I voted “no” on principle. I have no idea whether they need one to be competitive with other armies, but monstrous units seem to be generically assigned to some armies, and they don’t make sense for the Dwarves. Dwarfs. Dwarfi.
Argh! OK, I stand by the principle, but I have been thinking about the idea of steam-powered, Engineer-created golems, and that would have been awesome in this book. I change my vote. I still don’t like the emphasis on monstrous stuff in this edition, but I really liked the way some 6th edition books allowed completely different armies from the same book, and the golems would have been a really cool and creative way to do that. I yield, and I agree with Nathan (or Lange — I have no idea which of you is which).
Some form of cavalry would have also help add variety to the army. I know they’ve never had mounted units, but I think they’re the only army without at least one.
Heck, why not give them some kind of mechanised cavalry? Oh, wait, that would require an ounce of creativity and giving more than two shits about this army. I guess they’re just lucky they didn’t get Wood Elf’d into oblivion.
Needed? No, I voted that based on the strictest adherence to the question. The big models rammed down our throats like so much cock are tiresome, and have diluted the flavour of 40k and fantasy by making it a standard thing. Five years ago, you could say that MCs are a Chaos, or ‘Nids thing, with Chaos having princes and Greater daemons, few but exceptional, and Nids have the ability to field tonnes of them, and a variety, back when no variety existed. Now when telling someone about an army, they’ll ask “what’s their big unit/thing?”. Where Monoliths and carnifices used to be a feature, now they’re not.
That said, I’m disappointed to see the lack of them in this book. I’d absolutely LOVE the idea of steam golems, and regular ones too. I’d never thought of that, but after you spoke it, I was interested.
Miss out? A little bit but its hard to argue it wouldn’t have felt like Dwarfs if they had the access. The thing that is disappointing is that they have models and rules in place that could have easily been adapted to the Dwarf book to give us things like Monstrous Cavalry. You could have operated the Gyro’s in squadrons using the same rules as the Nurgle Plague Drones. If you wanted to reach a little further into the deep fluff you could’ve given us Monstrous Cavalry units of Deathrollers from Blood Bowl where they literally take a mining machine up onto the surface and drive it around. Was it necessary to make the army competitive? No, but it was totally a plausible thing to do and I think GW missed an opportunity that would have made the book more dynamic and even given them the ability to sell more models that they already.
We could have had clock work golems! It would have been awesome! they didn’t need a monster but ogre sized models would be nice. I also feel runes should have all been bound spells but I’m just weird like that.
Clock Work Golems! Think about how awesome it would have been. They did not need a monster or anything but an ogre size unit would have been cool! I also felt all their ruins should have been bound spells and they should have had premade ruin weapons rather than make your own so they were in line with the other races.
Jaded Gamercast 
I voted “no” on principle. I have no idea whether they need one to be competitive with other armies, but monstrous units seem to be generically assigned to some armies, and they don’t make sense for the Dwarves. Dwarfs. Dwarfi.
Argh! OK, I stand by the principle, but I have been thinking about the idea of steam-powered, Engineer-created golems, and that would have been awesome in this book. I change my vote. I still don’t like the emphasis on monstrous stuff in this edition, but I really liked the way some 6th edition books allowed completely different armies from the same book, and the golems would have been a really cool and creative way to do that. I yield, and I agree with Nathan (or Lange — I have no idea which of you is which).
Some form of cavalry would have also help add variety to the army. I know they’ve never had mounted units, but I think they’re the only army without at least one.
Heck, why not give them some kind of mechanised cavalry? Oh, wait, that would require an ounce of creativity and giving more than two shits about this army. I guess they’re just lucky they didn’t get Wood Elf’d into oblivion.
Needed? No, I voted that based on the strictest adherence to the question. The big models rammed down our throats like so much cock are tiresome, and have diluted the flavour of 40k and fantasy by making it a standard thing. Five years ago, you could say that MCs are a Chaos, or ‘Nids thing, with Chaos having princes and Greater daemons, few but exceptional, and Nids have the ability to field tonnes of them, and a variety, back when no variety existed. Now when telling someone about an army, they’ll ask “what’s their big unit/thing?”. Where Monoliths and carnifices used to be a feature, now they’re not.
That said, I’m disappointed to see the lack of them in this book. I’d absolutely LOVE the idea of steam golems, and regular ones too. I’d never thought of that, but after you spoke it, I was interested.
Miss out? A little bit but its hard to argue it wouldn’t have felt like Dwarfs if they had the access. The thing that is disappointing is that they have models and rules in place that could have easily been adapted to the Dwarf book to give us things like Monstrous Cavalry. You could have operated the Gyro’s in squadrons using the same rules as the Nurgle Plague Drones. If you wanted to reach a little further into the deep fluff you could’ve given us Monstrous Cavalry units of Deathrollers from Blood Bowl where they literally take a mining machine up onto the surface and drive it around. Was it necessary to make the army competitive? No, but it was totally a plausible thing to do and I think GW missed an opportunity that would have made the book more dynamic and even given them the ability to sell more models that they already.
We could have had clock work golems! It would have been awesome! they didn’t need a monster but ogre sized models would be nice. I also feel runes should have all been bound spells but I’m just weird like that.
Clock Work Golems! Think about how awesome it would have been. They did not need a monster or anything but an ogre size unit would have been cool! I also felt all their ruins should have been bound spells and they should have had premade ruin weapons rather than make your own so they were in line with the other races.
I voted yes because, even though I love the dwarfs and their fluff, there is always room for something new.
What happened to the idea of squadrons of gyrocopters? Hell, why units of shieldbearers?
There was a world of possibility missed out on here.