Starting Vampires in January: Tell Me How!

[ElectricPaladin]

I firmly believe that if you can afford it, you should have at least two armies for every game you play. That way you've got something you can do when your enthusiasm for your primary army wanes, or if your primary army goes through a period of sucking (and with GW's long development cycle, that can be years).

For a while, I was going to go Dark Elves, but my interest waned before I even got started. Vampires, now, seem a lot more appealing.

I like their anti-heroic appeal - as I wrote in my other thread, they're evil, sure, but they're not Chaos evil. They don't want to wreck the world, they just want to rule it. They're complicated, nasty, and have lots of mean rules.

This is meant to be an intro thread: who are the winners and losers of the Vampire Counts army book? What models should I jump on and which should I avoid? What are some of the popular "the unofficial version is better" conversions I should consider trying? Is the battalion any good, or should I buy an army piecemeal? What else do I need to know to go Vampiric?

Thanks in advance!

[Mr Mystery]

Good question overall.

To be honest, I'd need to sit down with me book and go through each unit on it's own.


For me, I prefer Skellies as core. Light armour, shield, spear. Solid, dependable unit, easily boosted up via magic to punch far above it's weight. And always go Horde in my opinion!

[ElectricPaladin]

For me, I prefer Skellies as core. Light armour, shield, spear. Solid, dependable unit, easily boosted up via magic to punch far above it's weight. And always go Horde in my opinion!

I definitely got the impression that skeletons are a good core anvil unit. Cheap, hard to remove, and with spears they can fight in an extra rank as long as they didn't charge. They don't pack as much of a punch as my Saurus, but with the ability to easily add models to the back even when in combat, they are even better at just holding an enemy unit down - possibly indefinitely.

[Mr Mystery]

Yup.

I'm also a fan of procuring a hero level champion for each Undead unit. Nothing puts off heroicy nonsense from your opponent quite like a Wight King lurking in the front rank, waiting to chop his Lord's head off with a deft stroke!

Plus, the additional Ld should things go a bit crumbly is always welcome!

[hebbish]

I play vamps as my second army, so I'll give my 10 cents. The first thing you have to be aware of is that you are going to be assembling and painting A LOT of infantry. You will be starting out with a lot of infantry. Then you're going to be increasing the size of your dudes after start of game. If that's not enough you're going to be summoning entirely new units from scratch. As a result of this, before you start the army, I recommend that you make sure that you can afford it and you are willing to put that much effort into it. Not trying to discourage you; I've just seen a lot of people rage quit the army, because they weren't aware of that fact.

Now that we got that out of the way, the army is very rewarding to play. The biggest winners of most vampire armies are the characters. A lot of armies tend to max out percentage points in both lords and heroes. The most popular vampire build is the blender vampire, which is a vampire lord with ASF power, red fury, 4++ ward, and the ogre blade. Run this guy screaming into combat and watch as he kills 8-10 guys a turn. Your probably going to want to take a vamp bsb with asf to help out with crumble and to help your lord kill things. Once you are done kitting out your combat characters, you are going to want to take a lot of magic(around 6-8 levels). You are going to find that your success will be highly dependent on how well you can control the magic phase. One way to do magic is to directly upgrade the magic levels on your vamps, which tends to save points. I prefer to take a lv 4 necromancer, and a lv 2 scroll caddy. This way I don't have to worry about my combat beasts dying when I need to chuck six dice at a spell.

Your core selection is going to highly depend on your personal preference. IMO all the options are good, but not spectacular, as core should be. Special slots are another area where you'll be spending lots of points. I tend to prefer crypt horrors and vargheists, but that is mainly cause I don't get to run big MI units in my de army. I run the crypt horrors in a large unit to tarpit, and the vargheists in smaller 4 man units to flank and warmachine hunt. I see a lot of other players successfully running black knights, hexwraiths, and spirit hosts, as well. My favorite unit in the rare category is the terrorgheist. The model looks so cool, and his screech ability has won me more games than I can count.

Anyway, those are pretty much my opinions. I hope they helped.

[Mr Mystery]

BSB wise I've always preferred a Wight King over a Vampire Count, simply because they get a nasty magic weapon and a pokey banner! Plus, you know, T5 is a right lol!

[ElectricPaladin]

I play vamps as my second army, so I'll give my 10 cents.

Thanks.


The first thing you have to be aware of is that you are going to be assembling and painting A LOT of infantry. You will be starting out with a lot of infantry. Then you're going to be increasing the size of your dudes after start of game. If that's not enough you're going to be summoning entirely new units from scratch. As a result of this, before you start the army, I recommend that you make sure that you can afford it and you are willing to put that much effort into it. Not trying to discourage you; I've just seen a lot of people rage quit the army, because they weren't aware of that fact.

Well, this is a nice change of pace. Lizardmen rely on their infantry, it's true, but they also tend to field a lot of monsters. Between all the stegadons, carnosaurs, bastilidons, salamanders, and cold ones in my army, it's going to be a nice change of pace to just paint a ton of dudes.

Additionally, for Fantasy armies, I use the Dip. A lot of fantasy stuff is going to be pretty easy: skeletons will be basecoat white, put Leadbelcher on the weapons and Warplock Bronze on the hilts, then hit with the dip, then highlight and add a glow effect for the eyes: done. A lot easier than my bright, multi-colored Lizardmen infantry.


Now that we got that out of the way, the army is very rewarding to play. The biggest winners of most vampire armies are the characters. A lot of armies tend to max out percentage points in both lords and heroes. The most popular vampire build is the blender vampire, which is a vampire lord with ASF power, red fury, 4++ ward, and the ogre blade. Run this guy screaming into combat and watch as he kills 8-10 guys a turn. Your probably going to want to take a vamp bsb with asf to help out with crumble and to help your lord kill things. Once you are done kitting out your combat characters, you are going to want to take a lot of magic(around 6-8 levels). You are going to find that your success will be highly dependent on how well you can control the magic phase. One way to do magic is to directly upgrade the magic levels on your vamps, which tends to save points. I prefer to take a lv 4 necromancer, and a lv 2 scroll caddy. This way I don't have to worry about my combat beasts dying when I need to chuck six dice at a spell.

What about necromancers? I like the idea of a necromancer Lord, or a necromancer Hero. I'll probably be using a necromancer on a corpse cart for my first few small-points games, because that's the only Lord that comes with the battalion box.


Your core selection is going to highly depend on your personal preference. IMO all the options are good, but not spectacular, as core should be. Special slots are another area where you'll be spending lots of points. I tend to prefer crypt horrors and vargheists, but that is mainly cause I don't get to run big MI units in my de army. I run the crypt horrors in a large unit to tarpit, and the vargheists in smaller 4 man units to flank and warmachine hunt. I see a lot of other players successfully running black knights, hexwraiths, and spirit hosts, as well. My favorite unit in the rare category is the terrorgheist. The model looks so cool, and his screech ability has won me more games than I can count.

Anyway, those are pretty much my opinions. I hope they helped.

Absolutely. Thanks for the good advice.

[ElectricPaladin]

So, here's a particular question I'd love to have answered: is the battalion worth it? You get a bunch of zombies, skeletons, and ghouls, as well as a corpse cart. It's not a legal army - putting your necromancer on a corpse cart makes it too expensive to fit into the army you can make with the rest of the box - but that's not important. Is it a good place to begin?

[ElectricPaladin]

Or alternately...

There's an eBay auction I'm thinking of jumping on. More than 60 skeletons, a couple of vampires (one is Vlad), a wight king, 4 giant bats and three bat swarm bases. The bidding starts at $100 and so far nobody else has jumped on. Worth it?

[Mr Mystery]

Yup!

Any saving is a solid saving.

60 Skellingtons gives you two decent sized blocks, or one which will be a pain in your opponents arse!

[King Chud]

I built my army back when the old codex was out, and I went with all ghouls, black knights, and blood knights. There have been many 3,000 point games where my horde of black knights and blood knights broke through enemy lines with their hammer tactic, while two hordes of ghouls held a thin combat line. Then there have been games where my lord miscasted, and blew up his retinue of blood knights too. I think hordes of zombies and skeletons are better at lower points value of 2500. I am looking to buy two hundred zombies to get my filler of tarpit troops. I may go yet with skeletons since wargames factory has 30 skeletons for $16.

Let's face it, orks have a good chance of killing a horde of ghouls in a one on one match that goes several rounds. There is no core unit that is rock hard stable. The combat resolution often goes against undead, and you may face a -20 penalty that will evaporate your core. That happens with WoC and Ogres. You need a tarpit that will stay for several rounds for your terrorgheists to do something, like screaming in the flank of a unit. I think skeletons have the most options to build up with magic to be offensive. I think zombies are better off as tarpits, with a 100 models. Just absorb the casualties, while your special and rare choices do the damage.



I firmly believe that if you can afford it, you should have at least two armies for every game you play. That way you've got something you can do when your enthusiasm for your primary army wanes, or if your primary army goes through a period of sucking (and with GW's long development cycle, that can be years).

For a while, I was going to go Dark Elves, but my interest waned before I even got started. Vampires, now, seem a lot more appealing.

I like their anti-heroic appeal - as I wrote in my other thread, they're evil, sure, but they're not Chaos evil. They don't want to wreck the world, they just want to rule it. They're complicated, nasty, and have lots of mean rules.

This is meant to be an intro thread: who are the winners and losers of the Vampire Counts army book? What models should I jump on and which should I avoid? What are some of the popular "the unofficial version is better" conversions I should consider trying? Is the battalion any good, or should I buy an army piecemeal? What else do I need to know to go Vampiric?

Thanks in advance!