Dragon Mounts in Regiments

    The OPR Regiments hype train has not stopped. The cult has grown and we have a lot of cool stuff lined up. We’re talking map campaigns, regiments of renown, magic items. Those are all posts for another day, though. Today, I am writing about dragons.

    Steve and I played a little undead on undead game this weekend and it marked the latest escalation in weapons of mass destruction: dragon mounts. His vampire on zombie dragon marks the first major monster riding hero to hit the table for our little group and, even though its only been a few days, I know of several generals already making moves to join the dragon rider club. Characters mounted on dragons is one of the fantasy wargame classic tropes, so I can’t blame anyone. It also doesn’t hurt that they are one of the better bully units in the game, crushing infantry under their claws and blades while sporting defenses that will keep them in the fight throughout all four rounds of play.

    That last part is what I was missing in my off the table analysis. I completely underappreciated how difficult it is to deal with a tough(15), 3+ Def, Fear(2) unit. At one point in our game, I had a unit of 10 skeletons able to get a flank charge on Steve’s dragon rider. Some quick statistics showed me that even with the dragon unable to fight back, my skeletons would lose that combat more times than not and crumble for their efforts. I had an opportunity to rear charge his dragon with ambushing zombies and that, too, was more likely to result in me losing half my unit without the vampire lifting a finger. Fear is a huge issue for non-elite troops. These are not models you can just throw dice at. When you do fight them head on, you’re usually going to be dealing with 3 AP(3) and 12 AP(1) attacks at Quality 3+ or 4+, with many dragon riders sporting some form of Furious. There aren’t many units that can weather an onslaught like that and most monsters will take enough damage to get close to a morale check. All while Fly lets them jump over screening units and hide behind terrain. Its going to be fun finding a strategy to address them.

    A lot of armies can take dragon mounts, but there are three heroes that stand out to me as being the best. Each of these has something that your average dragon rider lacks: improved defenses, raw power, or a competitive advantage in monster fights. 

    Let’s start with the guy who made my life miserable for two hours; the Vampire Master on Zombie Dragon.

    While pricier than many heroes with access to a dragon mount, the vampire master is about as complete a package as you could hope for. Insatiable Hunger boosts its offensive potential, making its Furious trigger on a 5 or 6 on 13 attacks. War Disciples have access to this, too, but what they lack is this model’s survivability. The protected upgrade ignores one point of AP, making this dragon rider effectively Def 2+ versus most of what your opponent will use against it. AP(1) weapons become completely worthless and the versatile AP(2) weapons that normally flex well between armored infantry and monsters suddenly under perform. The zombie dragon’s Regeneration adds an additional save to the model for anything that sneaks through its defenses while the Undead rule ensures it will not route or shake if it does lose a combat. Probably the best all around dragon in the game. 

    On the raw power front, it is hard to compete with this behemoth from the Eternal Wardens faction: the Eternal Lord on Great Dragon.

    With a staggering 18 attacks plus a breath weapon, no other dragon rider can come close to this attack output without getting very lucky with Furious rolls. The 3 additional tough is not a tremendous improvement over the tough(15) of most other heroes, but fearless helps keep it on the battlefield when it is below half strength. Most dragon riders are best as a bully unit, fighting medium or light infantry to clear them out and get an activation advantage, but the 8 AP(2) attacks let the eternal lord be a little more flexible in who it charges. This is the sledgehammer of dragon heroes. 

    This is the dragon rider I expect others to end up fearing: the Black Orc Boss on Wyvern.

    At first glance, there is not much very exciting about this hero aside from its significantly lower cost and Furious. It has a pretty standard dragon profile but trades a breath weapon for a few additional claw attacks and has quality 4+ compared to the Quality 3+ of the units we looked at earlier. Goblin Shroom Sniffers, which should be in just about every orc army, gives it +1 to hit in melee so its on par with its competitors. Beyond that, the Black Orc Boss has two rules that make it one of the best dragon hunters in the game: War Cry and Headtaker. War Cry adds +2” to advances and +4” to rushes/charges, giving it a larger threat range than all non-Lust Disciple dragons. This gives you a ton of board control and gives you a very good chance of getting the charge against other dragons. Headtaker gives AP(+2) whenever fighting a unit where most models are tough(3) or higher. That turns all 16 of the black orc’s Furious attacks into great weapons against monsters. On the charge, that averages about 13 AP(3) hits, putting every dragon without regeneration into routing territory in one combat. Easily clearing monstrous infantry in addition to chaff is a nice bonus. This unit is the best dragon killer I’ve encountered so far and I expect in the next few months, as players assemble their scaly beasts and they get more table time, our greenskin players will initiate the next round of nuclear proliferation.

That's two posts in a row where I have written a wall of text about Regiments. Though there will be more of these posts in the future (sorry Gage!), I have a number of units for my Undead nearing completion so expect some hobby posts in the near future!