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After reading some of the info in this section of the forums, I would like help at building a Vampire Counts list So, here is what I'm thinking:

Lords:
Vampire Lord w/ Shield, Heavy Armor, Red Fury, Quickblood, Fear Incarnate, Nightshroud, Sword of Striking, The Other Trickster's Shard, and The Talisman of Protection (414 Points)

Master Necromancer w/ Level 4 Upgrade (200 Points)

Heroes:
Wight King w/ Shield, Ogre Blade, and Dragonhelm (139 Points)

Necromancer w/ Corpse Cart w/ Unholy Lodestone, The Cursed Book (220 Points)

Necromancer w/ Level 2 Upgrade, Rod of Flaming Death (140 Points)

Core:
40 Crypt Ghouls w/Ghast (410 Points)

38 Skeletons w/ Full Command and a Screaming Banner (245 Points)

Rare:
Terrorgheist w/ Rancid Maw (240 Points)

Special:
38 Grave Guard w/ Full Command and Banner of the Barrows (498 Points)

So this leaves me with 239 points, and I don't know what to add to them.

Any ideas?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I guess I should add some things about this list.

My original idea was to use two ghoul units as a couple of tarpits, but instead I went with what you see here.

The idea is that the Ghouls travel alone, running a horde 10 wide 4 deep. If they die, I'm not too worried.

The unit of Skeletons holds my level 2 necromancer and the rod, allowing the unit to put the hurt on things while I advanced. The Screaming Banner and the Vampire Lord's Fear Incarnate allows me to fear bomb any unit that might put the hurt on my unit.

The horde of Grave Guard is my hammer unit, they will probably out flank and come in at the side. The necromancer and wight king will create some level of hurt with the grave guard.

The Terrorgheist is to take out cavalry, warmachines, etc..

So what do you think?

Vamp Lord cannot have Heavy armor and Nightshroud. I do not think. Give them the shield of -1 to hit instead.
I would add a second Terrorgheist. No need to take Rancid Maw on either of them
Take a block of zombies and bunker your Master Necro in them.
No need for the second necro to be lvl 2.
Potentially make the Wight King a BSB instead of the magic gear. He will benefit from the barrows banner and can add the screaming banner and then you could take the flaming banner on the skeletons.

Vampire can have Nightshroud with heavy armor as Nightshrod is not light or heavy armor

Rancid Maw is not worth it as the Ghiest should not be seeing CC

I would drop the Corpse Cart on the necro and give him death. Put him with your Vampire Lord and use the sig

My mistake, I have not messed with the nightshroud much...

Rivet wrote:Vamp Lord cannot have Heavy armor and Nightshroud. I do not think. Give them the shield of -1 to hit instead.
I would add a second Terrorgheist. No need to take Rancid Maw on either of them
Take a block of zombies and bunker your Master Necro in them.
No need for the second necro to be lvl 2.
Potentially make the Wight King a BSB instead of the magic gear. He will benefit from the barrows banner and can add the screaming banner and then you could take the flaming banner on the skeletons.

Okay, so I want to drop the ability for my Skeleton Unit with Vamp Lord and Necromancer to be able to fear bomb? I don't see why I need to drop the magic items from my wight king if the grave guard unit he's going to be with has the Banner of the Barrows.


And Johnny, if my Gheist is not going to be in close combat, what is he used for again?

I hope my quetsions don't sound sarcastic. I'm trying to figure out why my choices are the "less correct choices"

If you are going to Fear bomb, then you should put your Vamp Lord in with the Grave Guard, Make the Wight King a BSB and give him the Screaming Banner ( in order to take a magic banner he cannot have magic items) your Grave Guard with fear bomb will be hitting on twos and have a more likely chance of getting the Fear Bomb off. Skeletons even with Fear Bomb will be hitting on threes and are in general not very survivable.
Your Necromancer, you do not want in the front lines so he should not be in either the Skeletons or the GG but in a unit of Zombies near the back or at least well protected.

To answer your question to Johnny, Gheists do not fair well in CC. The Crumble like paper in a fire. Their Scream while potentially damaging does not count towards combat resolution. They have 6 attacks and a Thunderstomp your max potential kills are 12. With a Weapon Skill of 3, you are going to get less than half of 6 of those and with a Random D6 roll you will get about half of the others. So now, you have inflicted (Maybe) 6 wounds. If they have 5 ranks, and a Banner they have tied that. If they have a musician, they beat you by 1, if they managed to wound you, they are beating you by however many wounds. You have now lowered the threat of your scream by taking wounds if you did not outright crumble to death. T6 with a 6+ regen will not save you from combat res. adding Poisoned attacks will not really sway the combat in your favor.

Rivet wrote:If you are going to Fear bomb, then you should put your Vamp Lord in with the Grave Guard, Make the Wight King a BSB and give him the Screaming Banner ( in order to take a magic banner he cannot have magic items) your Grave Guard with fear bomb will be hitting on twos and have a more likely chance of getting the Fear Bomb off. Skeletons even with Fear Bomb will be hitting on threes and are in general not very survivable.
Your Necromancer, you do not want in the front lines so he should not be in either the Skeletons or the GG but in a unit of Zombies near the back or at least well protected.

To answer your question to Johnny, Gheists do not fair well in CC. The Crumble like paper in a fire. Their Scream while potentially damaging does not count towards combat resolution. They have 6 attacks and a Thunderstomp your max potential kills are 12. With a Weapon Skill of 3, you are going to get less than half of 6 of those and with a Random D6 roll you will get about half of the others. So now, you have inflicted (Maybe) 6 wounds. If they have 5 ranks, and a Banner they have tied that. If they have a musician, they beat you by 1, if they managed to wound you, they are beating you by however many wounds. You have now lowered the threat of your scream by taking wounds if you did not outright crumble to death. T6 with a 6+ regen will not save you from combat res. adding Poisoned attacks will not really sway the combat in your favor.

Is there a rule that allows him to be at the back of the zombie unit that I missed? I'm a little confused here, I thought a character had to be in the front ranks, so I'm not sure how I can hide him...

He has to be at the front, but your zombies do not need to be moving forward or getting into combat. They can stay at the back and be a bunker.

Rivet wrote: If they have 5 ranks, and a Banner they have tied that.

Rank bonus is capped at 3

Choose Nothing wrote:

Rivet wrote: If they have 5 ranks, and a Banner they have tied that.

Rank bonus is capped at 3

Could you imagine if it wasn't, with the way 8th favors hordes.

Rivet wrote:He has to be at the front, but your zombies do not need to be moving forward or getting into combat. They can stay at the back and be a bunker.

Idk about that. it seems like a waste of points. I might spend that 239 points on zombies...

Rivet wrote:He has to be at the front, but your zombies do not need to be moving forward or getting into combat. They can stay at the back and be a bunker.

Unless you go two wide and take standard and musician, characters are displaced by command models.

Zombies. Those points go to zombies. Also the Necromancers are unnecessary, just have vampires. I play dwarves and played the Vampire Counts many times. Blood Knights are horrible as are grave guard. Zombies those are my worst nemesis, as the person I played once had 60 of them and I couldn't stop them. Zombie Dragons are quite lethal as well.

baxter123 wrote:Zombies. Those points go to zombies. Also the Necromancers are unnecessary, just have vampires. I play dwarves and played the Vampire Counts many times. Blood Knights are horrible as are grave guard. Zombies those are my worst nemesis, as the person I played once had 60 of them and I couldn't stop them. Zombie Dragons are quite lethal as well.

So why are the necros unnecessary?

I'm trying to wrap my head around all of this info, because having a few necromancers make sense since I don't want my troops dying to a stiff breeze cause my general is dead... I do realize that vampires can do the same, but they're a wee bit more expensive on the points side, and I'm not sure if I would be able to take the Wight King kitted out as he is... but then again, I "might" if I make him a bsb...

baxter123 wrote:Zombies. Those points go to zombies. Also the Necromancers are unnecessary, just have vampires. I play dwarves and played the Vampire Counts many times. Blood Knights are horrible as are grave guard. Zombies those are my worst nemesis, as the person I played once had 60 of them and I couldn't stop them. Zombie Dragons are quite lethal as well.

I have yet to use blood knights but I'm sure a lot of VC players would agree grave guard are great. Zombies have their uses but those uses are generally, stand here and die for a while while the rest of the army does its thing. Necros are great, for the same points as a fully kitted out vampire you can get 3 necromancers, thats 3 invocations and 3 channel attempts per turn rather than 1 and a killy character.

The one thing you have to remember if you run necromancers is you do not want them in combat and you do not want them standing on their own. So put them in a zombie bunker, leave the bunker behind your other units and protect them. Your other stuff does the killing.

jonolikespie wrote:

baxter123 wrote:Zombies. Those points go to zombies. Also the Necromancers are unnecessary, just have vampires. I play dwarves and played the Vampire Counts many times. Blood Knights are horrible as are grave guard. Zombies those are my worst nemesis, as the person I played once had 60 of them and I couldn't stop them. Zombie Dragons are quite lethal as well.

I have yet to use blood knights but I'm sure a lot of VC players would agree grave guard are great. Zombies have their uses but those uses are generally, stand here and die for a while while the rest of the army does its thing. Necros are great, for the same points as a fully kitted out vampire you can get 3 necromancers, thats 3 invocations and 3 channel attempts per turn rather than 1 and a killy character.

That's what my thought was...

Here are some of the tweaks I've been looking at, as well as looking at the models I'm buying.

Lords:
Vampire Lord w/ Shield, Heavy Armor, Red Fury, Quickblood, Fear Incarnate, Nightshroud, Sword of Striking, The Other Trickster's Shard, and The Talisman of Protection (414 Points)

Master Necromancer w/ Level 4 Upgrade (200 Points)

Heroes:
Wight King w/ Shield, Ogre Blade, and Dragonhelm (139 Points)

Wight King BSB w/ Screaming Banner (110 Points)

Necromancer w/ Corpse Cart w/ Unholy Lodestone, The Cursed Book (220 Points)

Necromancer w/ Rod of Flaming Death (105 Points)

Core:
40 Crypt Ghouls w/Ghast (410 Points)

38 Skeletons w/ Full Command (220 Points)

39 Zombies (117 Points)

Special:
38 Grave Guard w/ Full Command and Banner of the Barrows (498 Points)

That is just 1 possible list... My thoughts on it are this:

Vampire Lord, and BSB run around with the Grave Guard fear bombing enemies

Master Necro sits in his cozy Zombie Bunker (its 39 too much, too little? what?)

The other Wight King and the lvl 1 Necromancer run around with the Skeleton Warriors (if the level 1 necromancer dies I'm not too worried, and the Rod of Flaming Death can prevent some units from getting into my lines, or at least allowing me to get the charge off).

And the Corpse Cart is there to beef up all of these undead.

This leaves me with 67 more points

The other list looks a little more like this:

Lords:
Vampire Lord w/ Shield, Heavy Armor, Red Fury, Quickblood, Fear Incarnate, Nightshroud, Sword of Striking, The Other Trickster's Shard, and The Talisman of Protection (414 Points)

Master Necromancer w/ Level 4 Upgrade (200 Points)

Heroes:
Wight King w/ Shield, Ogre Blade, and Dragonhelm (139 Points)

Wight King BSB w/ Screaming Banner (110 Points)

Necromancer w/ The Cursed Book (130 Points)

Necromancer w/ Rod of Flaming Death (105 Points)

Core:
40 Crypt Ghouls w/Ghast (410 Points)

38 Skeletons w/ Full Command (220 Points)

29 Zombies (87 Points)

Special:
38 Grave Guard w/ Full Command and Banner of the Barrows (498 Points)

Rare:
Terrorgheist (225 Points)

Which gives me... 0 points to use, and I'm thinking of using it as very similar strategy, though I don't know where to put that new naked Necromancer lol...


Thanks for all of your help so far guys, I bought a Terrorgheist this weekend and I put it together last night, I love the look of that model...

With the first list I would not put the Necromancer on the Corpse cart, he will become a cannon target and you will lose both quickly. I do recommend corpse carts and personally love using them. Not sure if you need two baby necromancers and also not sure if you need two Wight Kings. I think 1 of each would suffice and give you 200+ points to spend elsewhere. Your master Necro only needs a zombie bunker of 20, it will grow from there.

Just wondering, your main line of defense would be the zombies you summon?

No, the main line of defense is everything else in the army. You have enough stuff on the field that people should not be getting to that unit of zombies, it is not important to the over all game, well not entirely. It is important if they want to stop you having magic, but if they make that their focus they leave them open to getting hit by all your other beasties and deadites.

It just seems having 5 units is kinda small (even if you can replenish them).

I tend to field 3 units of 25+ skeletons, 1 unit of 20 zombies, 2 terrorgheists, a coven throne, a corpse cart and several spirit host.

That makes sense; you have a warmachine and two gigantic undead bats on the field.

Rivet wrote:With the first list I would not put the Necromancer on the Corpse cart, he will become a cannon target and you will lose both quickly. I do recommend corpse carts and personally love using them. Not sure if you need two baby necromancers and also not sure if you need two Wight Kings. I think 1 of each would suffice and give you 200+ points to spend elsewhere. Your master Necro only needs a zombie bunker of 20, it will grow from there.

Idk, the only reason why I'm looking at doubles of the necros and Wight Kings is that I know my dice rolls, and I'd rather have back up should I need it... I'd like another Terrorgheist, but idk if I can afford another one money wise... The baby necros are also in there for the magic items they have. I would have no issues putting one on the master necro and dropping the baby necro, but I don't have the points in my Lords slot... I've got 10 points to play around with lol...

What about this:


Lords:
Vampire Lord w/ Shield, Heavy Armor, Red Fury, Quickblood, Fear Incarnate, Nightshroud, Sword of Striking, The Other Trickster's Shard, and The Talisman of Protection (414 Points)

Master Necromancer w/ Level 4 Upgrade (200 Points)

Heroes:
Wight King BSB w/ Screaming Banner (110 Points)

Necromancer w/ Rod of Flaming Death (105 Points)

Core:
30 Crypt Ghouls w/Ghast (310 Points)

25 Skeletons w/ Full Command (155 Points)

19 Zombies (57 Points)

Special:
38 Grave Guard w/ Full Command and Banner of the Barrows (498 Points)

Rare:
Terrorgheist (225 Points)

Terrorgheist (225 Points)

Which leaves me 201 points to throw somewhere... Does this sound better? Idk... I'm trying to avoid spending an arm and a leg on this army, since WHFB is probably 3rd or 4th on my list of games I will play regularly.

Models I own: 1 Master Necro, 1 Tomb Banshee (was going to use her as my Vampire Lord), and 1Terrorgheist.

I was going to buy the Mantic Undead Army (110 Figures) which will cover my zombies, my ghouls (intermixing zombies and ghouls), my skeletons, and almost all of my Grave Guard).

Rivet, you have been a massive life saver in this endeavor.

Zombie minimum is 20 so need to raise them by 1. With those 200+ other points you could get one unit of 5 Hexwraiths (138 I think? Might be 150) and 1 spirit host.

Rivet wrote:Zombie minimum is 20 so need to raise them by 1. With those 200+ other points you could get one unit of 5 Hexwraiths (138 I think? Might be 150) and 1 spirit host.

My bad lol... I wanted nice even rows >_<

I should avoid their command right?

And what are the benefits of 1 spirit host? wouldn't it be better to spend those 45 points to beef up another unit?

Yeah avoid their command, unless you are playing the banners scenario then give them a banner, it is 5 points I think.
1 spirit host = 4 wounds, 4 attacks, and Ethereal.
It can block, it can redirect, it can usually survive combat res. It only fears magic and at 45 points most opponents will not waste magic on it except for a throw away attempt here or there.