Vampire Counts: 8th Edition Tactica

[Wesser]

That's what my gut has been telling me. They're solid enough to not risk crumbling the lord, but mediocre enough that they could certainly use his help. I'm still debating whether to run mine in ghouls like that or run with a skeleton based list and maybe put my lord in with black knights. Sort of a form versus function decision. Ah well, still got grave guard to paint till I really have to decide.


Very tough call. Normally I'd go with strength, but with red fury every extra attack is potentially 2 more kills, which is super juicy. I think sword of strife or even sword of bloodshed with a potion of strength is a nice compromise. Depends on the people you play, I suppose. Giving up the option for a ward could be dangerous against greatweapon troopers if your opponents actually direct attacks at your vamp.

Mine is invariably with some black knights or blood knights.

A blender lord easily cost 450 pts and you rly want him fighting as many turns as possible. A steed will get him there a turn faster. Also the increased speed will allow him to better choose his combats. Also it provides a good armour save for his protection.

If he's with Black knights then they invariably a smallish unit more used as a delivery system.

With the Blood Knights he'll often have MR2 talisman for 2+ magic ward save on the unit. With Flag of Blood keep he's thus well protected from ranged shenanigans and since he's able to choose his combats his 1+ armour saves is usually more than enough.

[Askari]

A steed won't necessarily get him into combat faster, we can always Vanhel's him nearer the enemy too - sure you can do the same to a mounted Lord but as he can't charge with the bonus movement it's not as beneficial.

[Frankly]

A steed won't necessarily get him into combat faster ....

Come on ...

In general it will.

[Wesser]

A steed won't necessarily get him into combat faster, we can always Vanhel's him nearer the enemy too - sure you can do the same to a mounted Lord but as he can't charge with the bonus movement it's not as beneficial.

Well if he's on foot and the enemy cast's M. Miasma on his unit he'll barely move at all, Vanhel's may get dispelled (my opponents tends to make it a prio).

[Askari]

I don't know, if my enemy isn't a gunline/defensive style, then they're moving towards me also. Between 2 M4 armies marching in one turn, that's 16" closer than we began - easily within Turn 2 charge range. Even if they are gunline style, I'll be in range Turn 3 to charge, and I certainly don't want my cavalry mounted general and his unit caught in a combat a turn before everyone else - that could easily give me a dead general.

Cavalry are better for flank movements, but for a Vampire Counts you want your General in the center anyway. So no, I don't think a steed is a valid choice for movement purposes. The armour save improvment, on the other hand, is worth considering.

[Frankly]

I don't know, if my enemy isn't a gunline/defensive style, then they're moving towards me also. Between 2 M4 armies marching in one turn, that's 16" closer than we began - easily within Turn 2 charge range. Even if they are gunline style, I'll be in range Turn 3 to charge, and I certainly don't want my cavalry mounted general and his unit caught in a combat a turn before everyone else - that could easily give me a dead general.

Cavalry are better for flank movements, but for a Vampire Counts you want your General in the center anyway. So no, I don't think a steed is a valid choice for movement purposes. The armour save improvment, on the other hand, is worth considering.

None of this makes a walking vampire faster than a mounted one and thats what we were getting at.

Thats the thing; a Vampire in a cavalry unit will still get into combat quicker, it'll be in those defensive armylists a turn faster and like wesser is saying you'll be getting 2 combats phases more out of your character.

The MOST important thing is you get alot more mobility from a better movement rate and better threat range, generally meaning you can get a better choice of combats.

[Askari]

I don't deny a mounted Vampire has better movement variety and threat range, but both are looking at Turn 2 combat, especially if you get Vanhel's off. The difference is the mounted one could be in the flank rather than the front.

You can decide if taking Black Knights, rather than Grave Guard, to accompany him is worth it.

[Ville]

I had great success with a Wight King with Fencer Blades and Banner of Barrows of his Black Knight unit. Four attacks hitting almost everything with 2+ resulted him killing the enemy BSB and general in one battle. I much prefer him over a Vampire leading my knights as they can keep their lovely ethereal movement. He should work just as well with GG too. Incredibly dangerous in challenges!

[iSnail]

I almost always use my Blender Lord in a block of ghouls, sometimes with a Tomb Banshee in there too. I have it only level 1, with sword of bloodshed, usually kitted with Invocation. Always earns her points back, even against Ogres. Against a flank charge alone she can eat through the combined ranks of whatever charged whilst your ghouls deal with unit in front, ogres however being an exception to that. So far, I've been using 20 ghouls in ranks of 7, but plan to upgrade that to a horde of 40 soon. But, the thought of putting her in a block of cavalry and charging that into the flanks rather than the middle of an army is a tempting thought.

Only thing I'm unsure about is upgrading her to a level 2, as I already have 2 level 2 necromancers in support.

[SideshowLucifer]

I'd rather stick a vamp on the coven throne and run it with the cav or with varghul, or coach. I do love the added AR save from being mounted, but I hate putting too many points in a single unit. It makes it too easy to deny the use of too many points of my army.

[SteelTitan]

Haha, yeah, true. Im also not a fan of deathstar type setups. The thing is, with a 500+ blender lord, that whichever unit you put him in sorta automatically becomes a mini-deathstar :P (ghouls and grave guard anyway).

@ Sideshowlucifer: you're the first person here that has said something about running a cover throne or a black coach. How are you faring with those?

[Spoonie]

I'm kind of worried about putting a vamp lord in cav now that I think about it. He's usually going to be your level 4, so being in range of enough units to make your buffs really worth it seems problematic. Might have to try it and see how it plays out.

[warplock]

Does anyone use a Vampire Lord in 1500 points games? Or do you think that's too small a size. If you do, what sort of build do you go for?

[Gondorian]

I used a unit of Bloodknights and a unit of Black knights the other day. Neither really got to do much because my opponent cleverly blocked one with ethereal spirit hosts and used small squads of summoned zombies to redirect my charges.

I know these are deathstar units, but the fluff for my army is to be mostly cavalry. So my conclusions are that I need to make sure both my cavalry hitters have magic weapons available, that I need to include a couple of small direwolf units to act as my own redirecters and potentially clear enemy redirectors out of the way. I can also maybe squeeze some hexwraiths into the list when I build them to add an ethereal blocker of my own.

Are there any ways of combating those small units who are redirecting those important charges?

[Askari]

I'm kind of worried about putting a vamp lord in cav now that I think about it. He's usually going to be your level 4, so being in range of enough units to make your buffs really worth it seems problematic. Might have to try it and see how it plays out.

It's not even the buffs that's the problem, it's the march radius. You're already leaving your battle line behind if your using the cavalry movement to engage quicker, but any infantry components of your army are going to be really slow without even being able to march. Which is basically what I was trying to say earlier.

Does anyone use a Vampire Lord in 1500 points games? Or do you think that's too small a size. If you do, what sort of build do you go for?

Vampire Lords need a hefty points investment in mundane equipment, magic items, Wizard levels and Vampiric Powers to be worth it. In 1,500pts you have, what, a 150pts to spend on the Vamp between all that. If I had to take one I'd probably do something like...

Vampire Lord (374)
w/ Level 1, Additional Hand Weapon, Armour of Silvered Steel, Dawnstone, Quickblood, Red Fury

Nearly the same damage output as my Lord at a 100pts more, and some survivability with 2+ re-rollable armour save. But with only Level 1 and no ward, he can't carry the game.

Are there any ways of combating those small units who are redirecting those important charges?

You should have your own great redirector units in Dire Wolves and Spirit Hosts which can usually deal with small enemy redirectors with very little issue. As a cavalry army, you should even have reasonably large units of Dire Wolves to sweep such petty units out of the way.

[Frankly]

I used a unit of Bloodknights and a unit of Black knights the other day. Neither really got to do much because my opponent cleverly blocked one with ethereal spirit hosts and used small squads of summoned zombies to redirect my charges.

I know these are deathstar units, but the fluff for my army is to be mostly cavalry. So my conclusions are that I need to make sure both my cavalry hitters have magic weapons available, that I need to include a couple of small direwolf units to act as my own redirecters and potentially clear enemy redirectors out of the way. I can also maybe squeeze some hexwraiths into the list when I build them to add an ethereal blocker of my own.

Are there any ways of combating those small units who are redirecting those important charges?

You'll have to run some type of deathstar when running cavalry,TBH I don't think thats a bad thing. Cavalry lists need that kind of hitting power or they'll lose to steadfast to often.

I think Cavalry heavy lists are all about how you deliver your units into selected units and how you a acheive board control to do that.

We have some of the best fast chaff with Dire wolves(better as redirectors than chaff killers), but their vanguard can give your cavalry units clear charge lanes just by getting in the way on turn 1 and 2. Personally I don't think 1 or 2 wolf units will ever be enough to do the job. 5-6 units gives you a reasonable amount of chaff to keep enemy uinits off your blood knights in his combat phase after your charge combat phase, meaning if your running a lord in the blood knight unit(+ support) you have 3 combat phases to rip through a target unit.

Dependning on how you construct your list and what you feel like using, V.C. have some nice chaff killers, anything from heros on hell steads, TGs, naked B.Knights, hex knights etc, etc. I do think if your running Blood knights then you do need chaff killers to clear path ways for your hitty units. The amount of support will depend on your meta.

I'd love to know whats in your list gondorian. I love VC cavalry lists.

Does anyone use a Vampire Lord in 1500 points games? Or do you think that's too small a size. If you do, what sort of build do you go for?

Not all VC lords a going to be good in cavalry units. Imho cavalry heavy is a niche type of list that looks at blitzing and concentrating combat power, while some VC lord builds and rank and file lists are amazing at smashface and/or grind out wins.


Just got back from the first day of a mock 2.5k tournament(22 peeps). The coolest thing of the tournament is you can run 2 lists. You have to decide before the tournament what games which list is playing. For example my horde list played game 1, while my flyers list played game 2 and 3, tomorrow flyers play game 4, while horde plays 5 and 6.

The Magic heavy VC horde list ran through a Empire shooty list, really really good match up for me.

The Double TG + flying ghoul king list beat a OK list, another really good match up in my favour.

But then the flyer list ran into our regional champ and last years national finalist. He had brought 2 totally different lists; all cavalry khorne and a marauder horde list. I got to play the horde list, 4 x 45 MoK marauders w. GW, 2 Shrines a huge amount of chaff. He rolled me!

We had a bit of a laugh. If my horde play his horde we thought I had an advantage, if my flyers played his cavalry; again we thought I had an advantage, but that wasn't the case. I got smacked around by his MoK rank and file list.

Can't wait for tomorrow, drawn against a great skaven player ranked 4th I think and I'm 6th so its all pretty even. :P

[Gondorian]

Frankly,
Lol well currently my club is doing the badlands campaign and being quite new to vamp counts I'm pretty much using units as fast as I can build them. I liked the idea of one of my three badlands armies being completely cavalry as I've always liked mounted armies. Upon realising the number of direwolves needed I adjusted this to include some skeletons raised from whatever graves happen to be near this mobile force.
My list I used last

Count Isaac, level 2 Vamp Lord, Nightmare, heavy armour, Ogre blade, talisman of preservation, dragonbane helm (considering changing the sword so that I can fit in the other trickster's shard but unsure), aura of dark majesty, beguile, dreadknight, killing blow, quickblood (I know red fury should probably swap for aura of dark majesty but its a bloodline fluff thing for my vamps)

Countess Katrina, Level 1 vamp hero, Nightshroud, biting blade, aura of dark majesty, beguile (used in this game for fluff this being the first time that Katrina was united with her brother Isaac, Likely to be replaced with Wightking or cheap blood knight vamp hero)

The Order of the Crimson Chalice, 8 Bloodknights, Banner of Blood Keep, I was using a champion with a basic magic weapon but am tempted to leave this out so that my banner is the last man to fall.

The Black Slayers, 10 Black knights, barding, lances, banner of the barrows (Name is shamelessly stolen from other Raymond Pike series but it fits, these guys definately need a magic weapon, thinking a Wight king)

All of my core was spent on skeletons, went for two units one at 25 one at over 50, ironically it was the lil 25 that did really well taking out three vargheists and some redirector zombies.
In future am swapping some skeletons for direwolves, have 20 atm and am thinking two units of five and one of ten.

As stated earlier I may look at putting in some hexwraiths if possible, even if its just so I have a unit that can tie up certain units.

My deployment had the bloodknights in the centre, black knights on their left, both skeleton units on the right. My opponent started by deploying three spirit hosts, so most of my army was down before he put anything meaningful out. Something those direwolves should help with when I get them built. He had two necromancers in a zombie bunker, a solid core of skeletons in hoard with dreadknight vampire leading (opponent will be mounting him long term but we're both playing with what we had ready) unit of ghouls to my right of the skeletons, spirithosts on my left with direwolves left of these. Vargheists went behind the spirit hosts. He also had several banshees and Skarksbarath on his Lord.

I began by charging the direwolves and wiping them with the Black knights, the vargheists responded by flying behind my blood knights, a unit of zombies also appeared right in front of them. The bloodknights reformed to face the vargheists and my small skeleton unit charged the zombies. The spirit hosts advanced to block the black knights who charged and took out one of the two bases, the other tied them up for the rest of the game by killing one model and thus denying me a rank. The vargheists flew behind my knights again, leaving them nothing to charge (should have expected this) but my small skelly unit killed the zombies and reformed to charge the gheists next turn.
Skeletons charged and eventually killed the gheists, the bloodknights were actually killed by repeated screams from banshees and enemy aura of dark majesty (a trick I used in my infantry army) this swung the game in opponents favour as we were timed out. Couldn;t have saved much as my Lord was instant killed by Skarsbarath.

At the end of the day I was playing an experienced opponent who knew what he was doing, where I'm really still getting used to warhammer, was quite a fun game despite the frustration of not getting a decent Blood knight charge. First thing to address is finding ways of dealing with redirectors in this case putting more dice into stopping raise dead and having wolves on hand to help out.

[Spider]

A quick question for my fellow undead generals.

I shall shortly have 10 Crypt Horrors ready to play (3k list).

I am torn between one giant horde of 10, but I also like the flexibility of a 6 and a 4 (or two 5's...whatever really).

What have people tried?

[Askari]

If you want to horde it up, you want 18 Horrors to really make use of the horde rules and monstrous infantry supporting attacks.

In that vein, 6 and 4 seem better than one unit of 10.

[SideshowLucifer]

Haha, yeah, true. Im also not a fan of deathstar type setups. The thing is, with a 500+ blender lord, that whichever unit you put him in sorta automatically becomes a mini-deathstar :P (ghouls and grave guard anyway).

@ Sideshowlucifer: you're the first person here that has said something about running a cover throne or a black coach. How are you faring with those?

I've not tried a Coven Throne yet, still worried about a large target where my lord can be targeted separate from the throne, though there are some nifty things to do to protect him and make the throne better too. As far as the Coach, I loved it the last few times I have run it. I usually run it along side a Vargulf for some added quick punch on a flank. I've not gotten it to be ethereal yet since the new army book, but at T 6 with 4 wounds, it hasn't died yet either.