8th Ed. Counter for HE Stardragon

well i guess the kroxis can do ok against the dragon
star dragon and the prince with heavy armour and great weapon is 387 points
8 kroxigors is 400 points

lets say kroxis pass terror test every turn, cos thats probable, they will fail one in five turns.
the prince and the dragon will do 5.553.. wounds per turn, so thats rounded up 2 kroxis dead.
so we have 6 kroxis left. they can direct 12 hits to kill the prince and 6 to hit the dragon, which leaves the dragon with 5 wounds. kroxis lose by 2. thats 50% chance to pass break test. though the dragon is probably the one charging so they lose by 3. thats 36% chance to pass break test.

lets say they stick. the dragon again kills one krox. we have 5 left. 15(+2.5) attacks does 3 wounds. dragon has 2 wounds left. draw.

third round dragon kills one krox. we have 4 left. kroxis finish the dragon.

i see now there is indeed a good chance to kill the dragon with kroxis. especially if u support them with Ld in the first round. cool. ofcourse if the HE player realizes this, its prob easy for him to keep the dragon away from kroxis as it is flying.

but the Oldblood on CO and on Carno will lose to the star dragon. The prince has good chances of almost killing the OB before he can even attack. If equipped with great weapon. If the OB survives, the prince is dead and the dragon gets hurt but star dragon will very likely kill OB+CO/Carno. Ofcourse OB+CO isnt nearly as expensive but OB+Carno is almost. perhaps 2 OBs+CO could kill it? thats probably 50/50 chances i guess.

and i see i forgot the dragon is only I 2. So that indeed makes the Pit and Sun a hard counter. good to know: )

[Edit: oh right didnt take into account that the kroxis dont get PF from second rank, well it wouldnt make any difference ]

[Edit2: also ive just used the vanilla stats of the Prince, theres no stopping him taking for example a 4+ ward. though then we would also need to take into account that we can put more kroxis into it, but it would prob swing the fight more into HE players favor]

 

yes if he has a great weapon. so i guess the prince probb wont kill OB in 1 round

 

If memory serves, the SD alone is 390, and the prince is around 140, so it costs at least 530, not 389. Which makes kroxigors a perfectly cost effective(granted, not by much) to rid yourself of the dragon. The thing that makes flyers so hard to deal with, is the strike where they like and to kill them, you need to catch them(I doubt it would ram strait into the kroxigor). And don't forget it's breath weapon.

 

lol you are right ive mistaken the points of the sun dragon... urgh. stupid stupid stupid.
yes star dragon+prince is indeed 530. which is alot. and if u can get 8 kroxis in with a slann ld bubble, HE player gonna have a bad time. ofc as u say, flyers are hard to catch.

 

Oldblood on a CO with Dawnstone, 4+ ward and a GW doesn't do too bad now, does he?
The Oldblood is also quite mobile himself, he can react to the movement of the flyers. He is not as fast, but he will get there.
Pinning the Stardragon in place with a tank-build oldblood, directing all attacks at the dragon seems like a solid first step. You can challenge and charge a unit in the flank for combat resolution (never hurts to make your opponent test!) or you can bring a stegadon with sharpened horns over. Or kroxigor. Or use magic.
The Oldblood has a decent chance of seriously hurting the dragon, which is the most dangerous part of the Stardragon/prince combo. A lone prince is annoying, but not as worrying.

I'd go with and oldblood and react to my opponent's moves. He has higher movement with his Fly, but he also has to stay back a bit; making his actual movement longer. You will never be ás fast as a flyer, but you can keep up with it and make sure you are withing charging range for at least the first couple of turns. If your opponent decides to dance around and wait for an opportunity to be old-blood-free, he is not using his 500+ point model for 6 turns of the game.
All you need to do is charge and pin him. If your oldblood dies in the process, without giving your opponent a real chance to wreck havoc among your lines: I'm happy. Sure he has killed your tank, but you relatively have more points left in your army to deal with the remaining stuf.

The downsides of a big expensive model (Slann included!) is that they have a hard time competing in every turn, in every phase of the game. If you simply buy time by pinning the enemy in place, redirecting it, stopping it from moving/doing something or letting it flee of the board...you get a virtual advantage. Not in actual points, but in board presence. Doing this will cost you points and will require effort, but there is nothing more frustrating than having your big Uberlord/Deathstar only kill some skinks, the odd salamander and and oldblood...while seeing the rest of his army crumble.

Exactly the reason why I prefer units over characters

Magic wise: Shadow seems like a very interesting option, with death coming in second and high magic third. High magic has the versatility to swap around a bit.

The Hunted

 

Featherfoe Torc is a good magic item to consider when facing off against big fliers. Forcing them to re-roll hits can reduce the amount of wounds they do by between 1/3 and 2/3 depending on their WS.

 

True. But the item is a bit narrow in it's use. If you know you will be facing dragons and other flyers it might be worth it.
In general, the item is a bit narrow in it's use. So I'd rather choose a ward save or some other protective item (like the 2+ ward vs flaming attacks) that is seen more on the battlefield.

The Hunted

 

How do you counter a Star Dragon?

This video may leave you with an idea...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAYL5H46QnQ

 

I've fought tons of star dragons with my army and I almost never run and slann and I certainly have never lost to that giant goofball. Most games I play he's dead by turn 1 or 2 thanks to chameleon and blowpipe skink fire backed up by a 6 dice Amber Spear. Also since I run a Carnosaur Lord most HE players realise they have to fight him with something big to win and will charge the dragon in to fight, which if he hasn't taken any damage (unlikely) he'll probably kill the carnosaur itself but more often then not my lord returns the favor and kills the dragon. But majority of the time I block his charge with Skrox and skirmishers and just beat him to death with poison and magic by turn 3 at the latest.

-Overlord of Serpents

 

Hmmm. This leads me to believe your HE opponents are inexperienced at best. Four bolt throwers can kill a Carnosaur in a single turn, and there are many good spells that will likewise wreak havoc.

As for the Featherfoe Torc being narrow, absolutely it is. I wouldn't take it in an all-comers list. But the OP was asking specifically how to deal with the Star Dragon. Amusingly, whoever is mounted on the back will re-roll all their dice to hit - they re-roll misses due to ASF and re-roll hits due to the torc

It's an option worth considering, even just for amusement value. After all, we play Warhammer for fun, right?
~gwh

 

Well the way I build my list I usually can manage to give my Carno Lord hard cover with intervening units or terrain and often have most if not all of the bolt throwers disabled by turn 2 at the latest. Often they can't shoot my carno lord turn 1 and on turn 2 I'll be charging my Skrox or too many other threats and they often have to ignore the Carnosaur as they usually hope the Star Dragon can bring him down.

So I would say the inexperienced player would shoot my big scary dinosaur, cause then I get an easy time of conquering his back lines and fold in my troops to surround his units and finish off his army. But then again I have waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much experience against High Elf players. Honestly I fear an untimely Frost Phoenix charge to a Star Dragon.

-Overlord of Serpents

 

Hi there I found this topic very interesting so I did some math. I wanted to see whether a kitted oldblood could kill the prince before dying from the prince+stardragon attacks.

The most competitive prince kitting in my opinion is giant blade + dragon armor + charmed shield + dawnstone. This is 4 WS7 attacks, rerollable to hit, strenght 7. In defense it has T3, 2+ rerollable armor save and 6+ ward.

The oldblood builds that I consider most competitive are the ones where the magic points are spent for defense. Since it is possible to cheaply give him S7 with a great weapon I don't see the point in spending points in offense.

These are the magic kittings I considered:

1 armor of destiny + dawnstone + potion of thoughness
2 glittering scale + talisman of preservation + potion of thoughness
3 stegadon helm + talisman of preservation + potion of thoughness
4 light armor + talisman of preservation + potion of thoughness
5 glittering scale + dawnstone + potion of thoughness

and in all of them he is riding a cold one of course!

In the link below you will find the wounds suffered in these different OB builds after 2 rounds of combat. Note that at the beginning of the second round the oldblood drinks the potion of thoughness. On the right of the graph you can see the wounds taken by the prince against a great weapon oldblood.



http://i59.tinypic.com/5knko2.jpg



I think that the verdict is clear: you should on average take down the prince after 2 combats. And you should on average be able to do so with the first 2 builds, a bit more risky with the 3rd build and very risky with the fourth and fifth build.

My favourite build is the second because I always have 2 cowboys scarvets in my armies and I never give them glittering scales or talisman of preservation so it fits very well that the oldblood gets them.

 

interesting...

 

When I faced a lord on star dragon:
In his first turn, he pushed it forward, in the reach of my ripperdactyls (3 strong). So I decided to charge the dragon with the rippers, if im lucky enough, a killing blow does the trick against the lord. When the lord was done with its attacks, 2 of my rippers remained, but I managed to land that killing blow, sacrificing them wasint in vein^^ In return, one more ripper was killed and the remaining one fled away. In his second turn he moved it to the flank of my saurus wich were used as bunker for my slann. In my turn I just used metal signature on the dragon, leaving it on one wound, wich was removed by skinks.

 

The puny elf was never the problem.
The dragon is

You need to take down both to get points.

 

@Skinquisitor: i am not sure that what you did was allowed. the rule book states that: "if a character has a ridden monster, the whole model is treated as having the troop type monster and thus follows all the rules for both characters and monster models". Since the prince is treated as if it has the troop type monster, I don't belive that you can killing blow it.

 

The HE Stardragon must be quite a costly model to field, for that many points a large enough unit of Kroxigor might do the trick (if you can get them into combat).

 

Killing Blow doesnt work on a lord on a dragon until the dragon is dead. Infantry ridding monsters gain monster troop type too so are immune to killing blow.

 

Anyone tried OB+`GW+CO+Featherfoe Torch+Glittering Scales and 5+ ward yet?
I was facing a DE player and expecting heavy on the Peg riders. This guy brings a Dragon instead (WS6,S6,T6,W6 etc)
No probs this guy kills the dragon anyway in two turns.. We both were a bit suprised.