How to get the most out of "dragons"?

By dragon I mean 300+ points monster or titan with the fly special rule.

As awesome and scary as they are, how do you get their worth out of them? It a decent chunk of points.

You could get two good regiments of infantry, decent regiment of cavalry and a hero or an infantry horde and some chaff for that.
The cavalry can hit roughly as hard and is fast too.

Cheaper and smaller flyers can threaten the same flanks for a little over half the points. While offering the same unit strength.

What can a big flyer do that a combination of units for the same points can’t that is worth the knock to US?

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I’dd love to see what people say as I’ve avoided dragons in favour of proper units. They seem like a risky investment but maybe I need to double down and go with 2 or 3

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Distraction carnifex is what I like about my arch demon. Not sure if that actually works in more competitive games though.

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It is difficult to quantify the threat and differences to your opponent’s gameplay.

Threat Projection is the main thing, rather than actual damage being done. Especially with something like brew of haste giving 22" threat range, get it on a flank, point it down the enemy line and it causes all kinds of havoc with forcing your opponent to think through their moves. The height means they can see over units, fly to move over them and enough attacks and CS to reliably break a unit on a flank charge. Even if you never send it into combat the whole game, it can win you a game by being able to dictate your opponents movement to an extent.

Their main job is being threatening. Especially towards units relying on high defense to stay alive.
Their very high CS and 3+ melee means that they are quite deadly for the high def, medium nerve, units.
They enjoy watching objectives or important lanes of movement from a flanking position.

They should cooperate with other units so that they threaten to make a double or triple charge, since they really want to break the enemy on the charge.
Being stuck in combat they not only risk dying, but their threat projection is reduced to practically zero.

Avoid tarpits like zombie hordes. If you get stuck into something like that, you will most definitely not be a happy dragon.
Have a strategy for facing war machines. (other units that have ways of killing the war machines.) It is not worth sending the dragon to take them out, but you cannot stand in front of 3 cannons for 6 rounds…

It is tricky to get the full value for the points, but when used correctly they can be good.

Also, they look great! :grin:
(Seriously, this is one of their main selling points)

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I slightly disagree. I like jumping a dragon into a war machine for an easy kill and then rotating to face all the delicious enemies facing the wrong direction. Situation dependent of course.

Getting a dragon into the opponent’s back line is really where the dragon shines in my opinion.

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@VigoTheButch : Well, if you can get to it without wasting a round or two, or get horribly countercharged, then it’s good of course. But often war machines are placed in awkward/guarded and/or faraway places. (or at least, that’s my experience when piloting a dragon) Dragons in the backlines are gold (except in some situations involving Surge).

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Oh yeah, Surge is a hard counter for sure!

I find that you can usually get to those war machines if you have the Speed 10 on the dragon. But you’re right, sometimes it just isn’t worth the time to get all the way back there.

I don’t mind biding my time though. A late game precision dragon strike or two can really win a game sometimes. But not every time, so thankfully that keeps dragons from being auto-include.

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I haven’t used dragons in v3 yet. But last edition saw me using a winged slasher for my orcs. I agree that these huge things have advantages and disadvantages. They really are huge, seeing over almost everything means you can also be seen all the time. I personally think that a dragon is way too expensive to be a war machine hunter.

Coming to the question if it is worth spending many points on one model instead of a horde of infantry is a question of taste and the rest of the army. If you are playing some kind of alpha strike list, a dragon is probably a choice that cannot be missed.

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I must say I’m diverting a little from the 75x75 titans to the medium fliers which are on a 50x50 base due to space economy. I can usually fit a 50x50 for a double charge, but a 75x75 is often problematic. The medium flier has the same threat projection at far less point costs.

My undead army uses vampires on undead pegasi these days over the revenant kings on flywyrms and in my KoM army I really dig the general on large flying beast. As these don’t break the bank point wise and come on 50x50, I recently painted up a 2nd to use them as a pair.

That said, it’s good to see that the large beasties are no longer an auto-include without them suffering seriously in the stat department. It’s just the lack of US and the high point costs which makes them not always a viable target. We’ve come far from KoW 2nd ed where the double dragon was more or less the standard.

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Amen! :clap: I like how the most powerful ones are slightly harder to manouver now. It really helps balance them out.

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