vampireless vampire counts.

[madival]

I was wondering if anyone else runs vampireless vampires counts. When I say vampires, I don't mean the monsterous type or the black coach. I am talking about the lords and vampire character. I prefer my characters to stay cheaper then them and more specialized. I was wondering what everyone else thought or ran?

I have been planning to run this

Lord

Heinrich Kemmler

Heros

Krell lord of undeath

Troops

40 skeletons spears, full command, sceaming banner

40 zombies standard

40 zombies standard

Special

10 black knights, barding, lances, full command

rare

Varghulf

What do you guys run for vampireless vampires? can they work and how do they work?

[metalloveman]

vamps are completely unnecessary thanks to the awesomeness that is heinrich. krell I don't like as much I think you're better off with a normal wight king.

How many points is that list? also I'd give the black knights the flaming banner go hydra hunting.

[Ville]

So, today I played another 2400 point match with my Vampireless Vampires. My opponent had Dark Elves and a solid list with Black Guard, Hydra, Cauldron, Dagger+lvl.4 Shadow etc.

I had two Necromancers, lvl. 4 and lvl 2. and they did an excellent job at keeping my army together and giving them boosts. I played a fairly defensive game with my core units, letting my opponent do the charges and just try to hold on, while my Black Knights, supported by a Varghulf, would try to rack up enough victory points for me to win.

It went really well and not once did I miss my Vampire Lord. Ghoul hordes can still be brutal when buffed by vampire spells and ASF from Corpse Cart. Our army can be killy enough even without any vampire characters.

In the end I massacred my opponent, but he made serious mistakes too. With better use of Okkam's and Cauldron I would have had a lot harder time. He also had the SC assassin Shadowblade, which could have won him the game turn 1 but he blew it and was later eaten by Zombies.

[Malorian]

You can do it, but vampire troops for the most part are extremely bad at killing things. You can try flanking in with a monster or knights, but you risk the weak unit losing so much that you lose combat and your good unit crumbles.

I find it really handy to have a vampire lord as he can hide in a unit and pump up their effectiveness without crumbling seperately and still fills in the magic roll.

So is it needed? No, but then you are probably going for the long attrition game.

[Ville]

You can do it, but vampire troops for the most part are extremely bad at killing things. You can try flanking in with a monster or knights, but you risk the weak unit losing so much that you lose combat and your good unit crumbles.

Yes, this is the classic problem with VC: you need to think carefully when to involve premium troops in a fight involving Zombies. I find it best not to, and let the basic troops merely survive with their numbers and magic support.

[madival]

But is 200 points of character worth bumping up 125 points worth of unit to make the unit effective ? Hell, throw a two banshee in their and double scream them if you just want kill. The vampire is just so expensive for what they do bow a days.

[SteelTitan]

But is 200 points of character worth bumping up 125 points worth of unit to make the unit effective ? Hell, throw a two banshee in their and double scream them if you just want kill. The vampire is just so expensive for what they do bow a days.

A scream doesn't add to combat resolution, which is (i find) extremely important for VC. And "to make the unit effective"? It beats not having any effective units :P

[Spoonie]

First of all, lol. Secondly: Your banshees kill things?

My opinion on the vampire lord is, there's nowhere else in the list where you can spend whatever the difference between a necromancer lord and the vampire is that will get you 10+ kills in combat. Plus, as Malorian mentioned, it turns that core unit the game made you bring into a viable asset.

[Frankly]

So, today I played another 2400 point match with my Vampireless Vampires. My opponent had Dark Elves and a solid list with Black Guard, Hydra, Cauldron, Dagger+lvl.4 Shadow etc.

I had two Necromancers, lvl. 4 and lvl 2. and they did an excellent job at keeping my army together and giving them boosts. I played a fairly defensive game with my core units, letting my opponent do the charges and just try to hold on, while my Black Knights, supported by a Varghulf, would try to rack up enough victory points for me to win.

It went really well and not once did I miss my Vampire Lord. Ghoul hordes can still be brutal when buffed by vampire spells and ASF from Corpse Cart. Our army can be killy enough even without any vampire characters.

Yeah I have little toubles with a M.Necro list. Once you start running a consistant magic phase its a hard defensive list to win against.

.... but then you are probably going for the long attrition game.

This is what a M.Necro list is all about imho. 6 turn grind out games, few other lists get to compete if your running a defensive chaff horde set up to keep that target enemy hitty unit out of action for 2-3 turns.

My opinion on the vampire lord is, there's nowhere else in the list where you can spend whatever the difference between a necromancer lord and the vampire is that will get you 10+ kills in combat.

For me its more GG's or whatever hammer unit your using. I'm running 2 x 40 GG atm thats hitty enough not to use a V.Lord.

@ the OP:

We usually don't play SC's, but Heins looks awesome.

Your Magic phase is way to flat to bother pouring all those points into a magic user like Heins. Either BP, stone, forbidden rod, spam channelling, M.E.s are needed to give you consistant rolls or dice. The main thing is to keep a consistant amount of dice in your casting pool to get good use out of Heins or a normal M.N. for that matter.

[madival]

had my first game with the New VC today and it didn't seem that I needed a vampire lord. Level 4 and ethereal made hein awesome enough to run. Vampires would work as calv additions, but other then that, I would rather have something along the lines of a spare caster.

[Sexiest_hero]

You dont need them, The removal of Master necromacers were a big issue of all the 7th edition books, seconds only to the gutting of Chaos space marines

[madival]

after a few games with my vampireless VC, I have found that certain units give me problems. Elite hammer units are just nasty. Sword masters of hoeth were better then my GG because they did it faster. Instead, I found that I had to do it kill them with Hex wraiths or just bog them down. My 10 man hex wraith squad should do the trick well. 10 s5 power weapons is just nasty. my magic was amazing and since I ran hemmler, I had +5 to dispel (4 lvls and +1). This helped quite a bit. Then I have gotten two games of Book of Hoeth and teclis.... Zombies became king.

[Aluinn]

I also use no Vampires and don't find it to be any sort of handicap, really. There are certain things that you can't do (full-on Fear bomb for example), but you get ample return in the form of a much more efficient Lords selection for pure casting purposes, and the points efficiency of Wight Kings and Wraiths as combat Heroes pretty much matches that of Vampires although they each have different advantages: WK don't really need to buy any defensive items whereas Vamps are liable to die to rank-and-file if they do not, and of course come with KB; Wraiths are super cheap in points and obviously have Ethereal win big/lose big syndrome (probably more advantage than disadvantage, but very lame when your opponent has the hard counters), plus can charge out of their unit to tie up anything without static CR and magic attacks (e.g. most Monsters), which opponents often don't expect. In-built Terror is also pretty nice and probably underrated; Chillgrasp is occasionally useful if nothing to write home about.

Beyond that, examining units, we have the following being Vampires: Vargheists, Blood Knights, the Varghulf, and the Black Coach. I wouldn't say any of those is essential to a successful or competitive VC army as you have ample other good heavy-hitters and fast-moving things in the form of Grave Guard, Crypt Horrors (though these thematically involve Vampires, so you may wish to use GG instead, though that's not much of a loss as they are about equally good point-for-point), Black Knights, the Cairn Wraith Rare unit, and the un-ridden Terrorgheist.

So I don't think that omitting all Vampires puts you into any kind of a corner nor constricts you much in list-building; for example, you don't even need to take Kemmler as the generic Master Necromancer is a plenty good caster, especially for his cost; Black Periapt is a very good item and he can also get by with just a Power Stone, if backed up by some Hero Necros with Scroll, Channeling Rod, etc., as he always should be. You can average +2 power dice per turn at reasonable cost with very little sacrifice--consider for example all those times you might have one or two useless dispel dice left after your opponent fails to cast, the Winds roll is terrible, or you Scroll something that he/she spent a lot of dice on.

[madival]

Can we just say the black coach not a vampire? It doesn't have any real bonus as a vampire since it cant march.

Also, the fear bomb is actually is nicer without vampires. People fun this expensive vampire kited out to max fear, but is ineffective versus fear causing enemies. The cairn wraiths causes terror which is better in a lot more situations. Point for point, vampires kind of suck at what they do. A tooled out fear bomb vampire costs more then my cairn wraith and zombie horde do combined.