Quarrellers pose a number of issues for inclusion in either Strollaz or ambush armies. Quarrellers with Great Weapon are especially problematic. The first issue is the challenge they'll always pose: shoot, move, or charge? This is often a tough choice. If you move them, you waste a round of shooting. If you shoot with them, you potentially miss out on important movement. It's best to keep yourself from having to make tough decisions, since such decisions leave the most room for error, and error will be exploited by your opponent. The specific issue with Quarrellers with Great Weapons as part of a Strollaz or ambush force is their overall lack of tactical capabilities required to support the strategic concept of such armies. First, they need to be able to be Stubborn. We do have the option of putting a RoStoicism on the BSB, but that BSB is going to be relatively fragile, so once he is killed (which will happen quickly if your opponent knows you've got a RoStoicism on him), the unit is no longer Stubborn. Second, WS4 hurts them more than you might imagine. You're expecting to be up against elite units, pushing that unit into your opponent's strongest unit so that your other units can take out the crunchy bits of his army. Third, you're spending points to give the unit conflicting capabilities. Sure, an argument might be made that you're doing that with Rangers, too. The argument doesn't hold up, though, I think, because the Rangers should already be in your list anyway, you're not paying for their ranged capability but rather their scouting capability, and they provide that ranged capability anyway so GW Quarrellers become superfluous.
Irondrakes will work better with a Strollaz army than an ambush army, because they compete for Rare points from which you're getting your big block of Rangers. If you're only taking minimum-sized Ranger units, you can take the Irondrakes in larger numbers. At 2500 points or smaller, you're probably only going to be able to fit a single effective unit into your Rare allowance in the end, so you want to make the unit as large as possible, I would think. I would further think that the Irondrakes might still work alright in a Dwarf ambush army, though it would mean significantly altering the look of the army from that of the particular force I use. The Shieldbeards would probably have to become Great Beards, you might lose a few Miners in order to apply changes in cost (but maybe not), etc.
Edited by Swordthain, 10 October 2014 - 08:16 PM.
I like the Lord. I think that'll help the Shieldbeards out, too, to have that Lord in there with them. I'd probably go with just one unit of Miners in order to make the Rangers big and scary, butt
