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LORDS

Vamp Lord lvl 4--561
hell steed, lance, heavy armour,
red fury, quick blood, fear incarnate
enchanted shield, book of arhkam, other trickster shard, tal of prev

HEROS

Vamp lvl 2--273
hell steed, lance, shield
quick blood, begile
armour of desitny

Wight king--162
SS+barding, lance, shield,
night shroud, luck stone, potion of fouhardiness

necro, lvl 1, scroll, ruby ring of ruin--115

CORE

625 points of anything

Thinking two groups of dogs, and a unit of skellies or zombies

SPECIAL

2x fell bats
2x fell bats

4x vargheist

RARE

7X blood knights, FC,
Flag of blood keep, dawn stone

I could up the dire wolves to impact my drops as well as to help with redirect?

both vamps run with the blood knights to draw the los and 4 up ward.

I oppt for the wright king to up the ld in the BK unit to take care of frenzy. As well he can cancel out the challenge because of his ld.

I keep returning to the varghiest and I dont know why. It seems this list needs some killing power and having this unit near the vamp lord means. I can get them into position with spells and movement.

I think the Flag of Blood Keep is really, really bad. It's just too expensive, basically. However, in this list, it might be worth taking, because you literally have NOTHING else for your opponent to shoot at, which means if they have ANY shooting at all, it will be directed at your deathstar. I guess maybe they'll shoot your chaff? I think you might have too much chaff, though. Plus, your vampires don't benefit from the Flag of Blood Keep at all, because they both already have 4+ ward saves from their magic items.

One thing I'm confused about, though, is why include the Wight King for leadership purposes if you already have a leadership 10 Vampire Lord in the same unit?

Also, I think the necromancer is useless in this list, except as a caddy for the scroll and ring, if you really need them.

Both vamps have the ability to be near the unit for the Los, but do not have to be in the unit because of there own ward save.

I added the wright king to give the unit a solid ld, as well as a scroll cady necro. The ring was to address chaff etc.

If I drop the king and the necro I can re add the other vamp. I just feel that a solid ld and scroll is much needed to address magic, and frenzy?

But why do you intend to keep the vampires out of the unit? IIRC, that only gives them a 4+ LOS, while being in the unit gives them a 2+.

As for the Wight King, I don't follow you. If the Vampire Lord is close enough to receive a LOS, then he's close enough for the Blood Knights to use his leadership of 10, which makes the Wight King redundant if you're only taking him for leadership. And if the Vamp Lord is actually in the unit, then this is even more so.

As for the Necromancer, yes, a dispel scroll is useful. But you might not need it, is all I'm saying. And if you don't take it, then you basically don't need to take the Necromancer - you'll be casting IoN on 2 dice to try to raise zombies or something. It's just not that useful.

Hum

In this list, there's basically no reason to keep the Vampires out of the unit (especially the hero). You've only got two combat units, the knights and the vargheists. Keeping the vampires out of the unit of knights allows them to charge stuff that the vargheists are charging that you DON'T want the knights charging, as well. But how many things is that, really? And how often will the vargheists be ABLE to charge and the knights NOT be able to charge? Almost never, I'll bet.

So, you've got a situation where you want a high leadership around to help both the vargheists and the blood knights, and every single unit that you charge with one of those units, you also want to charge with the other at the same time. The vargheists can fly and so are faster than the knights, which means you can always keep them in range of the knights if the Vamp Lord is in that unit to benefit from his leadership. If the Vamp Lord is NOT in that unit, all you're doing is splitting your power a bit, which gives an easier target for whatever shooting your opponent has, and could potentially create weird movement/spacing issues (every different unit must remain one inch apart at all times, stuff like that).

Then, if the Vamp Lord is in the knights, the high leadership of the Wight King is wasted. You could still keep him in the unit for other reasons, though, if you wanted to.

And finally, in my experience, having a low-level necromancer in the back-field to "keep your core units topped-up" is almost always a waste. You have to spend too many dice for a level 1 to reliably cast even IoN, and then you're boosting the numbers of units that, while better if they're larger, probably aren't going to win the game for you even if you dedicate lots of magical resources towards keeping them alive and large. This relegates the necromancer to the position of scroll caddy, and giving him that Ring just makes him more expensive and requires that you allocate even MORE winds of magic dice to him to make him useful. And, as I mentioned in the previous post, if you don't really need the dispel scroll, then the necromancer is a total waste of points.

Honestly, I would put the Vampires in the unit of Blood Knights, and change the Lord's steed from a Hellsteed to a Barded Nightmare. Drop the Wight King and the Necromancer and maybe spend those points on something decent from your special choices, like Grave Guard or Crypt Horrors. Those units will give you an anvil to complement the hammer that you've already got (kngihts and vargheists).

Or get really crazy and try to get something from your rare, like maybe a Varghulf.

Drop the blood knights, much better stuff you could get for the points

 Wolfie101 wrote:
Drop the blood knights, much better stuff you could get for the points

I was going to say that, but I don't like dumping on dudes' ideas right from the get-go. I mean, like everything else in the book, they're viable, even if they aren't the BEST choice in the world. Hell, I use both a Varghulf and a Black Coach and I do fairly well.

 Tangent wrote:

 Wolfie101 wrote:
Drop the blood knights, much better stuff you could get for the points

I was going to say that, but I don't like dumping on dudes' ideas right from the get-go. I mean, like everything else in the book, they're viable, even if they aren't the BEST choice in the world. Hell, I use both a Varghulf and a Black Coach and I do fairly well.

I do well with Varghulf, Coach and Blood Knights.

I like black knights more for character bus, but blood knights hit plenty hard.

-Matt

Yeah, I mean, I guess that's my point. Everything in the book is basically valid.

Onto the ring: I have been running do in my high elf army for awhile. Chaff will catch them off guard and kill any chance of combat. The option to address said issue is with archers. In the VC Dex we have one spell with dd and the ring to address cheap chaff. The necro in the backfield address chaff as needed. With the ability to dispell a nasty spell per the scroll.

Both vamps run the hell steed for the ability to reach out and charge thing down. If I can keep them in ran of the BK then the Los will kick in. Granted its only a four plus but its a dbl up save vs something nasty ie cannon. The key role for both of these guys is to take on said units turn two on. I'll look over the wright this weekend to see if I could drop him.

As far as the vary heist go, thinking a solid unit to tear threw cheap units of infantry. Will take a look at the full list again to see if I can change things up.

Thanks for your thoughts...

One Direct Damage Spell?
Do you mean Gaze of Nagash, Curse of Years or Wind of Undeath? Or do you mean Rod of Flaming Death?
Still get the Ruby ring, as you mentioned.

Wind of Undeath is actually really good. Doing hits to multiple units, and leaving a vortex on the table that opponents cannot move through (as per new FAQ, no unit can choose to move into a vortex) you have plenty of chaff clearing options. And that's not counting banshees, mortis engines pulsing or terrorgheists.

My favorite is to choose to end wind of undeath in my opponents magic phase. It's already blocked his movement, and pulling it then opens up the table for my movement.

-Matt

Tarval wrote:
Onto the ring: I have been running do in my high elf army for awhile. Chaff will catch them off guard and kill any chance of combat. The option to address said issue is with archers. In the VC Dex we have one spell with dd and the ring to address cheap chaff. The necro in the backfield address chaff as needed. With the ability to dispell a nasty spell per the scroll.

Hi Tarval,

Looks like you and I are trying to forumlate similar lists (i.e a no screamer, BK bus list). I was originally going to run my lord with the Book of Arkhan, but after reading this, I though the ring deserved a closer look. Yes, we have Gaze...but its not flaming, which is not much a problem most of the time, but you don't want to get caught out against regen. It's also as you mentioned, a vital chaff clearer. I'll be screening my BK's with some wolves, but seeing how fast they will die, it's always best to have a backup option in the form of the ring. It's on the cheap, power-dice wise which is always a nice bonus.

Tarval wrote:

As far as the vary heist go, thinking a solid unit to tear threw cheap units of infantry. Will take a look at the full list again to see if I can change things up.

Even if the vargiests arn't as tanky as Crypt Horrors, I feel that psychologically they draw more attention to themselves, and away from the Lord. As it has been spoken of elsewhere in these forums, as long as you remember they are glass cannons, you won't be upset when they get wiped out from protracted combat. I'm considering running both a unit of 3 Vargiests, and one unit of 6 Crypt Horrors (both the models look amazing!).