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i was having a thought....... its zombie week here, lots of zombie related board games, and whatnot. so i figured - could a zombie theme vamp counts army work?

essentially the army would consist of a few necros, (max out the hero/lord slots with them) make sure each one has the spell or spells that boost numbers, then the only unit... zombies! just like as many units of say 20 each marching up the board. or go horde formation and take 2-3 huge hoards, all backed up by the necros. if possible, get the necro a zombie dragon. but the only units allowed in the army are "zombified" stuff.

how well would it work? COULD it work?

No killing power. It won't be able to remove units from the table thus not score anything

 namiel wrote:
No killing power. It won't be able to remove units from the table thus not score anything

Not true.
You get re-rolls to hit and re-rolls to wound from the lore of magic, and ASF off the corpse cart.
Necromancers can also get death magic (yay for soul blight).
If you throw in a mortis engine or two, you also get a bubble of regenerations.

My experience with massed zombies resulted in summoning a little over 400 zombies in a 6 turn game.
The problem I ran into was table space; I actually had to go into horde formation with two of the units to have enough room to keep summoning.
It's very disheartening to an opponent to watch a unit of zombies march 8" forward and then summon 50 models to the rear rank, adding over 8" to the length of the unit.

If you do it right, you'll need 600 to 700 zombies; and that's the real problem.

-Matt

But his point still stands, you would get no points off his army and all he has to do is wipeout one maybe two units to win.

Zombies are great units to hold the opponents hammer for a turn or two but not that great otherwise

You could probably take Count Mannfed, so you know you are getting every spell you need at least once, on probably the toughest dude we have on foot for his casting ability.

the restriction to the list would be only necros and zombie/ghoul units. so lots of corpse carts, maybe some ghouls, but huge amounts of zombies. use magic to snipe enemy characters, then grind down combats with static combat res from ranks, etc. ghouls can provide smash power. but no skeles, (or variants) and no vamps, or such units. i think it **might** work.....if you had enough extra zombie models. it would be a blast to play tho, win or lose.

It's definitely do-able. Take units of 30 zombies to give you a bit of a head start on raising them. Then a level 4 and two level 2 necromancers, Black Periapt on the level 4, scroll and cursed book on the level 2s, and a pair of mortis engines with the tome. I'd probably also consider packing those units with banshees or something as well.

The idea is to lock the enemy in combat with zombies raised to obscene levels, and damage them with mortis engines, banshees, and spells until they die.

I might also consider throwing a level 4 death in there as well.

well, it could work, but do you count ghouls as zombies, if so you just got a ton more viable. and always bring A vampire because the killy there is amazing. I made my VC army as much skeleton as possible, with only the bare minimum zombies because I had a necromancer there.

yea ghouls count, but no vampire. necros ok tho. im gonna write up a list and see if i can make it work

 DarthSpader wrote:
yea ghouls count, but no vampire. necros ok tho. im gonna write up a list and see if i can make it work

I had decent success with zombie bombing, but the entire game more or less hinges on if you can keep your mortis engines alive. Bubble 5+ regen to free units is what makes the army work.
Being able to box out enemy flyers (leaving them no space to fly over units and charge necromancers is critical.
A few months ago, I went up against high elves, and gave them a good roughing over. 5+ regen zombies with ASF (thank you corpse cart), takes re-rolls away from the elves, and in pretty sort order, let me grind them down. Yeah, they are hitting on 3's and I'm hitting on 5's, but 1 round of combat is all it takes. Zombies were killing a few elves per turn, and the engines a few more. By mid-game, my army was over twice it's starting size, and the elves had lost ~half their starting numbers.
While I like the narrative of the last stand; elves slowing being pulled down as uncountable undead continue to rise, it is a bit dull to play. With the number of zombies required (several hundred), I wouldn't ever bother and painting it as a full army.

If you don't mind crypt horrors in the list, you get a similar effect, with a more usable army foot print.

I've seen this list. At 2,200, it looked something like:

2 Master Necros and 3-4 normal ones, with the Periapt, Book of Arkhan, Cursed Book, and a Dispel Scroll.

2 Mortis Engines

I think they had some Dire Wolves. They're zombie dogs, after all.

Corpse Carts and Mortis Engines.

Zombies everywhere.

The list is actually incredibly hard to deal with. It raises models faster than you can shoot them, and it's really good at grinding.
There's just no way to get any points out of this list. Once you're in combat, you're stuck there for the rest of the game.

The only way I could think of dealing with this sort of thing would be...lots of Witch Elves or Plague Monks...Purple Sun...that's about it.

Issue with the zombie list, as with last edition is that from a victory points perspective its virtually impossible to do anything other than draw. As the others have said you need some killing power, like just get something that hits harder than a wet Kleenex beyond your heroes and then you're good. Perhaps a small skeleton bunker for your heroes, and a great freakin great-weaponed up Grave Guard deathstar with your characters. The tactic would be just use your zombies to protect the flanks, let your magic do its work in both raising zombies and killing off/weakening their key units. Once your Grave guard get into combat then happy days.

Like, i understand that you really want the zombie horde and thats more than possible, but if you really want it to be viable then I'd suggest that Grave guard deathstar with the rest of your list a heap of zombies. It works man, it really does

Of course the Gravestar works. I've seen that thing since the last book.

But the Zombie horde can kill stuff. It generally takes 'til turn 5 for you to start getting points, but it's rock-steady.
Honestly, though. It's probably the most boring list to play in the history of ever.

yea if i get around to it, i would be doing it purley as a fun theme army, with no real purpose behind winning or competetive. although it seems to look like it might end up that way. either way, IF i decide to go that route i think nagash is now a must include....

Up to you man, but i honestly think if you're gonna invest time money and effort into an army, especially one as powerful as vamps then winning kinda comes hand in hand with it. That's me personally but I think also having such a static army would get kinda boring if its lacking serious kill potential.

It kills. Just very slowly. And always in the same way. Super boring. Super reliable. Stupidly so.

That said, I will say this: unit fillers. Big ones.

Now you can add Tomb Kings or Priests to your Zombie units for Weapon Skill 5. They suddenly got better at killing.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I would do it this way
Heinrich Kemmler 350
Master Necro -Master of the Dead, Lvl 4 Vampires

Lvl 2 Necro With dispel scroll and lore of death
Lvl 2 Necro lore of death
Lvl 2 Necro lore of death
Lvl 2 Necro lore of Vampires Master of the Dead

Dire Wolves
Dire Wolves
Dire Wolves

Zombies x95 Mage Bunker and tarpit of doom
Zombies x50
Zombies x50
Zombies x50

Mortis Engine Blasphemous Tome
Mortis Engine Blasphemous Tome


2500 points of never ending zombies. Just grind your opponent to death and let your death necros kill things.
Also you'll completely dominate any magic phase.

 FenrisianStuart21 wrote:
Now you can add Tomb Kings or Priests to your Zombie units for Weapon Skill 5. They suddenly got better at killing

No you can't. The rule for Tomb Kings/Princes specifies that it only works on Nehekharan undead.

Even in Undead Legions/End Times book? Seems silly to leave one army specific rule when combining two armies. I'll Have to double check that.

 FenrisianStuart21 wrote:
Even in Undead Legions/End Times book? Seems silly to leave one army specific rule when combining two armies. I'll Have to double check that.

I'll directly quote the rule:

"Any unit of Nehekharan Undead containing a model with this rule uses the character's Unmodified Weapon Skill in place of their own."


The rule comes from the Tomb Kings book, and unless they actually change it in The End Times book, it only applies to Tomb Kings. Just like TK magic only affects TK units, because it only affects Nehekharan Undead.

Darkavenger: I was never disputing what it says in the TK book, I was saying that with the way the End Times book is built, I would think that they would change that wording as VC and TK are being played in conjunction with each other.


I don't have the book on hand to quote unfortunately, I'm still waiting on it to arrive at my LGS.

End Times makes all rules/spells/items/etc. that effect Nehekharan Undead also effect Undead and vice versa.

 thedarkavenger wrote:

 FenrisianStuart21 wrote:
Now you can add Tomb Kings or Priests to your Zombie units for Weapon Skill 5. They suddenly got better at killing

No you can't. The rule for Tomb Kings/Princes specifies that it only works on Nehekharan undead.

You seriously need to get a copy of the rules for the topic on hand.

 HawaiiMatt wrote:

 thedarkavenger wrote:

 FenrisianStuart21 wrote:
Now you can add Tomb Kings or Priests to your Zombie units for Weapon Skill 5. They suddenly got better at killing

No you can't. The rule for Tomb Kings/Princes specifies that it only works on Nehekharan undead.

You seriously need to get a copy of the rules for the topic on hand.

Does the book tell us to change the classification of Nehekharan undead to normal undead?


As, unless it says something along the lines of: " replace any instance of Nehekharan undead with normal undead in the tomb kings book." The rule will only affect units with the Nehekharan undead rule.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
That's a genuine question. I refuse to buy into End Tines as it encourages stupid builds.

So a used to play around with a zombie army that was essentially a bunch of zombie blocks, 2 corpse carts, and as many blender vampires as I could get (the zombie units acted as buses to get the vampire in combat and the vampires just jumped from unit to unit as needed). It was pretty good but had lots of problems dealing with chaff shenanigans.

So along comes the end times...I can take 2x the number of vampires, I have access to some of the best anti chaff archers in the game, I can get some of the casters to summon different units via lore of undeath, and I can get corpse caskets and Hierotitan to really let me spam those invocation of nehek and get off a fair number of buffs. Zombies are looking pretty good IMO.

 thedarkavenger wrote:

 HawaiiMatt wrote:

 thedarkavenger wrote:

 FenrisianStuart21 wrote:
Now you can add Tomb Kings or Priests to your Zombie units for Weapon Skill 5. They suddenly got better at killing

No you can't. The rule for Tomb Kings/Princes specifies that it only works on Nehekharan undead.

You seriously need to get a copy of the rules for the topic on hand.

Does the book tell us to change the classification of Nehekharan undead to normal undead?
As, unless it says something along the lines of: " replace any instance of Nehekharan undead with normal undead in the tomb kings book." The rule will only affect units with the Nehekharan undead rule.

Automatically Appended Next Post:
That's a genuine question. I refuse to buy into End Tines as it encourages stupid builds.

This forum is not a replacement for purchasing rules. You genuinely want to get the rules for free to avoid paying for them.
I'd recommend:
1) Buy the Rules
2) Barrow the book from somebody who bought it. After all, it's only 21 pages of actual rules.
Or
3) Refrain from commenting on Nagash based stuff.

 HawaiiMatt wrote:

 thedarkavenger wrote:

 HawaiiMatt wrote:

 thedarkavenger wrote:

 FenrisianStuart21 wrote:
Now you can add Tomb Kings or Priests to your Zombie units for Weapon Skill 5. They suddenly got better at killing

No you can't. The rule for Tomb Kings/Princes specifies that it only works on Nehekharan undead.

You seriously need to get a copy of the rules for the topic on hand.

Does the book tell us to change the classification of Nehekharan undead to normal undead?
As, unless it says something along the lines of: " replace any instance of Nehekharan undead with normal undead in the tomb kings book." The rule will only affect units with the Nehekharan undead rule.

Automatically Appended Next Post:
That's a genuine question. I refuse to buy into End Tines as it encourages stupid builds.

This forum is not a replacement for purchasing rules. You genuinely want to get the rules for free to avoid paying for them.
I'd recommend:
1) Buy the Rules
2) Barrow the book from somebody who bought it. After all, it's only 21 pages of actual rules.
Or
3) Refrain from commenting on Nagash based stuff.

I have access to the book, but when I'm out of town with no access to my own warhammer, or the warhammer of anyone I know, it's kind of hard to get hold of it.

 ansacs wrote:
So a used to play around with a zombie army that was essentially a bunch of zombie blocks, 2 corpse carts, and as many blender vampires as I could get (the zombie units acted as buses to get the vampire in combat and the vampires just jumped from unit to unit as needed). It was pretty good but had lots of problems dealing with chaff shenanigans.

So along comes the end times...I can take 2x the number of vampires, I have access to some of the best anti chaff archers in the game, I can get some of the casters to summon different units via lore of undeath, and I can get corpse caskets and Hierotitan to really let me spam those invocation of nehek and get off a fair number of buffs. Zombies are looking pretty good IMO.

I'm not sure how well that would work, honestly. Blender Lords plus big zombie blocks just doesn't seem like a good mix. I'd rather kill my enemy slower, and give up even fewer points.
Now, Mortis Engines, Hierotitans, and Caskets, all in a list with Liche Priests and Necromancers and a ton o' Zombies? That would be pretty hard to deal with.

As for issues with chaff, when I faced off against the Zombie Horde, he literally had enough models to cover the table. Hard to chaff that up much.

Warpsolution wrote:
I'm not sure how well that would work, honestly. Blender Lords plus big zombie blocks just doesn't seem like a good mix. I'd rather kill my enemy slower, and give up even fewer points.
Now, Mortis Engines, Hierotitans, and Caskets, all in a list with Liche Priests and Necromancers and a ton o' Zombies? That would be pretty hard to deal with.

As for issues with chaff, when I faced off against the Zombie Horde, he literally had enough models to cover the table. Hard to chaff that up much.

Essentially the zombie hordes were first contact and would lock units into place. The vampires would increase the zombie units sizes and activate the corpse carts. Then I would choose a combat to win and commit as many vampires as I needed to win it, with ASF from the carts I could kill most units outside deathstars. The addition of hierotitans and caskets is going to make the zombie counts go through the old roof (I believe you should have a fair shot to generate 300-400 zombies a turn if you put some effort into it) and will really help with getting extra dice for some decent buffs.

The problem with chaff is not that they redirect 1 zombie block, it is that they can cause that zombie block to block other zombie blocks and enough quality chaff can literally lock you into your own deployment for 2-3 turns. This is why I really like the vampire ability to increase dog units as well as the dogs can run ahead and clear the chaff away. The vampires are necessary as force concentration in a zombie army is awful. So you would get refused flanked and then the opponent would just chop through one flank until they get to your necromancers where you just loose. There are just too many units that could slowly work their way through you while not taking casualties, thus you need some sort of ability to hurt 1+ ASV units and the like (which in my list was GW vampires an a tooled up vampire lord, heirotitans may work in the new list to a degree).

 ansacs wrote:

Warpsolution wrote:
The addition of hierotitans and caskets is going to make the zombie counts go through the old roof (I believe you should have a fair shot to generate 300-400 zombies a turn if you put some effort into it) and will really help with getting extra dice for some decent buffs.

More like 300-400 a game. With mortis engine, casket and Heirotitan (and black periapt turning 2 dispel dice into power dice) you're looking at 5-6 more power dice than the opponent has dispel dice.
And you're casting invocation at wizard level +3 to +5.
If you max out summoning (3 necro masters that are level 3, and 9 necromancers that are level 1), you're still going to fail casting with 4 out of 12 (not enough power). Of those 8 successes, you'll most likely have 2 or 3 dispelled with dice.
With 5-6 successes, you are now making 50-60 zombies per unit, and you'll have a hard time getting more than 3 to 4 units in range.
The real problem I had zombie bombing was that the units become deep too fast, and would grow and hit units behind them, preventing further summoning.
The thing is, you end up spending so many points on making the summoning better, you'd most likely be better off just buy more zombies to start with.

Pure zombie summoning does work, but a hybrid most likely will work better.
Think about 2 blocks as front line zombie units, then maybe a zombie bunker for the casters. Put those front line units into horde formations, and stick in a prince/king for the WS boost.
WS5 zombies are pretty damn good for the cost and recovery rate.

-Matt