Warhammer/Tactics/8th Edition/Vampire Counts

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Why Play Vampire Counts

As with every army in these games there are a few reasons why you might want to play a Vampire Count Army. I feel the best way to expand upon this is to innumerate it in a list:

• If you are a Feminist. Vampires are founded by a woman, she has a secret cabal of super powerful sexy lady vampires who want to enslave the world through a web of espionage via super secret sleep overs.
• If you are small of frame or stature, and were possibly picked on. Now is the time for you revenge! not only will you have an army to do your bidding but theoretically with every enemy you kill your armies numbers increase. It is the perfect answer to all of that bottled up rage! Necromantic world conquest!
• All right, this is going to fall under how you want interpret George Romero's Night of the living dead. Do you see the vast armies of undead as an allegory for rampant consumerism or for the domino effect of Com-nom-nom-unism. Alright now that you have that figured out, play the army ironically, you can simultaneously be playing Warhammer Fantasy and becoming a hipster. Or should you choose you could take the irony a level deeper but I cat handle that much hipster bullshit.
• Is most of your wardrobe black? Do you listen to Feilds of Nephilim? Or if you lack the memory of the pre 9/11 world if you have read Twilight. Because this is an army lead by vampires. So yeah enjoy that.
• Have you read Dracula? Have you watched "Lost Boys"? Do you long for the vampires that rip out throats and don't apologize? Do you long for the century living corpses who live off of the blood of the living and have not a care or concern for the cattle beneath them well then you are in luck this is the fucking army for ya!
• Plans that involve summoning dark necromantic magics.
• Do you fucking like Castlevania? Have you ever wanted to be a fucking dread lord of the night and fucking conquer fuck-mothering everything using an army of the dead? Invoke your inner Dracula, then, and kick some ass.
• Some people just like the idea of ancient old fucks sitting in castles all night to plot the downfall of the lands of man.

Alright, now that that nonsense is out of the way, Vampire Counts are a fairly effective force. They're fun to play, but they have several gimmicks that have to be accounted for to play at their best. First, note that there are no shooting options in this army, effectively eliminating an entire phase. Any ranged options in this army are purely magical. Second, you have no need to worry about the psychology of your units because they don't have any. You will be paying a lot of attention to the enemy's psychology because that's crucial to winning. Never forget to take a fear test or your troops lose any advantage they have. Third, magic is your bread and butter, your meat and drink, your bolter and chainsword. You are going to be heavily reliant on magic to refresh your units and get the most advantageous fights. If you're not utterly dominating the magic phase, you're doing it wrong. There are other things, but we'll get to them as they crop up.

Purely stylistically, Vampire counts look like the monsters from the days of Nosferatu and are a bunch of bloodthirsty conquerors waiting for a chance, with a horde of mindless undead to do their every bidding. They're the vampires from before Anne Rice, basically, and even if you don't like vampires you have to admit Christopher Lee's Dracula is a thousand times better than Robert Pattinson's sparklepire Edward.

Note: I am by no means a tactical genius and I haven't played this army extensively. Please feel free to correct any mistakes in the tactical use of units.

Unit Analysis

Lords & Heroes

Named Characters

Note: Under the current edition, named characters tend to be overpriced; you can pretty easily emulate most named characters from scratch and save yourself some points. That said, a few named characters do have abilities and wargear or wargear combos unique to them, so if you absolutely need to have them, go ahead. Just make sure you're really getting your points worth.

Lords

• Vlad Von Carstein: The man that started it all. Look at this monster. You want to field him, but you never will. Why? He's 490 points, which is your entire lord budget in an otherwise balanced 2000 point army, and you don't have that kind of room for one model. For the points, you could load a normal Vampire Lord up on a fucking undead dragon and have points left over to spend on powers. So skip over Carstein unless you're going for the Vlad/Isabella combo.

• Count Mannfred: Same deal as above. Very effective wizard, but you could have two standard vampire lords with room to spare for his price, and like it or not Mannfred can't cover the whole battlefield at once.

Heroes

• Mannfred the Acolyte: Much more fieldable. You can't quite emulate him with a standard vampire(It would cost 55 points of vampiric powers, and a standard vampire only has 50 points max), but walking death isn't that useful anyway and you can spend the remaining 20 points from upgrading a magic level elsewhere. His only advantage are that any wounds he causes become dice in his next magic phase, so take him if you think you can use him in combat and magic at once.

• Konrad von Carstein: No. You get some nice abilities and shiny bits for a smaller price than it would cost you to take from scratch, but with no magic and stupidity he's simply not reliable enough.

• Isabella von Carstein: Statline reminiscent of a Space Marine at 90 points. Has beguile, but without any special combat equipment what's she going to do with it? Blood Chalice looks nice, but it's nothing Invocation of Nehek can't do and it only works on vampires and even then only ones in the same squad as her. Of course, there's always the fact that if she kicks it, Vlad goes fucking nuts, with Frenzy and Hatred and whatnot... except that, as we discussed earlier, you're never going to take Vlad.

Generic Characters

Note: While named characters are judged against their generic counterparts, generic characters are examined based on their role in your army.

Lords

• Vampire Lord: Brilliant statline and a ton of upgrade options. Naturally, characters are the first place spare points go in a Vampire Counts army, and this unit will likely soak up as many points as you can give. Fully kitted out and with a zombie dragon mount, he's far more expensive than Vlad but with infinitely superior mobility and survivability, but that's only going to happen at high points value games. All in all, decent choice, can be kitted out to fulfill almost any role.
• Master Necromancer: Cheap level 4 wizard. If for some reason you can't (or don't want to) take a vampire lord or ghoul king, but you really, really want to be casting Invocation of Nehekh every turn without fail, I guess this is your dude. Build this guy for spell-casting and buff him for longevity. Biggest drawback being that their statline sucks for being a lord level character. Mount him on a Mortis Engine or a Corpse Cart or something.
• Strigoi Ghoul King: Whereas the Vampire Lord is the ideal mix of magic and might and the Master Necromancer is the magic focused user, the Strigoi Ghoul King is the punch-sport champ. Similar stat line to a Vamp Lord, but with regeneration 5+ and rerolls all misses in close combat. Severely lacks magic (Level 1 Wizard), so you will need to take another lord/hero to help him out with raising your dead.

Heroes

• Vampire: Cheaper Vampire Lord. The biggest problem here is the much more limited number of powers you can take, forcing you to choose wisely. Remember that neither this unit nor the Lord equivalent come with any equipment standard, so if you put all your points in magic don't send them into combat or they're going to get slaughtered.

• Wight King: Originally a poor choice because it used up a hero slot and wasn't a vampire, new force organisation rules give Wight Kings a place in your army; right at the front. There are few foes that can test a Vampire's WS of 6, and Wight Blade and toughness 5 makes the Wight King a more effective warrior than a standard Vampire. Stick him in a unit of Grave Guard with the Drakenhof Banner for an incredibly cheesy unit that will never die.

• Necromancer: as above, new organisation rules make Necromancers more viable. 55 points for a level 1 wizard isn't bad. Use them to keep your armies at good strength, but don't expect too much from them. You get what you paid for.

Core Units

• Zombie Horde: Zombies are pathetic. A unit of zombies will never kill anything and get killed with ridiculous ease. You might think to use them as a tarpit, but for reasons that I'll go into below regarding combat resolution, they're poor at that as well. So why take them? The answer is fear. For four points a model(Giving you a total 92 points for a 20-strong horde plus standard bearer and musician) you get a buffer which can make the enemy running in terror. There is nothing like a unit missing its crucial point in a battle because it's buggering off to get away from a 5 zombies it can mulch on the charge. In addition, remember to keep a few models off the table since assuming you have raise dead/undead summon horde(and why wouldn't you?) because you'll be summoning a lot of these buggers for various reasons. They are incredibly versatile and to a certain degree expendable(keep in mind the still count towards victory points), but it's better not to field too many on the table to begin with. If you want to do so, have one 40-model horde and spend the rest of your points elsewhere. Keep in mind rolling the dice for a squad of zombies is incredibly disheartening, and you don't want too much of it or it could ruin your mood.

• Skeleton Warriors: Better than zombies in every way. More durable due to having light armour and a shield. It's one point per model to upgrade to spears, so why not? The armour makes them more effective tarpits than zombies because they're likely to stay in the game longer, but as before best taken in large units to maximise the usefulness of Invocation of Nehek.

• Ghouls: Ghouls eschew protection for automatic wounds on a six, which means of your three standard core units they're the ones most likely to get kills. They tie with skeleton warriors, depending on what you want out of your army; skeletons are more durable, while ghouls have more attacks and poison. Take them in a horde for a wall of attacks that your enemy will devote ridiculous amounts of firepower to take down before they can get into combat.

• Dire Wolves: If Necromancers and Wight Kings gained from the new force organisation rules, units like Dire Wolves and the Corpse Cart lost out. They don't count towards your minimum core requirements, meaning they lower the percentage of your army that is everything else without bringing much to the table. Anyway, as with most units of this type, use them for flanking if you want them.

• Corpse Cart: Best used for its passive abilities. Don't make the mistake of thinking it's capable of holding its own in combat. Again, doesn't count towards any section of your army.