Warhammer Fantasy Battle Reporter Forum

I just started playing Warhammer, using the Vampire Counts, and Im kinda lost in what strategy I should use for the VC.

Any kind of advice would be greatly appriciated.

hi l33704f and welcome to the forum.

You have a few options but first of all...

How much experience do you have, that is, how many battles have you fought ? How big is your army (in points), what models do you have and which armies are you most likely to be fighting ?

Since I am not a pro in vamps) I can only recommend you to visit a guy in YouTube (bluetablepainting) he had some games with vamps and you could learn something from that battles!)

I got the battalion, dire wolves, Konrad, and two Necros.

You could buy 1 more unit of zombies and blood knights or black knights. Personally I like blood)

l33704f, do you have much battle experience yet ?

If so, what happened in your games to make you think your tactics aren't quite right ?

Most armies either go fullon raising undead with lots of power dice and vampires or they go for hard hitting offensive tactics to clear the ground between them and their enemy as quickly as possible without taking too many missile fire casualties.

I prefer the former, it's a bit cheesy but the ability to raise troops and whittle down the enemy with rank and file masses and fear is a very difficult tactic for enemies to counter.

I have never actually used a necro, I always stick with souped up Vamps and lots of power dice. I stick to the vampiric powers that give me higher magic levels and extra power dice and the ability to raise undead to greaternumbers than the original unit's size.

What size battles are you playing in ? 2000 pts ?

This is what i had in mind:
Wight King (General) 75pts (forgot I had him)
Wight Blade: Killing Blow: automatically kills opponents if rolls a 6 to wound, only ward save allowed.
Heavy Armor and shield: +4 Armor Save

Vampire 100pts
Blood Drinker: For each unsaved wound inflicted in battle vampire regains 1 wound 40pts
Black Periapt: Save 1 unused magic die for next turn 15pts
Enchanted Shield: +5 Armor Save 15pts
Dark Acolyte: +1 Magic lvl 30pts

Vampire 100pts
Blood Drinker 40pts
Black Periapt 15pts
Enchanted Shield: +5 Armor Save 15pts
Dark Acolyte 30pts

Crypt Ghouls 80pts
Crypt Ghast 8pts

Dire Wolves 80pts

Skeleton Warriors 160pts
Musician 4pts
Standard Bearer 8pts
Corpse Cart 75pts
Unholy Loadstone: +1 wound if Invocation of Nehek is cast within 6” of cart 25pts

Zombies 80pts
Musician 4pts

Total: 999
I havnt played a full game yet.

First up welcome to the forums



Key problem here is a VC has to have a Vampire as its General in the army composition rules underneath the table detailing how many units of each type you can take at various points level. Wight King is still a good guy to take either in a unit of Black Knights or as a BSB.



OK - for Vampires you have two basic options magic heavy or combat heavy, and the usual option is to take one of both. You need to give this guy Avatar of Death which grants him Heavy Armour, Shield otherwise his AS will be 5+ from the Enchanted Shield and he will die too easily. I am guessing from build that you are going for a mage character here, if so make him your general give him Dark Acolyte, Black Periapt and Book of Arkhan. Drop Blood Drinker and give him Flayed Hauberk instead for the 2+ AS



Can't double up on magic items mate, e.g., Blood Drinker and Black Periapt can only be taken once not on every character. Give this guy Dread Knight and Infinite Hatred and let him go nuts.



All good - but a unit of 20 would work better use them 7 wide if you can


Split this into two units of 5


Take War Banner with these guys.



If you want to increase your magic take a Necromancer and make this his ride.

Zombies 80pts
Musician 4pts



Oops didnt see this. In games this big taking one character is pretty much standard, although with VC I would take two. Keep their builds really simple so you can learn different options as you go. The issue of White Dwarf that introduced the new VC army book had some excellent ideas on army composition and a decent 1000pt army list that I used when first collecting them.



Best way to figure out what to take is to play as many games as possible and experiment as much as you can. Vampire Counts are can be complicated to play so in each game I would concentrate on one particular part of what they do, e.g., first few games concentrate on learning their magic, next few go for combat, games after that work on various special options.

As for what to buy next it depends entirely on what type of army you want to run. Some guys field nothing but Ghouls and Vampires, other guys (like me) like lots of Skeletons, others take hordes of Zombies. I would suggest you invest in some Black Knights - cheap way of doing them is to buy some Tomb King Horsemen (8 to a box) and convert them using leftover bits from the Skeleton unit box. Blood Knights are great but too expensive to begin with - the key strengths to VC are NUMBERS so lots of core troops is what you need to collect. Learn how to use the core troops first then branch out into other unit types

Conversion ideas for Black Knights discussed here -
http://battlereporter.freeforums.org/black-knight-conversion-idea-t867.html

Thank you for the tips I will definatlygive it a shot and let you know how it went.

Also, what do you think of using named heros like Konrad or Mannfred in 1000pt games?

both characters are more points then a regular Vampire.(not by much though.... 20-50 pts I think....)
I haven't played ether but I know Konrad has no magic, you's need another Vamp or a Necro to go with Konrad.
I don't have my Vamp army book handy but I believe Mannfred the Acolyte is a Lv.2 mage character and can take a single magic item at what ever cost.

do not ever take zombies as a unit. you are going to be raising them. i would advise having the summon ghoul upgrade to make a bigger unit. blood knights would help but my fav is cairn wraths. anyway, welcome to the forum and may powner not kill you with laugter

no, you should take zombies

why!?!?

gday mate lookin good id keep up the core units and add at least one more if ur not gonna be summoning too many. Dont want to have points sopped up by heroes, and leave them no armies to lead.

With zombies i reckon sometimes take em sometimes dont. I know this is possibly a bit confusing if your new, but the only goos thing about zombies is their fear causing. Hence, take em against low leadership armies;goblins, skaven, men, even ogres. Dont bother with units of them against dwarves or elves.

i say no to zombies they are 4 points a model. gobbo 3. my vote is on gobbos