Pretty new to the game and was just looking at the two threads about the viability of dwarfs. From the reading I've done it seems that dark elves and chaos are the most powerful races right now. Actually, I get the impression that they're the only races to play if your opponents know what they're doing. Is that overstating? What is the state of balance in the game these days? Thanks.

Personally I think that all races are playable more than ever before.

Definitely overstating. Things do tend to cycle but those cycles are reasonably short lived. Right now chaos is doing well, but are certainly not a must play to win. You can still win with any race.

Cool. I'll keep looking out for strong decks that are not DE or Chaos and do not have an illegal number of restricted cards. I've seen strong-looking order decks at deckbox.org and cardgamedb.com, but they all had more than one restricted card in them.

In my opinion HE are the strongest races now, Chaos, DE and Orcs are little less, but still powerful and Empire with Dwarves are only strong now ;-)

I love Dwarfs. A good mix of defense and heavy hitters. They may not be winning a ton of tournaments right now, but from what I understand they were "hot" when the card "reclaiming the fallen" came out. It was in The SIlent Forge battle pack. I suggest you get it if you want to do well with dwarfs. Along with Firey Dawn (for the card Grudgeborn fury) and Karaz-a-Karak.

Go to deckbox.org, search through the W:I card database. Use the filter options to shrink it down to dwarfs and then start looking at what packs to benefit them the most. This is perhaps not a good option to expand your card pool as a whole, for all races as it were, but if you like the dwarfs, go for their good cards.

I think all the races are viable in casual and shop-league play. But when it comes to tournament level, the DE control, Chaos Fateweaver & HE IDD are very powerful and difficult to counter with Dwarf & Empire - Orks might get in some good rush wins.

Fateweaver?! As far as I know that's the Legend that makes developments into units with 2 power. Chaos decks that do well tend to have a nice balance of unit and support destruction, from what I've seen. I'd be interested to see a decklist that did well in a tournament where using that legend is the main trick.