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Keep to the Vampire Counts specific lore, really.

It's the most useful for VC, with Shadows coming next, but not really as close when it comes to usefulness - Invocation and Vanhel's alone are enough to take that Lore above others, imo.

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daveh974 wrote:
Thanks. So is the Vamp lore for buffing, summoning, or is it killy? I'm trying to get a feel for how they play. I get the blender lord concept, but should I expect to be magic-ing people to death or just grinding out zombies to delay losing until the heroes kill everything?

A quick lowdown of your lore then. (VC players please feel free to correct me as this is mostly from being on the receiving end of VC lore):

I've mostly seen the lore used a pure support point of view and it is wonderfully dangerous at doing just that. If you dominate the Magic Phase, you can do immense damage with the correct buffing and regenerating, along with fething about with the movement of your own units.

In this specific approach, Invocation and Vanhel's are your proverbial bread and butter. You'll spam the former for the regeneration it will give your units and your casters. You'll also see the later is absurdly necessary because your army is sloooooowwwwww and it will suddenly make your ghouls more than just mildly irritating (ASF Poisoned attacks? Yes please) so yes, take Book of Arkhan for it alone. It'll be worth it, and no experienced opponent will ever underestimate the power of the Danse Macabre.

Hellish Vigor adds some interesting touches to the fun, but it's not as necessary as the first two.

Gaze of Nagash is... ok, but you can definitely live without it.

Raise Dead has the possibility of creating multiple flank charges on that big annoying unit that is being tarpitted by your Zombies. Or just outright denying a charge that your opponent has been lining up for the previous two turns by planting a new unit right in front of it. Or create a zombie conga line in front of the enemy gunline. Or tie up a warmachine... you get the gist.
ALWAYS remember that this can be cast while in combat.

Curse of Years - There's nothing this spell cannot kill. I'd take it for the intimidation factor alone, and use it on the Deathstar if my opponent was running it, just to force him to use his dispel dice so I can then buff and maneouver freely for the rest of the magic phase.

Wind of Death - I look at it as a not so good Curse of Years. It's in the same level as Gaze of Nagash - you can live wihout it.

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Lore of Vampires is ok, the problem is that you are forced to take it on your general.

I occasionally ran Manfred because he has loremaster Vampires and Death so he can just spam whatever he wants, but combat wise he was nowhere near as helpful as a Blender Lord.

I've found that if you rely on Invocation to raise gakky troops back from the dead, youre going to have a bad time. I'd use this on Grave Guard or Black Knights but thats it and only if I really needed to. The days of spamming invocate were in 7th, not 8th.

Basically, hope you roll Danse Macabre, Hellish Vigour and Curse of Years. Then drop whatever else you get for Invocate. The other ones have their uses but not as much as those 4.

Usually I'll take the Book of Arkhan as well for an extra Danse Mcabre (you can never have too much).