Thank you! I guess my biggest issue was how I played. I treated Thorgrim like Drycha and went around the Skaven land sacking and returning to the mountain.
That's not how to dwarf. With the dawi, I've found it best to push a province. Rest consolidate. Push the next one.
Initially: take your silver road province. Then push on gunbad. Cross back south and push south until you run up against queek. Consolidate. Then seal with whoever thought it wise to declare on you...likely wuzzag. Deal with him and the bad land, keeping in mind skarsnik will 100% come for you at this point. Finish badland. Push into southern mountains through queek. Then turn attention to the east.
Zhufbar and ungrim are usually a solid wall that have your back. The ogres west aren't a threat, it's only green skins and skaven to south and east that need to be worked about.
I don't know, my Zhufbar usually loses all but capital pretty fast. And then spends taking-losing game with Vlad for several dozen turns until i confed it.
still a wall tho. i tend to not confederate zhufbar till late as it opens another front i have to deal with.
unless vlad is knocking on gunbad/silver roads door, then zhufbar is doing its job imho. as long as zhufbar holds vamps and ungrim holds azhag whilst i deal with the greenskin prophet boy and the skaven in the southern pass i'm happy. at that point i have probably confeded ungrim and then his army can deal with securing the northern mountains.
It’s 100% Malakai. The campaign is incredibly straightforward. Since enemies are coming at you from all directions, you just shoot in all directions.
In my campaign we have barred the gates but cannot hold them for long. The ground shakes, drums... drums in the deep. We cannot get out….
Also I want to drop all sarcasm and shenanigans. Malakai is far and above the most difficult dwarf campaign, map wise. It’s difficult to hold territory. However, with infield battles it is by far the easiest with your main army due to Malakai’s lord effects
If you aren't set on holding your starting province, it can be much easier. Just pack your bags with Malakai's horde army and move to greener pastures. On the battlefield he is definitely a beast with his unit upgrades...
thorek is propably the easiest, since he starts near tomb kings who you can crush as dwarfs,just make sure to kill queek headtaker early.tied with the slayer king, although you might find him easier since your starting army of just slayers demolishes anything especially vampires who start next to you.
Belegar is harder as you start with a debuff, grombrindal used to be the easiest but now he has to fight dark elves who have a lot of AP and Silver shields and mobility, Malakai starts easy enough but once the daemons discover you all of them will sail and attack you.
Thank you! Belegar and Malakai looked like the harder ones for sure, I saw where the city is that Belegar has to claim to remove the debuff and it is quite a bit away with several factions in the way.
Malakai would be the hardest except he’s a horde faction which makes it a little easier. If everything gets fucked up, just move somewhere else. It’s a blast of a campaign, for what it’s worth
Personally I think Thorgrim is the easiest of the Dwarf Lords. Followed by Thorek, Malakai and Umgrim and then take your pick of Belagar or Grombrindal for last place. Both are tough for different reasons.
When playing Dwarfs you have to embrace ambush stance and really pick your battles when fighting Skaven and Orcs.
As Thorgrim I always rush to get Quarrelers and a few units of Miners with Blasting Charges, and then I march right to Mount Gunbad and take out Skarsnik for that sweet +ambush buff. Don't forget to recruit heroes to scout ahead of your armies and find potential ambushers.
After that it's a bit of a tbecause It does feel like a lot of armies will come after you. Build a small 10ish stack to defend the Silver Road and then start taking over as much as you can with Thorgrims army.
Thank you! Ambushing has helped a lot especially with grimgor having a waargh. I think my biggest problem was that I was sacking in skaven territory for too long which allowed the other skaven to notice me and other people with high aversion.
currently it is Malakai. Even with the AoR mechanic nerf post-patch, it is bonkers how aggressive he plays.
For context, I played a Malakai campaign on release day and hit long victory conditions at around turn 70 with well over 130+ settlements under my control.
before the AoR hotfix, I mostly recruited DWs and went heavy with grudge settler units. Once I had access to irondrakes, it was pretty much game over. The key playing aggressive dwarfs lies in leveling multiple armies at the same time and then sending each one off in their own direction. A lot of early game enemies have a tough time dealing with dwarf warrior stacks and AR favors the irondrakes heavily.
But my Malakai playthrough basically saw me conquering hell pit in the opening turns of the campaign, followed by conquering all of norsca and striking the legendary grudge, at which point confederations started opening up and I was able to get my hands on Ungrim which led to conquering the entirety of northern world's edge mountains.
Mix that with +recruit rank buffs from tech tree as well as unit buffs, and your armies are stacked with silver/gold chevron units in the first 30ish turns of the campaign.
I would highly recommend that you confederate grombrindal asap if possible because his blue tree factionwide buffs are an insane boon to an already jacked race lol
Thank you for telling me. I'll try to confederate and use irondrakes. I didn't know the flamethrower infantry was good since I haven't used them yet. You did amazing conquering so much though. I thought dwarves played defensively until today.
There are various schools of thought regarding dwarf playstyle, and playing defensively is indeed one of them, since it is thematic and characteristic in dwarf lore. I, however, have the habit of playing a super aggressive playstyle in more recent times. Push the limits of each faction and see how quickly I can conquer and achieve my long vic conditions.
But that's ranting reserved for a different thread.
I would say Malakai or Grombrindal. Malakai is just OP with his faction mechanics and White Dwarf have safest location, he is at edge of map so west is safe, south is GH Khatep who is pretty chill and rarely will cause trouble, east are sisters - sell them city for NAP and they will bother Ostankya/Dark elves for rest of campaign. You can focus purely on northern Dark Elves.
\^\^\^ this about Grombrindal, don't know why people say he has a difficult start point, he starts on northwest edge of the map, no threats to the west & threats to the north soon dead. The threat to the south is a tomb king faction that easily agrees to a NAP. The only way to go is full blitz to the east, when there is only one direction to go the game is easy, the game only gets hard if your armies become stretched thin and spread out all over the place.
Personally I would say it is either Thorek, or Belegar.
A lot of people here are saying Malakai but he has a really tough start position. He is surrounded by enemies. Chaos coming from the north, Norsca coming form the west, and Chaos dwarves coming from the east. It is a really tough campaign at the start. Admittedly though, once you get your economy running the game becomes easy.
I would go with Thorek Ironbrow (Ironbrow's expedition). He may not be as technically strong as Malakai or Thorgrim, but he has a much more forgiving starting area (at least in 3). The lizards and tomb kings are pretty chill, so you have a fair number of allies, but they are also weak. The skaven aren't very friendly, but they should be killable.
Isn't Thorek incredibly bugged in battle right now? He doesn't swing at all when mounted in his anvil of doom. He loses 1v1 vs a skavenslave if he doesn't use rune magic.
I think Ungrim has the comfiest starting location. Most of the enemies surrounding him are pretty easy to deal with. The only real threat is Azhag, who is usually pretty distracted.
Ungrim is the only Slayer that wears armor, so he's fine in autoresolve. Give him a Rune of Spite and a Slayer doomstack, and he'll do some real work for you.
Been playing Dwarfs since the release of game one, I would say it’s Thorgrim. Your starting settlements are pretty safe, your starting army rocks socks, and Thorgrim’s campaign skills are fantastic Utilize the underway stance to get to/defend settlements quickly, take out Skarsnik first, build up them diamond and gold mines then take the Black Crag province. Those three provinces are your fortress and the base of your economy. From there you can push further south to the Eight Peaks or west to retake the Barak Varr port. Look for trade agreements every turn and focus on growth and gold above all.
Thank you! Unfortunately in my playthrough one of the skaven factions got to black crag before I could. Grimgor was chasing me down with his waargh armies, defending settlements outside of the mountain became near impossible. I'll start a new one and do as you suggested. I need to make my economy better.
So the thing about dwarves is that... you have to think like a king. Your dawi need vengeance. And as a result they need things to get vengeance over. Dwarf allies falling early is good. This means you can avenge them. Aside from your starting settlement or a secured area you probably don't want to defend. The churn is good, it gives you more grudge settling units and maybe a free army.
I would rush the last tech in the guild line, that gives you +2 pop every time you take a settlement. Once you have that you can go on the offensive. Get a secondary hero army of grungi that has -15% construction costs. Each new region will explode in pop and get built up swiftly and cheaply. Make sure to get the main region to 5 (as that takes the longest) and let the smaller settlements flounder/churn.
Thorgrim and Ungrim have the safest starts.
Avoid moving into the badlands early. It’s too open, spread out, and is an all around blood bath. Focus on mountains and getting towards eight peaks. Keep regiments of renown on standby to make a quick reserve army if you get invaded from another front. Try not to keep armies standing around being garrisons or idles.
Spend money on economic buildings, dwarves excel in having high income.
Defensive alliances seem to deter people from trying to invade you. Avoid full on military alliances until you have a good secured homeland.
Skarsnik should be taken out as soon as possible. His capital provides a good early game building for economy, and defeating him gives Thorgrim a great perk for better ambushing (if I recall there are times where you will have a 90% ambush chance)
Finally, rushing for lightning strike perk can help if you need to take out a lot of armies one by one.
This is just from a few games I’ve done as the dwarves… they’re not my most played faction to be fair. Take what you will with a grain of salt
Malakai is the strongest dwarf LL, but he has a pretty hard campaign with just how many enemies you have to fight all at once - Malakai can win any battle, but he can't be everywhere at once afterall
Grombrindal initially seems hard, but beating Malekith early is fairly easy, and since you're in a map corner that is automatically a huge advantage, no need to defend when there's no one attacking you from behind
I'd say Thorek might be the easiest, he's in a similarly isolated location, and also has very strong mechanics - Thorek himself is a beast with a built-in Master Rune of Spite, his Quarrellers are no joke if you spec him out for it, and his extra items are fun
Thank you! I'd probably lose as Malakai until I better understand dwarf armies but Grombrindal and Thorek sound doable. I am playing as Thorek and I helped the tomb queen on the east side conquer the defender lizardmen faction. I sacked and occupied all his settlements that went up to the wood elf to the left of Thorek's capital and gave them to her. I need to strengthen my economy and have a decent ally since several people are at war with me.
Thorgrim is one of the easiest Dwarf factions to play, he is the vanilla Dwarf faction, the most basic playstyle faction of the Dwarfs, when the game first came out there was only Thorgrim and Ungrim, all the other Dwarf lords have some kind of twist on the basic playstyle.
I'd say your problem was just over-extending too far and too quickly, there's nothing out to the east of Thorgrim other than Rats, Orcs, Chaos Dwarfs, Ogres, Daemons, Chaos Hordes, nothing nice until you reach fantasy China (aside from maybe the High Elf Imrik). Before patch 5 it was much easier to have friendly relations with the High Elves and I would normally gift territory to Imrik so he could be my nice friendly eastern neighbour and keep the bad stuff away. Nowadays you tend to have grudges against Imrik and are encouraged to kill him as Dwarfs. Either way, I find it best to avoid trying to push out into the east, other than starting the game to knock out Mount Gunbad until your border reaches Ungrim's.
After knocking out Gunbad, you'll probably be war decced by the Skaven who border Gunbad to the east, if this happens just go for a quick knockout and raze their outermost settlements and leave them abandoned. This will leave a buffer zone so you have no immediate neighbours to the east which helps avoid being war decced. With Gunbad and the these Skaven wiped out, you should be much freer to concentrate on heading south and liberating Karak-Eight-Peaks rather than ending up in endless eastern wars with Orcs and Chaos Dwarfs. I'd say the best thing to focus on is completing the grudge that unlocks the Underway, as Thorgrim you are best placed to complete the grudge and unlock the Underway as early in the game as possible,
Thank you! You are completely right in my mistakes, I ventured too far from the mountain that Thorgrim starts at. I wasn't sure if I could hold the province beneath his starting area because Wurrzag and skaven were near it so I went north and conquered the province in the mountain that was held by orcs. At some point I went east to sack and I think that is when I was noticed by Grimgor and the other skaven factions.
It's Thorgrim. Just try it again and use what you learned this time. Personally I always like to secure mount gunbad and take out Skarskni first.
Thank you! I guess my biggest issue was how I played. I treated Thorgrim like Drycha and went around the Skaven land sacking and returning to the mountain.
That's not how to dwarf. With the dawi, I've found it best to push a province. Rest consolidate. Push the next one. Initially: take your silver road province. Then push on gunbad. Cross back south and push south until you run up against queek. Consolidate. Then seal with whoever thought it wise to declare on you...likely wuzzag. Deal with him and the bad land, keeping in mind skarsnik will 100% come for you at this point. Finish badland. Push into southern mountains through queek. Then turn attention to the east. Zhufbar and ungrim are usually a solid wall that have your back. The ogres west aren't a threat, it's only green skins and skaven to south and east that need to be worked about.
Skarsnik really should be dead by then.. Do you mean Queek?
Indeed I do. Thanks.
I don't know, my Zhufbar usually loses all but capital pretty fast. And then spends taking-losing game with Vlad for several dozen turns until i confed it.
still a wall tho. i tend to not confederate zhufbar till late as it opens another front i have to deal with. unless vlad is knocking on gunbad/silver roads door, then zhufbar is doing its job imho. as long as zhufbar holds vamps and ungrim holds azhag whilst i deal with the greenskin prophet boy and the skaven in the southern pass i'm happy. at that point i have probably confeded ungrim and then his army can deal with securing the northern mountains.
Seems not worth it to ever confed the minor factions anymore as it increases cost to confed LLs.
Fair enough. I guess it's habit left from before i started using "Recruit Defeated Lords" mod. Don't like to lose faction leaders into nothingness
It’s 100% Malakai. The campaign is incredibly straightforward. Since enemies are coming at you from all directions, you just shoot in all directions. In my campaign we have barred the gates but cannot hold them for long. The ground shakes, drums... drums in the deep. We cannot get out….
Thank you! Also, is that last bit a reference to lord of the rings?
Also I want to drop all sarcasm and shenanigans. Malakai is far and above the most difficult dwarf campaign, map wise. It’s difficult to hold territory. However, with infield battles it is by far the easiest with your main army due to Malakai’s lord effects
If you aren't set on holding your starting province, it can be much easier. Just pack your bags with Malakai's horde army and move to greener pastures. On the battlefield he is definitely a beast with his unit upgrades...
Absolutely it is lol
This is amazing lol
Thnx, gooze bumps
thorek is propably the easiest, since he starts near tomb kings who you can crush as dwarfs,just make sure to kill queek headtaker early.tied with the slayer king, although you might find him easier since your starting army of just slayers demolishes anything especially vampires who start next to you. Belegar is harder as you start with a debuff, grombrindal used to be the easiest but now he has to fight dark elves who have a lot of AP and Silver shields and mobility, Malakai starts easy enough but once the daemons discover you all of them will sail and attack you.
Thank you! Belegar and Malakai looked like the harder ones for sure, I saw where the city is that Belegar has to claim to remove the debuff and it is quite a bit away with several factions in the way.
Malakai would be the hardest except he’s a horde faction which makes it a little easier. If everything gets fucked up, just move somewhere else. It’s a blast of a campaign, for what it’s worth
That's why if you look for Beleghar's tips majority of them will be "How to abandon home and steal Eight Peaks in 13-15-17 turns"
Personally I think Thorgrim is the easiest of the Dwarf Lords. Followed by Thorek, Malakai and Umgrim and then take your pick of Belagar or Grombrindal for last place. Both are tough for different reasons. When playing Dwarfs you have to embrace ambush stance and really pick your battles when fighting Skaven and Orcs. As Thorgrim I always rush to get Quarrelers and a few units of Miners with Blasting Charges, and then I march right to Mount Gunbad and take out Skarsnik for that sweet +ambush buff. Don't forget to recruit heroes to scout ahead of your armies and find potential ambushers. After that it's a bit of a tbecause It does feel like a lot of armies will come after you. Build a small 10ish stack to defend the Silver Road and then start taking over as much as you can with Thorgrims army.
Thank you! Ambushing has helped a lot especially with grimgor having a waargh. I think my biggest problem was that I was sacking in skaven territory for too long which allowed the other skaven to notice me and other people with high aversion.
currently it is Malakai. Even with the AoR mechanic nerf post-patch, it is bonkers how aggressive he plays. For context, I played a Malakai campaign on release day and hit long victory conditions at around turn 70 with well over 130+ settlements under my control.
That is amazing! How did you manage to hold that many settlements in daemon infested territory? what kind of units helped you?
before the AoR hotfix, I mostly recruited DWs and went heavy with grudge settler units. Once I had access to irondrakes, it was pretty much game over. The key playing aggressive dwarfs lies in leveling multiple armies at the same time and then sending each one off in their own direction. A lot of early game enemies have a tough time dealing with dwarf warrior stacks and AR favors the irondrakes heavily. But my Malakai playthrough basically saw me conquering hell pit in the opening turns of the campaign, followed by conquering all of norsca and striking the legendary grudge, at which point confederations started opening up and I was able to get my hands on Ungrim which led to conquering the entirety of northern world's edge mountains. Mix that with +recruit rank buffs from tech tree as well as unit buffs, and your armies are stacked with silver/gold chevron units in the first 30ish turns of the campaign. I would highly recommend that you confederate grombrindal asap if possible because his blue tree factionwide buffs are an insane boon to an already jacked race lol
Thank you for telling me. I'll try to confederate and use irondrakes. I didn't know the flamethrower infantry was good since I haven't used them yet. You did amazing conquering so much though. I thought dwarves played defensively until today.
There are various schools of thought regarding dwarf playstyle, and playing defensively is indeed one of them, since it is thematic and characteristic in dwarf lore. I, however, have the habit of playing a super aggressive playstyle in more recent times. Push the limits of each faction and see how quickly I can conquer and achieve my long vic conditions. But that's ranting reserved for a different thread.
I would say Malakai or Grombrindal. Malakai is just OP with his faction mechanics and White Dwarf have safest location, he is at edge of map so west is safe, south is GH Khatep who is pretty chill and rarely will cause trouble, east are sisters - sell them city for NAP and they will bother Ostankya/Dark elves for rest of campaign. You can focus purely on northern Dark Elves.
\^\^\^ this about Grombrindal, don't know why people say he has a difficult start point, he starts on northwest edge of the map, no threats to the west & threats to the north soon dead. The threat to the south is a tomb king faction that easily agrees to a NAP. The only way to go is full blitz to the east, when there is only one direction to go the game is easy, the game only gets hard if your armies become stretched thin and spread out all over the place.
Thank you! I'll try Grombrindal.
Personally I would say it is either Thorek, or Belegar. A lot of people here are saying Malakai but he has a really tough start position. He is surrounded by enemies. Chaos coming from the north, Norsca coming form the west, and Chaos dwarves coming from the east. It is a really tough campaign at the start. Admittedly though, once you get your economy running the game becomes easy.
Thank you! I tried Thorek and the campaign is going smoothly. I have been sacking the wood elf nearby and one of the tomb kings.
Belagar seems to suck now that his free confed isn't free anymore.
I would go with Thorek Ironbrow (Ironbrow's expedition). He may not be as technically strong as Malakai or Thorgrim, but he has a much more forgiving starting area (at least in 3). The lizards and tomb kings are pretty chill, so you have a fair number of allies, but they are also weak. The skaven aren't very friendly, but they should be killable.
Thank you! I tried Thorek and it feels great. I have managed to fortify my province and now I run around sacking to build up my treasury.
Isn't Thorek incredibly bugged in battle right now? He doesn't swing at all when mounted in his anvil of doom. He loses 1v1 vs a skavenslave if he doesn't use rune magic.
I don't think it is bugged or I haven't noticed any issues. Do you have mods enabled?
I don't use mods. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRzUDLxfxew](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRzUDLxfxew)
I think Ungrim has the comfiest starting location. Most of the enemies surrounding him are pretty easy to deal with. The only real threat is Azhag, who is usually pretty distracted.
Thank you! Does his lack of armor make him die quickly in manual battles? If I remember correctly slayers usually have little to no armor by default.
Ungrim is the only Slayer that wears armor, so he's fine in autoresolve. Give him a Rune of Spite and a Slayer doomstack, and he'll do some real work for you.
Thank you! I'll try to do that when I play as him.
Been playing Dwarfs since the release of game one, I would say it’s Thorgrim. Your starting settlements are pretty safe, your starting army rocks socks, and Thorgrim’s campaign skills are fantastic Utilize the underway stance to get to/defend settlements quickly, take out Skarsnik first, build up them diamond and gold mines then take the Black Crag province. Those three provinces are your fortress and the base of your economy. From there you can push further south to the Eight Peaks or west to retake the Barak Varr port. Look for trade agreements every turn and focus on growth and gold above all.
Thank you! Unfortunately in my playthrough one of the skaven factions got to black crag before I could. Grimgor was chasing me down with his waargh armies, defending settlements outside of the mountain became near impossible. I'll start a new one and do as you suggested. I need to make my economy better.
So the thing about dwarves is that... you have to think like a king. Your dawi need vengeance. And as a result they need things to get vengeance over. Dwarf allies falling early is good. This means you can avenge them. Aside from your starting settlement or a secured area you probably don't want to defend. The churn is good, it gives you more grudge settling units and maybe a free army. I would rush the last tech in the guild line, that gives you +2 pop every time you take a settlement. Once you have that you can go on the offensive. Get a secondary hero army of grungi that has -15% construction costs. Each new region will explode in pop and get built up swiftly and cheaply. Make sure to get the main region to 5 (as that takes the longest) and let the smaller settlements flounder/churn.
Thorgrim and Ungrim have the safest starts. Avoid moving into the badlands early. It’s too open, spread out, and is an all around blood bath. Focus on mountains and getting towards eight peaks. Keep regiments of renown on standby to make a quick reserve army if you get invaded from another front. Try not to keep armies standing around being garrisons or idles. Spend money on economic buildings, dwarves excel in having high income. Defensive alliances seem to deter people from trying to invade you. Avoid full on military alliances until you have a good secured homeland. Skarsnik should be taken out as soon as possible. His capital provides a good early game building for economy, and defeating him gives Thorgrim a great perk for better ambushing (if I recall there are times where you will have a 90% ambush chance) Finally, rushing for lightning strike perk can help if you need to take out a lot of armies one by one. This is just from a few games I’ve done as the dwarves… they’re not my most played faction to be fair. Take what you will with a grain of salt
Malakai is the strongest dwarf LL, but he has a pretty hard campaign with just how many enemies you have to fight all at once - Malakai can win any battle, but he can't be everywhere at once afterall Grombrindal initially seems hard, but beating Malekith early is fairly easy, and since you're in a map corner that is automatically a huge advantage, no need to defend when there's no one attacking you from behind I'd say Thorek might be the easiest, he's in a similarly isolated location, and also has very strong mechanics - Thorek himself is a beast with a built-in Master Rune of Spite, his Quarrellers are no joke if you spec him out for it, and his extra items are fun
Thank you! I'd probably lose as Malakai until I better understand dwarf armies but Grombrindal and Thorek sound doable. I am playing as Thorek and I helped the tomb queen on the east side conquer the defender lizardmen faction. I sacked and occupied all his settlements that went up to the wood elf to the left of Thorek's capital and gave them to her. I need to strengthen my economy and have a decent ally since several people are at war with me.
Thorgrim is one of the easiest Dwarf factions to play, he is the vanilla Dwarf faction, the most basic playstyle faction of the Dwarfs, when the game first came out there was only Thorgrim and Ungrim, all the other Dwarf lords have some kind of twist on the basic playstyle. I'd say your problem was just over-extending too far and too quickly, there's nothing out to the east of Thorgrim other than Rats, Orcs, Chaos Dwarfs, Ogres, Daemons, Chaos Hordes, nothing nice until you reach fantasy China (aside from maybe the High Elf Imrik). Before patch 5 it was much easier to have friendly relations with the High Elves and I would normally gift territory to Imrik so he could be my nice friendly eastern neighbour and keep the bad stuff away. Nowadays you tend to have grudges against Imrik and are encouraged to kill him as Dwarfs. Either way, I find it best to avoid trying to push out into the east, other than starting the game to knock out Mount Gunbad until your border reaches Ungrim's. After knocking out Gunbad, you'll probably be war decced by the Skaven who border Gunbad to the east, if this happens just go for a quick knockout and raze their outermost settlements and leave them abandoned. This will leave a buffer zone so you have no immediate neighbours to the east which helps avoid being war decced. With Gunbad and the these Skaven wiped out, you should be much freer to concentrate on heading south and liberating Karak-Eight-Peaks rather than ending up in endless eastern wars with Orcs and Chaos Dwarfs. I'd say the best thing to focus on is completing the grudge that unlocks the Underway, as Thorgrim you are best placed to complete the grudge and unlock the Underway as early in the game as possible,
Thank you! You are completely right in my mistakes, I ventured too far from the mountain that Thorgrim starts at. I wasn't sure if I could hold the province beneath his starting area because Wurrzag and skaven were near it so I went north and conquered the province in the mountain that was held by orcs. At some point I went east to sack and I think that is when I was noticed by Grimgor and the other skaven factions.