Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I'm about to go up against someone who's been bragging about his army for weeks. He's claimed he can outswarm my rats (I play Skaven) and his 500 point blender lord kinda scares me. We are playing 2000 points and I've never gone up against VC before. Any tips and tricks for a Skaven player to defeat VC?

Without the lists, I can't give you any advice.

I don't need specific list building tactics. Just general tips. Are there any weapons that Skaven have that are typically effective against VC? Anything I should be taking advantage of during the match against VC? Seeing as he claims he can out horde me, I can assume he is bring Zombies, since Ghouls are to expensive for his claims. He talks up wraith units a lot, and it seems he enjoys loading up his Lords and heroes from my previous games with him...sorry, it's all I can offer.

Skaven are pretty well geared to go toe to toe with a vampire army.
You'll want a good mix of magical attacks, and lucky for the rats, they don't need characters to do it.

Censor Bearers are murder for the ethereals. You strike before anything ethereal, hitting on 4+ with a re-roll and killing on a 2+; on top of that you're forcing toughness tests.
Being frenzied, you don't have to worry about terror.

If I knew I was going up against vampires,
I'd take 2 warp lightning cannons and an Abom with the warp spikes; 3 units of 5 censor bearers, 3 units of 6 gutter runners with the magical poison slings, and ~2 units of 5 or 6 jezzails.
For wizards, go for plague, wither and cloud of corruption. All 3 are very good at harming vampires. If you can get a howling warpgale to shut down his flying, that could be very useful too.

The thing with fighting vampire counts is to finish off units.
Leaving a unit crippled does almost nothing as it bounces back in their magic phase.

The most important thing in a Vampire Counts list is not the vampire but his delivery system. Along a canon will kill him and end the game so focus on getting him alone.
Ghouls, black knights or grave guard are the most common units you'll see a blender in, focus them down and the lone surviving vamp isn't actually that durable.

Also keep in mind his vamp and its unit will be half his points, keep that unit distracted with 300 points of clan rats or slaves and he's not going to make his points back.

 jonolikespie wrote:
The most important thing in a Vampire Counts list is not the vampire but his delivery system. Along a canon will kill him and end the game so focus on getting him alone.
Ghouls, black knights or grave guard are the most common units you'll see a blender in, focus them down and the lone surviving vamp isn't actually that durable.

Also keep in mind his vamp and its unit will be half his points, keep that unit distracted with 300 points of clan rats or slaves and he's not going to make his points back.

Against skaven, I'd stick my vampire in a zombie unit. You don't really need the more elite units since the vamp will be wrecking face and the numbers the zombies bring along will make it really tough to thin the unit.

-Matt

I'd take assassins against VC. The weeping blade+ Potion of Strength is good, and the Sword of Antiheroes+OTS is alright. Stick them in the bell unit, and decline the challenge with the seer, or don't challenge, and take the vampire off. You pop them both out, in base to base with the vampire lord, and go to town. Your assassins WILL get their attacks, due to ASF, and the Weeping blade assassin just needs 1 hit. Pop them out at the start of the turn, drink the potion on the weeping blades dude, charge in and kill the lord.

And the bell+stormvermin can outgrind most vc units.

Other than that, a cannon and an abomb won't go amiss. Nor will a wheel. I'd even be tempted with jezzails. 36" magical range shooting attacks aren't bad against ethereals.

I wouldn't rely on the assassin to be honest. It's a one-trick pony that may not work. You still have to hit (on 4s), then wound (which shouldn't be too hard admittedly), then the VC Lord has to fail his 4++ (maybe 5++ at 2k, but still). Then you have to roll a 3 on the D3. And if he has beguile, you're pretty screwed. If you don't, the Vamp Lord will tear you to pieces.

Honestly, I'd field a large unit of Skavenslaves to try and hold up the VC Lord's unit. Take, like Matt said, chaff, small units of Gutter Runners, for example, to take out the chaff the VC player is using.

A large part of playing VC is getting the right unit into combat. If he can get his blender lord into the combats he wants, you'll be hard pressed to win. He'll probably be taking lots of drops and chaff to accomplish this. You need to win the manoeuvre war.

But cannons and the Storm Banner won't go amiss either

Im kind of torn on ideas for rare selection to be honest.

Cannon and Abomb are both solid choices.
But after taking those you can either double up on the cannon, or add in more stuff.

I'd be tempted to go with a cannon, Abomb and wheel which puts you on the rare limit.
You have 1 for taking out anything nasty as quickly as possible, and the wheel and Abomb grind through units quite well.

As said, make sure you go overkill on a unit otherwise it just comes back up in numbers.
Ive had alot of luck with throwing a cheap unit of slaves at large units, then putting the wheel and Abomb into each flank ontop of that.
The sheer damage this causes each turn means the unit will die, no matter how much they try to bolster it.

Also, take a seer, warlock and Dscroll.
Vamps are magic heavy so you want to try and counter as much as you can with this.
Keep the scroll for an important use as always as stopping a single spell can mean a unit actually dies for good.


Censers are nasty and i run 2 units of 10 anyway, but against Vamps, they really do shine as ethereal means nothing to them.
They are also good for grinding through units at a high pace.

Jezzails are hit and miss, but magic, long ranged weapons are nice here.
Pick off small units and chaff early on and your on the money.


The other idea is drop the Abomb and take 2 cannons and 2 plague catapaults.
Sit them back with 2 large units of jezzails and tear through the bunker unit with the vamp in it.

You will either cripple it enough that a unit can crush it in combat, or if your lucky (pretty lucky) you can drop the numbers enough that your dropping wounds onto the vamp.

To do this, i run what ive said but also alot of weapons teams and fire as much warp lightning as i can into the unit.
This also means doing anything possible to stop that unit being bolstered, even if it mean letting a nasty spell through in the process.

Also, keep in mind that skaven are good for causing toughness tests.
Against VC, anything thats not a vamp or a monster will suffer because of this.
In my themed skaven army (pestilens) ive actually had alot of luck with skrolk causing an insane amount of tests and destroying the best part of half a unit per turn on his own.

 The Shadow wrote:
I wouldn't rely on the assassin to be honest. It's a one-trick pony that may not work. You still have to hit (on 4s), then wound (which shouldn't be too hard admittedly), then the VC Lord has to fail his 4++ (maybe 5++ at 2k, but still). Then you have to roll a 3 on the D3. And if he has beguile, you're pretty screwed. If you don't, the Vamp Lord will tear you to pieces.

I wouldn't call assassins one trick ponies. They do one thing, and they do it well. They are the main reason the bellstar works so well. Because they are ace at killing characters.;


The weeping blade+Potion of strength assassin has more chance than you give him credit for at killing stuff like vampire lords. As for beguile, the assassin'S are still testing on 7 with a reroll.

To put it simply, I haven't seen a single thing the dual assassin bellstar can't kill. And this is including the new Warriors Nurgle prince.

DjPyro3 wrote:
I'm about to go up against someone who's been bragging about his army for weeks. He's claimed he can outswarm my rats (I play Skaven) and his 500 point blender lord kinda scares me. We are playing 2000 points and I've never gone up against VC before. Any tips and tricks for a Skaven player to defeat VC?

I just beat a VC player last game I played about 2 weeks ago. To be fair he was new to VC but a veteran player. The thing you need to know is that killing characters with lore of vampires and killing the general are your biggest priorities. I can not stress this enough. Once I killed his general which was his last vampire lore wizard on the field the whole army crumbled at the end of my phase and then his army crumbled again at the beginning of his turn. This effectively takes out all the ethereal units if you have nothing to do to handle it since they have few wounds and poor leadership.

This might be easier said than done in some cases (unless they go master necromancer general which I don't think he should do next time) but it's one way to handle them. What did it for me is my hellpit abomination. It has random movement and it basically took down a vampire lord in a unit of black knights and then overran and random movement charged his small unit of skeletons with his general and other wizard. Once they were dead esp. through combat resolution the army just completely crapped itself and kept dying.

Other things to note are ethereal units can be taken down with magical attacks so pretty much all non-sling shooting attacks skaven have can do it (since slings are the only normal shooting skaven have pretty much). I just had my grey seer but 'cracks call' took out a crap ton of hex wraiths and I imagine warp lightning would too.

Basically if I was to say anything take the hellpit abomination for pretty much everything and a doomwheel/cannons for monsters. Considering how some people put the general in the back scouts such as gutter runners and an assassin with them might even help if you have any.

Most VC magic is about buffs/hexes and bringing back more undead. If you can kill his death raising attempts you should handle him just fine. The rest is just how you both play it I suppose. I can't give you the best advice without watching the game unfold in front of me and that gets disapproving looks.

If he has a blender lord chances are his magic should be infinitely easier for you to dispel. Throwing all your points into lords like that also has disadvantages. It sounds like he's going to throw his Vampire Lord into a horde unit so it might be easy to take down with an abomination though flanking his unit in other cases is a good idea. Keep in mind doing this should attract some attention as it normally would so you should get ready to throw other units into position if they try to flank the abomination though considering losing combat would just combat resolution more of his units to death it might not happen.

A good tactic I used vs vampire counts is forcing them to fail charges or re-directs. This might not happen if the lord is close enough but if he's not it's actually pretty likely and easy to do and keep in mind the only way he can march is if he's in his leadership bubble. Vampire counts can still move quickly but not that quickly.

@HawaiiMatt: Actually poisoned slings on gutter runners aren't magical. No slings that skaven have should be magical. If your opponent has said otherwise they're lying or don't know their rules.

----------------

Anyway I honestly think as vampire counts your friend will have a harder time against you than you will against him. Skaven have lots of nice magical attacks and some nice hitters. If your opponent wants to move really fast it'll be much easier with Vampiric units though some vanguard light cavalry, war beasts or flying units can go fast. If he takes vargheists supposedly he'll need a leader or more likely vampire BSB with them that can also fly. Using 'howling warpgale' should help you a ton with his flying units. If nothing else it'll hold his units down a bit.

Maybe it's just me but I find I dislike taking lower level wizards more and more or at least with skaven. In fact i'd probably only take a couple if possible. The reason why is magic is very, very unpredictable. Sometimes you get a ton of power dice and sometimes barely any and sometimes your opponent gets about as many dispel dice as you do power dice. My problem with low level wizards is that if you cast with them and your opponent has a better wizard to dispel with then you're at an instant disadvantage for the cast. So yeah better two grey seers than one seer and a load of warlocks casting worse. It might not seem like a lot but the opposite is also true if for instance somebody has no wizards or at most a level 2 and you cast a bunch of spells with your level 4 with possible boosts then it's instantly going to be harder to resist them esp. with fewer dice.