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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.

Nah, the problem is not the amount of wounds.
The problem is that you get to add magic items or skills that give invulnerable saves and regeneration saves. Remove that and the dragons are no longer that much of a problem.

New info regarding this now. No need to look back to previous editions for a dragon now. Albeit, it isn't the same as the mount version, the Warpfire Dragon in the Arcane Journal has W6 as a standalone dragon.

I understand they wanted to simplify the rules, despite increasing complexity everywhere else...

But I don't think it was that good an idea to merge their profiles.

The ability to strike the rider separately was a way to balance their power out, without it they're just massive wound sinks.


They should probably have a rule something like:

Ridden Monster
Any hit roll of a 6 strikes the rider. Gain +2 to those wound rolls.

It wasn't about simplification, there were two issues. Firstly, like monstrous cavarly before it, that eventually became one model, the mounts for anything that wasn't a Dragon/had Ward/Regen were too easy to kill. Secondly, characters that were outside top tier eg Dragon Mages were too easy to kill.

Too easy to kill by what metric? By points they should have cost more if they were harder to kill.

They're currently too hard to kill. Their survivability has gone up massively. but they are relatively affordable.


There are two options:

Take them as two separate unit profiles that count as a single choice with a combined vulnerability as the price for that, or treat them as a single monstrous statline and make them really expensive.


The chaos lord has to pay +285 for a dragon, while a warpfire dragon is 375 by itself with worse stats.

I'm not sure how making a chaos lord's stats better and combining two units into a single profile and army pick is worth a 90pt saving.


The vulnerability of a rider IMO allows discounted points for the advantage of taking two units as one choice.

The current combined profile is just a massive monster at a discount price

It seems like you didn't read what I wrote properly.

I'm not sure what you're saying so probably not.

dragon don't have mounts so I'm assuming you meant any mount that wasn't a dragon?


Anything not a dragon was too easy to kill and anything not a dragon mage character was too easy to kill?

Given that this thread is about dragon mounts having too many wounds, I'd say that neither of your points were solved in this edition either.

They have too many wounds for their points costs.

If they were appropriately costed (more expensive), there would be some balance.

I don't think points are the solution here because their stats are too high to fit the game. When your character is rocking T6, W10 and protected under a 3+/5++/5+++, while throwing enough attacks to bulldoze any static resolution, points aren't going to solve the issue. Dragons cannot be effectively fought using the games core mechanics and seem to rely on either bringing your own or fishing for Monster Slayer hits. A dragon could cost 1000pts and still be a net positive because it will always kill something without conceding any VP in return.
My own suggestions would be some combination of;
- Reducing resilience. I don't think any Dragon should have 3 saves to hide behind and 10 Wounds is daunting. I'd prefer to see them closer to 7-8 Wounds along with making Regeneration harder to separate from Flammable.
- Granting more VP. I think you should get half VP once it's reduced to half Wounds.
- Limiting numbers. The horse has probably already bolted here but I think it's absurd to see 2 or even 3 Dragons in a 2k list. I'd see all Dragons limited to 0-1 regardless of army size. Ideally that's a 0-1 that is shared with Level 4 wizards so there's actually a choice to be made.

Mozzamanx wrote:
I don't think points are the solution here because their stats are too high to fit the game. When your character is rocking T6, W10 and protected under a 3+/5++/5+++, while throwing enough attacks to bulldoze any static resolution, points aren't going to solve the issue. Dragons cannot be effectively fought using the games core mechanics and seem to rely on either bringing your own or fishing for Monster Slayer hits. A dragon could cost 1000pts and still be a net positive because it will always kill something without conceding any VP in return.
My own suggestions would be some combination of;
- Reducing resilience. I don't think any Dragon should have 3 saves to hide behind and 10 Wounds is daunting. I'd prefer to see them closer to 7-8 Wounds along with making Regeneration harder to separate from Flammable.
- Granting more VP. I think you should get half VP once it's reduced to half Wounds.
- Limiting numbers. The horse has probably already bolted here but I think it's absurd to see 2 or even 3 Dragons in a 2k list. I'd see all Dragons limited to 0-1 regardless of army size. Ideally that's a 0-1 that is shared with Level 4 wizards so there's actually a choice to be made.

This is where the 'hit the rider' part of the original rules acted as a balancing feature, because the dragon would go crazy without a rider and often fly away.


If you want to have powerful statlines in the game then you need to explore nonlinear balancing solutions. Otherwise you end up with really compressed statlines that make dragons look anaemic or heros ridiculous (it's already weird that a dwarf is the same toughness as a griffon). Or difficult to balance expensive uber units.




Another example of nonlinear would be something like:

Mobbing Monsters
Any infantry unit that outnumbers a monster (higher unit strength) gains +1 to wound rolls.

I think they over buffed dragons whole over nerfing cannons. Personally I think +4 would been fine. I think this is made worse with lords getting more wounds.

As Daba already noted, the Chaos arcane journal adds standalone dragons. He mentioned the Warpfire dragon but there's also Galrauch. Both have 6 wounds. I've played a few games with the Warpfire dragon and while it is T6, with a 4+ save and 5+ regen (and sometimes a 5+ ward), it is very far from unkillable. I'd argue the opposite - its got excellent mobility and damage output, its drawback is its fragility.

As the OP notes, the problem really is with adding the dragon's full wounds to the character's profile when taken as a mount. It would be a solution is to just drop the number of wounds added when taken as a mount. Halve the wounds and its +3, so a Chaos Lord on dragon would still be 7 wounds at T6, and still really good. A High Elf Lord on a Star Dragon would be 6 wounds at T6, and still really good. It's a viable solution.

The other option would be to split the character and monster, and go back to the old rule of directing your attacks against either in combat, and shooting splitting between them 1-4 mount, 5-6 character, as in older editions. I prefer this option before we even look at balance, just because it is so much more fun. I have fond memories of 3rd ed (maybe it was 4th?) of my griffon dutifully staying to protect the body of my fallen HIgh Elf lord, or more often my Lord running about on foot trying to make himself useful after his mount got splatted. It just makes for great storytelling.

It would also produce a much better balanced system. A dragon unable to benefit from a character's regen and ward saves is quite killable, and even with his triple save a character brought back to 3 or 4 wounds is also killable. This option also has the added benefit of resolving a few of the problematic builds that banning a triple save wouldn't fix, such as Tomb Kings Armour of Ages.

It would also make Killing Blow/Monster Hunter a bit less screwy. Right now that functions as a 'roll a 6 and win the game' mechanic if you have monster hunter, while Killing Blow is generally very powerful but entirely useless against characters mounted on dragons. This is fairly unsatisfying in play. Splitting the character profile on a dragon would mean both Killing Blow and Monster Slayer would be able to have some impact, but neither would kill the whole model entirely.

I know a lot of people have shown some concern about dragons disappearing from play as they would become too vulnerable, but its important to remember that war machines don't do D6 wounds any more. Against a split profile dragon, with a Dwarf cannon you would still need 8 shots on average to kill that dragon (55% hit ratio, 5/6 wounds, 5/6 beat armour, avg 2 wounds). An empire cannon would need 5 shots. And that's assuming every shot hits the dragon, not the character. And then you have to consider with characters on dragons being a lot less effective, they would still be common in competitive gameplay but wouldn't be a near certainty, so there won't be lists filled with cannons just to counter them. Being able to survive 5 great cannon shots on average is fine, when the enemy only has 1 cannon.

 Wibe wrote:
Nah, the problem is not the amount of wounds.
The problem is that you get to add magic items or skills that give invulnerable saves and regeneration saves. Remove that and the dragons are no longer that much of a problem.

Not quite, its the interaction of high wounds and multiple saves. Spending 50+ points on magic items to boost your armour save, get a ward and a regen save can be a reasonable investment for a 4 wound character. For a 9 or 10 wound mounted character its a ridiculous bargain. Triple saves on regular characters are good, but they're a considerable points investment for a 3 or 4 wound character. But when they're protecting a 9 or 10 wound mounted character who is also outputting 9 or 10 attacks and D6 stomps, that's when they're a crazy bargain.

Cutting down the wounds from riding a dragon would fix this, and so would cutting down the triple saves. But the latter would impact all those other character builds that aren't anywhere close to OP.

SU-152 wrote:
They have too many wounds for their points costs.

If they were appropriately costed (more expensive), there would be some balance.

The problem with this approach is TOW has a kill - casualties system for determining the winner. Plenty of games are won by having the dragon using its high mobility to target 500 odd points of vulnerable enemy units, while everything else in the last plays hide and seek points denial. When many armies lack the ability to kill a kitted up character on a dragon before its scored its points, it doesn't matter if it costs 500 points or 800 points, reducing the rest of the army from 1400 points down to 1200 points doesn't matter when they aren't even needed.

Fundamentally, a unit that has mobility, huge damage output and extreme durability is going to be extremely problematic at any points cost. Given the nature of the unit, it needs to have mobility and high damage output, so the only way to bring it back to function within the game's rules is by making it somewhat vulnerable.

Mozzamanx wrote:
- Granting more VP. I think you should get half VP once it's reduced to half Wounds.

I think this change would improve the game considerably, well beyond any balance to characters mounted on dragons. It isn't even a game balance thing, I've just seen too many games where an army is wrecked, but the VPs give them a draw or even a win because units are just above 25% casualties, or were down to 1 or 2 models but managed to hide away and only give up 25% of their points cost. Too many really fun games ending with very unsatisfying results.

The old system was terrible, going back to this is just another over correction. Honestly just making them +4 wounds is fine, with a manticore being either +2/3 wounds. When it comes to 2.0, I suspect it will be a massive overcorrection again.