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Hi everyone, I recently started a Vampire Counts army for 8th Ed. I was just wondering what kind of builds are good for a Vampire Lord on Foot and what kind of unit to put him with. Thanks all

Ask yourself how many characters you want.

For a general survivability is key, he doesn't need to be tooled up to attack and mostly he should avoid characters.
In general all you need is level 4 magic boosts that you can afford and a decent ward save.

Use 'normal' vampires as attack characters.

So I should use the Lord as a high level caster, and the lesser Vampires as the fighty ones? I will most likely run 1-2 necromancers to stabilize my large core units.

1. You cannot afford to lose your general.

2. You must take a tooled up level 4 wizard with lore of Vampire Counts.

3. You need something to deal with combat characters as had-of-the-snake is just about everyones priorities when facing undead armies.

So really you want either a level 4 necro or a vampire lord to be your general. The former is cheaper, the latter more resilient. Despite his power you dont really want him in combat, use a vampire lord to add combat resolution by killing mooks.

Combat vampires can be cost effective.

Is it wise to put the lesser vampire characters in a squad of Graveguard (just an example), that way they are in the front line carving up troops?

The typical way to go is a Vampire Blender Lord, which is a Vampire Lord pretty much as tooled up as you can get. He'll take up most of your Lords allowance and it's a huge problem if you lose him, but generally he'll carry the army and rip through anything he faces. The typical backbone is: Lvl4 | Red Fury | Quickblood | Talisman of Endurance | Enchanted Shield | Heavy Armour, then you'll add other stuff depending on whether he's mounted or not. If he is, you'll probably add a Lance, Other Trickster's Shard and Earthing Rod. If not, it'll be an Ogre Blade and the Other Trickster's Shard. Some people still like to use the Ogre Blade with mounted Vampire Lords, and many people like to take Beguile as well.

This is the build I'd recommend, but if you're also taking a Lvl4 Master Necromancer, you can keep your Lord at Lvl1 and downgrade some of his equipment. Generally though, I'd say the "all or nothing" mentality is best.

You'll want this Lord character in a unit that will do decent damage. If you put him in a unit of, say, skeletons, there's a chance he'll just die through combat res because Skeletons are so easy to kill and deal little damage in return. So Grave Guard or Black Guard are usually the best bets. Putting another Hero-level Vampire into the same unit is usually advisable, just because it will mean the unit is practically unstoppable, and the casualties it causes should always carry your combat res. However, some people do like putting a Hero Vampire into a unit like Skeletons. The reasoning behind this is that it makes the unit a little more scary and deadly, as well as survivable, as the casualties caused by the Vampire will lessen any crumbling through combat res. However, a "bus" unit with two Vampires in is the usual, and most effective, way to run 8th edition Vampire Counts.

Hope this helps!

Ya I've read about the blender Vampire. That's definately my favorite idea for a build. I'll experiment with the different units. First I'm going to try out the blender in a unit of grave guard. Thanks all for your suggestions and help