Thunderers vs Quarrelers

[Panfilo]

Don't get me wrong, Quarrelers are excellent ranged units you can use through your entire campaign. Their range and durability help keep them from becoming completely obsolete. But I'm starting to favor Thunderers more...

While it is true Thunderers cost more, are shorter ranged, have less guys in a unit, a slower rate of fire and fire in a flat trajectory, their AP and stronger per-shot damage is very useful. Someone did the math, and it turns out the armor cutoff for Thunderers out-DPSing Quarrelers is suprisingly low; anything at a mere 30 armor or above has Thunderers coming out ahead. There are a lot of pretty mundane units in the game with 30-50 armor, meaning you don't need to just save these guys for Chosen or Knights; they'll do very well against Boyz, Halberdiers, and so on. And since they have shields like Quarrelers they'll also do decently in ranged unit exchanges, and their smaller unit size benefits them when trying not to get hit by artillery.

The faster projectile speed is also nice for hiting fast, laterally moving targets or fleeing enemies that bolts start to miss. The best way to reliably get a clear shot is to set your army up in a 'checkerboard' formation so enemies stuck in melee with your warriors/longbeards/ironbreakers are exposed to enemy fire. Using terrain well also helps, and remember the closer to maximum range you fire, the more likely you are able to get a clear shot even with minor differences in elevation. When firing at defenders at walls, position them so they are htiting at max range to get a clear shot. With Thunderers on walls it is a bit trickier since they seem to have a somewhat narrow field of fire compared to Quarrelers. What I like to do, especially when siege towers are incoming, is to actually place them behind the walls so they fire at enemies coming into line of sight.

[Emmental]

Thunderers aren't a replacement for quarrelers. If you stop using quarrelers because you unlocked thunderers you're screwing yourself over. Thunderers are just better at anti armour and anti-air. Quarrelers are good all round dps and range.

[Panfilo]

Right but anything beyond 30 armor the Thunderers win out in terms of dps. That means there are a lot of targets where Thunderers are superior, not just the most heavily armored enemies.

[Emmental]

They really don't man run some experiments.

[Panfilo]

They tested it on Reddit. Past armor 30 their armor piercing gives them more overall damage than the Quarrelers.

So for very low armor units like savage orcs, monsters, etc yeah Quarrelers are better. But vs even many tier 1 infantry, their armor is high enough for thunderers to start to edge them out.

I never claimed Thunderers were a straight upgrade to Quarrelers, merely that they were better than I thought. You're missing out on a lot of potential damage if you limit yourself to only taking 1 or 2; when you're up against lots of mid tier units or heavy cavalry they are a lot better.

[StarofTanuki]

Honesly , Those are your armies , let's set up what do you want .

for me i always use 2 Thunderer & 2 Quarrelers , for reason i don't want enemy archer free fire my troop or Skirmisher cav back stab my line also kill low amour unit . for Thunderer like you said .

imo both unit should work together i can't miss some one .

[Sultschiem]

Originally posted by jerjare:

Right but anything beyond 30 armor the Thunderers win out in terms of dps. That means there are a lot of targets where Thunderers are superior, not just the most heavily armored enemies.

Yeah...in the best possible scenario, which for thunderers is: either on the flank or on a hill.

Quarrelers can fire in an arc, which makes them strong even behind your frontlines. Thunderers are more situational. They can be covered when shooting large targets.

Thats the pro and the con of those 2. Personally, I prefeer Quarrelers. There is other stuff for armor-piercing such as the Irondrake-RoR, Explosive Charges and Gyrocopter.

[Hovis]

I like quarrelers to shoot at enemy missile units behind the line. Generally missile units have low armour so they're squishy enough, plus you can fire over the battle line. I'm not a huge fan of Thunderers because to get a good shot without getting dragged into melee they can take a bit of micro-managing, plus they're slow (as in normal speed for a dwarf) and that makes lining up those sweet, sweet flank shots time consuming.

That said, the games I've played lately have included a modded and more powerful Chaos faction, and when I shoot crossbows at those huge armoured nutters that make up their front line they just laugh and call me stunty. Thunderers been very good value against those guys.

[YaMe]

Thunderers are anti dwarf unit in essence, though they do have obvious units to use against in other armies, if CA made dwarf civil wars more likely on campaign map you would almost always be running them.

Actually half the the dwarf roster is built to counter other dwarfs its just on campaign map dwarfs wars are a rare occurance atleast for me.

[hammerinn]

They have a hard time shooting over objects, like friendly units or walls so you have to give them clear line of sight. If i see he has all thunderers i will try and body block with his units or stay out of range with my archers until they are done shooting. And don't bother saying " then i can shoot you with all my cannons" because if you spaghetti your lines cannons don't do a whole lot.