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My mate and I are just getting back into fantasy after a while, havnt played any 8th edition yet, Ive still got all my O&G but hes gunna be starting vampire counts, Basically just wondering whats a good start for him, as in how large should units be, zombies or skellies, hexwraiths or knights, how much grave guard? etc

Basically we were thinking getting two battalions, and then two boxes of hexwraiths/knights and a vampire to start with, giving him 40 Skellys, 40 Ghouls, 20 Wolves, 2 corpse carts, and 10 hexwraiths, plus a vamp, then possibly sell a cart and get something else, or get 1 new battalion and 1 old battalion, giving him 20 zombies at the expense of 10 ghouls

Basically what should he start off with? Cheeerrrrsss

Well, the terrible truth about the new vampires book, much like the new Empire and O&G books, is that pretty much everything in the book is very useful. It would hard to recommend one build or set of units that would cover all your bases.

However, getting a full set of core troops is required and is a great start for any new player. A good set of guidelines for your army purchases should be as follows-


2500 Point Vampire Typical Army Outline

Lords/Heroes
1-3 Vamps
Necromancer of some sort

Core
30-50 ghouls(Should be one big unit of these)
60 zombies(split into 1-3 units)+40 reserve zombies for raise dead (Can substitute skeletons for either slot)

Special
Choose one big (about 40 infantry/12 monstrous infantry/15 cavalry) or two medium chunky units of your choice. Basically everything in here is good. Recommend not going overboard on hexwraiths, 5-10 is solid.

Rare
Pick one or two big toys to play with.

If you guys are shooting for 1500, pull back on the characters a bit, and lower the troop counts by about 1/3.

And that's about it. Typical vampire strategy is going to be big slow infantry in the center, with heavy hitting units or monsters on the sides. Use spirit hosts and wolves to hold back/annoy monsters and guarantee good charges. Always bring a big caster at every point value and supplement your elite units with some nasty vampire combat characters. Bunker your wizard in zombies behind the lines and you're basically golden.

Jinkazeal wrote:Well, the terrible truth about the new vampires book, much like the new Empire and O&G books, is that pretty much everything in the book is very useful. It would hard to recommend one build or set of units that would cover all your bases.

However, getting a full set of core troops is required and is a great start for any new player. A good set of guidelines for your army purchases should be as follows-


2500 Point Vampire Typical Army Outline

Lords/Heroes
1-3 Vamps
Necromancer of some sort

Core
30-50 ghouls(Should be one big unit of these)
60 zombies(split into 1-3 units)+40 reserve zombies for raise dead (Can substitute skeletons for either slot)

Special
Choose one big (about 40 infantry/12 monstrous infantry/15 cavalry) or two medium chunky units of your choice. Basically everything in here is good. Recommend not going overboard on hexwraiths, 5-10 is solid.

Rare
Pick one or two big toys to play with.

If you guys are shooting for 1500, pull back on the characters a bit, and lower the troop counts by about 1/3.

And that's about it. Typical vampire strategy is going to be big slow infantry in the center, with heavy hitting units or monsters on the sides. Use spirit hosts and wolves to hold back/annoy monsters and guarantee good charges. Always bring a big caster at every point value and supplement your elite units with some nasty vampire combat characters. Bunker your wizard in zombies behind the lines and you're basically golden.

All of this is very solid info. I would not take the ghouls and take more skeletons but that is my opinion.
Another rule of thumb is make sure you have at LEAST 20+ Skeletons in reserve and 40+ Zombies in reserve. Depending on how many you bring back.
If you are going to make spirit hosts (which I strongly suggest) Buy a box of empire flagelents, you can turn that into about 3 spirit hosts. and have plenty of bits for other things.

Great, thanks alot guys, Ill pass this onto him

Or you could buy a box of LOTR Marsh Spectres, they look pretty sweet, or Twilight Ringwraiths, youll get three hosts out of them and their only 15 bucks