A collection of MEPBM articles concerning dragons originally hosted on Bobbins by Brian Mason & Tom Walton
Attached are selected articles specifically for dragons and my dragon tables. Most of the info for the dragon tables is old (with a few updates from me). If you try a different response and get a surprise answer, please let me know.
The first big MEPBM issue as I recall was agents. They were "too tough" the agent orders were "made more difficult", now the issue seems to be Dragons, although agents are still tough (maybe too tough), we have learned over time how to better fight against them. Move your capitol, use emissaries to double them, don't stay in one place for two long, have backup commanders, transfer command so they cannot follow you... I think we should be asking similar questions of Dragons. How do we combat them, not if they are too tough or not.
They tend to go to the character in command of an army with the largest total skill ranks (including artifacts, I believe) I am still not 100% on this but it looks pretty good. If they attack a pop centre that is defended by an army, they only attack once, against the army.
They show up very well on pop centres, with divine char/forces and even locate character.
If they are seen in a place other than Mordor, Misty Mtns, Mts/Hill&Rough hex on DL Map or Mtn in North they are with an army.
They stay with an army for a limited (random) time. I have tended not to play the FP positions because I feel it is to easy to win. This has made me not consider at length how to deal with dragons. Lets talk about this one! I do feel that given the "Dragon Lists" floating about they have become a larger problem for the FP. I'm sure its possible. How do we combat them? Did GSI give us any options here, I think so; but perhaps I give them to much credit.
(Tom's note: there's a correction that needs to be made. Brian L. states that dragons only appear in Mordor, mountain hexes, or hills/rough hexes. This isn't entirely true. Two dragons that I know of will appear in the Wastes north and west of the Grey Mountains (in general, hexrows 01-03), in the Wastes north of the Iron Hills, and along the road that runs from Gundabad east past Mirkwood. They're rarely seen because hardly anyone sends people to these areas. At least one of these dragons is recruitable.)
By Tom Walton
This last turn I won my first battle against an enemy army that contained a dragon. Because I destroyed the enemy in the first round of combat, and because complications such as spells, artifacts, multiple armies, etc. weren't present, I was able to calculate exactly how much damage the dragon did. The result: the dragon, in this instance Throkmaw, inflicted 45,000 points of mayhem upon my army.
This case (winning against a dragon) is rare enough that combat values for others of the great wyrms haven't been established (so far as I know). It could be that all dragons are generic, or that combat strength varies from dragon to dragon; I don't know. I also don't know if there's a relationship between challenge rank and combat strength, although I'd make a tentative guess that dragons have a challenge equal to their combat strength divided by 200.If anyone else out there has done what I did and managed to figure out the combat strength of a dragon, I'd like to hear from you.
Darren Beyer reports that he managed to calculate the combat strength of Khuzadrepa in battle. His estimate was roughly 50,000 combat points, +/- 10% or so. Note that with the variance, this means that Khuzadrepa could also have a combat strength of 45,000, as was determined for Throkmaw earlier. Or, assuming my calculations were at the wrong end of the scale, Throkmaw could instead have a combat strength of 50,000. I see one of several possibilities:
(1) In terms of combat strength, dragons are generic (all the same).
(2) Dragons are broken down into classes (weak, average, strong).
(3) Dragons have individual base strengths with a variable factor thrown in (like eagles, mumak, woses and such).
What follows is a list of dragons recruitable by each of the allegiances, for those that are curious. These dragons have been confirmed by GSI itself:
Free: Scorba, Throkmaw.
Neutrals: Scorba, Throkmaw.
Dark Servants: Aivnec, Ando-Anca, Angurth, Culgor, Itangast, Klyaxar, Khuzadrepa, Lamthanc, Lomaw, Smaug, Throkmaw, Uruial.
There's an unconfirmed rumour that any Dragon Lord character who States his NAME will recruit any recruitable dragon. Sounds pretty darned far-fetched to me, but since I'm the Dragon Lord in one game I might test it out for you all.
By Brian Mason
I'm in the process of completing a survey on the range of particular dragons that move outside the normal bounds of the Grey/Misty Mountains, the Withered Heath,and surrounding rough hexes. No real surprises here, but some information you may find marginally useful: Rough hexes in Northern Gondor: the group of rough hexes in Northern Gondor just east of Angrenost and south of Dol Guldur will sometimes see visits by dragons. The most common encounters are with Itangast, Khuzadrepa, and other dragons that are generally found in the Southern Misty Mountains. Strangely enough, these dragons won't be found in any of the non-rough hexes between this location and the Misty Mountains (i.e., no encounters in plains or forest hexes).
Sarn Goriwing: Sarn Goriwing and the two rough hexes to the north will commonly be haunted by Nimanaur, Bairanax, and other dragons found in the Grey Mountains to the north. Again, they won't be found in the intervening forest or plains hexes.
Iron Hills: dragon visits are very infrequent in these rough hexes, but the most common encounters are with Bairanax and Gostir. These dragons can also be found in the Northern Wastes between the Iron Hills and the Grey Mountains. No dragons range east or south of the Iron Hills (with the exception of Lamthanc in Mordor).
All other dragons are encountered in the mountain hexes of the Misty or Grey Mountains, adjacent rough hexes, the Withered Heath (the plains hexes between the two branches of the Grey Mountains), or rarely, in the Northern Wastes north of the Grey Mountains. Dragons are not found in any other location on the map, unless attached to someone's army (so far as I know).
If you're looking to find the recruitable dragons, the best places to be are pop centres in Angmar (mountains), Gundabad, Goblin'sGate, or the mountain hexes within this triangle. Most of the recruitable dragons have ranges which cross in this area.
COMBAT vs INJURED/KILLED results: A couple of players have asked what the difference is between these two results on my dragon lists.
Here's how I distinguish them:
Where it says COMBAT, the majority of the results given to me by other players ended in death for the characters who chose that response.
Where is says INJURED/KILLED, the majority of the results given to me by other players ended with the character escaping severely wounded (1 health point).
For example, if 10 players chose DEMAND obedience from Smaug, and seven of the ten died gloriously, then the result would be COMBAT.
If seven crawled away to live another day, the result would be INJURED/KILLED.
I distinguish between the two because INJURED/KILLED gives you a better chance of escaping a bad situation than COMBAT does. And for many players, a chance to escape in any form is all they want.
For those of you who sometimes get results different from those on the table, let me remind you: you'll get that result a MAJORITY of the time, not EVERY time. Some people are still operating under the extremely faulty assumption that x response gives y reaction no matter what. THIS IS NOT TRUE; IT HAS NEVER BEEN TRUE. There area range of results for reach response, some of which only happen once in a blue moon, others which happen more often. The linear x/y thinking outlined above gets players into trouble because they don't take into account the unexpected, resulting in rumours that the encounter lists have been changed.
Once a 'favourable' response was learned, players rarely try anything new so it's difficult to update the Dragon Lists as frequently as I would like. If you have any information to add to these lists please let me know. Thanks.
On successfully recruiting a dragon, it will go to the army commanded by the character with the highest challenge rank.