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Howdy Dakkites and happy holidays,

As you may know from my inferior cousin down in the tactics board, we are starting fantasy, he as Lizardmen and me as the dastardly-possibly-sometimes-misunderstood Vampire counts! Now fantasy has really caught my eye from a 40k'ers perspective because i'm tired of the focus on shooting, i want close combat and I want it now And magic is cool too. Reading through the boards here and the various rulebooks and army books ( Kudos to you Red Zeke, love the battle reports ) has given me alot of insight and perspective but i'm afraid that I wont get a feel for exactly how the game (and especially the magic phase) will treat me. I've made many lists and we plan to play later today for the first time, and out of boredom I started writing up a list for the future...when I have the rediculous amount of skeletons (like them over Ghouls, no need for suggestions otherwise) that I wish to field!

That being said I have the inkling in the back of my mind that i'm wanting to be too ambitious with this lists magic, I have a couple vampires with different lores that I want to do different things and I could argue that with that comes great versatility. But is it versatility I could throw to the winds for more numbers?

Any advice at all would be of great help, the list isnt finished and I could make tweaks right now but I think i'll just post the raw uncut version of it now and come back after some holiday cheer has been had and see what has been said. Thanks in advance.

Vampire counts: 2497/2500

L: Vampire Lord-425
Blood Drinker, Flayed Hauberk, Dawn stone
Forbidden lore (vampire), Lord of the dead, Dark acolyte +1 magic level

H: Vampire- 295
BsB, Drakenhoff Banner, Avatar of death, Walking death
H: Vampire- 175
Forbidden lord (beasts), Gamblers armor, Charmed shield, Sword of might
H: Vampire 150
Forbidden Lore (Metal), Cadaverous Curiass


C: Skeletons(19): 216
FC,Spears, Endless nightmare standard
C: Skeletons(19): 191
FC, Spears
C: Skeletons (20): 225
FC, Spears, Deathly Vigour standard
C: Dire wolves (5)- 40
C: Dire wolves (5)- 40
C: Corpse Cart:100
Unholy Lodestone

S: Grave Guard (30): 465
Fc, GW, Banner of the Barrows

R: Varghulf: 175


If it will help the rough plan as I saw it is that the Lord goes with the skeletons packing the Endless nightmare banner, the BSB and the Lore of Metal vampires go into the Grave Guard and the Beast Vampire goes with the other unit of Nineteen skeletons (this unit will move closely with the Lords unit). The Dire wolves harass, the Varghulf keeps them marching if need be and hurts something. The magic in theory was suposed to be a kind of cascading barrage where each vampire would cast the spell i got them for in order of importance with the one I want off most that turn last. Example being invocation spam only to end it with giving my Grave guard scaly skin and my unit of skeletons +1T and +1str. But I imagine that by the time I get back you people will be telling me that magic is much too fickle to be expecting all that many spells a turn, versatility or not and four channelers or not! Yet again thanks in advance Dakkites.

Instead of Metal, I would go with Death or Shadow against Saurus. The I test spells are horrific, and its so much fun to debuff their S or T.

I'm not sold on skeletons in 8th. I have seen then shatter time and again on the first charge. no one in my meta game even bothers with units of S3 single attack models anymore. Its S5 multiple attacks or nothing. The only exception is Night Gobbos with Fanatics. Soo many fanatics... :shudder:

The Dire wolves are very very VERY flimsy, and I've never seen them even kill WM crews, let alone reliably support flanks... Not since 6th ed, at least, when they got S4 on the charge.