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Hi, I am incredibly new to Fantasy (don't even have the rulebook yet), and I am interested in VC as my first army. I would like to know what would be recommended to start a VC army (rulebook aside, of course), and how the army usually plays. If at all possible, put it in 40k terms to make it easier to understand.

Well, vampire counts are a horde army. You'll even be summoning new units during the battle! Hence, you will need a lot of skeletons and zombies. I dont know much about VC, but I know that this is right.

I thought as much. Figure skeletons and zombies would be pretty easy to paint, too.

Any other suggestions?

I actually dont run all that much of a horde vampires army. I run the minimum skeletons I need to make the cor unit choice, a solid block of spellcasters to keep the army alive, and then everything else is ethreal. You have to be careful about pitfall units in our codex because it has alot of them.

The first step is to figure out how you want to deal damage to the enemy. In my case its a simple smashing process while avoiding any return damage.

Some players perfer to summon hordes of zombies and throw them at the enemy, and then summon more to outflank behind. With our unit population abilities, sure they will lose combat the first round, and the second, and maybe even the third, but eventually your opponent wont have any models left and you win by default.

The biggest thing we have to be careufl of is war machines as we dont have alot of capability to take them out and they can easily kill our most important characters. if you want any other advice you could pm me or try the tactica. You could also look at the WHFB Army List section so you can get a good idea of how people are currently playing them.

Here are some pointers.

WFB has a completely different "force org chart" than 40k -instead of slots, you have percentages. Generally everything is a 25% maximum, except for core, which is a 25% minimum, and special, which has a 50% maximum. So let's say you were building a 2000pt army. You could spend a maximum of

500pts on Lords
500pts on Heroes
1000pts on Special
500pts on Rare

and a minimum of 500pts on Core.

Unlike 40k, there is no incentive to take more Core (which are the equivalent of Troops.) There are no "scoring units" or objectives - most of the points you earn from straight killing. So unless your Core is amazing (and very few armies have amazing core,) you should really be spending the minimum on core, so that you have more points for good/fun stuff.

Magic is an extremely important phase, especially for Vampire Counts. As such, you really want a level 4 Necromancer Lord for spell casting. Since he's fragile, you want to buy him a "bunker" - a unit that stays behind another unit to avoid combat and keep your wizard safe. A minimum sized unit of zombies usually does this.

When it comes to choosing the rest of you core, it depends on what you want them to do. If you want them to live, skeletons with light armour, hand weapon, and shield are the way to go. Cheap, and fairly durable. If you want to kill, ghouls are for you. More attacks, initiative, WS, T, and poison. Much more expensive, but you're paying for the ability to actually kill stuff. Also, when you regrow skeletons and ghouls, you regrow the same amount per casting. You'd rather regrow Ghouls since they are worth more.

Anyway, that's a start. How many points are you planning to build towards?

I also heard Blood Knights are insanely good, but pricey (in both points and $). Are they worth it?

tiberius183 wrote:
I also heard Blood Knights are insanely good, but pricey (in both points and $). Are they worth it?

Depends whom you ask. Some people say Blackknights are better (13 blackknights with barding and banner of the barrows, wight king mounted, vampire mounted with
book of arkham sprinkle in magic items and vampire powers and you have a very hard hittint unit that can march and get extra movement from the book of arkham)

The unit that just about every VC player takes is a 30 strong unit of graveguard with great weapons and the Banner of the Barrows. 5-6 across with full command. You can put a wight king or your vampire lord with them for extra killing potential.

Vampire lord (lvl1 wizard lore of vampires) speced as a CC blender, or a ghoul king speced as a CC blender.

Lvl 2 necro's to keep your units at full strength.

Lvl 4 master necro's with useing the lore of death (take sig spell and kill enemy characters)

Skeletons to fill core, or ghouls.

Terrorgeists are fun as a rare choice (bring a couple), also maybe look at the mortis engine, black coach can also be cool.


I'll let other people fill in more (or disagree with what I've written idk) I've got to study for a test tomorrow

You do not need to field them as horde. Only the core is horde.

Vampiers of any kind would be kind. Vampier lord as a level 4 spellcaster and kick ass fighting and armour is all good. After that you can have 2 spellcasters level 1 with shadow magic that would help your core a lott in melle with miasma.

Add blood knights as the rare coise (use alternative models for this to save money) and you have a neat army! Add some special of your choise and it is funn funn funn.

tiberius183 wrote:
I also heard Blood Knights are insanely good, but pricey (in both points and $). Are they worth it?

Blood Knights are considered to be the best heavy calvalry (statwise) with possibly the exception of chaos knights. That being said, if you field them to their full potential you will lose 500 points that could be spent on other models. I perfer to field hexwraiths as they dont generally get penalized for wielding great weapons (Initiative dosent really matter when nothing can hit you) and their soulstriders special rule allows them to stay mobile while still doing damage.

The new VC megaforce coming out for the holidays: worth it? http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/productDetail.jsp?catId=cat440004a&prodId=prod1760008a

I actually just grabbed the megaforce (well, my fiancee did for Christmas). It's got a lot of stuff in it, though as a starter you'll be adding to it - at least twice the Skeletons and Ghouls, as it's really short on Core. For me, I already have the core selections in it, so it's doubling my Core, which is great.

Then it's basically a smattering of new kits and the ever awesome looking Corpse Cart (which will give me two, same with two Necromancers, which basically means HELLO CORPSE CART MOUNTED NECRO). I would say it's a bit unfocused - most people would probably prefer twice the cavalry or monstrous infantry kits to focus it more, but it gives you a good taste of the army.

Including both the Zombie Dragon and Coven Throne was a great idea - it gives you a choice of going with a monstrous mont or chariot mount, or neither and going with a Necromancer Lord. You can also very easily base the Strigoi Ghol King and use that without the Terrorgheist.

I'm kind of rambling now. It's a great set for adding the new stuff to your army, and has some great opportunities for a new player. It's just also very light on Core. Though you're getting effectively a 30% saving, so you'll have the money to fill out those Skeletons and Ghouls.

VC are a very strong army but they do have pitfalls. A lot of people seem to go Ethereal.

When the new Daemons get released next year, I wonder what will happen...

But VC also have some monstrous infantry which are pretty decent for their cost. And cavalry, which you know of. And some solid monsters. The throne things are just too weird for me and i think I only looked at them once.

VC is a very well balanced book which makes it hard to get opinions on because people will want to run different things and because there is no wrong answer you might get a lot of mixed signals coming your way.
Having said that I like to think of vampires as an army where you want to be focusing on the bells and whistle while ignoring the 'main' aspects. Yes you need a min of 25% of core and yes that core is going to suck. These units are your tarpits and re-directors (god I love my wolves ). Then you have your Heroes and Lords, these are the heart of your army in a very real sense, they die and you crumble, they will also be relied on to do most of the work but really if you kit out a 550 point vampire lord he should kill anything in front of him and a 65 point necromancer is.. well its 65 points, if he channels once and gets of 1 raise spell he has done his job. whatever you do with your heroes they should do their job.
What I really love about VCs is that we are absolutely spoiled for choice in the special section. Want hard hitting infantry? bam, 40 grave guard with great weapons. Want to run a cavalry army? 8-15 black knights. Want ogres? we can do that with crypt horrors, nothing will break through 18 of them when you raise back d6+caster level with each invocation. We even have fast ethereal cavalry and flying monstrous infantry that will eat anything it touches (admittedly it does that before dying like a little wuss).
We get a lot of fun specials to work with even if our cores and lords/heroes will usually be the same in every list you make once you find a system you like, and I bloody love that.

*Edit*
Sorry if you want it in 40k terms (or just tl;rd):
It is like the Blood angels book or the Grey knights book there wasn't OP stuff in there. It is a very balanced book, you can pick up anything you want and make it work. There are no "this unit sucks, I'd never take it" units and there are no "this is so broken I have to take 3" units. We can have a lot of fun.
As for what to buy.. what do you like the look of?