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Looking through the lists and character mounts, great eagles have W3 on profile, but add +1W as a mount, so 2 less than it's unmounted profile. Both high elf Phoenix have W5 and add +3W as a mount, which is consistent.

Meanwhile, the dragon adds +6W. We don't have an unmounted dragon to compare, but this would imply an unmounted dragon would have W8 on profile, but if we look back to the 8th edition profiles, they have W6 (on average, with the high elf trio being 5, 6 & 7), and the contemporary Eagle is identical to it's current profile and the Griffon is W5 in 8th while adding +3W in TOW like the Phoenix mounts. So it seems dragons are 'adding' two more wounds than they should, if they are to be consistent with the other monster mounts we know of and instead behaving more like a chariot mount.

Was there a forgotten application of -2 wounds to the modifier when copying the stats for dragons (and the manticore) for combined profiles from 8th?

Personally I think they should have gone with "use the highest of rider or monster" to keep it reasonable, which in most cases would be 6 for Dragons.

 Daba wrote:
Looking through the lists and character mounts, great eagles have W3 on profile, but add +1W as a mount, so 2 less than it's unmounted profile. Both high elf Phoenix have W5 and add +3W as a mount, which is consistent.

Meanwhile, the dragon adds +6W. We don't have an unmounted dragon to compare, but this would imply an unmounted dragon would have W8 on profile, but if we look back to the 8th edition profiles, they have W6 (on average, with the high elf trio being 5, 6 & 7), and the contemporary Eagle is identical to it's current profile and the Griffon is W5 in 8th while adding +3W in TOW like the Phoenix mounts. So it seems dragons are 'adding' two more wounds than they should, if they are to be consistent with the other monster mounts we know of and instead behaving more like a chariot mount.

Was there a forgotten application of -2 wounds to the modifier when copying the stats for dragons (and the manticore) for combined profiles from 8th?

Agreed.

Dragons giving just +4 W (total W -2 like other monster mounts) seems logical and would also fix "dragonhammer".

I don't think past stats should dictate the design too much. But from a gameplay perspective, dragons seem way too hard to kill. There are many layers of rules that contribute to this.

High toughness. Many wounds and stacking armour saves, ward saves and regens.
So to make dragons easier to kill there are many ways to change this.

You could make them easier to hit (they are a large target after all)
You could reduce toughness or wounds
You could remove some layers of the saves, like no stacking of regens or wards.
Those are just some examples.

Also making games about objectives, where monsters or characters can't take objectives.

Or introducing injury brackets, where wounded monsters lose effectiveness the fewer remaining wounds they have. Eg. a monster under half starting Wounds can't Fly anymore.

Or go back to those good days when static CR mattered and a dragon charging a unit from the front was on average losing due to the musician. And this still didn't make dragons any less popular then, which makes you wonder what the designers were thinking when writing TOW.

Recently in a comment on YT I was told that taking 100 blowpipe Skinks for 600pts is unfair but even if they all could be allowed to double shoot every turn of the game at a Chaos Dragon (200shotsx6 turns= 1200 poisoned shots) they would only slightly overkill it on average (14W inflicted vs assumed 6T, 2+sv, 4+ward, 5+ reg - not sure if these stats are exact, as I am just watching the game from the sidelines correct me if they aren't).

 Daba wrote:
Looking through the lists and character mounts, great eagles have W3 on profile, but add +1W as a mount, so 2 less than it's unmounted profile. Both high elf Phoenix have W5 and add +3W as a mount, which is consistent.

Meanwhile, the dragon adds +6W. We don't have an unmounted dragon to compare, but this would imply an unmounted dragon would have W8 on profile, but if we look back to the 8th edition profiles, they have W6 (on average, with the high elf trio being 5, 6 & 7), and the contemporary Eagle is identical to it's current profile and the Griffon is W5 in 8th while adding +3W in TOW like the Phoenix mounts. So it seems dragons are 'adding' two more wounds than they should, if they are to be consistent with the other monster mounts we know of and instead behaving more like a chariot mount.

Was there a forgotten application of -2 wounds to the modifier when copying the stats for dragons (and the manticore) for combined profiles from 8th?

In general, The Old World just treats Behemoths and Chariots different to cavalry (including Mounstrous Cavalry) for the most part.
For example, the Necrolith Bone Dragon adds 5W, the Warsphinx has 5 wounds when taken solo and adds 5 wounds when taken as a mount.
Tomb King Chariots have 3 wounds by themselves and add three wounds to a Character when taken as a mount.
Meanwhile, for whatever reason, GW has decided Monstrous Creatures (like the High Elf Griffon and both types of Phoenix, as another aside why the hell are the phoenixes not full monsters?) don't get the same treatment when used as mounts.
Except for Chaos Warriors it seems, where the similarly sized Manticore and Chimera (both Monstrous Creatures and not Behemoths) add 4 wounds or have 4 wounds respectively

Cyel wrote:
Also making games about objectives, where monsters or characters can't take objectives.

Or introducing injury brackets, where wounded monsters lose effectiveness the fewer remaining wounds they have. Eg. a monster under half starting Wounds can't Fly anymore.

Or go back to those good days when static CR mattered and a dragon charging a unit from the front was on average losing due to the musician. And this still didn't make dragons any less popular then, which makes you wonder what the designers were thinking when writing TOW.

Dragon's weren't popular or taken often during 6th-8th edition.

Recently in a comment on YT I was told that taking 100 blowpipe Skinks for 600pts is unfair but even if they all could be allowed to double shoot every turn of the game at a Chaos Dragon (200shotsx6 turns= 1200 poisoned shots) they would only slightly overkill it on average (14W inflicted vs assumed 6T, 2+sv, 4+ward, 5+ reg - not sure if these stats are exact, as I am just watching the game from the sidelines correct me if they aren't).

I don't think any dragon can have a 2+ save, 4+ and 5+ regen together. The closest would be a high elf one at 4+/4+/5+ or 2+/5+/5+ (the former spends almost the entire budget while the latter just over half on defensive items).
On a general high elf one, 2+/6+/5+ would be reasonably common; 3+/5+ would be common now on a Chaos Dragon (which has one more wound); 4+/5+ on a Wood Elf one, for general builds not built around avoiding skink blowpipes.
Blowpipe skinks at long range using multiple shots will takes 584, 270 and 162 shots on average respectively. A hundred skinks would 1 turn the Wood Elf dragon, 2 turn the chaos dragon and 3 turn the high elf one on average rolls.

 Matt.Kingsley wrote:

In general, The Old World just treats Behemoths and Chariots different to cavalry (including Mounstrous Cavalry) for the most part.
For example, the Necrolith Bone Dragon adds 5W, the Warsphinx has 5 wounds when taken solo and adds 5 wounds when taken as a mount.
Tomb King Chariots have 3 wounds by themselves and add three wounds to a Character when taken as a mount.
Meanwhile, for whatever reason, GW has decided Monstrous Creatures (like the High Elf Griffon and both types of Phoenix, as another aside why the hell are the phoenixes not full monsters?) don't get the same treatment when used as mounts.
Except for Chaos Warriors it seems, where the similarly sized Manticore and Chimera (both Monstrous Creatures and not Behemoths) add 4 wounds or have 4 wounds respectively

Eagle and Phoenix (and Griffon), although not behemoths, are still full fat monsters rather than monstrous cavalry (so don't benefit from single character movement or hiding from targeting by being near cavalry). It's strange they're treated differently, especially with the Manticore. The Warsphinx might be a case of it being treated like a chariot (which is implied in it's own entry) rather than a regular monster mount.

Cyel wrote:
Also making games about objectives, where monsters or characters can't take objectives.

Or introducing injury brackets, where wounded monsters lose effectiveness the fewer remaining wounds they have. Eg. a monster under half starting Wounds can't Fly anymore.

Or go back to those good days when static CR mattered and a dragon charging a unit from the front was on average losing due to the musician. And this still didn't make dragons any less popular then, which makes you wonder what the designers were thinking when writing TOW.

I think the current combat res system works fine with "regular" units but I agree that maybe using the system from previous editions for big monsters might be a good approach, so if you can make them fail a Break test they run away. The big problem at the moment is you can't easily kill them before they get into combat, then you often struggle to kill them in combat and they have high Ld so even when you do win they tend not to run away. They're the perfect combination of points sink and offensive power and one of those advantages probably needs to go.

I think the dragons are good, you need more the one cannon to kill them and they are a beast in combat. Its how a dragon shoud be.
In past edition you would not field them because warmachine could kill them with one shot.

So its the age of the Dragons.