How much of a problem is Impetuous on a Prince on Dragon?

[Pash]

Ok, so just been mathhammering some fights with a kitted out Prince on Star Dragon (with Dragon Slaying Sword) vs the tooled up Nurgle Chaos Lord on Dragon and it's a bit of a slog, I tell you. What really swings things in our favour is being able to hit with WS8, which we can get from the Blood of Caledor Honour. Obviously, it comes with the downside of Impetuous but I was wondering, how much of an issue is that likely to actually be? We want our Prince to be in combat as much as possible and provided you position him in charge range of a couple of units, even if he does fail the test, he's got options and all it means is some other unit dies instead.

I can see it being an issue on other models who want to pick their fights (Dragon Mage, Dragon Princes) but the Prince is a nasty guy, he wants to get stuck in and the sooner the better.

Convince me i'm wrong here, please.

[Axiem]

Some armies this will be a big problem. Good tomb king players for instance. Setup small chaff unit with Champion within range and for the next 2-3 turns, you're tied up eating champions while he resurrects the unit back. When you come out of it, you get hammered with Great Bows and Catapults. Not ideal.

OnG might similarly be a problem, if he can get Fanatics out after holding you up successfully.

As for the rest, I think it's not that big of a downside and you can probably live with it and/or mitigate it with normal defensive positioning or LOS blocking turn 1-2.

However, if you're really worried about it, make sure to put the Dragon facing sideways/backwards turn one so first turn you get your full move forward to at least give you options.

Kind regards,

Axiem

[Morgen]

It's a reasonably deep tree to go down.

You've got very good odds at making a 17-18 inch charge with a swiftstride flying unit, if you're going second and your opponent nudges something into your 19" charge range that can safely flee a charge or is unbreakable, deployed in a place it can get into your threat range and then you fail the impetuous roll it could be problematic if they can also then threaten your prince with another unit on their next turn. And if their plan doesn't backfire where you catch the unit anyway, massacre it and cause panic tests in surrounding units.

So basically if you fail to deploy your units well, lose initiative and your opponent has anti flying unit bait and monster slayers you might be in trouble. 50% of the time. Oh deary me.

I honestly don't see it being a huge deal for most games, or for most of our units. The dragon mage maybe but that's such a weird thing anyways...

[Pash]

Given the lack of responses and high views, I consider the questions settled.

They're not much of a problem and they can be managed. Sorted

[Dark Dwarf]

To paraphrase morgen: there is a 50% chance, against a canny opponent, that a quarter of your army and your most proactive unit is rendered useless and potentially killed. Seems like an unacceptable risk to me...

take a unit of 20 night gobbos with fc and a warbanner. It is 102pts and guaranteed beats the charge of any prince on star dragon. given they double outnumber him there is a 17% chance he breaks (not fbigo) from combat on YOUR turn, and a guarantee he is not where you want.
A unit of hammerers or skeles (with very reliable champion res) for example, can pretty much tie him up for the whole game.
I think the bane of the large monsters are static combat res under the new rules. Max overkill is only ever 6, basic blocks start at static res 4, and double outnumber means auto breaks are deceptively easy. The obvious solution - don't charge them; but with impetuous...

Now this all needs to be assessed against the purported benefit - killing a chaos lord on dragon. Given the rest of Helves match up nicely against most chaos, and the choas lord out costs the stardragon most the time, simply tying him up all game is still likely a winning outcome.

ergo I don't see much point, given the risk benefit, for the blood of caledor

[Csjarrat]

That sounds sensible. It is optional on the prince thankfully!

[Ielthan]

Honestly they should have given Blood of Caledor furious charge, +1 WS is not worth Impetuous at all. +2WS would have made it worth thinking about for the 5's to hit for WS 4 enemies.

[Morgen]

My entire point was that it's dramatically lower than 50% chance in reality. You need kind of almost a perfect storm of things to be true for it to be an actual hindrance.

Impetuous is a 50/50 shot. A coin flip, yes. However for it to be a game effecting hindrance there's a lot more that needs to happen.

If you've got only 1 valid charge target in 19"/17" and you don't want to charge it. This is where the 50% of the time charge from Impetuous happens for your order disobeying elves from Caledor. However this scenario is not something that's going to happen 100% of the time you place down a unit of dragon princes or a star dragon Caledorian prince.

Your opponent has to somehow generate both of those conditions to trigger Impetuous, which not all of your opponents will be capable of doing given the models they're fielding or the deployment of armies. If there's stuff in range you want to charge, then who cares about Impetuous? So after all that, you're in this bad situation now we're doing out d6 roll which means that even these cleverly laid out plans only work half the time anyway! It's the same tactic that gets used against a unit with the Frenzy rule, only those traps are always successful against Frenzy and only successful half the time with Impetuous. (Obviously Frenzy does more than that but still.)

That's also not including the fact that traps can backfire. Surprisingly luring things that are dangerous in combat and love to charge both tend to charge quite far and be dangerous in combat. Units that were designed to flee from a charge to bait your unit in might still end up caught and wiped out or flee too far and end up in bad positions. It's almost never a no-risk gambit to lure something. A canny opponent can certainly weigh those risks.

There's this whole rest of your army that just might be helpful too in making sure it's not a bad thing your unit charged Impetuously. We've got access to a lot of magic or very fast models that can support our Impetuous models perfectly well. Chariots, silver helms, reavers, scouts, ambushers, etc. The downside of this ability is just the minor cost for our very potent units. It's ridiculous to assume somehow it's always going to be bad.

[Giladis]

It's ridiculous to assume somehow it's always going to be bad.

For random games I wouldn't care and it is somewhat in character with Caledorian background but at an event where there is a limited number of turns/games that determine the eventual ranking the risk of that happening even in one of the turns/games is too high from a dependency of list performance point of view.

[Dark Dwarf]

My entire point was that it's dramatically lower than 50% chance in reality.
It's ridiculous to assume somehow it's always going to be bad.

I think it's debatable how dramatically lower it is, but that doesn't really matter. You also don't have to assume it is always bad.
The point is it is definitely sometimes bad and that's all it needs to be, to be worthless.

Competitive Warhammer is about probability control. Increasing variance where there was none before is mathematically infinitely less powerful. It needs a strong positive reason to do so.

The jump from WS 7 to 8 is just not an important inflection point.
You gain offensively 0.66 hits per combat round only against WS 7 (roughly 0.06 extra wounds on the charge against the chaos lord aforementioned). You gain defensively only against WS 8 (about 25% less hits). Not much is WS 8
I cannot see how that is worth the trade off ...

I agree with lelthan that either of those changes would have made it a more interesting choice

[Halinn]

My entire point was that it's dramatically lower than 50% chance in reality.
It's ridiculous to assume somehow it's always going to be bad.

I think it's debatable how dramatically lower it is, but that doesn't really matter. You also don't have to assume it is always bad.
The point is it is definitely sometimes bad and that's all it needs to be, to be worthless.

Competitive Warhammer is about probability control. Increasing variance where there was none before is mathematically infinitely less powerful. It needs a strong positive reason to do so.

The jump from WS 7 to 8 is just not an important inflection point.
You gain offensively 0.66 hits per combat round only against WS 7 (roughly 0.06 extra wounds on the charge against the chaos lord aforementioned). You gain defensively only against WS 8 (about 25% less hits). Not much is WS 8
I cannot see how that is worth the trade off ...

I agree with lelthan that either of those changes would have made it a more interesting choice

It's not just a WS bonus, it's also a 6+ ward save that doesn't cost from the magic item allowance.

[Pash]

You’re essentially paying 9pts for a 6+ ward and +1WS, at the cost of a controllable downside. Yes, that downside can catch you out if you ignore it but it will likely only be an issue once in a very rare while. It’s about cost vs benefit and I think the benefit it worth the cost/risk.

[Prince of Spires]

take a unit of 20 night gobbos with fc and a warbanner. It is 102pts and guaranteed beats the charge of any prince on star dragon. given they double outnumber him there is a 17% chance he breaks (not fbigo) from combat on YOUR turn, and a guarantee he is not where you want.

How does the night gobbo unit win combat? They have a static res of 5 (2 ranks, banner, war banner, closed order). Dragon charges, Champion challenges.

Dragon Prince kills, close order. That's already 2. Prince can get +5 overkill, and with the dragon attacks and stomps will get those for +7 combat Res.

Gobbos lose by 2, and test at -1ld because of terror, so on a 5 I think.

If they make that, then in the dragons next turn there's no champ and the dragon wrecks the unit.

That's of course assuming the dragon charges the gobbos instead of something else.

[TyrrenAzureblade]

In my games so far, my dragon has been incredibly successful in collapsing weak flanks. Since he's a character, he deploys last, and in all of my games, my opponents and I have had about an equal amount of drops, so they've had very little to counter-deploy with. I basically place it where I want to charge as soon as possible. Even when chaffed, I've been able to overrun into favorable combats. I've yet to field Dragon Princes but I anticipate doing the same, or screening them with a Great Eagle, charging them both (Eagle first obviously) when I need the Dragon Princes to charge.

[Francis]

I don't think it is a big issue, the dragon will stomp almost anything it faces into the ground anyway.
My go to dragon build will be: Prince on Stardragon with Blood of Caledor, Bedazzling Helm, Seed of Rebirth, and Sword of Might, shield.

The Sword of Might is there to ensure that the unit isn't caught out by Ethereal units and gives the Prince a slight damage boost, the unit has a 2+ 6++ 5+++ save, but the selling point for me is bedazzling helm combined with WS8, it ensures that only WS9 and up hits on better than a 5+. Granted, WS8 is not normal, but a chaos lord on dragon ha a decent chance of getting it through Gaze of the Gods. Then of course it allows an elven prince to hit any of the lesser races on a 3+, as Asuryan intended.

Impetus is also a weakness that a good player can attempt to use, and I actually think that is a good thing, when I look at how good Dragons are this edition (even if I think a Moon Dragon should have 1 more attack and I4 like the other standard dragons).

[Prince of Spires]

Then of course it allows an elven prince to hit any of the lesser races on a 3+, as Asuryan intended.

You will actually hit plenty of R&F models on a 2+, as Asuryan intended... That's a change to the To Hit table this edition. If your WS is more than double your opponent's, you hit on 2+.

[Francis]

Well, yeah, not worse than 3+ would be more precise.

[Dark Dwarf]

How does the night gobbo unit win combat? They have a static res of 5 (2 ranks, banner, war banner, closed order). Dragon charges, Champion challenges.

Dragon Prince kills, close order. That's already 2. Prince can get +5 overkill, and with the dragon attacks and stomps will get those for +7 combat Res.

Gobbos lose by 2, and test at -1ld because of terror, so on a 5 I think.

If they make that, then in the dragons next turn there's no champ and the dragon wrecks the unit.

That's of course assuming the dragon charges the gobbos instead of something else.

You are right; it needs to be 21 gobbos. So 3 pts more.

Gobbos have banner, warbanner, close order, 3 ranks (horde) for 6 CR.
Prince gets 6 from max overkill. I tried looking for a while in the rules, but close order bonus requires 2 models (please correct me if wrong here - I would like to use blood of calendar)

So 6 vs 6 and gobbos have a muso...win every time

[Halinn]

close order bonus requires 2 models (please correct me if wrong here - I would like to use blood of calendar)

You're looking for the Lumbering rule on page 195

[Dark Dwarf]

Thanks

[Iain]

Let's through another option in the mix.

Now make it a noble on sundragon. Now that +1 WS to 7 is a big bonus (quite a few WS6 around that he gets better at hitting and a hell of a lot of WS3 Troops that he gets alot more defence against).

He can get a respectable save and offensive power (I'm looking at perhaps 3+/6++/5++ full plate (dragon armour), shield, seed of rebirth, giant blade or GW.

He's obviously not as damaging but a very powerful hero level. He's not as big a point sink as the tooled up prince and having him pulled out of position in the event he is baited out is not as big a deal as he may not be the army general.

Thoughts?

[Csjarrat]

Let's through another option in the mix.

Now make it a noble on sundragon. Now that +1 WS to 7 is a big bonus (quite a few WS6 around that he gets better at hitting and a hell of a lot of WS3 Troops that he gets alot more defence against).

He can get a respectable save and offensive power (I'm looking at perhaps 3+/6++/5++ full plate (dragon armour), shield, seed of rebirth, giant blade or GW.

He's obviously not as damaging but a very powerful hero level. He's not as big a point sink as the tooled up prince and having him pulled out of position in the event he is baited out is not as big a deal as he may not be the army general.

Thoughts?

That's a fun option, be interesting to see some trial lists.

[Ielthan]

Let's through another option in the mix.

Now make it a noble on sundragon. Now that +1 WS to 7 is a big bonus (quite a few WS6 around that he gets better at hitting and a hell of a lot of WS3 Troops that he gets alot more defence against).

He can get a respectable save and offensive power (I'm looking at perhaps 3+/6++/5++ full plate (dragon armour), shield, seed of rebirth, giant blade or GW.

He's obviously not as damaging but a very powerful hero level. He's not as big a point sink as the tooled up prince and having him pulled out of position in the event he is baited out is not as big a deal as he may not be the army general.

Thoughts?

Nice idea but on a sun dragon, with say talisman of protection, seed of rebirth, shield and great weapon he still comes to 321 pts. Just 50pts more gets you a fully tooled up Prince on a Lion Chariot. I think if you were going for a sun dragon build the value lies in his breath weapon, which is just as good as the star dragons (still meh compared to the dark elf and wood elf ones though...). Flying the noble around blasting units would be fun, but in that case impetuous would be a real problem. Similar problem with the dragon mage. Best case scenario he has 6W T5 3+ armour, 5+ ward, 5+ regen, which isn't that survivable for 321 pts that can't be screened from shooting. His damage output is ok though, decent with the D6 stomps. I can see him being good in smaller games, but I wonder if the Dragon mage is better.

[Halinn]

Heck, prince on griffon is slightly cheaper than noble+blood of caledor+sun dragon

[Ielthan]

I mean tooled up the griffon prince is like 10pts cheaper than the lion chariot prince. I wonder tbh if you want a sun dragon noble maybe an anointed noble on flame phoenix isn't a better option? Give him the ruby ring so he can blast stuff while he flies around burning chaff, dragon helm so he gets a 2+/6++ T5 7 wounds (also that 1/6 chance he can come back to life), shield and great weapon. 305pts (10pts left in magic items) so slightly cheaper than the sun dragon noble and no impetuous. Or can put him on a frostie to be quite a bit more fighty for only a bit more pts. It's nice to have so many options, the internal balance of the book seems miles better than 8th ed.

I really wish the Blood of Caledor honour gave furious charge, then I think it would be worth the impetuous. Didn't T9A have a very similar honour to this?

[Prince of Spires]

Heck, prince on griffon is slightly cheaper than noble+blood of caledor+sun dragon

The prince and noble are very similar in all other respects though. They have the same WS and W. Prince has +1I (which matters little with Strike First) and +1 LD. Noble has impetuous (which is a downside). But he also has a breathweapon (though using it with impetuous is hard), full plate armour (which at 6pts is more expensive than the 5pts difference between the 2 models), and more importantly, the dragon is a behemoth, which means that its stomps (D6 of them instead of D3) are at -2AP.

So it's a wash between those. And if you're playing in a environment that only allows 1 lord, then the noble is a good stand-in if you want an archmage.

[Seredain]

Given the lack of responses and high views, I consider the questions settled.

They're not much of a problem and they can be managed. Sorted

Hi Pash,

Thanks for posing the question. I've been umming and aahing about it and because flyers are so mobile I think I'm with what I think is the emerging consensus* that the answer is "Quite a big problem". At least with ground-based impetuous troops you can block them with your own units and/or field them in enough numbers that auto-breaking them becomes difficult. But a monster which loses combat against a unit twice its size will auto-break, so having a star dragon make bad choices for itself could easily end in disaster. I can see why Caledor II lost to the Dwarfs during the War of the Beard.

If I were to go for the Caledorian Star Dragon I'd want to lean into it to make it pay. For instance you could give the prince a deadly weapon to maximise the benefit of the WS8, or perhaps take the Bedazzling Helm to make him very hard to kill in combat (one way of mitigating a bad position). As for an army to support him, three routes spring to mind.

The first method leaping forward in my mind is to maximise the aggression of your army so that every is charging every turn. Much harder to isolate a star dragon and charge-focus him down if his whole army is running alongside him.

Second, as has been observed by others, is to hide him behind a building or point him in the wrong direction until the turn before you want to charge things. This feels wrong to me but I can see it working with a defensive shooting army, full of bolt throwers and sisters, where the Star Dragon is your counter-strike piece. You don't need to worry about getting redirected by chaff if the chaff is all dead! Army design will need to be handled delicately here. Bolt throwers are not as good at clearing chaff as they used to be.

Thirdly, perhaps in addition to either of the above routes, you could invest enough points in casters that you can give yourself the best possible chance of casting Courage of Aenarion on the dragon every turn. Sensai say: if you're going to do rash things, be unbreakable!

I'd say give it a go! Charge over the hill and tell us what happens. I appreciate this is the Ulthuan version of "you first, mate", but someone's got to do it!

Cheers,

S

*EDIT: Shout out to Morgen and Tyrren for supporting the positive case!

[Hoeth]

I am wondering, in a similar manner with DP + great eagle, getting another large target (griffon, phoenix) in front of the impetuous dragon would block LOS to prevent impetuous?

Then you can double charge them (to the same or different targets if in range)

[Pash]

I am wondering, in a similar manner with DP + great eagle, getting another large target (griffon, phoenix) in front of the impetuous dragon would block LOS to prevent impetuous?

Then you can double charge them (to the same or different targets if in range)

This is an interesting point and you might be onto something there.

A Large Target does block LOS of another Large Target, so in theory putting one (say a Griffon) in front of your Impetuous Dragon is a valid tactic. They'd likely need to be touching base to base to fully block LOS, creating a funny Large Target conga line or the front Large Target (e.g. Griffon) would have to be at a slight angle to fully block LOS. However, the Dragon would not be able to declare a charge in the same turn, as it has no LOS to an enemy unit. So all it would create is portable terrain for the Dragon (and a very tempting target for cannons).

[NHB]

you are allowed to clip your own units... to what extent in reality on the table... I don't know. but it sounds like you can't prevent your Star Dragon going places. Just let your High Mage throw Courage of Anaerion and you are fine