Hi everyone, sorry I've not posted in a while, just life has suddenly picked up the pace and I had to drop a few things to manage, I should be able to start posting regularly again now though, thanks for your patience and enjoy the article :).
As a Khadoran jack Drago shares the same basic stats line, however he is an upgraded Beserker, meaning slightly higher DEF as well as lower ARM and RAT. With the upgrade he comes with a fair buff to his MAT which is very nice considering this allows Drago to threaten the likes of Lancers and Chargers with ease on average, good thing to as like Beast in the upgrade Drago's target priorities changed from infantry to jacks. Basically Drago is designed to run into jacks chop them to pieces then move on to the next one.
Drago comes armed with two Executioner axes (according to the fluff he picked them up from a pair of wrecked Destroyers) with the same P+S as a Beserker's axes, or the Kodiak's fists. As Executioner axes they have the Critical Amputation (on a critical any system damaged by the attack is crippled), whilst the effect is really nice, you don't want to boosting to get the critical, just take it as a bonus when it happens, although it does work really, really nicely against jacks that rely on shields as on a lucky hit you can avoid that push back from jacks with repulsor shields or take away the ARM bonus granted by shields.
That brings us to Drago's abilities. Firstly we have the Beserker staples, Unstable, essentially the more focus Drago uses the more likely he is going to blow up (roll a d6 and if the result is equal or less than the amount of focus used in that turn Drago generates a large blast). This would be an issue if it wasn't for the second Beserker ability Aggressive, allowing Drago to run and Charge without spending focus, allowing Drago to get up in your opponent's face without spending any focus. Next up is Drago's affinity, when fielded in an army with any of the Vlad's and when Drago is in the control area he rolls an extra dice on attack and damage rolls and drops the lowest. This is the reason Drago is an auto include when using Vlad as your caster (that and the ability to not make unstable rolls), this can stack with Signs and Portents or Hand of Fate for a total of four dice without boosting, making for an excellent chance to get the Critical Amputation effect and then making the most of it with five dice on the charge for damage. Then comes the upgraded chain attack whereas the Beserker gets a free headbutt having hit the same target with both it's intial attacks, Drago gets Thresher, attacking each model in his LoS and melee range, this isn't all that great given his lack of Reach, however it potentially gives a free attack against that jack you just about scrapped, but fell short by a few boxes. Lastly theres Drago's imprint Run Riot, for a point of focus, when Drago destroys an enemy model and is unengaged he may advance 1", this comes in very hand if your opponent is unlucky enough to leave models close enough together for Drago to simply hop over to the next target, as long as he's not engaged, downside to this is you are giving Drago focus, so unless you field him with Vlad theres a chance of him blowing up and being either wasted as the blast damage isn't likely to really hurt jacks or potentially wiping out stealthed infantry squads (which is generally a better option for getting your points back).
Drago is an interesting jack, in that while his ARM is lower than the regular Khadoran jack, if you use him right your opponent shouldn't have many chances to actually land a blow on him. As giving focus to Drago is generally a bad idea he runs well with casters who can give out boosts and buffs through spells rather than putting focus directly on him, so pButcher and Karchev are good choices (Harkevich is an outside choice due to fortune), obviously running Drago with any of the Vlads is a great idea, due to the affinity and the various forms of Signs and Portents that each Vlad brings that then goes on top of the affinity to ensure you roll the dice you want. A further thing I have noticed is that Superiority gives another way around the focus issue, putting Strakhov and pIrusk into the frame as possible casters to run Drago with, however as pIrusk generally only wants one jack it'd be better at higher points as if he takes a jack he wants something with reach to compensate, Strakhov on the other hand is more viable, though similarly he'll want a reach jack and I tend to find Torch works really well with Strakhov too and running more than two jacks under one caster is generally a bad idea as focus doesn't quite go as far as we would like it to. If you need a jack to take on a jack and keep on going Drago is a good bet, his Critical is excellent (but doesn't affect beasts) and the ability to churn out three attacks focus free is a welcome addition to the Khadoran arsenal.
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