7th Ed. Stopping a High Elf Dragon

Any ideas for stopping a high elf star dragon with a prince on it? Prince has 2+ re-rollable armor save and 4+ ward. Dragon is toughness 6 with 7 wounds and 3+ armor save (sorry skink skirmishers).

I played high elves tonight and brought that unit against lizardmen (my friend and I traded armies). I think he'll be bringing the star dragon, now that he sees its raw power (it chewed through an ancient stegadon in 1 turn and then went on to kill 3 other units). 6 strength 7 attacks + 4 strength 5 attacks from prince is nasty. Lizardmen don't have any high strength war machines (where's a cannon when you need one) to bring this thing down... so what do you use against the scaly one?

One idea is to bring slann with beast lore and cower the dragon as much as possible to just keep it out of play. What other ideas do you have?

 

I played one last week and got lucky enough to corner it so it had to hold to my charge. My Old Blood on Carnosaur with Blade of Realities chewed through it fairly easily. Since the dragon doesn't have ASF you just need to hope your Old Blood survives the Prince's attacks, then pop the dragon with the blade. The carnosaur will be able to chew on the Prince. The hard part is cornering the dragon though.

 

probably spells are your best bet, spirit of the forge is nasty against the prince and even against the dragon. basically you just have to ignore armor saves even if hte prince ignores half your wounds and you need 6's to wound the dragon you just have to focus enough on teh unit. in my last game agaisnt dark elves i met a black dragon with a dreadlord on it that had a 3+ save and the dreaded reverse ward save, 2 turns of skink shooting took the lord down to 1 wounds and took 2 wounds off the dragon even with a 3+ save.
20-30 skirmishers should take that dragon down if you manage to shoot at it enough times, and for that all you need to do is make him come to you.
another option would be a slann + steal soul + bane head. its a short range spell unfortunately, but it takes off 2 wounds at a time and after the lord is dead the dragon won't fare well since any result on the monster reaction chart means either that he stays in place, he's stupid at a low Ld or he charges anything he has in sight.
not a full proof tactic but its the only one barring old blood + carnosaur

 

The Prince will have Dragon Armour so will be immune to any Lore of Metal. I would suggest Beast Cowers and redirectors to try to limit the damage it causes, and then kill the High Elf players other stuff.

 

Beast of cower helps to get it pinned down, then just hit it with everything you got (rocks, blowpipes, javs, giant bows, burnning alignment, razordons). Get everything in a decent position, get a beast cower off so he can't escape and go ape-sh!t on his ass. Usually the dragon is so expensive that its the only real major threat in the list anyway, and the game will mostly revolve around taking the dragon out before he can do too much damage.

Spirit of the Forge is a pretty decent choice, ~5 hits that wounds on 5+ and ignores saves (as hits on the rider will most likley be ignored). Remember that sometimes its enought to severly damage the dragon to force the opponent to play defensivly with it. Most players wouldn't exactly chuck their Prince on a Dragon into the heart of battle when there is only 1 wound left on the prince and 1-3 on the dragon.

Pit of Shades isnt bad either. Sure it will only kill the draon on a roll of 6, but 1/6 chance of gibbing a super duper mega dragon worth 700+ VPs? Yes plz. Creeping Death + Bane head is also pretty interesting against the lord, but as its useless against the dragon (which will soak up 66% of the hits) its not exactly the optimum way to deal with it.

Redirecting a flying Large Target is very very tricky if you play a competent opponent.

 

I ment redirectors as in blocking diverters. Sure he can take a turn to fly to a different flank, but that is one more turn he isn't killing stuff (and one more chance to Beast Cowers).

 

Lore of Metal is considered flaming attacks?

 

There's no way that any competent player is going to allow your carnosaur to charge his dragon... unless it gets bogged down in combat against a stubborn steggie. You can't beast cower it without the slann, and you can't have a slann and old blood in same list... So I think Slann with Beast lore is truly the way to go here. Then, hope for uranon's thunderbolt on a skink priest for that ignore armor potential.

 

rule of burning iron, spirit of the forge and distilation of molten silver are all flaming attacks

 

I agree with using either Lore of Beast or simply shooting the Prince off his steed. Those are going to be your best tricks to pull out since getting into close combat with it will definately ruin your game!

 

Slann (with complete lore of heavens) and uranon's thunderbolt could work. a skink priest with plaque of Tepok has a good chance of getting a thunderbolt as well. and maybe I would still try the skinks. 3+ AS is tough, on the other hand, you can throw many skinks at it. if he decides to chase them, even better, you can keep him busy for a while.

 

well, i played a dark elf dreadlord on dragon the other day and i was lucky enough to get a charge on it with my skink chief on ancient with warspear and my oldblood on carnosaur. i basically tore that thing apart. all attacks directed towards the dragon because once the lord gets down on foot, i cause terror. and then run that little thing down.

 

Well that's definately one way to go about it...to heck with spells and the lot! Pure Lizardman brute strength!! Yeah!

 

if you think about it, lizardmen is good at 2 things, strength and magic. but the only down side is that you have to pick one.

 

A competent player should be able to easily avoid a charge by either a stegadon or a carnosaur into the dragon.

 

I definitly agree with skinker, a competent player would not in any normal situation allow his dagon to get charged by a carno or war spear steg. As a warhammer is a very complex game obviously there are a million situations where even the best players will be forced to allow a carno or steg into their dragon, but its not something that you can rely on, and it won't happend often (most likley to fluke LD tests or IF cowers).

Blade of realities was mentioned before, but a Star Dragon has great LD and WS, so the Old Blood only hits with 2.5 attacks forcing 2-3 tests on LD 9, which he probably will pass anyway. The carno has WS 3 vs the dragons WS 7, so he only hits on 5s resulting in 1.33 hits, scoring 0.9 wounds (multiplies to an avarge of 1.8). Throwing your expensive Lord at a dragon when you statistically will loose as a Star Dragon does an avarage of 3.8 wounds on a carno, killing it in 2 rounds (as it strikes first the second due to in).

Uranons thunderbolt does an avarage of 0.38 wounds to the dragon and 0.38 to the prince. It would take 10.5 bolts into the dragon to bring the prince down, and the dragon would still only have taken 3 wounds out of 7. Unless he plays with 2 DDs and you play with Slann & 3 piests that all roll thunderbolt then you won't get 10-11 bolts on him. Poison works okay, still takes 4.5 poison hits to cause 1 wound (and the rider will most likley have 2+ save, reroll and a 4+ ward), so to cause the 7 wounds the dragon has you need 189 shots into the dragon which isnt an impossible feat.

Killing the rider is pretty impossible as well, he has a 3+ "mount ward", 4+ regular ward and a 2+ save that he can reroll. He is also immune to all flaming attacks so Lore of Metal goes out the wiindow. Even if you take out the rider, which is very hard, he will most likley pass his monster reaction test and then you still have a 7 wound beasts that hits harder than an unkitted Bloodthirster (i.e. pretty damn hard!).

 

Would not have been a star dragon though at that point level. The lower ones are a bit more manageable, I agree... It's just that the star is near unstoppable.

 

there's only 2 ways i've ever dealt with big flying nastys.

1. Poison via board control. While it is a lot faster than your stuff, careful placement of units can deny them a lot of good charges. Even a tooled up star dragon/whatever doesnt really want to be charging into the front of TGs.

2. Pretty much linked to the first point, just lure it away with little units. If they start getting frustrated and kill a few skinks, so much the better. The longer you can keep all those points out of the game, the better.


Obviously its not a foolproof strategy, but imo, lizardmen are one of the least well equipped armies for killing big flying nastys.... its just so crushing when a big dragon goes piling into your lovely stegadon on turn 2 absolutley mincing it in one round