Determined and strong-willed dwarves from the tops of the frosty mountains, who have experienced both the terrifying cold of the most remote peaks and the frightening darkness of ancient tunnels. Dwarves are distinguished by their well-developed musculature, thick beards, fighting temperament, and short stature. But rest assured, even the centuries-old elves of the Forest Alliance do not look down on this people.
We recommend that you don't underestimate these guys either! They lack speed and initiative, but health, defense, buffs and many other features of this formation more than compensate for all their shortcomings.
Let's consider the features of the representatives of the different classes of this faction, and finish with non-obvious, but very useful chips.
The starting dwarf mage, the hermit, already has options to deal aoe damage and slow down opponents. This helps you not only effectively control the battlefield, but also level up someone else's speed advantage. At rank two, you are free to choose between enhanced deceleration and strong earth elementals, or opt for area damage and summoning a water elemental, a useful and mobile healer.
Healers do not have as powerful healing as the priests of the Free Empire, but each healing ability of dwarven herbalists and alchemists boosts the healed person's defenses, increasing the effectiveness of their health. A very useful option to remove negative effects appears at rank two. Necessary if the enemy has a lot of damage with poison, bleeding or has armor piercing.
The trappers of the Mountain Clans have a unique trap mechanic at the moment. A trapper can set a trap that when activated triggers sector damage or aoe damage. With proper positioning, you can easily move your opponent to the trap and turn the tide of battle... Or you can place a wounded unit on the trap yourself to bury a couple of your opponent's units with it.
Riflemen, Warriors and Leaders have an important common feature - “ Hird”. If these units are adjacent to each other, they all get defense boosts. If your opponent has no aoe damage or your mages have run out of aoe abilities, then you just have to put an artifact as a leader and stand your warrior, gunner and leader around it. Hardly anyone will be able to make your ranks shake. The archers themselves have a variety of skills: armor piercing and multi-attack are already on the first rank, and on the second rank you can both annoy the enemy by applying bleeding and make remote repulsion or attraction attacks.
Leaders can offer you the option of installing artifacts not only for defense and attack bonuses, but also for regeneration, making the Dwarf formation able to compete with humans in survivability. At rank two, you may prefer the Skald to the Jarl. He's not as strong and powerful as the last one, but he can give a defense buff to all allies on the battlefield at once, making positioning easier for your squad.
Dwarf warriors are strong and adaptive - thanks to their repulsion strike, they can easily combine with both trap catchers and mages of any formation. And at rank two, you're offered the classic choice between survivability and damage. Shilder won't let even a jumpy elf get past him, and Berserk will easily chew a hole in the enemy's defense with his axes.
Finally, and most importantly. If you noticed, the Mountain Clans have a passive skill called “Mountaineers”. They spend 1 OP instead of 2 to stand on an elevated sector, and they gain defense buffs when they occupy such a sector. Each holding point in the eponymous mode is an elevation. Stand a Hird warrior on such a point, press “Battle Formation”, place a defense artifact next to it and watch your opponent try to kill it during the whole battle.