My general experience has been when a shooty army meets a horde army at equal points, the horde army wins through the amount of extra bodies it has. I have played in numerous games with my chaos dwarf blunderbuss units going against Tomb Kings and Goblins, and lost. I have a friend of mine who tried to make a pure Tzeentch army for chaos daemons, and it doesn't work at equal points value against other horde armies. My same friend trying tried to play an all elf army for wood elves verses dwarves, and lost. Once he tried to use dryads and tree men in the mix, he won against the dwarves. This was at 3000 points, so there was a lot of stuff on the board. Fast forward to this Saturday, I played in an 16, 000 point battle. My friend on my right flank had a troll army from the warrior of chaos at 2000 points, and opposite him was a wood elf army with flyers and shooty elves. I held the center with 3000 points of chaos dwarves, and I was paired against 2000 points of ogres. There was no where for the opposing ogre player to flank attack, so he proceeded to get destroyed through magic and blackpowder (fireglaives) in a frontal assault. The trolls got to the wood elves and destroyed them. I have experimented in the past to build 2000 point shooty chaos dwarf armies, but I am not satisfied with the results against hordes. I have tried to do the same with my ogres, using black powder like leadbelchers and maneaters with a brace of pistols, but these armies aren't competitive at equal points. I am starting to think a shooty army needs a 25% point increase to be competitive to a comparable horde army.

Chaos dwarves are expensive in their war machines and black powder, making it hard to get enough guarding units and redirection chaff. It's so simple to come up with an ogre 2000 point list that has horde of bulls, a unit of mournfangs, and two ironblasters, and you are ready to go clobber any army. I can't make a chaos dwarf army comparable to that, in the use of shooting. I have heard of rumors where black powder armies work, but I have never seen a gun line work, or an all arrow army work. Tell me where I am wrong about shooty armies. Are there any success stories out there?