Topic: Slaying Ethereal Dragons - A Brainstorm

[Clymer]

I haven’t fought an ethereal dragon yet, but the idea terrifies me. And given that about 1/4 of the folks in my gaming group play high elves, it’s only a matter of time before I face one. So, I’m just brainstorming ideas, and collecting ideas I’ve seen in other threads to see what people think might work.

First off, thinking about the dragon, it’s a three-fold problem:
1. It’s a goddamn dragon, whether ethereal or not. It’s hard to target because it can avoid LOS arcs and is tough as nails even when you can hit it. Whatever else a dragon slaying unit must be able to do, it has to be highly maneuverable or long ranged or have 360 LOS, or all three.

2. Obviously, you need a way to deal with the ethereal part, either using magic attacks or preventing the ethereal from happening in the first place.

3. After dealing with the dragon, you still have to deal with the rest of a potent army. This means you can’t over-do it when it comes to investing in slaying ethereal dragons. This is even more true in an all-comers environment where you may not even encounter the ethereal dragon and so can’t over-invest in fighting it.

Possibilities:

Illusionist with Mace of Helstrom. Statistically speaking, without taking into account anything else happening on the battlefield, this is the strongest option for dealing with ethereal dragons. If 2d6 magic cannonballs can’t take out the dragon, nothing will. But there’s a couple problems with this approach. First, it’s a definite glass cannon, with only T4 and no option for getting a ward save if you take the mace plus a talisman of protection or similar. You can put him on an Imperial Griffon to get more wounds and a 5+ armor save, but it’s still pretty vulnerable. And it’s a lot of points for something that really only is designed to target large beasts. Put the wizard on a Pegasus and he becomes more vulnerable, but now can charge 360 which could really help, considering the Griffon isn’t any more maneuverable than the dragon and may have trouble coming to grips with it. The other upside of the Pegasus wizard in this role is that he can play lone-character to avoid being targeted until the time is ripe to attack.

Illusionist with Dragon Slaying Sword. Pretty similar to the illusionist with mace, but saves 15 points on magic weapons that could be useful elsewhere. Still not enough points to pick up a ward save though. Also, much less versatile. The mace of helstrum is still useful against non-monstrous targets.

Magic missile wizard. This wizard is just trying to overwhelm the dragon with magic missiles, hoping to get a large number and roll a lot of 6s to wound. The build is a level 3 or 4 with the Arcane Familiar, Ruby Ring, and Wizard’s staff. Use the lore familiar to get The Summoning and Doombolt, and of course you have the Ruby ring for fireballs. That’s rolling with 5+ to cast on the first two and +3 on Fireball. This chap also has enough points left over for a ward save item and is useful against all kinds of other targets. He also doesn’t have to perform the difficult task of getting into combat with the dragon, or trying to survive if something goes wrong and his spectral doppelgänger doesn’t go off. The downsides are that he had one or two spells that will be left up to the dice roll to determine what they are, and that it will take a lot longer to kill that dragon when depending on those 6s to wound.

Dispel wizard. This is a level 4 wizard with a wizards familiar and a dispel scroll or two. His game is to prevent the dragon from going ethereal in the first place and let the cannons do the work. This may also be a good application for the War Altar’s -2 casting roll aura. Downsides are that the dispel scrolls are one-use and that when tooled up fully for anti-magic, it is impossible to get bothered the Lore Familiar and a 5+ save. But otherwise, this is probably the most versatile wizard approach to dealing with the ethereal dragon, so he should do better in an all-comers list.

Commanders + Dragon Slaying Sword. I’m going to just write off the captain for this role: two attacks just isn’t enough to give him a good chance of slaying a dragon before getting wiped out in return. The general is better, but not by much. Either option is much tougher than the wizard and has the same trade offs when considering whether to mount them on a griffin or Pegasus.

Demigryph dragon slayer. Giving a Demigryph mounted character the dragon slaying sword in a unit of Demigryphs is a less maneuverable approach than the flying mounts, but is more versatile in an all-comers environment and does have a chance of tracking down the bastard. Or, the Demigryph preceptor is just as good as a captain here. Give the preceptor the dragon slayer sword, add a general to the unit with the Ogre Blade, Giant Blade, or Sword of Justice, and you can be getting some damage done even if you’re not rolling 6s to wound with the dragon slayer.

Magical Demigryphs, magical knights. This is taking one of these units and adding a WitchHunter with Suffer not the daemon. Similar issues with coming to grips with the dragon as in in the DGK unit above, but a lot more reliable damage… unless the dragon throws down a challenge. The good news though is that the witchhunter can sulk to the back rank after refusing the challenge and the unit’s attacks are still magical, as far as I can tell. Also would be very helpful to plan for some magical buffing on these attacks with a battle list spell, or word of pain cast on the dragon, or both ideally. Downsides besides the challenge of getting this unit to the dragon is the cost of the witchhunter who really doesn’t have a purpose when the dragon isn’t ethereal.

Magical Outriders. Similar to magical DGKs and Knights, you’re adding a witchhunter to a large unit of Outriders, probably about 10, and hoping for sixes on your many rolls to wound. The upsides are that you can do this from range with a 360 shooting arc. The downsides are the same as for magical DGKs, with the addition that the outriders are much squishier.

Anyway, those are my compiled options plus a couple ideas. Wondering what you all might be thinking.

[Gorim]

Demigryph grandmaster with white cloak and ogre blade / 2x charmed shield + paymaster coin + ogre blade can try to take it down, deal few wounds.

Otherwise, just lvl 4 wizards with spells that will make the dragon waste time, for example by putting a los blocking vortex in its face, or the illusion spell that forbids charging next turn.

EDIT: witchhunter can't ride barded warhorse, so putting him in an unit of demigryphs / knights makes the whole unit lose counter charge, which is at least in my book, a bad idea.

[The Peacemaker]

A quick note about the Doppleganger wizard on griffin - it is not simply designed to target large beasts. This game has very limited damage output gor rank and file units, and the highest average strength Is l5 or 6, and the highest common AP is like -2. So being able to doppleganger a S10, AP5 that gets 2D6 hits means this guy chews through units. And you got the griffin attacks plus stomp even if you fail the spell, it's still going to pull it's weight against 95% of enemy units.

Now, all that said, I think it is a risky choice to send this guy against a Dragon with a 5+ regen and a 5+ ward. ....but that's hero hammer for ya. Reduced killyness in R&F but the monsters get extra defense and attacks. Heh, in T9A the dragons are capped at a 3+ armour save with very few ways to get any kind of 5+ without a drawback. And that game has R&F units with AP2 average along with FIER everywhere. Units dish out 15 attacks or people don't bother taking them, lol.

I really think these Dragons are so unbalanced that there is no real counters to them.
Then there is the Initiative problem with the elves striking before the wizard. Now a griffin wizard has lots of wound so might be able to take the first round of swings from the elf. ...but not the pegasus wizard.


I want to like the pegasus but it's just not cheap enough. For the extra 130pts you get so much more defense and combat stats. ...whats that 130pts going to get you elsewhere? 5 knights? Not even 2 demigryphs. I guess it gets you a cannon.

And a pegasus needs a cavalry unit of 5+ models to not be targeted, right?
One knight unit of 8ish knights with drilled is ok to take. But then the pegasus has to stay in range of the cav unit. It's an option but for 130pts it's just better to take the griffin.

[Clymer]

Demigryph grandmaster with white cloak and ogre blade / 2x charmed shield + paymaster coin + ogre blade can try to take it down, deal few wounds.

Otherwise, just lvl 4 wizards with spells that will make the dragon waste time, for example by putting a los blocking vortex in its face, or the illusion spell that forbids charging next turn.

EDIT: witchhunter can't ride barded warhorse, so putting him in an unit of demigryphs / knights makes the whole unit lose counter charge, which is at least in my book, a bad idea.

Thanks for the ideas!

For the withunter, yeah, either you lose counter charge, or mount him on a Pegasus which makes him even more of a points sink.

[sedobren]

Illusion is not that bad against high eleven dragons. You should be able to survive the prince striking first, with the signature spell it's -1 to hit, griffon's Ws 5 equals being hit on 4s. That's 2 attacks on average, so it really depends on what weapon the HE has.
What i've seen so far is that usually the prince takes mostly defensive items (armor of caledor, seed or rebirth, dragon helm etc) leaving little for dangerous weapons with monster killer or multiple wounds. He usually has one so that he gets magical attacks but that's it. Some might take the dragon slaying sword (sword, talisman of protection, seed of rebirth and dragon helm) but again it's 2 attacks on average, most i've see have the bedazzling helm despite being very expensive - that does nothing for your illusionist mage.

Obviously with the mace he'll probably get to roll both the ward and regen save. Math wise it's 7 hits from the 2d6, 5.8 wounds, the. the double 5+ save which is about 55.55% so on average you should inflict 2.57 unsaved rolls, multiplying that for the expected value of a 1d6 you get a final result of 9.02 wounds, just what you need to kill the prince on dragon.

edit: i forgot the wizard's own attack, another 0.65 wounds after saves, plus the griffon inflicting 0.333 from the claws and less than 0.1 inflicted wounds fron the beak attacks. All in all another lost wound bringing the total to a nice 10.

[The Peacemaker]

Pretty good odds. But spikes do happen. Either you roll low for the 2D6, or you wiff your wounds, or they make their wards saves.
So just be prepared.

[Gorim]

Mage on imperial gryphon + 2 great cannons + cannon from the steamtank is what I have to deal with a dragon. The problem is, that for example yesterday the local tournament was won by high elf list with two star dragons (prince + sun dragon and lvl4 mage + sun dragon). Two is too much to cope

[sedobren]

Mage on imperial gryphon + 2 great cannons + cannon from the steamtank is what I have to deal with a dragon. The problem is, that for example yesterday the local tournament was won by high elf list with two star dragons (prince + sun dragon and lvl4 mage + sun dragon). Two is too much to cope

Damn two star dragons (one being mage) is one of the most oppressive lists i can think of, only rivalled by the  VC's necromancer engine castle. Even with a specific counter list from the best counter army it's tough.

[The Peacemaker]

Mage on imperial gryphon + 2 great cannons + cannon from the steamtank is what I have to deal with a dragon. The problem is, that for example yesterday the local tournament was won by high elf list with two star dragons (prince + sun dragon and lvl4 mage + sun dragon). Two is too much to cope

....but I thought people would just refuse to play those kinds of lists!

[commandant]

Tournament players are, after all, often playing a different game. I often thought that tournaments in a Role Playing Game were weird. I wonder what a DnD tournament would be like.

[PowerSeries]

I've run one of those once, for a school club.  There was one adventure written, a playtest was done with a group of GM's, and the each GM ran the adventure for another group on game day.   Everyone had fun and while we did compare how much extra treasure and such each group found, it's not like we have everyone a score.  And there wasn't a trophy.  But we all had fun. 

I (as a gm) may have accidentally read "ancient red dragon" instead of adult, but look no one actually got eaten so it's all good.

[The Peacemaker]

Tournament players are, after all, often playing a different game. I often thought that tournaments in a Role Playing Game were weird.

I started with 8th edition and after 3 years of playing casual i was surprised to learn that people held tournaments for the game. I was like "with all the random and severe imbalance how can you do a tournament with prizes?". Only tournaments I was familiar with was magic the gathering which have an extensive balanced rules set.

I'm was just shocked when The Old World came out and tons of players didn't care about obvious Imbalance and kept saying they just wouldn't play people who take powerful lists, lol. But i guess those guys only play a handful of games a year and don't go to tournies even if they say on the internet they go to tourneys.

[commandant]

Maybe warhammer tournaments should have set lists the players can choose from.

Tournament players are, after all, often playing a different game. I often thought that tournaments in a Role Playing Game were weird.

I started with 8th edition and after 3 years of playing casual i was surprised to learn that people held tournaments for the game. I was like "with all the random and severe imbalance how can you do a tournament with prizes?". Only tournaments I was familiar with was magic the gathering which have an extensive balanced rules set.

I'm was just shocked when The Old World came out and tons of players didn't care about obvious Imbalance and kept saying they just wouldn't play people who take powerful lists, lol. But i guess those guys only play a handful of games a year and don't go to tournies even if they say on the internet they go to tourneys.

There is this. I play something like 1-2 games a month so  I can feel free to ignore such nonsense. You slap down two dragons in anything below about 10000 points and I'll shake your hand

[Dazgrim]

Mage on imperial gryphon + 2 great cannons + cannon from the steamtank is what I have to deal with a dragon. The problem is, that for example yesterday the local tournament was won by high elf list with two star dragons (prince + sun dragon and lvl4 mage + sun dragon). Two is too much to cope

The ethereal dragon will laugh at cannon, unless they are dwarf magic cannon.

Against High Elves you almost want all champions to have a 5pt magic sword to provide at least the illusion of a threat against ethereal units (not that they won't single out the champions and murder them at initiative higher than yours).

[Clymer]

Tournament players are, after all, often playing a different game. I often thought that tournaments in a Role Playing Game were weird.

I started with 8th edition and after 3 years of playing casual i was surprised to learn that people held tournaments for the game. I was like "with all the random and severe imbalance how can you do a tournament with prizes?". Only tournaments I was familiar with was magic the gathering which have an extensive balanced rules set.

I'm was just shocked when The Old World came out and tons of players didn't care about obvious Imbalance and kept saying they just wouldn't play people who take powerful lists, lol. But i guess those guys only play a handful of games a year and don't go to tournies even if they say on the internet they go to tourneys.

I’m also a little skeptical of the “I just won’t play that list” people. In anlmost 20 years of gaming and tournaments, I have only resigned 1 game that I refused to continue, and it had nothing to do with the person’s list and everything to do with how unpleasant the person was.

Then you have different kinds of tournaments and different goals people have for them. There’s hardly a better way to get 3-5 games in a weekend while meeting new players and seeing new ideas for armies. Imbalanced or not, it’s a pretty good gaming experience. In some tournaments I have tried to cover all the bases, like how do I deal with 2 dragons, or two level fours. Whereas in others I’ll build as tough a list as I can without covering all the bases. My reasoning being that I have very low odds of facing the worst kinds of lists twice, because they tend to move on the top tables and if you don’t care about winning it all, then I’ve always thought the most fun was in the middle tables.

And then there’s the attempts by tournament organizers to balance the game through comp restrictions and scenarios. I haven’t seen a tournament pack yet that actually succeeded in this. My advice to anyone attempting to write such a pack skips all the silly scenarios like capture the coins and line breaker, because they invariably end up favoring some armies over others. As for comp, don’t do this silly army list stuff like, “flying lords are 0-1 per 2000” and “1999+1” points is your army limit to hamper the 0-1 per 1000 stuff. Again, that just hurts some armies that don’t need any hurting. Instead, just name the thing you can’t do explicitly, like, Dragons cannot become ethereal by any means.” You may not take more than one of: Star Dragon, Moon Dragon, or Chaos Dragon. Just be direct in banning the problem things and leave the rest alone.

[commandant]

I've said it before and I'll say it again. I think a lot of nonsense could be cut out by changing the percentages. If you want to go 25% lord and 25% hero that is grand but I'd consider something like 20% lord 39% hero.

In sixth it was 1 lord 3 heros. So maybe 12.5% lord and 33.5% hero.
 
Of course it'd be maths to do that so instead you could say.
2000 points
250 points max on lords
750 points max on heros.
500 point min on core
500 points max on special
500 points max on rare

I can't remember if special and rare are 25% or 50% so I set them at 25%.

This would cut out all the duel dragon (and most of the dragon) nonsense. I donno how it would hurt armies that are super dependent on lords.

It'd also murder my 2 wizard lords at 1250 points list.

[sedobren]

some packs limit lords to 33%, which works pretty well limiting two dragon lords. It's nearly impossible to fit both a prince and an archmage (or even a regular mage) within 666 pts, if you manage to do it it's probably going to be either lesser dragons - like the sun dragon - or very few magic items meaning less protection

[The Peacemaker]

Maybe warhammer tournaments should have set lists the players can choose from.

Lol. That's what the rules are: lots of various units with points that are supposed to be balanced so you can create various lists.

Rather than writting up a bunch of preset lists, why not just balance the points or tweak a few rules to make it work. Ya know, do GW's job for them.

Just amazes me how big a % of players just can't conceptualize changing/adding rules or adjusting points. Projects like T9A and WAP are literally that but nope, people still want to buy a book a rules that have that feeling of officialdom from a higher authority or whatever.

[Gorim]

T9A is somehow hard to adapt to "friendly games in the basement with beer involved". It's a shame, because GW is unable to produce decent rules.

[commandant]

Maybe warhammer tournaments should have set lists the players can choose from.

Lol. That's what the rules are: lots of various units with points that are supposed to be balanced so you can create various lists.

Rather than writting up a bunch of preset lists, why not just balance the points or tweak a few rules to make it work. Ya know, do GW's job for them.

Just amazes me how big a % of players just can't conceptualize changing/adding rules or adjusting points. Projects like T9A and WAP are literally that but nope, people still want to buy a book a rules that have that feeling of officialdom from a higher authority or whatever.

Because it would be easier to write lists than to rebalance all the different armies.

T9A is somehow hard to adapt to "friendly games in the basement with beer involved". It's a shame, because GW is unable to produce decent rules.

I tried fo play T9A a few times and I don't know why but I didn't like it much. No real story. Admittedly that was in its early state

GW's rules are, minor adjustments aside, quite good. It is worth remember that they are writing a Role Playing Game. At least they think they are so it should be compared with something like DnD or black powder.

I have a set of 7 year war rules where the  rule for army comp is
Roll x number of officers (depending on country). Give each officer a command (depending on country). Remember that auatrians are likely to have less veteran troops than prussians.

[Warlord]

Just amazes me how big a % of players just can't conceptualize changing/adding rules or adjusting points. Projects like T9A and WAP are literally that but nope, people still want to buy a book a rules that have that feeling of officialdom from a higher authority or whatever.

Yeah, its weird hey. I have encountered that too.

[Dazgrim]

I suspect part of it is a suspicion of bias. Rules issued by GW have the gloss of being balanced because they in theory shouldn't favour one faction over another. Where in a social gaming context playing with house rules can feel as though one side is trying to get an advantage.

House rules tend to work best in small groups which have a stable membership, or at an event where they have been clearly communicated in advance.

Take Mordheim for example, it's a 25 year old game with a wealth of fan content, but most people tend to play with only official warbands.

[Warlord]

Over the years, my scepticism for GW 'balance' is pretty high.
Both due to their lack of understanding of how to do it, and also their interest in selling models.

I get that its also a 'standard' that at least everyone is using the same poorly balanced rules so everyone has the same advantage / disadvantage, its just frustrating.
And I am not advocating T9A style balance, because that sucks all character out of the game too, and in my mind, the designers of that also favour a certain style of play and balance according to that, which is not where I think it should be.

I get it. But I just want everyone to see that the balance that I think is the right one 

[Clymer]

Now that we have a new FAQ, let's strike out option 1: Illusion wizard + Mace of Helstrum.

We can also strike out the Vanguarding Outriders with Witch Hunter. I think outriders+witch hunter are still a good option, but losing the vanguard move will make it tougher to adjust after character drops.

[The Peacemaker]

Illusion Wizard + Ogre Blade is still an option. But now you are wounding on 5+ rather than 2+, and reduced AP. I would not charge a full wound dragon that has a 2+/5+/5++ (which HE's can still take).