Ulthuan

This is all speculation and fun, but we have seen a fair amount of combined profile monsters and riders lately so it's fair to assume that this is the direction the game is heading. So I wanted to discuss how the StarDragon might look as I believe it will be one of, if not, the most powerful mount in the game.

Judging by how the other combined profiles have worked, wounds and attacks are combined, the rest of the stats are made from the highest available to the model.

So that would leave us with a dragon with the following stat line:

M6 WS7 BS7 S7 T7 W10 A10 I8 Ld10

Combined with 100 points of magic items, say:
Sword of might/striking, OTS, 4++, charmed/enchanted shield, and slap on dragon armour for 2++ vs flaming, I actually think he would be the most powerful, non special, combat character in the game.

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I don't understand why they are releasing these combined profiles.

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About time!

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If this is the case I really don't know what they are playing at. Going from what we have today, even if the split profile isn't a perfect system, and then to something like THAT? It basicly s***s all over anything that isn't a canon or another monster and even in the case of canons it will on average take more than 5 shots to bring it down and thats without a ward. Witha 4++ this goes up to close to 11 canon shots on average to bring it down.

I am not a huge fan of canons especially since not everybody has acces to them but putting something on the table that can destroy an infantry army by itself and that 3 canons wont reliably bring down in 3 rounds of shooting seems a bit silly...

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While it is about time for the most powerful creature in fluff to actually be the most powerful creature around, I don't think he will be. My prediction is we're getting emperor dragons back. Which relegates star dragons to second tier status.

As for combined profiles, they are so much better then having separate stats for mount and rider. While it doesn't matter too much for monsters on the scale of star dragons, who with separate profiles are still great. It does make a big difference for lesser monsters. A combined profile dragon mage would be great. 6 ASF S5 attacks, 7W, T5, 1+ or 2+ armour, room for a ward, offensively a lvl4 mage with 2 spells. I'd take that.

Same for griffons. At the moment eagle characters are way better then griffon ones because of a combined profile. Higher T for the rider and better protection for the mount make a big difference. Offer that same logic to griffon characters and I bet we will be seeing heaps more griffon nobles. 7 ASF S5 attacks base, 2+ armour save, T5, 6W. Sounds like a kick-ass BSB or support noble.

As for the stardragon profile, I think Sacrees prediction sounds about right. Though I would hope for some extra punch here and there. Or perhaps wave the hard cap of 10 on stats. But indeed:
M6 WS7 BS7 S7 T7 W10 A10 I8 Ld10
Comes with ASF and 3+ armour save build in. Charmed shield, golden crown, OTS, Talisman of preservation. I would actually consider sword of striking here. Base S7 means wounding a lot of stuff on 2+. +1 to hit means you're hitting a lot of stuff on 2+ with a reroll. Alternatively, you could just bring the starlance for 10S10 hits.

As for the emperor dragon, his profile reads:
M8 WS9 BS7 S9 T9 W10 A10 I8 Ld10
ASF, 3+ armour build in, you can purchase magic levels upto lvl 4 (BRB lores or lore of dragons). And since you can't go above 10 attacks, he does 2 wounds per wound.

Of course, if that's just a regular character, imagine what a special character on dragon looks like... The we really start heading to the description of Aenarion walking out of the temple of Asuryan for the first time: "...he faced a howling Daemon horde... With a single throw of his hunting spear, Aenarion slew the Daemon-lord who led the charge. Then, scarcely breaking step, he took up the Daemon's weapon and butchered the rest of that abominable host."

The End Times are upon us...

Rod

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So, here's the thing, I don't think we've seen a combined profile that wasn't a special named character. These ET releases have given us two sets of 3 characters, all named special characters btw, Glottkin and Karl, all with combined profiles. I don't think I've seen, for example, any combined profile of say just a generic Vamp lord on a zombie dragon. As much as I would love to see a combined profile for a stardragon, and truly I'm a huge dragon fanatic, I don't know if we'll actually get one. Thus far all the combined profiles have been new mounts, new as in some completely new made up mount not just model, with one exception, ascended Karl, so if we're to draw any inferences out of this, I'd expect we will probably get some sort of triple character kit as well (possibly with DE, HE, and WE riders), presumably on a new mount type, and while a dragon is the obvious fit for elves, I'm not certain that will come to pass. Also it's worth noting that Glottkin did not receive the "best of" stat in each category, one of the brothers is a chaos lord, but yet the beast's Initiative value is still a 1, and every combined profile character thus far has not had saves anywhere near a 1+ or 2+ armor AND a ward on top of that, Karl is the closest thus far with a 3+ 4++, and hes a border line ascended god at this point.


I think the real question is after these ET releases, will GW implement a system for combined profiles.

All that said, Tyrion mounted stardragon, using a combined profile, when GW, when??

I think End Times are somewhat an indication of the direction GW is going so I for one see this happening. It also has the effect of tightening up the rules and speeding play. Sure a Dragon like this with a combo-profile will tear up an army. But, its cinematic and GW has shown that they cater to the 'fun' gamer, not the tourny player so they don't care that such a model becomes nigh unstoppable.

Also, I don't see Tyrion riding a dragon. He has malhandir and being a cav. dude is his thing. He has never shown any inclination towards dragons in the fluff. Imrik though...

Imrik is going to lead an army of dragons to save the day

He will be riding an emperor dragon

BTw, new glottkin has 12 wounds do think they might wave the Max 10 stat

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Regarding combined profiles has anyone considered Caradryan on Ashtari? 8 ASF S7 attacks with D3 wounds, 7 T6 wounds with a 4+/4++, mr 1 and his frost aura for not too many points really. Flaming attacks as always is a potential weakness but I'd definitely give him a try for just over 400 points. Not sure how attuned to magic would work with him, but im guessing he'd be able to benefit from the plus 1 attack plus 1 strength rolls, either of which would be sweet. An average of 6.3 wounds to a steam tank in 1 turn is really nice.

Although new karl franz does 20... In a challenge with Karl Franz he'd do 5 wounds to him, then die and do another, which isnt bad really, he'd be 2/3 dead costing you around half franz's points.

It seems to me that the multiple wounds rule may become the most valuable rule in the game in 9th.