Warhammer/Tactics/8th Edition/Vampire Counts

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Why Play Vampire Counts

As with every army in these games there are a few reasons why you might want to shag a Vampire Count Army. I feel the best way to expand upon this is to innumerate it in a list:

• If you are a carpet muncher. Vampires are founded by a woman, she has a secret cabal of super powerful sexy lady vampires who want to enslave the world through a web of espionage via super secret sleep overs.
• If you are small of frame or stature, and were possibly picked on. Now is the time for you revenge! Not only will you have an army to do your bidding but theoretically with every enemy you kill your armies numbers increase. It is the perfect answer to all of that bottled up rage! Necromantic world conquest!
• All right, this is going to fall under how you want interpret George Romero's Night of the living dead. Do you see the vast armies of undead as an allegory for rampant consumerism or for the domino effect of Com-nom-nom-unism. Alright now that you have that figured out, play the army ironically, you can simultaneously be playing Warhammer Fantasy and becoming a hipster. Or should you choose you could take the irony a level deeper but I cat handle that much hipster bullshit.
• Is most of your wardrobe black? Do you listen to Feilds of Nephilim? Or if you lack the memory of the pre 9/11 world if you have read Twilight. Because this is an army lead by vampires. So yeah enjoy that.
• Have you read Dracula? Have you watched "Lost Boys"? Do you long for the vampires that rip out throats and don't apologize? Do you long for the century living corpses who live off of the blood of the living and have not a care or concern for the cattle beneath them well then you are in luck this is the fucking army for ya!
• Plans that involve summoning dark necromantic magics.
• Do you fucking like Castlevania? Have you ever wanted to be a fucking dread lord of the night and fucking conquer fuck-mothering everything using an army of the dead? Invoke your inner Dracula, then, and kick some ass.
• Some people just like the idea of ancient old fucks sitting in castles all night to plot the downfall of the lands of man.
• Do you want Nagash? Well too bad he's still not available (probably because he'd break the game), but he's tied to this army's fluff pretty well.

Alright, now that that nonsense is out of the way, Vampire Counts are a fairly effective force. They're fun to play, but they have several gimmicks that have to be accounted for to play at their best. First, note that there are no shooting options in this army, effectively eliminating an entire phase. Any ranged options in this army are purely magical. Second, you have no need to worry about the psychology of your units because they don't have any. You will be paying a lot of attention to the enemy's psychology because that's crucial to winning. Never forget to take a fear test or your troops lose any advantage they have. Third, magic is your bread and butter, your meat and drink, your bolter and chainsword. You are going to be heavily reliant on magic to refresh your units and get the most advantageous fights. If you're not utterly dominating the magic phase, you're doing it wrong. There are other things, but we'll get to them as they crop up.

Purely stylistically, Vampire counts look like the monsters from the days of Nosferatu and are a bunch of bloodthirsty conquerors waiting for a chance, with a horde of mindless undead to do their every bidding. They're the vampires from before Anne Rice, basically, and even if you don't like vampires you have to admit Christopher Lee's Dracula is a thousand times better than Robert Pattinson's sparklepire Edward.

Note: I am by no means a tactical genius and I haven't played this army extensively. Please feel free to correct any mistakes in the tactical use of units.

Unit Analysis

Lords & Heroes

Named Characters

Note: Under the current edition, named characters tend to be overpriced; you can pretty easily emulate most named characters from scratch and save yourself some points. That said, a few named characters do have abilities and wargear or wargear combos unique to them, so if you absolutely need to have them, go ahead. Just make sure you're really getting your points worth.

Lords

• Vlad Von Carstein: The man that started it all. Look at this monster. You want to field him, but you never will. Why? He's 490 points, which is your entire lord budget in an otherwise balanced 2000 point army, and you don't have that kind of room for one model. For the points, you could load a normal Vampire Lord up on a fucking undead dragon and have points left over to spend on powers. So skip over Carstein unless you're going for the Vlad/Isabella combo.

• Count Mannfred: A superb and versatile caster with no less than 14 spells. However for optimum usage he needs to kill stuff, which he isnt too good at for Vampire Lord aside from being fairly vulnerable.. This is the man you want fighting nothing but goblins and skavenslaves if you can possible help it. If you can manage this then this guy will generally rule both magic phases, especially if you're canny and snipe enemy wizards early on with Sprit Leech where you'll almost always have the superior LD.

Heroes

• Mannfred the Acolyte: Much more fieldable and a solid choice since he provides Loremaster, which is what you take him for. Like his Lord Incarnation you want him fighting chaff and nothing but chaff, the weaker the better.

• Konrad von Carstein: Nothing short of Psychologically Damaging if your opponent happens to bring Monstrous Infantry. The combo of hatred, red fury and Sword of Waldenhof means he'll cut 5-6 ogres down...per combat! That being said it's all he really does well while being the uncle of all glass cannons. So be wary of using him... and be aware that Ogre players will die a little each time you field him.

• Isabella von Carstein: Statline reminiscent of a Space Marine at 90 points. Has beguile, but without any special combat equipment what's she going to do with it? Blood Chalice looks nice, but it's nothing Invocation of Nehek can't do and it only works on vampires and even then only ones in the same squad as her. Of course, there's always the fact that if she kicks it, Vlad goes fucking nuts, with Frenzy and Hatred and whatnot... except that, as we discussed earlier, you're never going to take Vlad.

Generic Characters

Note: While named characters are judged against their generic counterparts, generic characters are examined based on their role in your army.

Lords

• Vampire Lord: Brilliant statline and a ton of upgrade options. Naturally, characters are the first place spare points go in a Vampire Counts army, and this unit will likely soak up as many points as you can give. Fully kitted out and with a zombie dragon mount, he's far more expensive than Vlad but with infinitely superior mobility and survivability, but that's only going to happen at high points value games. All in all, decent choice, can be kitted out to fulfill almost any role.
• Master Necromancer: Cheap level 4 wizard. If for some reason you can't (or don't want to) take a vampire lord or ghoul king, but you really, really want to be casting Invocation of Nehekh every turn without fail, I guess this is your dude. Build this guy for spell-casting and buff him for longevity. Biggest drawback being that their statline sucks for being a lord level character. Mount him on a Mortis Engine or a Corpse Cart or something.
• Strigoi Ghoul King: Whereas the Vampire Lord is the ideal mix of magic and might and the Master Necromancer is the magic focused user, the Strigoi Ghoul King is the punch-sport champ. Similar stat line to a Vamp Lord, but with regeneration 5+ and rerolls all misses in close combat. Severely lacks magic (Level 1 Wizard), so you will need to take another lord/hero to help him out with raising your dead.

Heroes

• Vampire: Cheaper Vampire Lord. The biggest problem here is the much more limited number of powers you can take, forcing you to choose wisely. Remember that neither this unit nor the Lord equivalent come with any equipment standard, so if you put all your points in magic don't send them into combat or they're going to get slaughtered.

• Wight King: Originally a poor choice because it used up a hero slot and wasn't a vampire, new force organisation rules give Wight Kings a place in your army; right at the front. There are few foes that can test a Vampire's WS of 6, and Wight Blade and toughness 5 makes the Wight King a more effective warrior than a standard Vampire. Stick him in a unit of Grave Guard with the Drakenhof Banner for an incredibly cheesy unit that will never die.

• Necromancer: as above, new organisation rules make Necromancers more viable. 65 points for a level 1 wizard isn't bad. Use them to keep your armies at good strength, but don't expect too much from them. You get what you paid for.

Core Units

• Zombie Horde: Zombies are pathetic. A unit of zombies will never kill anything and get killed with ridiculous ease. You might think to use them as a tarpit, but for reasons that I'll go into below regarding combat resolution, they're poor at that as well. So why take them? The answer is fear. For 3 points a model(Giving you a total 70 points for a 20-strong horde plus standard bearer and musician) you get a buffer which can make the enemy running in terror. There is nothing like a unit missing its crucial point in a battle because it's buggering off to get away from a 5 zombies it can mulch on the charge. In addition, remember to keep a few models off the table since assuming you have raise dead/undead summon horde(and why wouldn't you?) because you'll be summoning a lot of these buggers for various reasons. They are incredibly versatile and to a certain degree expendable(keep in mind the still count towards victory points), but it's better not to field too many on the table to begin with. If you want to do so, have one 40-model horde and spend the rest of your points elsewhere. Keep in mind rolling the dice for a squad of zombies is incredibly disheartening, and you don't want too much of it or it could ruin your mood.

• Skeleton Warriors: Better than zombies in every way. More durable due to having light armour and a shield. The armour makes them more effective tarpits than zombies because they're likely to stay in the game longer, but as before best taken in large units to maximise the usefulness of Invocation of Nehek.

• Ghouls: Ghouls eschew protection for automatic wounds on a six, which means of your three standard core units they're the ones most likely to get kills. They tie with skeleton warriors, depending on what you want out of your army; skeletons are more durable, while ghouls have more attacks and poison. Take them in a horde for a wall of attacks that your enemy will devote ridiculous amounts of firepower to take down before they can get into combat.

• Dire Wolves: They now count towards your minimum core requirements, meaning they are now a very fast moving alternative to the other core choices. As with most units of this type, use them for flanking if you want them.

Special Units

• Corpse Cart: Best used for its passive abilities. Don't make the mistake of thinking it's capable of holding its own in combat. Can be ridden by Necromancers.
• Grave Guard: Now an infamous staple in VC armies along with their mounted counterparts, Grave Guard are essentially stronger, tougher and generally better skeletons. They don't pack it in as easily as regular skeletons due to having better armour, higher Ld/T/S and as nifty little bonus, have killing blow! Stuff a Wight King into this unit and take them in hordes, possibly with great weapons.
• Black Knights: One of two heavy cavalry units in the army and the Grave Guard's mounted counterparts, as previously mentioned. DAMN good unit capable of moving over terrain like it wasn't even there and letting loose with a flurry of S4 (or higher, depending on weapon choice) killing blow attacks.
• Hexwraiths: New for 8th edition, weaker black knights with great weapons and an interesting advantage: they're ethereal! They will attract a TON of magic during your opponents turn and don't have any protection against that, so beware. Otherwise, they work exactly like Screamers of Tzeentch, allowing you to zig-zag them through unengaged units dishing out S5 flaming, magical attacks that ignore armour saves per hexwraith. Oh, and they cause terror.
• Vargheists: Flying, Frenzied, Vampiric, Monstrous Infantry - one of two, actually. Basically a step down from Varghulfs, but without the regeneration.
• Crypt Horrors: The other monstrous infantry unit, little more than super ghouls. Like ghouls, they have poisoned attacks, but also regeneration 5+.

Rare Units

• Blood Knights: There are alot things to remember about the Blood Knights: EVIL BRETONNIANS! They are as expensive as a Baneblade to purchase, and they are, without any doubt, the single best overall cavalry unit in Warhammer Fantasy. The Flag of Blood Keep gives them a +4 ward save against any ranged attacks that can get through their 2+ base armor save, and you don't even need to keep them in range of the general to get a March off. Having recently had their points cost lowered and their initiative raised , they are a fantastically lethal addition to an army of any size. It's still a good idea to keep a loaded-up barded vampire lord within the unit anyways, the unit is frenzied and gets some sweet ass upgrades if the vampire joins as well, and the lord serves as a medic whenever he casts invocation he can regain the vampire and the horse he rode in on.

Building Your Army

Magic Items

• Magic Weapons:

• • Frostblade: A sword that causes instant death, and is usable on a model with as ridiculously powerful as a Vampire Lord. Nothing else really need be said about this. The only drawback is its exceptional price tag (100 points), which, like this weapon's power is practically unmatched.

• • Dreadlance:Hits automatically. Expensive, but you'd be amazed how enfuriating for the enemy it can be when the full number of a given commander unit's attacks are going to hit. Hilariously effective on mounted units.

• • Black Axe of Krell: Wight King only, but jeez, this thing will turn big, scary, multi-wound creatures into piles of good. Does d3 wounds on a hit, and any unit wounded but not killed has to make a toughness test on every turn for the rest of the game or suffer additional wounds. Not bad for half the price of the damned Frostblade.

• • Blood Drinker: Healing sword! Vampire only, but restores one wound each time you wound something with it. Given how insanely durable Vampire Lords can be, and the weapon's low cost compared to other items on the list, it's actually remarkably useful, though not anywhere near as potent as the heaviest choices on this list.

• • Skabskath: It gives Terror. In an army already chock-full of fear effects. Really nothing be said.

• • Sword of Kings: Killing Blow, and gives an improved version of Killing Blow when given to a Wight King. Not bad considering it costs a measly 25 points.

• • Tomb Blade: Only useful for a unit with skeleton warriors; every unit the user kills adds another skeleton to the wielder's unit. Not hugely useful considering you have Invocation for restoring forces to full bore, but can be handy for a unit camping amidst your skellies, and kinda inexpensive, which is nice.

• • Balefire Spike: A flaming lance. Nice and cheap, but that's its main upside.

• Magic Armor:

• • Walach's Bloody Hauberk: Basic armor that provides a half-decent armor save (that can buffed by shields/steeds) and a ward save. The closest thing available to Vampire Terminator armor.

• • Accursed Armor: Heavy Armor that gives +1 toughness and -3 to WS and Initiative. Questionable value, though it most-assuredly does make for a goddamned frustrating-to-kill Vampire.

• • Flayed Hauberk: Heavy Armor that gives a 2+ armor save which can't be improved by any means.

• • Armor of Night: Footslogging units only. Heavy armor. -2 penalty on all units shooting at this unit. There's better choices, but it is pretty lulzy.

• • Nightshroud: Light Armor your Necromancers can use! Anyone attacking someone wearing a Nightshroud loses its Always Strikes First rule and hits at Initiative 1. Not bad, especially given how fragile Necromancers in general are.

• • Cadaverous Cuirass: Heavy Armor. Fuck your instant kills. This armor protects the wearer from Killing Blow and Poison alike. Not bad for 15 points. If you can't find better, lean in this direction.