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As some of you may know im an energetic Necron player, now though I have a burning desire to start a vamp army, is there anyone out there who can advise me on making a good and releativly cheap army, plus id like to know any extra rules that are in Fantasy (cos I cant be bothered to get the rule book )

Well you could always proxy if allowed. Mantic pretty much has a ton of undead to fit the bill. Luckily you dont have to spend too much on core since they suck. Need Grave Guard and Knights mostly. some spirits and vargulfs here and there

And by rulebook as in NO rulebook at all? 40k is WAY different from fantasy. Best find a mini book on ebay or something

Extremely different, it's not like you can learn Fantasy off the back of 40k. they are different games.

yeah, fleabay a mini rulebook (£5?) and get some mantic undead..

You cant be bothered to buy the rules but want people to spend their time to tell you how to play and what to use?

Come on.. as others have said theyre drastically different games. You probably dont even have to *buy* the rules, just borrow the book from someone

Graveguard and Blood Knights are good.

you will need LOTS of Zombie models.

the good news is that ANYTHING that is mansized will suffice, with a suitible paint job, as a zombie.

a friend is using the Battle for Skull pass Dwarves and Goblins as Zombies.


you can easily raise 20-30 zombies in one turn if you have a couple vampires using invocation of Nehik so you will need tons.



the really nice thing about VCs is you can increase the size of your undead units(skeletons, Grave Guard, Dire wolves) beyond their starting numbers and if they get decimated in a fight you can heal them back again.


it is a high model count army so you will need to buy alot of models.


Edit: this is also an army that definitly needs to keep the general alive.

last week i saw a VC player just ripping apart a TK player, BUT the tomb king(last TK model left) managed to kill the Vampire general in a challenge and instantly the VC army lost 9/10 of the models. only because the Vhargulf charged and killed the TK did the VC player salvage victory and even then it almost lost against the tomb king.

While Blood knights are indeed good, they aren't exactly cheap. If you want a reasonable cost army you might want to proxy something as the models are all metal and pricey. A friend of mine got plastic chaos knights and converted them to blood knights. Not exactly how I'd do it but it certainly is a much lower cost option.

Grave Guard with great weapons are pretty essential for VC.

For GW models two batallion boxes, two GG boxes along with 2 vampire characters and a necromancer will get you enough for 1000-1500 point games. From there you can get things like black knights, the varghulf, and more grave guard. Wraiths are good too but they're expensive if you get them from GW. Either kit bash some or get the mantic set.

Speaking of Mantic, they have some great models that are cheap. Just be sure that your local play group is fine with proxies and/or non GW figures.

As for the rules you should at least get the vampire counts army book. You really can't expect other people to provide you with the rules for your army. As for the main rulebook I'd recommend getting the small one online or at the very least borrow one from a friend and learn the rules.

I am going to get the codex,..... what about spirit hosts , are they good?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
and I was just merely saying that to get the hardback version of the rule book would be plain stupid

i would only buy a few models because a Vampire magic spell creates them.

they are good for tying down units which can't hurt them as they are etherial.

Also, im not a high model count player, swarming them with zombies is not my style,(hence Necrons) so I was going more for skeletons or ghouls

Well, you will be wasting points as you automatically know the zombie spell.

Whats the zombie spell?

Raise Dead.

actually i was wrong, you don't auto come with the zombie spell, but you can swap a spell for Raise dead.


Invocation of nehik adds to existing units and its the spell everyone knows.


you can make a 20 strong unit of skellies as big as you want(allowing for dispells and such)

So a clever guy would stop me from using this spell anyway right?

Hardly as you can cast it multyple times a turn, at least i think there was a VC special rule to that effect, and even if there isn't you can still cast it once with each caster who has it and i've heard people run cheapo hero level chars just to spam it.

So you actually dont raise the dead, you just raise the limit of your units

You raise models in the unit regrowth style, but this spell can be used to increase the number of models in the unit beyond its starting size.

? soz, I dont have the codex, WHATstyle?

Regrowth is a spell in the BRB lore of life check it.

Shame you cant have Lore of Life!

I can make an army of Ghost Riders (fire), Undead Paladins (light), and Space Zombies (heavens) but I cant make them Uncertain Liches!

We where talking how Invocation of neheik can add models to stuff regrowth style, not that he can actually use regrowth.

VCs really excell in low point games with cheap Vamps and necros because they can raise an obscene amount of troops and just flood the field with bodies.

Yea very few armies can counter that, in fact it's the main reason i bought my 1st sallamander.

Flammable is wonderful

would using ghouls, vlad and a lot of banshees work?

Ghouls are decent core choices, Vlad - he's a special character so I stay away from them, although he's pretty darn good in combat. I'm guessing you mean wraiths - they can be, but suffer from WS3 and skirmishers, so they willl rarely wipe out a fully ranked up unit. Now they are ethereal and cause terror, so can be good to disrupt enemy flanks and such. Expensive models though and never take the banshee upgrade, as she can be counted as a unit champ.

What abot the carrige thing?

Black Coach or the Corpse Cart? Corpse Carts I think took a big hit since they don't count towards your 25% core choices and you have to throw dice at the bound abilities - power dice are at a premium now for VC.

Personally I'd rather have 12+ more ghouls in a unit than a corpse cart for the price and can achieve the same result with casting Dance Macabre into combat.

Black coach - not really sure how the dice grabbing ability works in 8th edition now, so I'm undecided. If it works on the total pool for everything, then running 1 or 2 might not be so bad, but would be the only rare choices I'd look at. Very survivable and very nasty once they get powered up.

Cart keeps you alive for longer though?

Phase wrote:Cart keeps you alive for longer though?

Not by much.

Maybe take it as a Necromancer mount.