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Hey. How do VC play? Do they offer tactical depth/fun? Are they competitive, and what can I look forward to if I go with VC (playstyle wise)?

I'll answer what I can.
As for tactics, I don't know. Don't have much to compare with But I can tell you I enjoy playing them.
Though for competetive.. Not so much. According to internet consensus they're lower middle tier. Ofcourse, in casual settings this doesn't matter at all.
Playstyle wise... I'd say you can go either way. You could go magic heavy, combat heavy, big blocks. You can however always count on having magic as semi-important as that is where your reanimation comes from.
Oh, and you'll always play protectively when it comes to your general. You do not want to crumble. But how you protect him is up to you.
Personally mine is protected by some sweet CC abilites, and then I throw him into CC

There is a lot of forethought into how you will run the army. Vamps are pretty strong heroes and can be made several different ways. If you want a caster, use Mannfred and buy him skull staff and book of ashur. He's just over 600 points with those, but he's lore master of vampire and death and has +6 to his casting and dispelling (7 if it's incantation) on top of all the other casting bonuses he gets. Combined with corpse carts, magic phases will be yours. Necromancers are also nice to hold dispel scrolls and channeling staffs and cast invocation.

You buy skellies, raise zombies. Graveguard are a steal for their points (4 more than a skelly) and an incorporeal vampire with crown of commandment behind them makes them WS 6; their special banner gives them +1 to hit so they hit everything on 2s with killing blow. Also, bloodknights are a power house, but if you don't know how to use cav in this edition, they will be a massive points sink. Black knights are also good cav albeit low WS. Vargulf is one of the better monsters in the game right now. Black coach is scary after it sucks up some power dice and has a 3+ 4++ to boot.

That's sort of the highlights. Most of the rest is kinda trash imo. Dire wolves are fast cav that can't flee, cairn wraiths are too expensive, bats are generally worthless, spirit hosts are too expensive. Ghouls are interesting but I haven't seen them used. Wight kings are ok, but if you can fit a combat vampire in, that's the better pick.

Surtur wrote:...) and an incorporeal vampire with crown of commandment behind them makes them WS 6; ...

Hate to break this to you, but Spectral Form specifically states that the vampire can't take any magic items.

VC's right now have crap all for choice competitively... In tournaments and/or any kind of competitive play, it's ghoul hordes + drakenhof banner grave guard horde + caster lord w/helm 'o commandment = win!
The big problem is there's absolutely no internal balance right now, espcially in the core & special sections where there's obvious 'must haves' and everything else is crap to unplayable. (zombies, I'm looking at you!) As for external balance? Our power build is too good, but trying to go outside the box typically results in an army that's gimped by the new undead rules and high pts costs.

Right now VC's are magic dependant army, so caster lords are not only more tatically viable because they can get outragously good buff spells, but they're far safer too since they hide behind your main lines! Thus, they're one of the hardest characters in the game to kill. Which is a good thing, because when a VC army loses it's general, everything else starts taking damage as they crumble to dust.
Our required 25% core mins are a choice between a balanced unit in ghouls, or else spending pts on crap... skeletons cost twice what they should, while zombies get massacred by the likes of skaven slaves or gnoblars!
Grave guard are our main hammer unit. Give them great weapons & the barrows banner and they'll carve up pretty much anything that's in front of them! Black knights are fun, but again, over costed... Still, I like to have a small unit of 6 personally, running them in a 3x2 formation they squeeze through the tightest gaps and still hit with full effectiveness - a great little flanking unit to support say a vargulf or black coach!
Rares are where it's at! All of our rare choices are solid, though blood knights are a wee bit pricey. The big problem with them stems from the fact they can only be supported by other rare choices, ghouls or grave guard. (who arguably don't need it!) While you'd honestly think 6 blood knights or a terrorghiest *should* support say skeletons with a timely flank charge to break the enemy, the truth is, they can't because those skeletons (or god forbid zombies) will bleed so much combat res that our ultra expensive rare unit will simply die to crumble from combat res!

If you don't care about winning alot and just want to have fun, VC's are a different animal. Just take what you want, fit it to your theme and look at each game as a ture challenge! If you're looking for something that's pretty competitive, VC's can do it, but it's so damn stale with just 4-5 units that all do the same thing. (hit stuff!)



Luckily we get a new book early next year! (let's just call it 'Vampuary') So along with a bunch of new models, we should (hopefully) get some actual choice to our armies and more than a single viable build to terrorise our opponents with!

If you're looking to build a few units and just wait out the next month and a bit for the new book, then look into skeletons, ghouls, dire wolves, corpse cart, grave guard & vargulfs. Those were re-done last time 'round, so they shouldn't be up for re-do untill 9th or 10th edition!

Vampire Counts play like a magic dependent close combat army that grinds the enemy down with unbreakable blocks of infantry and prays you don't kill their characters or disrupt their magic phase.

Nitros14 wrote:Vampire Counts play like a magic dependent close combat army that grinds the enemy down with unbreakable blocks of infantry and prays you don't kill their characters or disrupt their magic phase.

For some strange reason I don't get this feeling at all when playing VC. Only if you build your list around magic and need the magic as a road to victory will you suffer when your magic phase is disrupted.
I tend to get satisfied if I get off only one Invocation of Nehek per turn - I don't need more than that, and barely that.
If you build a non-magic based VC army, then suffering from magic disruption isn't that bad.

40kTactics wrote:How do VC play?

Dead.

The Cornerfag~ wrote:

Nitros14 wrote:Vampire Counts play like a magic dependent close combat army that grinds the enemy down with unbreakable blocks of infantry and prays you don't kill their characters or disrupt their magic phase.

For some strange reason I don't get this feeling at all when playing VC. Only if you build your list around magic and need the magic as a road to victory will you suffer when your magic phase is disrupted.
I tend to get satisfied if I get off only one Invocation of Nehek per turn - I don't need more than that, and barely that.
If you build a non-magic based VC army, then suffering from magic disruption isn't that bad.

Invocation is crap right now... Vanhel's Danse is easily our best spell since we can still magically charge with it, or better yet, gain ASF + re-rolls to-hit! (makes ghouls truely savage fighters)
Combat VC armies can work, as long as you're not running up against other highly competitive builds. (and by 'combat VC army', I'm talking about a fighty Lord/thralls!)

Our other really big glaring weakness right now is a lack of playstyle options... Currently you can pick;
a) infantry units that hit stuff in combat
b) cavalry units that hit stuff in combat
c) monsters that hit stuff in combat
d) characters that cast magic... and can hit stuff in combat! (though your general really shouldn't!)

It would be really nice to have some shooting added to our list of options. The closest we get are banshees and the new terrorghiest, and they're only really ment to scream at small, expensive units like chaos knights...
Something to thin the masses of enemy infantry would be dandy!

Kind of poorly now, though they might be getting a new book in January.

I don't expect Vampire Counts to get more shooting options and frankly I don't want them. If you tried to give each army what it doesn't have every new army book all the armies would end up being too similar for my tastes. Vampire Counts in the background material have no shooting to speak of.

Nitros14 wrote:I don't expect Vampire Counts to get more shooting options and frankly I don't want them. If you tried to give each army what it doesn't have every new army book all the armies would end up being too similar for my tastes. Vampire Counts in the background material have no shooting to speak of.

Let's just hope that GW doesn't go that way... But...
Big monsters for every army lately.
Reducing army's own magic gear, forcing everyone to choose the common ones from the BRB.

Those two things seem to me like they are doing just that - Giving each army what it doesn't have / making all the armies have the same things, more or less.
I think shooting is one of the things we might get, in some form.

Oh, and I'm not completely sure, but I believe I've heard that Vampires had Skeleton Archers in the last rulebook...

The 6th ed book had a Von Carstien list in the appendix that had Slyvaanian milita who could take missile weapons (iirc, bows or x-bows). Storm of Chaos introduced the 'new' Army of Slyvaania which had the zombie levies & shooty skellies.

GW wants every army to be able to do something in each phase... Giving us a shooting option or two doesn't mean we're all of a sudden going to turn into a gunline! But it does allow those of us who want the option to take it! It also address one of our biggest problems currently; how to deal with multiple enemy horde units.

The Cornerfag~ wrote:Let's just hope that GW doesn't go that way... But...
Big monsters for every army lately.
Reducing army's own magic gear, forcing everyone to choose the common ones from the BRB.

Those two things seem to me like they are doing just that - Giving each army what it doesn't have / making all the armies have the same things, more or less.
I think shooting is one of the things we might get, in some form.

From current rumours, there's a big warmachine kit that makes a Necrach warmachine or a Lahmian warmachine. There's a new cavalry unit (Wraith Riders/Black Knight dual plastic kit) and a new monstrous infantry unit (with an option to be flying monstrous infantry).

They're not getting shooting. They're not getting big monsters aside from the Terrorgheist.

The reason vamps are apparently up next for a book is they're the last army with a magic phase that's very different to the core rulebook, and they want all armies to be be in line with that, even if they have their own lore. Which means Invocation will likely be reworked into something that doesn't need to be spammed and probably power levels and an attribute for lore of the vampires. Of course, the usual trimming of magic items will occur with a few mainstays being kept (I'd lay odds the Drakenhof Banner, Crown of Command, Frost Blade and Tomb Blade will be among those kept).

The Cornerfag~ wrote:Oh, and I'm not completely sure, but I believe I've heard that Vampires had Skeleton Archers in the last rulebook...

Only Lahmians. Which made sense.

edit - forgot about Sylvanian militia. Lahmians had skeleton bowmen.

All of those things were in the "Clear this with your opponent these units aren't balanced" appendix, not the main list.