors with great weapons. No significant change.

Thunderers
Thunderers take some tricky handling to use, but if the terrain is right, and you can get them elevated above your front lines, they are worth their weight in gold. If there is no way to gain a terrain advantage, then you should push them forward ahead of your main formation, let them fire into the charging enemy, and then draw them back through your lines as the charge begins. Their focused damage, and their range and accuracy, mean they'll often break units long before they can get close.
Thunderers also make great flankers. The problem is setting them up to flank in such a way that they aren't torn to shreds by flanking cavalry. A good way to handle this is to deploy them in the middle and let them blast the initially charging foe, then swing them around during the phase where it's unlikely they'll be able to safely fire into the melee, bring them around the back, where your miners have no doubt already intercepted the flanky calvary units, and then bring them about and start rolling them up the sides.

Cannons
These really need some elevation to get the most out of them, otherwise friendly fire incidents are just too common for comfort. Only flame cannons are more worrisome than cannons. That said, two of them, or one of them with a grudge thrower, can take down a fully upgraded tower in less than a minute, making them invaluable for sieges. For counter artillery, there is nothing better, because their shots move faster, and they pack more of a punch, and they're more accurate than grudge throwers, meaning you're more likely to break enemy artillery. Cannons are far more versatile than Grudge Throwers as well, so you usually want to invest in swapping out grudge throwers for cannons and organ guns when you can.

Slayers
Slayers are fragile for dwarves, but they are speed bumps without compare. They do not break, instead they just get cut down to the last dwarf. Slayers might not be tough, but they are the fastest of the dwarven ground units, and can actually be used as a reserve unit to swing around the enemy, and then smash into their rears or flanks. More importantly, Slayers give a much needed hard counter to giants and other monsterous units. Slayers can take them down rediculously quickly, and this makes them invaluable as monsterous units are amongst the largest dangers dwarves can fight, since almost all monsters have the ability to disrupt formations even worse than cavalry charges are capable of.

Placeholder: Rangers
Rangers are interesting, they're much like miners, but without the nice anti-armor picks. They make up for this in two ways. Firstly, they have some actual range on their weaponry, so when they're placed forward from your main lines they can pull off some really nice ambushes. Secondly, they have "Fast", making them unique in the dwarvish army list. Don't expect them to outrun anybody else with Fast, there's a reason the ability is modified stating "For a Dwarf". All it means is that they'll run away at about the rate as a normal set of infantry rather than close to three quarters of that, letting them pull off actual hit and run attacks (As opposed to your miners, who you mostly throw out as sacrificial roadbumps). The nicest thing about them however is their ability to remain hidden in any terrain provided they started hidden. This lets them get up nice and close, even maneuvering around enemy formations on the map, and cutting down their artillery if you play your cards right.

Placeholder: Bugman's Rangers
Slightly higher leadership, better melee stats, and are immune to psychology and have an ability: "Liquid Fortification" but none of this is really worth the extra cost and upkeep of them. Liquid Fortification is also a melee buffer... these guys are theoretically worth it if you use all of your vanguard units as road bumps rather than as a rear echelon, but if you wanted that, miners with blasting charges will do it for cheaper than even rangers will. You probably only want these guys specifically for artillery hunting, when you -need- to lock up the artillery with melee so it's not going to be shooting, and you want to kill it fast so you can retreat to some forest cover and become hidden again.

These are the units you'll be getting when you've teched up significantly and built a great deal of infrastructure. All of them must be built in a lvl.4+ settlement, which means province capitals only.

Hammerers
It is tempting, especially if you get these guys, to make them the center of your front lines, they look big and tough and scary. But they are really not as well suited for taking a charge as your warriors are. You want to use them as Warriors/Long Beards with Great Weapons only taken to the next level. They will break through just about everything if they're not busy taking the brunt of the enemy's charge (which they are not suited for). Please note, these guys are crazy fragile compared to other dwarves. Artillery will rail them, so keep them WELL BACK since the AI knows this is the best target for their artillery and will try to hammer them. Keep them back in reserve, charge them in on an enemy's flank.

Iron Breakers
Warriors, Miners, Long Beards? They have nothing on the Iron Breakers. By your late game, you should have entirely replaced any warriors with less than silver ranks with Iron Breakers and Long Beards. Iron Breakers throw grenades, they break charges, they redefine the words "unkillable" and "unbreakable". I've literally never seen them break in combat when backed up with a moral boost of any kind, and they can even shrug off indirect artillery strikes, something that will murder almost any other dwarven unit (Do not bet on them taking direct artillery fire though).

Iron Drakes
These guys are your go to for light infantry breakers and general moral killers. Especially when fighting from a flanking position or from an elevated one, they will obliterate the opposition. Their range leaves something to want for, and you want to make damn sure they won't hit your own units, but they are some of the best bang for your buck in the game as Dwarves.

(With Trollhammer Torpedoes)
These guys are actually very decent at wittling down cavalry, large units, and monsters in general. They preform far better in a defensive garrison attop the walls than they do on the open field, where their torpedoes can be used against siege equipment as well as against infantry formations. But they are not shabby, and far harder to kill than slayers are. Their ammunition isn't great however, and their innaccuarcy at longer distances means you really might just be better off doubling down on iron breakers.

Organ Guns
Shorter ranged than cannons, and more expensive, they make up for this with far superior armor piercing and rate of fire. Place them amongst your thunderers and quarrlers on the slopes of hills rather than the top, so they can fire over your front line troopers, and then have them hammer away at anything with heavier armor. They'll rip those things to pieces.

Gyrocopters
I've gotten a good handle with them, and I'd suggest always buying them in pairs, and always using them to harass the enemy. If the enemy is smart, then they'll kill them by mass archery units, but otherwise, they are the best moral killers, and can reduce goblin and ork formations to bloody shreds in moments. Their bombs very much help with this, but not nearly as much as you might expect. They are also good at playing flankers. What other factions use calavry for, Dwarves use Gyrocopters for.
However, you must, absolutely, keep them away from enemy missile troops at all costs. They can harrass, destroy, and out gun artillery and most slow units, but if they get ganged up on something even as low range as chaos maurauders with their throwing axes, they will break and run. Gyrocopters are the cowards of the dwarven army.

(With Brimstone Gun)
Reported to be a good armor killer and large killer. Slower firing rate, slightly less accuracy, but bigger impact. They make good monster hunters and harrassers.

Flame Cannons
Flame cannons are just not worth it. They have better range than Iron Drakes, and achieve comparable results, but at the ranges they would actually be useful with, they are simply too innaccurate against any army lead by someone halfway competent (EG: not keeping their formations closely set together). Given their expense, you might as well just invest in Iron Drakes, who are more maneuverable, more accurate at a useful range, and will shoot faster.

Gyrobombers
Like Gyrocopters, but far more efficent at bombing runs as they carry 10 bombs a piece, rather than 2 bombs a piece. They serve the roll of rolling up the enemy's flanks and dropping bombs on them, repeatedly. Use them to screw with enemy infantry formations and to help alleviate the crush on your own units.

Regiments of renown are higher cost, but not bank breaking, units with lots of special features and changes too them, and importantly, the fact they start off at Rank 9 (3 gold stripes), the moment you buy them. They are expensive on your upkeep, but well worth it.

Special thanks to The Malachite Stalagmite for categorizing the differences between the regiments of reknown units and their baseline Rank 9 units of the same type.

Ekrund Miners (Miners w/Blasting Charges): +7 charge bonus, +2 ammunition, has Frenzy.
Warriors of Dragonfire Pass (Dwarf Warriors): -2 melee defence, fire damage, +6 vs infantry.
The Grumbling Guard (Long Beards): +4 charge bonus, -charge defence, has activatable Vigour-granting aura.
Dragonback Slayers (Slayers): -11 leadership and melee defence, 20% physical resisance, gains 20% fire resistence in melee, and inflicts 25% fire vulnerability and -36% speed on attack.
Peak Gate Guard (Hammerers): Inflicts -30 armour on attack.
Norgrimling Ironbreakers (Iron Breakers): Increased unit size (90 vs 75), immune to psychology, vanguard deployment.
Ulthar's Rangers (Dwarf Rangers): -2 speed, -3 melee defence, +3 melee attack and charge bonus, activatable ability to mark enemy unit for 26 seconds, inflicting -30 armour, -24 missile parry, -22 missile resistance.
The Skolder Guard (Irondrakes): 20% physical resistance. Uses steam cannons instead of flamethrowers; -5 range and totally different damage profile. A regular Irondrake volley deals four shots of 5/1 normal/ap damage and 16/3 normal/ap explosive damage, every 5.6 seconds. Skolder Guard fire one shot per volley, dealing 4/12 regular/ap damage and 37/8 regular/ap explosive damage, every 7 seconds.
Gob-Lobber (Grudge Throwers): -1 melee attack (how terrible), additional -16 leadership debuff on hit. Doesn't stack, but still, youch.
Skyhammer (Gyrobombers): -6 bombing runs, but drops three bombs per use.

We're gonna start with the super basics, and then move onto campaign specifics.

1) Your economy rocks. Seriously. Dwarves make BANK. This won't matter overly much because dwarven units cost an arm and a leg in upkeep, but you really don't have to worry about economy overly much as long as you keep it to 2 armies in the early game, and keep your expansion going. If you have all of your war time stuff set up and ready to go? Put down a tinker's shop, and never, NEVER fail to build mines or trade resource buildings when available. There's simply no excuse when the Dwarven game is almost always going to be one of making trade buddies with all of your other dwarven buddies nearby.

2) You want to save your shooting ranges and such for places where you'll be building engineering guilds as well. It just saves you time. This means that more often than not, you'll be devoting your chief cities to one of 3 duties.

• Making Advanced Artillery/Missile Troops
  
• Making Advanced Melee stuff (meaning a forge to support a training grounds elsewhere)
  
• Economic Powerhouse

3) There is never, EVER a good reason, ever, to not build fortifications on any place that even MIGHT be hit by an enemy attack. Never. Fullstop, ever. You are dwarves. Remember what I said about formations? This stuff still applies for this. You are at your strongest when as an iron wall that people break on you, and walls just HELP with this. You can replace it later (and you should, just as you should replace your barley fields overtime with other things once your cities are fully advanced and you have a point or two excess population) once they are super close to the core of your empire.

4) Make friends with dwarf clans. It is easy, and simple, and you should always do it when you can. Dwarves trade, they give you money, and you NEED money, and your tech tree makes it easy to make money from trading. You also want them because they will, by and large, act as a buffer against the Vampire Counts, humans, and Chaos. They'll occasionally drag you into stupid wars as well, but even in those circumstances, they'll tend to win out against them and never need more than cursory support from you. Sometimes you might notice an enemy besieging one of their cities (Baron Princes love to do this on the settlement directly west of Kharaz-a-Kharak), go in, sit next to it threateningly, and they tend to run away rather than risk being ganged up on.

5) Don't be TOO friendly with them. Don't go killing their foes for them. Let them get eaten up as much as you can, so you can assimilate them later, or go and reconquer their cities yourself. Unless it's a capital, or directly connected to one of your own cities, you should ignore those locations, as they just aren't valuable enough. Other exceptions are strategic locations (Usually capitals) and places with trade resources. You want to exploit the HELL out of those, and, in general, sticking a hero near by and upgrading their walls/gates will help fend off most attacks.

6) Never make capitals melee production focused. All cities within a province share their upgrade buildings, and your dwarven melee unit production structure can be fully upgraded in a lvl.3 settlement, meaning you want it placed someplace other than a captial, freeing up the slot for something far more valuable. Generally it'll be your artillery production building, or a slayer building.

7) Turn the district directly north of you into an enormous fortress state. Chaos -will- come calling eventually, and they will mess you to hell and back if they penetrate that choak point. There are only two ways into the southern lands as far as you are concerned (there's a lot of them actually, but you're unlikely to be worried about them for the Purposes of Chaos. They have two major routes they can come at you from. Either they'll come towards your northern province (either by cutting their way through Zhufbar if they are turned back from the northern most world's edge mountains, or by killing their way through the dwarves up their first), or by cutting a bloody swathe through the Empire, and then descending through Blackfire Pass to your west.

8) Always occupy. Never burn cities down. Do not try to colonize a city that's been burned down unless you have another defensive army ready to go during the colonization period, as colonizing will HALF the population of your army, opening it up to attack from whoever sacked the settlement in the first place (Border Princes probably).

12) Do your quests. It is a pain in the ass. But freaking do your quests. They are worth it. Even a partially kitted out Legendary Leader can almost single handedly turn the tide with a well placed charge.

The Way of Guilds: How to make mad bank and never worry about rebellion ever again
This breaks down into two basic lines. The diplomacy line, the lower one, is very important, and you generally want to dig about halfway into it around turn 25, before that, you want to focus on the upper line, which is your economy and growth line, again, by the end of the early game, you want to be fairly deep into these two lines because they'll give you the economic and happiness boost to hold together a larger empire as chaos corruption seaps in.

An essential tech you want, and one I think you should shoot for as soon as you can, is Heavy Quern Stones. I don't know about other factions, but Dwarves are incredibly dependent on their infrastructure, and that means your cities need to be growing constantly.

Important Techs:

• Dwarven Treasuries Line: Income is everything to the gold hungry Dwarves. These two techs are probably the very first things you want to research.
  
• Heavy Quern Stones: Growth is critical to dwarves, and heavy quern stones really helps push your growth universally. Also a reason to grab Autonomy of the Holds.
  
• Gromril Picks and other mining lines: Everything after Gromril Picks is entirely dependent on how you expand, what places you control, and similar. Even Gromril Picks is kinda sorta optional until mid game. But you want this sucker eventually, and all of the riches that come with it. Your mines are your fortune makers, and you'll have enough of them by end game for this to really push your riches through the roof.
  
• Dwarven Emissaries Line: You want to make best buddies with as many factions as you can in order to trade with them and leverage your mines and such to maximum effect. Dwarven Emissaries help with that tremendously, and also help overcome the problems from having grumblings.
  
• Valaya's Protection Line: These upgrades are amongst your best defenses against corruption from chaos and undead. Grab them almost immediately after Chaos corruption starts being spread across the entire map to buy yourself more time.

The Way of Clans: How to make yourself unkillable and shootier.
Military tends to break down strictly, much like dwarves themselves, into melee and ranged units. You want to have some of this stuff fairly early, especially the cost reducing techs, but also the ammo boosting technologies. They are incredibly useful for keeping your artillery and missile troops functioning. After that, focus on things that make your melee units harder to kill, rather than harder hitting (except, perhaps, in the case of slayers, who you aren't keeping around to hold the line). This is where your focus should be going research wise in mid game. Trying to dig deep into it. I personally find the artillery lines way more satisfying, but if you find yourself running an attrition focused melee army, then definetly invest in the melee line.

Important Techs:
Note: I'll be including specific techs here, rather than entire lines of them as I did with the Way of Guilds, as you really should be heavily targetting your tech building depending on army composition.

• Gather the Throngs & Levy Missile Warriors: Arguably it's best to grab these before you grab any other techs in the game, as they help defray upkeep costs enormously.
  
• Call to Clan & Reknown Dead Eyes: Another pair to shoot for early game if you can, I'd grab these as soon as you got a stable economy, but before you've really put your nose to the grindstone recruiting folks.
  
• Interlocking Shields: Dwarven Shield units are the critical mass of your front line troops. Blanket Buffing all of them is a wonderful tech to have.
  
• Ammunition Wagons: You literally can never have too much ammunition for your warriors.
  
• Volley Fire: The faster your units shoot, the better.
  
• Master Craft Weapons: Perfect for buffing almost all of your front line troops.
  
• Iron Price and Everything Connected to it: You want everything that buffs your Ironbreakers, they are the single best dwarven unit in the game hands down, including your artillery, but they come with a price tag from hell, and they can always use that extra bit of edge to make the ones you can afford worth every penny.
  
• Recite Ancient Grudges: Recruitment Capacity increases, and increases replenishment costs. What's not to love?
  
• Grimnir's Favor: You are unlikely to grab this one by the time you can use it, unless you blitz it from turn one, forgoing far more useful techs, or if you invest heavily in getting as many lords as you can to buff your research rate. That said, it's REALLY nice if you get it early enough.

One bit of universal advice for this, that if you have to choose between dwarves and non-dwarves, always help the dwarves, and never break an agreement with a dwarf. Broken Treaties with dwarves can lead to terrible things.

Barak Varr (Your only real rival)
These guys start just west for you, and you start off as really good buddies. They will build rediculously melee heavy armies and will usually be the first group you ever make a confederacy with. You want to make a confederacy with them, because that gets you sea trade and secures your flank. That said, it'll tick off the Border Princess (More on them later).

You want these guys to be confederated, because then you only really have to deal with Kharak Azul (more on them next)

Kharak Azul (Potential Other Rivals)
These guys are the largest starting dwarf faction that I can tell, and they, like Barak Varr, have a decent chance of expanding into southern badlands held territory. That said, they can only manage this if you manage, very early on, to beat in the head of the ork legendary leader. If you don't manage that, then they tend to get bottled up as the tribes in that region are very fast to confederate with the Greenskin Tribes. I learned however they can very quickly leverage their power if the Greenskin Tribes become too badly beaten up, or kicked off to another part of the map (I drove ironskin off to the northern worldsedge mountains by turn 20 because I kept beating him up so badly). Then they become a real power to be reckoned with and they will be your major competitor for the badlands area. They are definitely a second contender for fusing into your confederation early on, though usually only once you've begun cleaning up the badlands.

Zhufbar (Your Meat Shields)
These guys, if given half a chance, will take the far half of the Rib Peaks from you, and you will have to deal with it because the alternative is to declare war on them and you really do not want to start wars with dwarf factions because of the book of grudges mechanics, which will mean when you take something from them, you had better be prepared to just annihilate the dwarf faction. That said, these guys are your homies in that they will take on ALL THE VAMPIRE AGGRO for you. They'll drag you constantly into wars with the Vampire Counts, and the Vampire Counts, in turn, will constantly pay you to make peace once Chaos shows up. It's a wonderful circle of profit. Leave these guys until late game to confederate if you can.
With Regiments of Reknown really switching things up, Zhufbar can very easily find itself between a rock and a hardplace if you aren't swift in dealing with the Bloody Spears Clan of Orks, as even if you smash the rest of their stuff, they'll likely lose so much public order that they'll start throwing out greenskin rebel armies that will attack Zhufbar, who in turn will likely be having trouble surviving against the Vampire Counts. Then Kharak Hadrin, if they're having a good game, might attack Zhufbar if it's been weakened enough. Don't try to confederate with Zhufbar to save it until you have 2 or 3 suped up armies in the region, and don't even think about colonizing any ruined settlements there until you've dealt some serious damage to the Vampire Counts and denied them the targets of opportunity.

Kharak Hadrin (Your other meat shields)
These guys would normally be of no interest to you, trapped between Red Eyes on one side, bloody spears on another, and with the vampire counts and chaos chomping at their gates, they would normally be one of those factions you wrote off as inevitably doomed. Surprisingly, their hold is STACKED and they very rarely get pasted, perhaps because they're good friends with Zhufbar, Ostermark, and Kislev, who tend to ride to their rescue if they're ever REALLY in trouble. All the same, they matter because you need to own their capital if you want to have your second Legendary Leader unlocked.
This is where things get dicy, because owning this place opens you to a WORLD of hurt if you have not turned your other northern holds into total fortresses. This is pretty much the first place chaos is going to come knocking as far as you're concerned, and having an NPC holding the line is way easier than holding it yourself. That said, if you've all but secured the south, and convereted Kharak Azul into your own holdings? And begun the process of transforming that place into a pure and total economic powerhouse of endless money making possibility? Then grab these guys.

Other Dwarves (Western and Northern Dwarves)
You are unlikely to deal with these guys any time soon except, in so far, as it is to obliterate the remaining orks holding territory in those places. You're just plain unlikely to have to every deal with them. It could happen! But really, set up some trading posts, try to get a bit of territory over there so you can maybe connect your capitals, and then move on. Border Princess will usually stop you from doing anything to these guys.

Border Princes (The Jerkwads)
These guys are jerks. They are possibly the most fickle faction in the game that won't just rip your face off. The moment you make serious gains, they will cut their noses to spite their faces just to deny you trade or any possible advantage, even if they would get trade from it too, prevent you from military access, all of it. I find the best strategy is to try and bottle up the orks to the point the AI tries to take a sea route rather than flailing uselessly against my defenses, and then they'll turn their attentions on the Border Princes', maybe destroy some of their territories which I then use as a chance to march through. It's not a surefire strategy however, but I -have- noticed that when Orks repeatedly lose against your faction, if they have absolutely any other options, they'll go and attack those guys rather than trying to beat your skull in, so it's worth a shot.
Update: With the introduction of Beastmen, now they've got bigger fish to fry. It'll be a rare day you don't see them consitently fighting Warherds, and more importantly, having territories ripped up. They still won't like you too much except sometimes, but they'll be less able to screw around with you. They also tend to get their eastern holdings eaten up by various empire factions.

Other Humans (Manling Babies)
These are all really the same. The best I can say is you should like them more than you like the Vampires, and even that's not a garunteed thing if you keep on the ball anti-corruptionwise. The only human faction that stands out is the Empire, who can start off with really nice relations with you, and with whom you can make super nice trade agreements and such, but really, more than that can be a bit of a hassle as the Empire is so busy trying to survive against the other elector counts. Try not to get too wrapped up in Imperial Affairs until you get your own empire together and hanging nicely without having to deal with too many WAAAGHS!.

Vampire Counts (The Other Jerkwads)
Just, just don't trust these guys. If you share a border with them and don't keep an army ready to ambush them at all times at the passes they can enter by, they will just march in and start raiding you for lunch money. They'll spread corruption because it's what they do, and in general, you're better off going on a purge of the ones bordering your mountains early on if you can't just let Zhufbar and Karak Hadrin eat their attacks.

Orks (Grobi Scum)
Why diplomacy for Orks? Simple. You want to know how they think. Orks like to fight and win, don't present them with easy targets unless you intend to make them into traps. If you can make an Ork tribe lose against you often enough, they'll go seeking easier pickings 9 times out of 10.

Beastmen (Annoying but Deadly)
Beastmen are most important in how they effect other factions than your own, as the only Beastmen faction that might cause you trouble, spawns smack dab in the middle of Ork territory, and usually get eaten up immediately before you even encounter them. There are exceptions, but that's how it goes. The other group that might threaten you spawn in the Border Princes' territory, and then work their way west. The Border Princes usually don't have the capability to fight back against them, only slow them. It's even odds which direction they'll run, whether it be north, east, or west. If they head west, you might have to deal with them, or they might run north into the Empire. The biggest danger to them however, is the group that spawns in the North in the Empire's holdings, capable of devestating large regions of the Empire and it's neighbors, leaving them chaos corrupted and their economy weakened for when the full hammerblow of Chaos falls upon them.

Wood Elves (Dangerous Knife Ears)
The Wood Elves are usually too far away for their diplomacy to matter to you, unless you begin expanding into the Grey Mountains. There's a good chance you'll be competing with them for building spots if you do. Surprisingly, they seem to like to ally with a couple of the Dwarf factions up there. They can be a particularly thorny problem if they take one of the territories necessary for occupation to get a dwarf victory, or if they manage to strike south and begin placing outposts in the Badlands. It's unlikely to happen, as they start off not only with other Wood Elf Rivals, but also Brettonians, Vampires, Dwarves, Orks, and even Beastmen, and in that cauldron of conflict, it's anybody's guess how things will play out.

Brettonia
Will come up with this when I reboot my campaign with the new brettonians.

1: The Silver Roads
Turn 1: Crush the local ork menace, buy units until you have 3 warriors, 2 miners, 2 quarrelers (or a quarreler and a thunderer). Having the Grudgethrower from the high king helps, but isn't absolutely necessary. Start your economic research, focusing on money for the time being because you really need the spare cash. Your units are tough enough to slug it out for the time being. Don't bother upgrading your sparring grounds, you'll just be removing and replacing them in the next 5 turns.

Turn 2: Grab the Pillars. Never autobattle with dwarves. It never pays, the AI can't play them for love or money and more so than any other army, their straight stats are nothing compared to the pure force multiplication of the enemy's forces. Chances are the place will have reinforcements from the army you just whipped, take the high ground, let them come to you. Open up the diamond mine on your capital, and build the barley fields on the 8 Pillars

Turn 3: Take Mount Squighorn. This battle will be against a basic garrison, if you are barely hurt at all, then the enemy will wait to come after you until you give them no choice. Do not try to force a melee confrontation, instead set up your forces, then move your artillery into place.Do this while paused so that you can get everybody moving together. If the enemy starts moving for you, set up as best you can immediately.

Turn 4: You should have made bank by this point settling a few grudges and with cash rolling in. You can afford to buy up a new army. Get a second lord, and kit him out with an army almost as nice as yours, set that bad boy on a crash course with the green skins in the southern half of Blood River Valley. Move your army back in, the enemy won't be able to run with any luck since they probably tunneled in with a small raiding force.
Your first research should be done by now, or perhaps the next turn. Either way, set it towards Heavy Quernstones, you need growth badly, and anything you can do to grab it is a good thing.

Turn 5: you'll probably deal with some greenskin poachers trying to get at your settlements. This is fine. Use your returned army to kill the greenskin one, then go rest up a bit and start walking back towards the Rib Peaks and the quest there. Use underground movement, it goes waaay faster, and if you're lucky you get ambushed by some punk greenskin army that'll break itself on you. Underway is filled with hills and valleys, and is perfect for setting up kill zones. Use underway movement rather than marching any chance you get.

Some Notes:
If you do this JUST RIGHT, you might be able to draw the Orc's Legendary Leader into a trap. If they try to use tunnel movement to escape. No matter how much it costs, if you can kill him in a tunnel battle he will be full dead for 4 turns, not building alliances, not leading armies, not building up his forces, and you'll also kill all of his original army and the experience they've accrued. If an enemy ork army tunnels into your territory, KILL IT NO MATTER THE COST BECAUSE NONE WILL ESCAPE.

Optimizing The Silver Road
You should consider moving the sparring grounds to Mount Squighorn or the Pillars, as you can max it there, and turn the capital into a artillery production zone. Then move your armies out to lure in any poachers from the south, your army building in Kharaz-a-Kharak (or you can build it in 8 pillars and avoid this mess) won't scare off the poachers coming to take your pitifully defended level.1 towns. Only do this if you've got some breathing room or if you've pumped out a decent few warriors and quarrlers for your main army and can afford the couple of turns it'll take to build the new sparring grounds.

2a: Optional- The Rib Peaks
This section used to detail why you should grab the Ribpeaks, and it's still a -great- claim -if- you can make it stick. But the fact of the matter is that you can achieve the same effect of securing your northern border via the mountains by simply parking a sufficiently tough army in the ambush position in the pass. If you have managed to get a spare army by this time, and very very quickly, which is unlikely, then go ahead and follow this section, otherwise just strike south and press the advantage of having smacked around the greenskin's primary army. Don't bother grabbing it unless you can grab both, but if you can grab both, then start tooling up Mount Gunbad as your artillery production captial.

2b:Blood River Valley
While this is going on, you should be taking Blood River Valley and moving fast. This is about when you probably want to create a 3rd army as a policing force and just camp them on the pillars to blow the hell out of any small time raiding forces that take the Pillars. Get the Pillars some walls asap, you can't lose this place. This is why you want to grab the fast growth techs as quickly as possible. Go for the heavy quern stones and turn any rune priests you got towards making growth go faster. Deploy them constantly. The moment public order is up, set the armies to expand a little into bloodriver valley, either raze the towns and leave them for your nearby coastal ally to fill in the gaps, or fill them yourself.

3: Death Pass
Roll on through here with your high king and the army you got holding down Blood River Valley. You want this place under your thumb fast to drain the economy of the greenskins who have no doubt by this time claimed the place. It also makes a nice buffer against the silver roads being attacked via underways. Don't forget that, orks can mess with you EXACTLY the same way you can with them, and sometimes it's faster to go underground and bypass the mountains, always check that stance when you can. Around this time you probably want to ask Barak Varr a confederacy invite. Be prepared to cut down the armies, keep your income above 500g/turn at least, preferably around 1000g/turn. But you should have at least two nice new lords and a trading port opening up way more trade.

4: Black Crag
This will cost you to take, it will probably be a phyric victory, but it is WORTH IT, because taking it will gut the Greenskin's economy, and quite possibly delay them ever grabbing a second lord. This gets it's own section because you will spend the most of the remainder of early game building up your holdings in Blood River Valley and Death Pass specifically to weather the inevitable counter attack from Black Crag's loss by the green skins. When you bring a close to this place, preferably before turn 50-60, you know the early game is over. During this stage, especially if you have Confederated with Barak Varr, do not be afraid to allow the settlements you own, but can't build up fast enough, outside of the Blood River Valley and Death Pass to wither on the vine or even be taken. If you plan it right, you can even use the losses of such places by giving them up to one of the smaller ork tribes, forcing the Green Skins or some other ork tribe to fight them for it, which is all to the good as far as you're concerned because they'll be bleeding each other and not you while you build up.
I should also mention, that by this time, you should have 1 fully stacked army (full bar) and at least 2 armies at 3/4ths strength running support for it and defensive interference the rest of the time. You can also use a single 1/4th strength army to literally patrol between the two southern towns of Blood River Valley and lock them down nicely, as with a light army, it can be made in less than a full march stance movement.
You'll also, by the time you take Black Crag, be rolling in money if you turn Blood River Valley into a gold mine (temporarily, later you'll want to change it over to a full military production site as you roll up the badlands and convert IT to a full blown economic powerhouse). Remember, border provinces on the seaward side for military production, interior and eastern side for economic stimulus.

Vampires, Beastmen, and Rebels Oh My.
Depending on how you've been doing things, you might have more pressing problems, even if you've done everything in your power to smash the Green Skin's faction. If your Allys in Zhufbar, Azul, and Barak have all taken too much damage, then you can be caught in a situation of having to pick your fights. Have 4-6 armies total, and stick two or three on whatever front you aren't planning on dealing with. Once you've picked a front, march until you've utterly ended all problems on that front. Don't worry about the badlands, keep your defensive armies on the ready in your other territories, and then smash your way through whatever target that you picked until the issue is done. Vampire Counts causing your allies issues to the north? Deal with them before they start going further south. Beastmen hammering in from the west? Hunt them all down. Neither of those pressing? Set your armies to the south to murderate the Greenskins and end the problems once and for all.

The Badlands
This will be the longest, and hardest slog in the game up until you go about purging Chaos from the freaking map. Even if the orks have not been united, then there is a significant chance that the Red Fangs, Teef Snatchez, or Top Notz (Probably Top Notz), have managed, somehow, to beat out their competition, or get a WAARGH! going, and that's assuming that the Green Skin tribes haven't united under their legendary leader and don't have multiple WAAARGH!s going. Either way, kickin in this place is going to be nasty, brutish, and no fun at all. Not the least because the badlands will cause you attrition as you cross them. For this reason it's often a better idea to try and sweep along down the coast. If you see a river, stick to the river. Use heroes to scout, try to find a good route through, but just be ready to encamp yourself near the enemy towns before you siege them, and bring armies that enormously favor you in size.

The end result, if you nail this, is having the single most secure set of holdings anywhere on the map full stop. You can effectively turn this place into nothing but slayer shrines, economic buildings, and breweries, and rake in all of the money while you turn your northern holds into the factories of war. You can even remove your fortifications from these places once you own them and replace them with better structures. Don't do this to your coastal cities however. Just incase Chaos gets smart and decides it'd be better to come through the oceans rather than cutting through black fire pass or the worldsedge mountains to rip your beard off.

It's near the near the end of this stage you want to confederate with Karak Azul, put a mason in the misty mountain for the achievement, and then begin balancing your budget while repairing the damage the AI did to the choices of buildings they have in the provinces they owned. I'd advice, as well, setting all of your districts to stuff that'll improve happiness for the next few turns.

Peak Pass
Now in some cases, you'll already have a foot hold here by this time, and there's no reason not to grab it just to keep a weather eye out for chaos coming via Karaz Khadrin. Just keep in mind you're probably going to lose it unless you wait until now to grab it.

There's a good chance, provided that Karak Hadrin hasn't been ground into dust, that they'll own all of it. This is when you need to make the big decision. Do you want to open up the can of hurt that will rain on you for bordering the chaos and vampire counts? If you've followed this guide and seriously buffed up your economy and northern productions, then you should be able to handle this. Just march like, 3-4 armies right up there and hold the pass while waiting for Chaos to come knocking at the front gates. But chances are, Zhufbar might have taken some of the stuff you wanted, you'll have a long chain of slowly developed forts that won't be even close to their end state no matter how much money you've poured into them, and it'll take FOREVER to get armies from your heartlands up to here.

You have to ask yourself if it's REALLY WORTH IT to get that second Legendary Leader. Chances are, yes, it will totally be worth it, but honestly? You're probably better off focus firing on your actual leader's quests. This also applies if you're trying to unlock the High King rather than the Slayer King, since I believe unlocking him takes an entirely different prerequisite than owning Karaz-a-Kharak.

What Next?
Honestly? The rest of mid game, right up until the Chaos hordes start truly wrecking stuff, is going to be spent tooling up your armies and cities into the glory that the Dwarven Empires used to be, and crossing off some of the minor grudges you got earlier such as kicking in the teeth of undead armies if you've not managed to do that yet. End Game for Dwarves is literally a long, slow march of angry bearded men from one end of the old world to the other with flame throwers burning away the chaos taint as they go, cleaning up the last ork presences on the map, and generally being bosses because your unstoppable economy will quite literally be making you rich beyond dreams.

That said, do, and I'm very clear on this, DO try to keep an eye on your southern territories. Dwarves never really worry about rebellions, but sometimes it can pay to turn off the taxing of a province for a few turns to build up their stability and happiness. That or knock out one of your probably redundant tinker's shops and stick in another ale hall.

This section is almost purely speculation. I've seen too many wildly variant maps on how the old world can break down at the end of the chaos incursion, and you simply don't know who the hell you're going to be dealing with.

Your job, literally, from this point on, will be hunting down the everchosen with at least 5 armies tooled up to the gills and probably costing you like, over half your massive income, and kicking his teeth down his throat. Over and over and over and over and over again. And then doing that again, and again, and again, to every chaos unit you run across. Then sticking rune priests on every freaking territory with chaos infestation you can find and setting them to cleansing the hell out of them. Thankfully Dwarves are really REALLY good at this part, because you're unlikely to own any of the chaos corrupted territories.

You might, though it is unlikely, have the greenskin tribes remaining as a faction. Chances are, if you didn't erradicate them to own the badlands, they scarpered off and made one of the distant Ork Tribes into their confederates and took over there where they had less room to grow and more room to raid. You might even have literally left them there, just so you could have the satisfaction of uniting the dwarven lands under your rule.

The point though is, that where other factions might have a desperate fight going on late game. Yours is anything but. You are the dwarves. You are dour, rich as midas, and capable of putting more artillery down range into chaos than is good for the mental health of the Manlings whose burning homes are where Chaos is currently camped out. Done right, you can literally steam roll the map at this point, using the wealth of the badlands to maximum advantage.

That said, there are all kinds of things that can upset this plan, and the only thing this walkthrough, and guide, truly try to garuntee, is that you will own the southern half of the old world by this point in the game.

This section will cover the Clan Angrund Campaign, how they start up, as well as dealing with the Brettonians, Wood Elves, and Beastmen in a far more direct capacity, as well as the other minor human nations. It's a much harder thing to do, as you've got less free space to expand into in the Grey Mountains, no where near the same value in mineral loads as those in the Worldsedge Mountains, and your situation is far more similar to the Empire's, in that you're surrounded by enemies on all sides. If that wasn't enough, your big goal is to get to Karak 8 Peaks, which is not the easiest target to crack in the first place, not to mention it's way the hell away.

• Regiments of Reknown change a lot of things. Grab them any time you can, and beware that even the dumbest AI is going to do the same thing. If you see an army with Regiments of Reknown in their numbers, do your best to screw them over.
  
• Do not screw up your grudges, and make -really sure- that you get at least one hero, free of an army with a really high level and focusing in assassination (Thanes are perfect for this). The counter assassin grudge is rediculously hard to fix if your enemy has a much stronger assassin than your own heroes, as I'm half convinced the game weights assassinations by AI as more likely than player ones. That or Goblins are sneakier than dwarves and they get an assassination buff earlier.
  
• Do not waste your money. Ever. It is really easy to keep jumping your different buildings around, getting it just right. Just don't. Get it right, or as close to right, as you can the first time. Always grab the mines, always grab the unique buildings, and always grab the gates/walls because they increase your garisson forces enormously. Make sure at least one place has barley fields, two if you need the place to upgrade ultra fast (such as the province directly north of the silver roads), as long as you keep friendly with the other dwarves you don't even need an army present except to keep happiness up.
  
• You have a LONG TIME before chaos will even get close to you. Don't worry about their announcement so much. It's no big deal, you can wait for them to come and break on your northern allies, or on your holds when you claim the territory just north of you. Just make sure you're turning that place into a military fortified powerhouse, and it'll all go smooth. All the defenses you can afford, the unique structures, engineers and artillery in the capital, and mid-tier melee dudes in the second place. Import high tier melee from Kharaz-a-Kharak.
  
• --->This is less true than it once was. With the introduction of Beastmen, they might not screw you up, but they will do a load of damage to the Empire and Human factions most of the time, meaing Chaos is even better set to sweep on through when it gets going. If you're lucky the Beastmen that spawn in the south will just get eaten by orks almost immediately though.
  
• Set your rune smiths to deploy any time there's a goblin hero running around assassinating people. It'll reduce their chances of doing anything in your provinces. It won't help when you go on the offense, but it'll prevent them from pulling shenanigans on your defensive armies at least. It'll also screw up corruption against you as well, shut down enemy magic, and generally help out enormously.
  
• I Haven't experimented very much with skill points, so this is pure logic talking. In general, if you can improve the ammo stocks of your army, you should. Nothing sucks more in a long fight where your beefy melee infantry are holding the line against greenskins, and suddenly it all washes up because your artillery starts running out of ammo. This is only RARELY a case, but it's a sucky case to have all the same.

Boltar's Legendary Dwarf Guide: A useful and fast breakdown of how to stomp over everything in legendary. Also has much nicer pictures than mine.

The Milkman's and Burn's Total War: Warhammer 100% Achievement Guide: Great for getting everything done in one run.

Please leave further advice for improvements in the comments! This is my first guide, and I've not played very long, so I'm sure I missed some massive stuff.