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I haven't really started a vampire counts army but my previous roommate did before the current army book and i bought the current army book when it came out.

I have to say of all the things i've heard about vampire counts (admittedly not much) i don't hear much about bat swarms. They honestly sound fantastic. Swarms are unstable so it's not like they somehow are at a disadvantage in an army that has instability on everything. The unit can fly and basically go out of line of sight for a lot of units. In fact fly marching could allow it to jump over units and possibly assault war machines though fell bats might do it better. If all this wasn't enough it even de-buffs enemies in base contact with it by making them always strikes last. Considering vampire counts and their low initiative forcing an enemy to strike last sometimes can be a fairly big deal. Combine this with causing fear and some other buffs on your guys or de-buffs on the enemy and they're in a world of hurt. This is probably a bigger deal against small enemy units like skirmishers, single model units, cavalry, monstrous cavalry and so on.

Are fell bats better to use as a sort of war machine killer instead? Are bat swarms useful at all?

Please let me know. I'm somewhat more and more interested with vampire counts and though i might not start them even with my roommate's small old army i still might consider giving his army a go or two. Also talking about vampire counts is fascinating me a bit.

So just let me know what you all think.

I don't know much about. Vampire counts but I think the problem with most of them is their inability to march except the first turn when they may be next to a vampire.
I have played against vampire counts and they seem like they need a lot of finese to really play.
Very slow moving too.

Fell Bats are awesome. 32 points gets you a flying skirmishing unit with 4 wounds and 4 S3 attacks. They close in and threaten warmachines turn 2, and are so cheap you don't really care what happens.

Bat swarms Hover, not fly (10" movement, but cannot march).
The ASL effect looks good on paper, but you've got an issue with WS3 T2 models giving up a lot of combat res.
I think they can work, but you've got to build a plan around them. They are more expensive and slower than the fellbats, so they aren't as general purpose/throwaway.

If you do face a lot of monsters/monstrous cav, zombies and terrorgheists seem like a better solution.
But, if you wanted to mix it up, you could go with a Wight-Star, corpse cart to make the wights swing at init 3 with their great weapons and bat swarms to make the opponent ASL.

The biggest problem with them is not only do you have to spend points to grow them beyond the starting size, but being warbeasts and swarms, they only grow you wizard level + 1 wounds.

So for chaff, you're either getting 2D6 +2 zombies, or 3 wounds on bat swarms (and the zombie summon doesn't cost you 10 points to pull off). With how crappy Direwolves, fellbats and bat swarms are, they really should have invoked at D6 + wiz level.

I was only thinking of using the bat swarms to flank with once you got the more horde-ish units to get other units stuck in melee with them.

I also noticed that with the current vampire counts army book they seem to have a higher focus on zombies than they do with skeletons. Sure skeletons are better but you can raise zombies beyond starting size and faster as is whereas skeletons can only be raised beyond starting size with one master necromancer witht he upgrade i think. Not to mention their whole stat line has seen a serious improvment since the last army book. May as well do a zombie horde instead of a skeleton horde most of the time. A bit of both sounds good though.

Anyway going back on topic i will think about using fell bats and bat swarms in the future and seeing how good both are. I'm planning to run the bat swarms in 3's if i do use them.

Peasant seems to bring up a good point though. Aren't most non-vampire units unable to march unless they're in a certain range of the general? Sorry if my knowledge is a bit off as in the previous VC army book it was the general and also any vampire though these days i think it's only the general. Meh i might take that as a negative over having to deal with a dead general equaling an army that slowly or quickly dies. At least now as long as you have other vampire lore wizards you should be ok. Something that bothers me though is how does everything work if your vampire general loses all its wizard levels (chances are you're still fine as i think it has to first deal with general death more than anything) or more importantly if your general died and you have other wizards with the vampiric lore but the last one manages to miscast and lose all its remaining wizard levels so it's no longer a wizard? I'm guessing the army starts to crumble at that point. That's a very horrible way to go.

Nothing happens to your army if your general loses his wizard levels. He sucks at casting, or maybe can't cast at all.

If you lose wizard levels you can't cast.
If your lord dies and you have no other vampire or Necromancer...not sure exactly which way that goes..to take over control the army begins to crumble.
At the start or end of either the friendly or enemy...not sure which...doh..the army crumble.
You take a ld ship test and lose wounds equal to the amount failed by.
No one gets to march so you are moving 4" at best.
Again..I don't know much but they sure need finesse.

Bat Swarms are nice to get into a corner on the front so only 2-3 models can attack them. Their best use is paired with Grave Guard with great weapons. Especially if the grave guard have ASF from a corpse cart.

96 points of fell bats (3 units of 2) is amazing at being incredibly annoying. Hunt warmachines, or better yet throw them an inch in front of enemy units at an off angle, so they are forced to charge and reform.

NinthMusketeer wrote:
96 points of fell bats (3 units of 2) is amazing at being incredibly annoying. Hunt warmachines, or better yet throw them an inch in front of enemy units at an off angle, so they are forced to charge and reform.

I always thought the enemy could reform after combat and i don't expect 2 fell bats to last in combat for more than a turn. Doing this against frenzied units might work though. The problem i see is that fell bats shouldn't be able to flee being undead and immune to psychology. All immune to psychology units can't flee and undead are all immune to psychology. A gift and a curse sometimes.

That said using raise dead as a unit blocker sounds really funny though.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:

NinthMusketeer wrote:
96 points of fell bats (3 units of 2) is amazing at being incredibly annoying. Hunt warmachines, or better yet throw them an inch in front of enemy units at an off angle, so they are forced to charge and reform.

I always thought the enemy could reform after combat and i don't expect 2 fell bats to last in combat for more than a turn. Doing this against frenzied units might work though. The problem i see is that fell bats shouldn't be able to flee being undead and immune to psychology. All immune to psychology units can't flee and undead are all immune to psychology. A gift and a curse sometimes.

That said using raise dead as a unit blocker sounds really funny though.

You don't need to flee. You block their path, they must charge you to get by. Then they either over-run in a bad direction, or they reform. Either way, they are at most ~1" forward of where they started.
for 96 points, you can do this 3 times. It just cripples death stars. It's like saying, here's 96 points, now you don't get to play half the game.