Warhammer Fantasy Battle Reporter Forum

First off: I'm biased. Dragons always end up being awesome when I play, so I'm very pro-dragon-usage. The only con that I know of is that they are crazy expensive. That being said, a Star Dragon with a defense-focused Prince wielding a great weapon or hand weapon and shield is quite the sight to behold in combat. 6 WS7 S7 attacks is not something to trifle with.

Also, you can take the lesser Sun Dragon in an under-2000pt army. While it would obviously be detrimental in a 500pt skirmish-level game, in 1000 points having access to one of the strongest creatures in the game is great. Make certain that you give the Dragon Mage a Dispel Scroll or two, and then use Flaming Sword of Rhuin and charge. Only against Chaos is this really a bad idea, or against the other heavies.

Note: the rest of this article will be primarily concerning 2000pt+ armies.

Dragons have two main roles in the HE army. One is troubleshooter. An engine of destruction with a 20" flying move, if (or when) a melee starts in the center of the board, unless you are in combat already, it is simple to charge to wherever the Prince or Archmage is needed most. Adding a charging Star Dragon to the mix will almost always bring the benefit to the HE side. Be careful when charging units with enemy Lords and Heroes, especially armies such as the Bretonnians that can create builds very cheaply that will decimate your dragon. Because of the cost, you cannot let your dragon die frivolously.

Another major role of the Dragon is to destroy the opponent's siege weapons and missile troops. Since the latter are often in blocks of 10, a prince and dragon can in most cases easily decimate a unit to the point that it flees and does no damage to your oh-so-expensive lord. War Machine crews stand no chance, and troops lining walls of a castle--especially when core--will be instantly demolished without a chance to strike back against the pair.

The biggest problem: Dragons are expensive, dangerous Large targets. Siege engines love them. If you take Sacred incense instead of Vambraces of Defense, you can help yourself, but every now and then a Trebuchet or Hellcannon will decide to fully unload a spot-on attack on your Dragon. Your best move with a weakened, riderless dragon is to charge the nearest enemy core, and take little to no regard for their safety, attempting to take out as many opponents as possible before you get killed off. Apart from War Machines, not much hurts a dragon. Losing control because you lose the rider is probably the biggest difficulty. Greater Daemons will do serious damage, as will Chosen Chaos Knights or their similar equivalents. Getting outnumbered and surrounded is also a common mistake. If one of these units is already in combat with a decent-sized unit of yours, flank or rear 'em. The Terror mixed with the combat prowess will break many of these units, or at least hopefully be able to do enough damage that they will die without injuring your Dragon too extremely.

In conclusion, the Dragon kicks ass. They are great in combat, combining excellent mobility, extreme power, and access to some of the game's best magical and mundane combos. They also are great at drawing enemy fire from all sides, and getting charged at by Knights. Essentially, you must wrap them gently in a cloth like an atomic bomb. If it blows up where you don't want it to, it will ruin your game.

Or, if your like me, you take the dragon for a different reason. It looks freakin' awesome!

-Crel

i have some reason to disagree. i had a star dragon with ofensive prince charge my ntg archers and it lost by 1 point and fled and then failed to rally. also vampire counts laugh at dragons and cairn wraths would murder a dragon. also there cores would hold i still and even take a few woulds off it

I've used a dragon twice in my HE army now and it had been very successful so far. Obviously it is a powerful force for combat, but I find the most useful thing about a dragon are the tactical advantages it can bring to your army as a whole. For one thing, it moves fast so it has no trouble aiding the rest of your army when needed. For another thing, it causes terror. It also has a breath attack, and although that wont win you any games by itself it can sure do some nasty damage to low toughness, low armoured units of infantry. And don't forget that any unit that suffers even 1 casualty from dragon breath must take a panic test as though it had lost 25% casualties from missile fire.

But I think the most useful thing about a dragon is that your opponent will be scared of it. The last time I took a dragon it was only a 1750pt game, so I could only take a dragon mage. My opponent deployed the bulk of his army (chaos) as a little fort in a corner with a war shine behind it. The soul purpose of that was so that I couldn't fly behind his lines and breath on his units/rear charge. He only had one unit of knights and a unit of marauder horsemen. Long story short, this meant that his tactics became inflexible and the bulk of his army remained stationary for 2 whole turns. On the other hand, I was left with enough flexibility to pick his army apart bit by bit.

One word.. Skulltaker, he is awesome and could quite happily see off a Dragon in one round of combat for a lot less points. Sure, he has to catch you first or you're dumb enough to charge him but you'll end up in a challenge and he'll chop that Dragon down NOM NOM NOM.

Dragons are not bad at all, but they can be countered so require careful use.

Yeah, that's sorta what I tried to say. Sorry if that wasn't clear with my atomic bomb metaphor. I admit, I haven't played against that many different armies, so most of my experience has been where the biggest threat was a Bretonnian Lord with a dragon-killer mix or a Bone Giant.

@ aBadger?: Yes, having an opponent scared of your dragon is a great thing. You can't really count on that in most games though, since (at least from my experience) an experienced opponent is usually not actually frightened by the dragon, but will work to take it down as efficiently as possible. This is where the dragon performs the same roll, if you get good dice. It can bottle up numerous amounts of foe trying to kill it. But that requires more luck than skill usually, so it's kinda dangerous to count on.

@ The Engineer: Skulltaker? What army is he, and what is he? I've never heard of him before.

@ Orcy: A Star Dragon running from Night Goblin Archers because it lost the combat by 1 point is not a normal occurrence. That's just a bad leadership roll, no offense. Because it would have had a prince riding it, it would have been rolling to get under 9. That's still an extremely good chance of staying. There are only 4 rolls on 2d6 that are higher. As to cairnwraiths and other Vampire Counts that you mention, again, I haven't played much against them, and never with a dragon, so I honestly can't say. But yes, I would imagine the Dragon to be more ineffectual against Vampire counts because undead are immune to psych and unbreakable. That's one of the situations I've mentioned in passing that you don't want to have the dragon go solo. Actually, you rarely want the dragon to go solo, cause that is when it gets beat.

Or against army with many shooters. Its not hard to hit dragon due to his large target rule, 5 and 6's hit the mage - he has only 2W and no AS, so its quite easy to shoot him off the dragon's back. Then will you not only loose an expensive mage, but tge sun dragon with Ld of only 7 has some serious chance to fail monster reaction test, which may cause some serious troubles to you. Dragon mage has to be protected - either by hiding behind some terrain features or by something like Sacred incense or Guardian phoenix.

As for Skulltaker, he is special character of Deamons of Chaos army (I dislike fielding special characters...). His main menace is that he is WS 9, has hatred and in challenges he causes killing blow on 5 and 6's and to creatures of any size (including dragons). But he has only movement of 4, T of 4 and 2 wounds - lord on star dragon should charge and kill him easily.

I have to agree that dragons, especially star, are excellent beings that can grant you victory. You have to play carefully with them, though, because they are far from being immortal and are too expensive for you to them get killed. And as Crel mentioned, they are beautiful models, as a HE player I could not resist to buy it if only for its appearance.

crel i play against people who can role 20 dice and not get a 6

Dragon tactics is a bit of an oxymoron I think.