I have read a few threads here and noticed people saying dwarfs are not in the "meta" at the moment and only rush and control decks are. Is there a way to make dwarfs viable? i'm planning to buy the starter pack with 4 decks and then go from there. I'd like to go with the dwarfs because I like their lore and am generally a dwarf fan from the WH universe… but if they are totally uncompetitive I don't know what to do.
Dwarfs viable?
I don't play competitively…yet
….but I agree with what you're saying. It does seem to be that control decks are all the rage, with Chaos and DE getting a lot of run. I read that news thread of the Polish championships and the bearded boys weren't even mentioned!
I have the core set and 2 battle packs is all, but I really love playing the dwarfs. Deckbox.org is a great tool. You can search by battlle pack, or race, or whatever, and find what you're looking for. I bought the 2 packs that I felt complimented both the Dwarfs and Chaos (that's who my buddy really likes to play as).
The dwarfs are not really a control, or rush. Kind of a "defense/control" IMO.
Here's a link to my Dwarf deck on deckbox: http://deckbox.org/decks/whi?f=17YmVhcmRz
They don't win every time, but have great defensive abilities and some good power.Plus, some sweet tactics that can overwhelm a zone if played right.
I'd say right now I seem to win with them about 75% of the time. A Chaos Call the Breyherd deck can take it down every now and again.
Let me know what you think and how the dwarfs fare for you when you play them.
Does anyone else know why they seem to be "out of favor"?
Well first a little history lesson, in case anyone didn't know. Dwarves were THE deck to beat in 2010 with the Reclaiming the Fallen build. As is the case with any overly prominent deck, a few restrictions nerfed it's potential. It cut out the speed of the deck (it's a combo deck at heart). Whilst RtF is still feasible it's lack of speed and deck focus make it too slow to handle Rush's aggressiveness and gives Control too big of a foothold. During our Regionals in Queensland, Aus (of which I won, yay me) the RtF dwarf deck was defeated by me running Dark Elves (a slightly modified list of the 2011 Championship deck) and a French Regional winning Empire build, both wins coming rather easily.
The point I'm getting to is that the way dwarves were run is considerably less feasible than in the past and it now has to evolve. There has been middling success with "Slayer" deck builds and other semi-rush strategies but most are finding greater success when paired with Empire or Wood Elves as they both can utilize development manipulation of which dwarves can excel at, either with Judgement of Verena Empire decks or development based aggro decks with cards like Wild Riders and Troll Slayers. I'm certain I've missed a few builds as well.
So if you don't mind teaming up, dwarves can still be quite competitive, I feel they just need a hand up from other teams every now and then to push them over the edge. Slayers of Karak Kadrin can only hold back the tide for so long after all.
Hope any of that helps
I think first/second turn loyalty issues are the biggest thing holding dwarves back at the moment. If given more of a chance for a nice start I think their middle game mechanics would definitely hold their own. That being said I'm guessing it's a design decision to give dwarves the worst starts. They're slow uncooperative bastards..