Firstly, the credit for the original design of this deck goes to Toberk.

Ok, the listing:

3x Defender of the Hold
2x Mountain Legion
3x Slayers of Karak Kadrin
3x Dwarf Cannon Crew
2x Troll Slayers
3x Dwarf Ranger
3x Zealot Hunter
3x Mountain Brigade
-- 22 Units

3x Innovation
3x Stand Your Ground
1x Lure Them Out
2x Demolition!
2x Master Rune of Valaya
1x Blessing of Valaya
1x Judgement of Verena
-- 13 Tactics

1x Grudge Thrower
3x Contested Village
3x Great Book of Grudges
3x Keystone Forge
3x Warpstone Excavation
2x Mountain Barracks
-- 15 Supports

Now some explanations of card choices. This deck needs a whole bunch of supports for Dwarven Cannon Crew to work, hence they take up a lot of the deck. However, it's also very resource-intensive - it is pretty unusual for me not to play DCC into the Kingdom.

A lot of people get excited about the Grudge Thrower/Dwarf Ranger interaction. While it's good, I don't think it's all it's cracked up to be and that's why there's only 1 Grudge Thrower. I am considering cutting it altogether, since by the time the Thrower/Ranger combo gets going you should be throwing down Troll Slayers and Mountain Brigades and just winning. However, if you do get it going, note the finicky timing of the Thrower/Ranger interaction. The sacrifice of the Thrower is an cost, not an effect and the ability of the Rangers is forced, so your opponent cannot respond to the 1 damage. Also note that if you use the Thrower before combat, its effect lasts till the end of the turn anyway.

Speaking of Rangers, a lot of the time you want to play them to battlefield as scouts rather than using their nifty ping ability. The times you want to do that are usually: (a) if you're playing against a Thrower deck where pinging their capital for 1 is pretty pointless and (b) if your opponent has underdeveloped their Quest zone so pressuring their hand will be effective. Against Empire, the pinging ability is useful since they typically have a lot of 1-2 hp units, but scouting them to get rid of Judgement or Will before they play their combo is also good, so it's a bit harder to figure out where you should play the Rangers.

Mountain Barracks is ok and sometimes useful, but it is coming straight out for a full set of Mining Tunnels when they are available. If I wanted to splash a bit more Empire or High Elf, I would cut these for alliances with no worries.

Blessing of Valaya varies wildly between being a totally dead card and amazing. It can win games in the right circumstances and hence has earned a slot for now. It's pretty hard for your opponent to play around it. Note the nice interaction between Lure Them Out and Blessing, which can give you a way of killing troublesome utility units like Deathmaster Sniktch and Vile Sorceress. Like most Order unit-based decks, the Sorceress and Sniktch are very problematic for the Dwarves. Multiple Sorceresses usually results in a game loss and the Deathmaster is similarly really bad. If you do not have a Zealot Hunter in hand when the Deathmaster enters play you may well have just lost.

Lure Them Out turned out to be surprisingly good, mostly because it is nice and cheap and your units are generally better than your opponents in a straight-up fight. Killing Spider Riders without them hitting you back is pretty handy. The biggest problem with it is the battlefield restriction, so you can't hit Greyseer and (if your opponent is smart) the Deathmaster. I keep going between 1 and 2 copies of LTO.

Slayers of Karak Kadrin are one of the deck's MVPs. These guys are simply awesome. Add Stand Your Ground to taste and enjoy. Sadly, they don't combo well with Lure Them Out because they sacrifice as a cost, so you can't get that to work.

Stand Your Ground. I love this card. Note that you don't have to play it immediately after your unit dies - if they kill something on their turn, wait for them to commit attackers, then play Stand Your Ground and bring in the dead unit as a blocker. It's a great shame that it only works on Dwarf units (and not the Zealot, that would be awesome) but it's still really good.

One copy of Judgement of Valaya to provide virtual card advantage. Sometimes you'll get to Demolish a development and flatten a previously-protected zone, as a bonus.

Warpstone Excavation is a necessary evil here. Its downside is an actual downside for the Dwarves since they actually block.

2 copies of Master Rune of Valaya. I think you need these because otherwise you can lose when a key blocker is Seduced or your opponent busts out some Waaagh action to go over the top of a Brigade. It also lets you win damage races more easily.

This is my favourite deck to play right now. It has game against all the major unit archetypes and its best draws seem to beat the Skaven's best draws. Order Thrower is problematic and not good for you at all. I don't think there's a whole lot you can do about it without sideboards and that would be my main concern about running this as my tournament deck.

Dwarves certainly crept up on us. They got Stand Your Ground, then Slayers of KK, then Book of Grudges, all of which were really good and replacing pretty marginal cards in Core-only Dwarf builds. I've still been playing them along the lines of the build I posted in this thread . It's a little bit more combolicious than this build, but I like the the control the Zhufbar/Quest interaction gives you (especially against Thanquol, Vile Sorc, and company). I've been thinking about Defender of the Hold, though. Turn one loyalty, early BF chump blocker, and Lobber Crew fodder are all good things. Warpstones have been in on occasion. Mining Tunnels is definitely going to be another huge card for Dwarves; I kind of wish they wouldn't keep buffing the Cannon Crew, though...

Defenders of the Hold aren't exciting but they are in there for all the reasons you stated. Cheap Lobber Crew insurance is solid - it's just terrible to have a turn 2 Brigade die to Lobber Crew. I would much rather they be kingdom-only instead of battlefield-only, but having a random dork standing around to deter Greyseer is often useful.

Your Dwarf build is interesting but seems to be way too worried about the late game to me. The current meta is very fast and drawing Ancient Map, Infiltrate, Prepare for War (which I think is pretty terrible btw) etc. seems bad.

Having said that, this deck is definitely set up against rush and some of the tier 2 decks like Volleygun Empire have game against it (but not against the other strong archetypes). My plan to deal with that would be to avoid those matchups via other people beating them.

We have been playing a deck similar to this around here. We have Zhufbar Engineer in our builds, that is the biggest difference. If you have Zhufbar, you probably need more than 1 grudge thrower though (I currently have 2 in my deck like this).

I also sometimes include burn it down in this deck. You are playing developments in your battlefield for the troll slayers anyway and you can frequently choke people out pretty badly with that much support destruction.

TL

Sure. I don't even have 3 Demolitions right now though and I would obviously include that before Burn It Down.

The Engineers were in Toberk's original listing but they got cut because they are too slow. The corresponding zone restriction means they are too weak.

Yeah, the original list wasn't really aspiring to Tier 1/1.5, so I was going with some gimmicky stuff. I had an older Dwarf Deck that ran 3x Prepare for War just to have a way to fire off the Engineers at will (like the Grudge Thrower, but free). And putting back Valayas was actually pretty good when the deck was down to thirty cards or so. But, you rarely want to pay one to tutor up the Prepare for War. I think the current mix of quest stuff is 2 Empty the Hold, 1 Glorious Death, 1 Infiltrate, 2 Ancient Map.

I have found the Engineers in general to be pretty strong, but Slayers accomplish the same thing in a lot of spots. Engineers have to be positioned properly, and are more vulnerable to corruption, but are less vulnerable to removal. Obviously, they are doing more with the Hold/Mine combo than they are without it.

I was hoping for a slightly beats-ier decklist. Longbeards seem really solid but you have zero, AND only two Troll Slayers. I like the utility and removal, but are you fast enough to win before SS can recover and relaunch?

I have been mainly playing DE & HE just to learn the game. However I like the Dwarf and want to start playing with them. In you deck you have

1x Judgement of Verena ......which I imagine is a misprint because that is Empire. But then you talk about Judgement of Valaya. What number is and pack is that card. For some reason I cannot find it on Deckbox.

I like the way you told how to use the cards, good information for Newbies.

No, it is not a misprint. You can play with it with no alliances and no Empire loyalty in the deck at all - it just costs you 6. Since the Dwarf deck often hits 6 resources on turn 2, that's not a big problem.

3x Defender of the Hold
3x Slayers of Karak Kadrin
3x Dwarf Cannon Crew
3x Troll Slayers
3x Longbeards
3x Zealot Hunter
3x Mountain Brigade
21 Units

3x Innovation
3x Stand Your Ground
3x Lure Them Out
3x Demolition!
2x Master Rune of Valaya
3x Burn it Down
17 Tactics

3x Contested Village
3x Great Book of Grudges
3x Keystone Forge
3x Warpstone Excavation
12 Supports

Interesting. I've been meaning to try the Longbeards for a while now - they weren't in print when I was first working on the deck. I'll have to give it a shot. I don't know if you need all 6 support removal though. Also, the list seems a bit short on things you'd actually want to play to Quest. Does seem like the Longbeards/Lure combo would be pretty decent.