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I would probably say crypt horrors are better, they are mor solid but vargheists hit harder and I prefer them, I like vampire heavy armies. The beat vampire lord choice is probably a well protected CC as the general. However a necromage (lv4) is good as a second lord, he's just to risky through miscasts to use as a general.
But my main question is which lord is better for CC the average tooled up vampire Lord or a ghoul king?

Ghoul king is better at cc. Vampire lord is easier to protect.

Varghiests and crypt horrors are more apples and oranges. Vargiests to me are more anti warmachine and flankers. Crypt horrors are a hammer/anvil. They both are great at what they do, but what they do is completely different.

Yes but the commonly missed problem with the hammer and anvil strategy with VC is to use the crypt horrors on a unit bogged down by a zombie horde. Your units crash in yet the zombies will have lost the combat by SO much your crypt horrors will crumble away to dust. I would say when supported vargheists can make decent charges on smaller units they just can't take hits- glass cannons I agree that the ghoul kings Statline is better but I'm not sure if he is as effective as a normal vampire.

On lords:
A necromancer is there as your cheapest way to get a lvl 4 in your list.
A ghoul king is a (relatively cheap) combat machine, there to slaughter everything it comes across.
A vampire lord is your balance. He is killy and can be made even killy-er and he can be made a lvl 4 on top of that. But he is never cheap

A ghoul king is as effective (in fact more so) than a vampire lord at what he does, ie killing. A lord however is more survivable and can be made a high lvl wizard. What to take comes down to what you can get in at the points level you are playing at and what you prefer.


As for vargheists vs crypt horrors, two different units. Horrors make a solid center of your line while 'gheists are flank units.

 jonolikespie wrote:
On lords:
A necromancer is there as your cheapest way to get a lvl 4 in your list.
A ghoul king is a (relatively cheap) combat machine, there to slaughter everything it comes across.
A vampire lord is your balance. He is killy and can be made even killy-er and he can be made a lvl 4 on top of that. But he is never cheap

A ghoul king is as effective (in fact more so) than a vampire lord at what he does, ie killing. A lord however is more survivable and can be made a high lvl wizard. What to take comes down to what you can get in at the points level you are playing at and what you prefer.


As for vargheists vs crypt horrors, two different units. Horrors make a solid center of your line while 'gheists are flank units.

Thanks for the help! However I would never even contemplate making my general my main spellcaster, there's a big chance he will kill himself through a miscast then goodbye army!

Nah, works fine most of the time :-)

Yea the chance is a lot lower than you seem to think, with VC most the time you want to be throwing 2 dice at 4 different spells rather than all six dice at that 1 big spell you need to get off.

The other issue for vargheists is their frnzy, so if an enemy unit runs, they have to pursue, which can lead to alot of flank redirection.

At adepticon 3000pt tourney 1 player had a horde of 18 run down a flank.

'Twas truely a sight to behold...

 Waaagh_Gonads wrote:

At adepticon 3000pt tourney 1 player had a horde of 18 run down a flank.

'Twas truely a sight to behold...

I think having 18 Vargs in one unit isnt the most tactical of options for a tourny

From memory he ran:
1 master necromancer
x2 100 strong zombie units
x1 20 strong zombie unit (bunker for necromancer)
x7 5 strong dire wolf units
x1 unit 6 vargheists
x1 unit 18 vargheists
x2 terrorgheists.


Spam deploy 7 units of wolves, then the zombies and then character.
Then the unit of 6 vargheists, the 2 terrogheists on 1 flank to destroy whatever was out there and then the big unit vargheists go on the other flank.

Truely an awesome army.

 kenshin620 wrote:

 Waaagh_Gonads wrote:

At adepticon 3000pt tourney 1 player had a horde of 18 run down a flank.

'Twas truely a sight to behold...

I think having 18 Vargs in one unit isnt the most tactical of options for a tourny

I have the VC army book but am so lazy i don't feel like looking in it even though it's not that inconvenient right now. That said i'm pretty sure vargheists are fairly high in points and they're not terribly easy to raise back from the dead (or more dead) mostly because they're in the ethereal, vampire and monster category which can't come back to full health as easily. This is one reason why black knights interested me because with a level 4 you can raise back 5 in one casting.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:

 kenshin620 wrote:

 Waaagh_Gonads wrote:

At adepticon 3000pt tourney 1 player had a horde of 18 run down a flank.

'Twas truely a sight to behold...

I think having 18 Vargs in one unit isnt the most tactical of options for a tourny

I have the VC army book but am so lazy i don't feel like looking in it even though it's not that inconvenient right now. That said i'm pretty sure vargheists are fairly high in points and they're not terribly easy to raise back from the dead (or more dead) mostly because they're in the ethereal, vampire and monster category which can't come back to full health as easily. This is one reason why black knights interested me because with a level 4 you can raise back 5 in one casting.

I am pretty sure you can only bring back 2 as Black Knights are cavalry.

@brentyboi: I'm pretty sure things like black knights are dependent on wizard level. It's pretty much 1+wizard level in models back so with a level one wizard that would be the case but with a level 4 it's always 5 per cast.

Yep, cav doesn't cap at 1 like ethereal, vampiric or large target, but neither do they get wizard level +d6 because they are not infantry. They get 1+ wizard level.