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Just wondering as I haven't been able to afford the book yet.

Wow, your title and post differ emencly.

I have been able to aford the book (didnt buy as i want to get it at a discount store later)

They are pretty cool but very magic heavy. And if they want to be really magic heavy they can be. The necro spells being cast multiple times leads them to have a tombkingesk magic phase (which i find annoying)

They have some great new units and items

Necros are basically gone (very limited uses)

Will play against them again in a few days, more thoughts then

Sorry. My only experience against VC was one of those
Lahmia or summoning armies with the grave markers or
something like that.

Most of the stuff is pretty similiar to the 6th edition book and unsurprisingly the VC are still very much about the magic. The points you spend on characters rises, though, as the thralls are more expensive for starters and you'll be able to get bloodline powers and magic items for 100/100 and 50/50 (for lords and thralls respectively).
You can easily spend around 1k on chars alone when making a normal 2k list, altough wheter that's advisable or not, I don't know yet.

Also, be prepared to buy lots of zombies, and feel bad about buying and painting those 100's of skellies.

Vidar wrote:Also, be prepared to buy lots of zombies, and feel bad about buying and painting those 100's of skellies.

Really, what is your reasoning behind this? I'll admit that I haven't gotten any games in with the new book but it seems to me that zombies are quite weak now compared to what they used to be. I can still see wanting to have some zombies for the purpose of raising new units for rear charges or to destroy units beaten in combat. But with WS 1, Str and Toughness 2 and losing the ability to shelter characters zombies just don't seem as useful as they used to be which to me means that Skeletons will pretty much be the defacto backbone unit of the army now (and so far this seems to be beared out by most of the lists I am seeing people post online).

Well, my hardcore VC playing friend explained to me that summoning and rez'ing zombies now is very impressive. I kept asking what happened to the spells that put up skellies, but he said there were no more such things, or they were sub-par compared with the zombie-rez'ing.
That, and a few tears about how he wouldn't be able to feed himself for months due to the great numbers of zombies he had to buy were kind of sad.

Vidar wrote:Well, my hardcore VC playing friend explained to me that summoning and rez'ing zombies now is very impressive. I kept asking what happened to the spells that put up skellies, but he said there were no more such things, or they were sub-par compared with the zombie-rez'ing.

Only units of zombies can be created magically and dansed in ftw. Skellies can be raised into existing units though, and with the right bloodline power you can add more skellies to a unit than were there to start. Seems like a classic summon horde tactic now is to take a couple blocks of 10 skellies w/ command + characters and bloat them up by 30+ skellies in the first turn by spamming invocation on them

- Salvage

Zombies= LifeBlood of the Vampire Counts (No pun intended).

Raise D3+4 Zombies is the Default Spell in the Lore of Vampires. They come back D6+4 as opposed to just D6 with IoN. The Sceptre of Noirot let's you raise D3+9! It is entirely possible for a level 4 Caster to raise a new unit of 56! Zombies in one magic phase, if he's within 6" of a Corpse cart and has some insanely lucky rolls (4 6's). Give him the book of Akhran and this unit that didn't exist 10 seconds ago is now charging you.

Consider that if they charged line infantry you're likely to only be capable of killing 5 per turn. So you do so, and you have a standard, and the Zombies, sucking as they do, kill nothing. 11 Zombies just died. Good on you. 45 more to go.

Granted that's best-case scenario, but with a couple of Necromancers, corpse carts, Vampire Hero casters, and over the course of a few magic phases, blocks of this size are not impossible. And you have to kill every last one of them. And even if you do? You only get 50 victory points.

Sure Zombies suck, but remember, everything counts in large numbers. And 3 ranks. Especially when causing fear.

And best of all, they are effectively free! Free units! Muhahaha!


Personally I plan to have butt-loads of Skeletons as well. Fleshy soft wall plus bony firm wall. You will never kill them all!

It is good to hear a positive take on zombies, especially seeing as how I still have 100 of them laying around.

Finally got around to playing the vamps a couple times.
Here are thoughts in no particular order.

In almost all cases the vampire's magic is stronger. More units raised, more guys raised across the board. Raising grave guard makes them sooo much better than before.

The regeneration banner is crazy. While that banner lives the unit is almost un-killable (really doesn't matter what unit it is even). Even flank charging them wont do it. I saw one unit of 9 black knights with a BSB with the banner hold off 2 bret lances and 8 pegasis knights for 4 turns.

Ghouls are still useful.

Zombies are still useful (and freaking cheep)

The banshee's unit is amazing as long as you don't face the hail of doom arrow or the anvil. Everything else falls before them.

Multiple dances will ruin your day. Makes it a very hard spell to stop.

And finally, multiple drain magics in effect will crush even the most powerful of vampire magic phases.

In general I would suggest that vampire armies use either a strong flank or hoard approach. They can be equally good at both. It would not be hard to hold up most of the enemy battle line using skeletons while black knights and blood knights roll up the flank.

Good to hear Ghouls are still useful. I really liked them in their skirmishing incarnation and never used them when they used to be ranked units.

Better buy some more zombies....

Ozymandias, King of Kings

I decided that the new book would be my excuse to fianlly buy a VC army. I bought a box of the old zombies, and together with an old box of halberdiers and some rededicated Free Company, I now have 63 zombies ready to go. I also bought a box of skellies- now I wish I had waited, since the new skeletons are so much nicer.

My plan is to use skeletons and maybe one unit of zombies for my obligatory core choices, hit the enemy in the front with a block of skeletons and a nasty killy vamp, hopefully flank them with some dire wolves, and raise a 5-strong unit of zombies behind them. With luck and a few kills, the enemy unit will autobreak from fear and flee through the newly summoned unit.
We'll see how that works out.

I played my first battle with my vamps today. Here are some initial findings:

The banshee/wraith unit is awesome. I initially had some reservations about this, but they are ethereal, have two wounds and three attacks plus a howl AND cause terror. I think you should definitely include one of these. My unit of 3 took out a chariot and half a mob of Big-Uns in hand to hand before loosing in the 3rd round of HTH to combat results. On the way there, they terrorized several gobbos into fleeing and yelled at some others causing tons of wounds!

The Spirit Host are great too. I had a unit of 5. They have four wounds, four attacks, ethereal and you can take an ethereal vamp with them now. These guys can hold an entire flank. With a unit strength of four, and only hit by magic they have a good chance of winning combat results and forcing retreats of lesser units. Movement of 6 gives a nice long charge range too.

My other units of skellies, zombies and wolves did ok. I had some trouble with raising, not to mention some rule confusion.

I really like the way the powers are structured now. You can mix and match some nifty combinations.

Anyways, that's my two cents!
Good Luck!