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So a few of us are dusting off our WHFB minis and are going to be having some fun. The thing is my only option is Vampire Counts. Doing some reading on the internet, a dangerous venture I know, it seems there's quite a bit of teeth gnashing when it comes to VC. I don't want to be 'that guy' and would like a competitive but not overpowering army list. Are there certain units to avoid? I would imagine keeping the number of power dice to a reasonable level would be a start.

I don't have corpse carts or the new monster thing. I have skellies, zombies, wolves, giant bats, grave guard, a small number of knights... and... a banshee?

I would imagine we'll start with smaller armies. I am not looking for complete army lists, just some guidance as to what would be appropriate to make for a good game and be fun for my opponent and myself. Oh the opposing armies are likely Skaven, Wood Elves, and possibly Dwarves & O&G. Maybe DE I can't remember.

Hey... The bar your looking for is one town over. This is the 40k lists forum lol. Though I don't think I wanna face VC even in the grim darkness of the future...

Hmmm...

Well, The thing that people complain about when it comes to VC is the ridiculous amount of bound spells they have, in addition to unkillable blood knights.

If you don't specifically try to be WAAC with 'Counts, you should do fine.

Allright I have no idea what the guy above me means by unkillable Blood Knights or the bound spells, but I'll chip in:

Considering you always lose when your general dies you should consider playing him conservatively. Most people equip him only to cast spells and keep him out of harm's way in a Ghoul bunker parked behind other units. He doesn't need any defesive items then. However, you could also make him a hybrid caster with some defensive items but then he needs to be parked in the regen bunker Black Knights with the Wight King. Otherwise he'll get whacked. The last option is to make him a mounted dragonlord type of character and because of Red Fury, Dreadlance and whatnot he can cause a massive amounts of damage wherever he goes but he is much harder to use than the Dark Elf/High Elf equivalents. His mount is much worse, he doesn't have particularly impressive defensive items and when he dies your army explodes.

The awesome items are naturally the Drakenhof Banner, Helm of Commandment, Skull Staff, and the awesome bloodlines Black Arts, Forbidden Lore and Summon Ghouls. Dark Acolyte is also good and Summon Creatures of the Night has a role. Hero level Vampires can be tooled to be quite nasty fighters with upgrades like Avatar of Death and Flayed Hauberk and Talisman of Lycni.

VC aren't all that bad actually and teeth gnashing on their behalf is somewhat of a thing of the past.

Since you don't want specifics or army lists, I'll just warn you that the easiest way to build a really bad VC army is by spending too many points on characters -- Especially hero level Vampires. I like going with Vampire Lord, Wight King and 1 Necromancer. Those who try to play without the Drakenhof Banner usually go with Vampire Lord and two Necromancers, or Vampire Lord, Vampire and Necromancer. 90% of all Vampire Lords are equipped with Helm of Commandment, Skull Staff, Black Arts, Ghouls, Lore.

As far as the rest of the army is concerned, if you think about using lots of Fell Bats and Dire Wolves I'd suggest supporting them with the hero level Vampire with Acolyte and Summon Creatures. What that little Vampire can do for the bats in one or two magic phases is pretty impressive. If you let him use the pool dice he can cast 1 die invocation with +1 to cast four times per phase, and each succesful spell adds D6 wounds to bats and dogs. You can start with two units of 3 bats and end up playing with two massive units.

Normally people go with a two or three units of Ghouls, possibly a unit or two of Zombies, and two units of Bats. From the rare choices the Wraiths are by far the most overall effective. Varghulf was a nice choice before GW decided each subsequent book would always have an even more underpriced monster. Blood Knights are tough to use, but if you go with them, go with a unit of 4 with Banner of Hellfire and keep them in total hiding untill you've tarpitted the enemy with your Zombies and Ghouls.

As far as Black Knights are concerned, they're very good for the price. If you take the Wight King with Drakenhof Banner, go with a unit of 9, 10 or 11 Black Knights. I don't like equipping them with barding because it's expensive, but it's not a bad choice since you want them to survive and by investing points into the survival of an already super expensive unit you're effectively playing points denial.

You can make all sorts of lists with Black Knights and not go very wrong. You can take lots of small units, or one large unit and few smaller ones, or two massive units or none at all.

Things to avoid completely are Spirit Hosts and Skeletons. Spirit Hosts don't have a real use in the modern day Warhammer and Skeletons are simply inferior to Ghouls in every way. Ignore the people who even start opening their mouth about the magic banner and standard bearer bonus. Ghouls survive longer, get support from bloodlines like Ghoulkin, cause real damage especially with the Helm of Commandment or re-rolls from Danse, don't give up the free +100VP from the captured banner if they're destroyed, and overall produce better combat resolution results.

Things that might be cool and fun to use but aren't the most effective units for the slot are Black Coach, Blood Knights, Varghulf, Grave Guard. You can win games, even tough ones, with any of those four units in your army but it won't be as easy (or even as fun in my opinion) as with Wraiths and Black Knights.

Aztralwolf wrote:Hey... The bar your looking for is one town over. This is the 40k lists forum lol. Though I don't think I wanna face VC even in the grim darkness of the future...

That's what I get for drinking before I go inside the bar!

Thank you Therion for the lenghty reply. It is quite helpful. I forgot I have a black coach as well. As for ghouls vs skeletons that will be harder. I don't have very many ghouls at all. I'd be hard pressed to have one full unit let alone three.

Erm, Blood Knights with Drakenhoff Banner and Flag of Blood Keep?

VC's awesome amount of bound spell items?

Standard competitive fare is it not?

I don't know about you, but a 2+ Save, 4+ Ward and Regen seems pretty tough to crack...

I would like to say I agree with Therion on every point he made.

VC are a solid list, that is pretty balanced. Where the complaints of lack of balance occurs is by players who play books that aren't balanced (in a bad way) or by players who refuse to adjust to what tactics are needed to bring them down. VC models are NOT hard to kill, if you know how to do it, and have the tools in your army. It is a bit hard to make sure units stay dead though, you can't leave any model in the unit alive, or they can just come back. Trying to win a game against them just using static resolution is folly, VC are better at it, yet I see the "complaining types" do it over and over again.

Most good players understand VC, know how to beat them, and don't complain about cheese when the VC player executes his strategy well enough to win.

Many players pick up VC thinking that they are a top army, because you can auto play them and win. This is simply no the case. They actually require more thought to how to use them than many other lists, because your ItP is a two edged sword. If you get into trouble, you can't back out of it with a timely flee response. Their units aren't all that dangerous in killing things, and can die easily if faced with the wrong unit. Strong list building and the ability to see multiple turns ahead are more important with VC than just about every other army I would say. Once these are mastered, then the real potential of the army is unlocked, and there is a good payoff for your efforts. (some armies no matter how good you get with them, won't win often: Ogres, because they cost too much and can't reliably overcome SCR. Beasts, since their book was balanced to be usable with hordes, which they can no longer do. O&G, since their randomness is nearly impossible to control, and they have fragile leadership.)

ramongoroth wrote:

Aztralwolf wrote:Hey... The bar your looking for is one town over. This is the 40k lists forum lol. Though I don't think I wanna face VC even in the grim darkness of the future...

That's what I get for drinking before I go inside the bar!

Thank you Therion for the lenghty reply. It is quite helpful. I forgot I have a black coach as well. As for ghouls vs skeletons that will be harder. I don't have very many ghouls at all. I'd be hard pressed to have one full unit let alone three.

No problem. Naturally you can and you should get into the Warhammer game with your Skeletons instead of worrying too much. However, the moment you consider expanding your VC army a bit you might want to pick up a few boxes of Ghouls. I like the models atleast and since they're plastics they can be converted to your liking. If you want to save some money you can beef up your units with a few hands and heads coming out of the ground and some tombstones. Noone will mind. This is especially helpful for building lots of summonable Zombies. If you build a magic heavy VC army you might need a lot of Zombie models. If you deploy 40 on the table with your army you need about 60 extra models around in case your magic phases go well.

Therion wrote:Ghouls survive longer, get support from bloodlines like Ghoulkin,

The only spot I'll disagree with Therion in his big post, and it's only a partial disagreement at that: Ghouls will survive longer... when it comes to shooting S4 or better (or S3 & armor piercing). Similarly, they are superior in combat against the following: WS3 S4. models (Ogres, Orc Boyz, some Cavalry), WS4 S5 (Chaos Warriors with Halberds, Great Weapon troops, Orc Big 'Uns / Black Orcs, actually, practically every dedicated combat unit not S4). Against WS3 S3 models (a rarity, yeah), they're about equal. Basically, Skeletons can match Ghouls in durability. But it often is not worth it, as Skeletons are also worse in combat (1 S3 attack as opposed to two S3 poisoned attacks) and easier to shoot down. If you assume the Helm of Commandment, Skeletons get slightly superior against WS3 S3 models (Clan Pestilense, Clan Rats, Goblins, etcetera, similarly they're slightly better against WS2 S3 models), but that's it. Unless you plan on facing, well, other undead or a Goblin-heavy list, Skeletons just aren't worth it. And I mean Goblin, by the way: Night Goblins can sap strength and toss fanatics and Ghouls do better against each of those things.

Avoid the Drakenhoff Standard, if you want a "friendly" list.

Blood Knights are fine - there's ways to deal with them like leading them around due to frenzy, spells, etc.

Start the game with large units of skeletons or ghouls, and don't buy lots of bloodline powers that give more magic dice and allow you to raise blocks of skels/ghouls above starting size. This limits your army to a few large blocks that, while they can be restored, are limited in what they can do and a big combat can still bring them down.

Try a zombie dragon. They're fun to mess around with and there's simple ways to deal with them.

Take Isabella if you take Vlad. She's pretty terrible, but it makes for a fun theme list.

Those are some ways to make the list less WAAC.

The reason I have not played VC since the new book came out is I have 100 skeletons, 80 zombies and 10 ghouls.

I have too much other stuff to paint to worry about doing more ghouls (and 10 cairn wraiths)

Avoid Vampire Counts if you wanna play friendly.
Seriously, look at the top lists, and do the opposite way. Even though you would do so-called "bad" list, they are good enough to still give you a chance.
For example, don't use Ghouls, take big units of Skeletons and Zombies. Backed up by Black Knights (or whatever are those "lesser" knights) and Black Coach would make not uber powerful army, but not very bad (I don't play VC so don't take all my opininons sharply)

You can play Vamps and still be friendly. Take Skeletons, the Black Coach, and a Varghulf and avoid the Drakenhoff banner and the games will be fun but still competitive. My group takes pretty friendly lists and I still win more than I lose but when I do lose, it's because I was out-generaled, not out listed.

Why worry about being fair. Bring the army that you want to bring, and let your opponents rise to the occasion.

A VC army simply doesn't scare me, and I play Brettonians/Tomb Kings (often decried as seriously at a disadvantage against VC). The trick is to know how to beat your opponent, and execute that plan.

This touchy, feely, "I'm playing to win, but not so badly that it makes you cry" mentality is depression, and moreover bad for competition. Be a good opponent that's friendly and doesn't argue about rules, and you'll be held in high reguard because you're a nice guy who somehow manages to win often.

vampire counts are not broken as some people above me have said. Top tier armys like daemons of chaos, dark elves, high elves and even dwarfs can bring enough dispel dice and anti magic power to shut the VC magic phase down. Dont worry about being fair, bring your best list to the table because in most cases your opponent will as well.