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He Guy’s

So I would really like to get some tips from the “veteran” undead generals

I’m new to this edition of WFB and to Vampire Counts, but because I really like the look of this army I give it a try.
I realy want to play a Hordes army with lots of standard units…

Want to the shop and bought the army book and:
60 Ghouls
40 Grave Guards
60 Skeletons
30 Zombies
10 Black Knights
05 Wraiths
02 Vampires
02 Necromancers

What would be a nice start and what to buy to bulk out the army?
I was thinking of some Ghost units or some Banshees a Varghulf?

My first set up (no real magic items placed):

43 Ghouls with Vampire
23 Skeletons with Necromance
23 Skeletons with Necromancer
29 Grave Guard with Vampire Lord
05 Bloodknights with Wraith
05 Bloodknights with Wraith

Zombies are to be cast in the game…

Place respons with some tactics or better a better set up (that should be easy )

I love vampires; they are the army i started out on. I'm not gonna lie, it was pretty rough finding a list that worked. what i did was used minimum points for core. usually a small unit of skeletons (20 or so) to hide my casters in, and then the rest of the core points in ghouls. i generally had at least a 40 man horde of them.

Heroes are important. a BSB is very important. generally my bsb was a Whight King and he carried the Drakenhoff banner to sit with the horde of ghouls. Make sure to use the item Helm of command on a Vampire (Lord if you can, but not necissary). giving your ghouls or grave guard WS 6 or 7 is a huge advantage. Teaming this up with the Grave Guard's Banner of the Barrows gives you a unit that hits on 2s. if they have Great Weapons, then you are also wounding on 2s (generally).

I also never left home without my Black Coach. a T6 chariot with 4 wounds that sucks away power dice to buff itself. thats pretty awesome. ive seen many games where my opponent rolls a 6 and a 1 for power dice and the black coach ends up sucking two of those away leaving me with more dispel dice than they have power dice.

I never used the cavalry. its just too many points for me. i feel if you use bloodknights, they should be 10 strong with two charactors with them. but with that, youve got about a third of your army wrapped into one unit. i think your points could be spent better somewhere else.

But, glad to see another VC player and i hope you do well. ever need help, feel free to ask . . .

Skeletons are extremely overpriced, Zombies even more so.

At 2500 pts, a competitive build could look like this:

Vampire Lord, lvl 3(4)
Master of the Black Arts
Summons Ghouls
Dark Acolyte
Talisman of Preservation
Helm of Commandment
Earthing Rod

Wight King BSB, great weapon
Accursed Armour
Gem of Blood

Necromancer with IoN and Vanhels
Dispel Scroll

Wraith
Wraith

30 Ghouls with Ghast
30 Ghouls with Ghast
18 Skellies, full command (bunker)

30 Grave Guards, full command, great wepons
Banner of the Barrows

Varghulf
Varghulf
Black Coach

The chance of the lord gettin Vanhels is around 92% IIRC. Take it and spam it when the opportunity comes, don't use more than 2 dice. Avoid casting the high end spells.
Try to figure out if the enemy fighty heroes has any magical weapons, to decide were you send the Wraiths. Either keep them inside the Ghoul units or send them alone to hold up enemy monsters.
Give WS 7 depending on what best in the situation. Grave Guards with Barrows and Helm hit on 2's, but 3's are usually good enough. Try to engage the enemy one fight at a time, to avoid multiple units needing to be healed at the same time.

Tiktaalik Roseae wrote:I never used the cavalry. its just too many points for me. i feel if you use bloodknights, they should be 10 strong with two charactors with them. but with that, youve got about a third of your army wrapped into one unit. i think your points could be spent better somewhere else.

Or 4 strong with a character... (ties up less of your Army but still hits like a ton of bricks).

Otherwise, the best advice is use the searchy. Theres quite a few (recent) threads on VCs, and they all ahve very good advice in them...

Don't count out skeletons or zombies, recent rumours suggest a new Vampire Counts book (and a plastic Black Coach) in January.

That would be amazing. So would affordable cavalry.

uummmm plastic coach and new Army book would be very nice

NIB, iirc the WD that came out with the new VC stuff said something like 0-1 wraith hero may be taken, same for the banshee. I don't have my copy in front of me (@work) but i seem to remember going

@Ductape
I have the White Dwarf (#380) in front of me and the 0-1 restriction on Wraiths / Banshees is for the Pact rules from Storm of Magic. If Vampire Counts are the main army, then there is no restriction on the amount of Wraiths / Banshees taken as Hero choices (except for not being allowed to have more than 25% of your points in Heroes).

Thanks Air. I completely ignored all of the Storm of Magic crap that was released and thought they'd gimped the release of the new characters by only allowing 0-1. Good to know that you can stack up. Makes my plan for my VC way better, thanks