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Hi everyone. I'm getting into fantasy (longtime 40k player) and I'm trying to pick which army to play. I heard vampire counts were strong and was curious if anyone could explain to me what it is these guys do? what are the units that see alot of play, and why? what are the units no one takes and why? Any and all help would be greatly appreciated thanks. How were they affected by 8th? How do they compare to Skaven (I expect to have to fight the rat people alot)?
AF

AbaddonFidelis wrote:Hi everyone. I'm getting into fantasy (longtime 40k player) and I'm trying to pick which army to play. I heard vampire counts were strong and was curious if anyone could explain to me what it is these guys do? what are the units that see alot of play, and why? what are the units no one takes and why? Any and all help would be greatly appreciated thanks. How were they affected by 8th? How do they compare to Skaven (I expect to have to fight the rat people alot)?
AF

Just a quick sum-up for now:
The undead suffered from some of the 7th to 8th edition changes, altough the vampire counts seem quite playable still. I expect vc armies having large units of ghouls and grave guard as a main battle line which would try to grind/overwhelm opposing units with the help of vampire magic. Add fast and/or hitty support units to spice. In 7th the skaven matchup was relatively even, I assume it hasn't changed that much.

Skaven are probably powered a bit above VC under the new rules, especially since it's now awfully hard to pour points into vamp characters as much as you'd like to. Also, vamps can't cast single-dice spells as freely any more, because if you fail a cast, your wizard can't cast any more.

However, they're still an eminently playable army. Their tactics have to be modified, but they're still good. They'll struggle vs skaven, because skaven have a lot of template weapons that can fricassee vampire counts core by the fistful, and now there aren't as many "bring them all back to go around."

Chaoslord is right, you'll see large core units of unbreakable infantry to STICK things, and then blood knights, black coaches, or some combination thereof to sweep in and break the balance. Leave the zombies alone, they're worthless. Take crypt ghouls for killyness or skeleton warriors for survivability and maneuverability (ghouls do not have musicians). Then take some blood knights, a couple of black coaches, or a vampire with forbidden lore (beasts) who can turn into a dragon to win you combats.

Best of luck!

I was looking at the beast lore for the vampires but it's so difficult to get those spells off. It seemed like you would need to be level 3 at least because all the better spells are 9+ to cast.


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what do you think about taking necromancers instead of vampires in order to get more tries at invocation of nehek without the risk?

A lot of the beasts spells work really well with vampires. The +1S +1T is golden for any of the units, which can be a bit lack luster. Magic is a lot more hit and miss now, so as high a level caster as you can afford is probably a good idea. Skeleton warriors are still just terrible, but you will need some for more banners for that blood and glory mission. Ghouls are good. Fighting in two ranks makes their poisoned attacks better. I've also had a lot of succcess with grave guard. If you can get any sort of buff off on them they can really beat face. Having low I generally hurts the army quite a lot and there usually isnt enough magic to get off lots of IoN, so if you can get a caster with summon undead horde it's really worth it. I've taken to using manfred von carstien to get access to it and all of those awesome death spells.

A vampire lord looks like your best bet for casting. You can bump him to a level 3 caster for 50 points, and buy Dark Acolyte to get him/her to level 4 and Forbidden Lore to get you whatever spells you want.
That puts him at 35 more points than my high elf level 4 archmage, but the vampire lord has a hell of a better stat line!