What is better in a 1 unit army - 1 red or black dragon

[McSwan]

I noticed dbdov used a single black dragon in his single unit army run through and got to level 43 without having to change.

How do you deal with not being able to heal the black dragon, or does the black dragon take such a small amount of damage it doesn't matter until lev 43?

It would seem that reds are better from healing, but do they get hammered form hero spells, or something like that etc?

[joasoz]

He can answer himself, but from what I have read he switches depending on opponent.

If you play against an magic based enemy (upgrade of items for example), then a black dragon is perfect. If you play against a more physical one, then maybe a troll stack is better. Slap on protective magic and enjoy the show.

[DGDobrev]

The idea is that if you want your spells to do the job for you, you need a fast, high-initiative unit that will take minimal damage. The Black Dragon can fly from side to side and stall a slow army indefinitely till you hammer it with spells and post-effects.

As such, 1 Black Dragon is better than 1 Red Dragon. The red dragon is succeptible to enemy spells (Poison skull is awful due to 0% poison resistance, Geyser will hurt a lot due to his relatively low phys resistance), while the Black Dragon stops the enemy hero's spellcasting completely (all he can do is summon or buff) and nullifies the Evil Gremlins. Just to be on the safe side, keeping a secondary stack (even if you're not using it) of Trolls helps a lot if the AI decides to throw something unexpected at you.

You should also keep the BD as far away from enemy rangers as possible, so that they get their penalty - each ranged unit has a range, in which it inflicts full damage. When striking a target outside their range their damage is reduced for each cell outside their range.

It is about lvl 43-45 when the enemy ranger stacks grow big and numerous enough and the fear spell itself is unable to deal with them. This is when I had to swap the BD's for Black Knights for some battles. For example, 1 BD vs. 500 Shamans is winnable if the stacks are favorably set, but 1 BD vs. 500-600 shamans split in 5 stacks may give you quite some trouble and you'll be forced to keep 4 of them with fear on while you hammer the last one. In such fights it's simply much easier to swap BD's for a unit which you can ress if needed.

P.S> You can hardly imagine how many fights that single Black Dragon managed to escape with a single-digit Health value... So using the 1 BD tactics is very risky.

[TemjinGold]

For me it depends. I keep both because I like the Red Dragon's flame breath thing better than Black's as you can use it out of harms way. I can also phantom reds if needed or stone skin/heal. Heal can be useful as reds are much tougher than trolls minus the regen.

[tetleytea]

Haven't done Mage yet, but I would say Red, because of Mana Spring. Toy with the enemy at the end, let him hit you, spend a whopping 1 mana to heal. End the battle with all your mana. Next battle, have some rage to go with that mana.

[travelingoz]

It's easy to do the mana regen thing with one BD. I'm also up to level 43 and have been using similar tactics as DGD.
However, at the start of a battle, i usually cast Demon Portal, then when they emerge, cast Stone Skin and Mana Spring on them. Then i let them take a beating. If there are lots of ranged units or Shamans, then a level 3 Target on them also helps.
So while they're getting the crap beaten out of them, your BD is free to soar around and open chests etc. Towards the end of the battle, you can use the BD's Fire Breath on the stacks around the demon to get your range back up if you have the Paladin's Holy skill maxed.

[McSwan]

Arg, just realised, Is it necessary to get the pet dragon that gives you +1 initative to dragons? I got The +1 int pet dragon. Is there an item that gives you +1 init for flying creatures?

[travelingoz]

If you're going for the one dragon strategy then it certainly can't hurt!

[Zechnophobe]

Just get Adrenaline instead, and choose the dragon that gives +crit chance.

[N3MES1S]

Red dragons always. They can be resurrected and can be improved by spells. Besides, red dragon are good against black dragon, but black dragons are not than good against red dragons (RD Are fire inmune). And, the red dragon special hability is more useful than the black dragon (almost for me). Maybe i always use red dragons cuz i have paladins and inquisit, but i really found em more useful than black dragons. I just changed royal griffins for assasins, and i almost never used the tank units lol, i only summon the avenging guards and let em to do the work. But god, i run out of royal griffins but assasins are amazing -.-. I love red dragons, but i dont use em too much, only to block enemy's way or for using the RD Hability.