40K Tactics: Dreaming Of Fire Dragons

Fritz here everybody. Fire Dragons seem like the perfect melta choice for your Eldar warhost. With so many tanks and monstrous creatures on the table, melta weapons give you an almost guaranteed kill at whatever they shoot at, well as much of a guarantee as you can get with a game involving dice.  Lets take a closer look:

Space Marines have their Landspeeders and tactical marines to deliver the heat, Imperial Guard have their own veterans spammed out with melta guns to do the job so Fire Dragons should naturally fit right in with the same role correct? Perhaps, if you are trying to play like Space Marines and Imperial Guard…

Let’s take a look at how Fire Dragons are being used on the table, and then I’ll offer up my own opinion on this suddenly popular aspect warrior.

Put a bunch of Fire Dragons into a transport and zoom it up to your opponent’s super unit, like a Land Raider with terminators inside, get out and pop it open. With the speed and survivability of the Eldar grav tank getting there in one turn isn’t a problem especially when you take into account cover saves, energy shields, and holo-fields.

But, is this “guaranteed” kill a good idea? Is trading 1 for 1 or 1 for 2 worth it in the overall scope of the game? Consider this: You zip your tank up and the Fire Dragons get out exploding said land land raider. What now? Your opponent can’t afford to loose another unit from those ‘dragons so they are going to get shot up and die, and in the process you may even loose the grav tank that ferried them since it is now next to your opponent’s core.

As an Eldar player with an overcosted codex you can’t afford to play the trade game. Aspect warriors are expensive, their ride is even more expensive, while the mon-keigh Imperial Guard get both cheap transports and cheap melta options. I often see my fellow Eldar players trying to play this trade game.

Now that is not to say the trade game doesn’t have a place. Maybe it is best serving to explode that Land Raider to cripple the spearhead of your opponent’s army and shut down their mobility, but there are other options to this, and a good warhost will seek to take advantage of them also.

Before we get into how I want you to run Fire Dragons, let’s look at the unit itself. Do you really need ten to do the job? What is the optimal number to take for a unit size. Allowing for some unlucky rolls, even while hitting on a 3+ I’ve found five to six to be that magic number. You are committing as few points as possible while ensuring that what they shoot at is destroyed. Forget about the exarch while your at it to shave off a few more points.

Now that you have your ‘dragons all loaded up, here is how I want you to play them. Remember that an active player is always at an advantage over a reactive player. Your Fire Dragons should not be reacting to your opponent’s movements. YOU should be setting things up for the optimal kill with your Fire Dragons so they are killing stuff, and then getting back in their transport to go on and kill more stuff. If I am playing Fire Dragons I don’t consider them a “success” unless they have killed three or four big things. So what is the setup? Again, let’s go back to that Land Raider full of terminators…

Most opponents have a defined role for each unit in their army and they often can’t see beyond that role. Termies in a Land Raider are used to smash through, assault, and wreck face. Like a rabid dog they can only see one thing, they lack the true overall vision of a skilled Autarch.

What if you used the bulk of your army to engage your opponent and keep them busy, while depositing a lone unit out somewhere on the table almost in assault range for the land raider. With you army engaged, what is around to stop that land raider from rolling up and slicing up your unit? For that unit, I often use my jetbikes turbo boosting into range. Everybody likes to assault jetbikes…

Land raider moves in for the kill, and then your Fire Dragon grav tank breaks off and intercepts killing the land raider and stranding the terminators. Can you visualize this concept? You want to pull off a unit from your opponent’s army, isolate it, and then kill it with the dragons so nothing is around to then reliably counter and kill your them. Of course those terminators are still out in the open and in position to shoot and assault next turn, but the rest of your army can then shoot at them with long range shots, and if you have star engines (you do have them right?) you can then star engine in your tank to block those terminators for a turn, only to have your dragons jump back in and zoom away next turn.That is how I would use Fire Dragons in a conventional type of warfare, but we want to take it a step further and engage in the unconventional – being Eldar and all.

Power perceived is power achieved is my favorite and often abused quote.

Often what a unit could theoretically do is way more powerful then what it can actually do. What about using your Fire Dragons to direct and control the flow of the battle, restricting your opponent’s movement.

A good opponent will be all about calculating threat range. X unit can move X inches and then shoot X inches. So those Fire Dragons sitting in the transport can potentially move 24″ + the 12″ star engine move to threaten next turn or move the 12″ to threaten this turn. That good opponent will see where you can go and adjust accordingly. Just be having those dragons in a certain area could potentially shut down parts of the table, especially if your opponent is looking to move an expensive or mission critical unit.

The final way I want you to think about using Fire Dragons is to punish your opponent with them, breaking their will in the game. Overall, 40K is about not making mistakes, the opponent that makes the least often wins, and the general that can force and then exploit mistakes shows a true command. We all make mistakes on the tabletop, so having your Fire Dragons in a central spot on the table so they can zip out and exploit a mistake when it appears is key. It is not enough to “create” a mistake, you also have to set up the game through movement and looking ahead to capitalize on that mistake.

I’m going to go back to dreaming about Fire Dragons…  The floor is your’s generals.