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New to WHFB and wanted to start off by making two armies for me and my brother, the first one I want to make is a vampire counts army which is why I'm here. I'm looking to make a 1500 point army avoiding ghouls for now simply because of theme reasons. Any help would be appreciated.

Lots of zombies and skeletons, terrorgheist(s), vargheists and or crypt horrors, dire wolves, spirit hosts, grave guard. Obviously a blender lord and necromancers.

I was more looking for a more explanatory list, I own the army book from a recent trade, but very little idea on how to actually arrange an army list.

With vampire counts you want the bare minimum of core since you will be raising up more later. Your focus will be on special, rare, heroes and lords from then on. So a start could be two fifty man zombie blocks with full command, then a zombie bunker to meet the minimum core, after that its up to you really.

Yes, but I was looking for a list of what specifically to get, such as (eg) 30 skeletons, 1 necromancer, 20 zombies, 1 terrorgheist, etc, mostly due to the fact that I have a semi limited budget for this and dont want to be spending more than I have to on unnecessary units. (Extra cores will be in consideration though, because of the making more troops)

If you have a limited budget for a warhammer fantasy army I suggest not going with a horde army. Try another army like dwarfs, Elves, or Chaos/Deamons.

Well by budget I mean I can spend just not like say, three mortis engines and 100 skeletons, I already own a few core units (20 zombies, 20 skellies, 5 black horsemen, 5 brettonian knight blood knight conversions, and a converted Green Knight to Red duke, just checking if I need to expand it.) Its all the stuff I got in the same trade as the book, and though I have it, I don't really know what else to get.

Yout will need more zombies like 80 in totals. A Terrorgiest or two. Necromancers and vampires. But in the end it's what type of army you wana build, you can go scream list, blender list, fast moving vamperic units, etc...

Don't always need terrorgheists. If you want them then do, they are cool models, otherwise don't. From what you've got, it sounds like you could be interested in a bit of a cavalry force. The Army if Sterneiste set could be ideal if that is so, 15 black knights, 20 zombies, some vargheists and a necro. I don't think you need much more in the blood knight department than 5.
That plus some more skeletons and some dire wolves could set you up well.

First and foremost, you need to understand that VC are a HORDE army. If you're not into painting massive quantities of troops then go find another army to play, period.

My standard core for VC is 80 skeletons (in 2 bricks of 40) and 20 direwolves (in 4 units of 5). If I went zombies then I'd need somewhere in the neighbourhood of 200 (mostly for raising above the unit cap). Which is nuts.

Some people run ghouls to keep the model count down, but ghouls fething suck. So avoid that.


Otherwise, your big decision with VC is between foot and cav. Either you take a VL and put him in a black knight bus, or you put him on foot with skeletons or grave guard. If the latter you'll probably also want a bunch of crypt horrors and maybe a mortis engine or two. The former, 1-2 terrorgheists and some vargheists. Hex wraiths are...not good in the current meta (magic missiles shred them, and they're really in vogue right now). Spirit hosts are great. Fell bats are pretty decent too. Most everything else is mediocre to awful.