Editing Warhammer/Tactics/6th Edition/Vampire Counts (section)

===Army of Sylvania (Storm of Chaos list)===

''And lo, in the Age of the Rings Franchise Deal there shall be a decline in sales, and metaplot shall become the fashion among the nerds, and skub shall be the whole of the lore. And in that time of darkness, man shall become beard, and beard shall become man.
- Excerpt from Warhammer: Storm of Chaos (2004), probably''

The Army of Sylvania represents a bizarre extension of the Von Carstein theme force from the regular army book, this time into an army designed to fight on Mannfred's home turf and a final attempt to make a Necromancer-free variant of the faction actually work on the tabletop. In subsequent editions, the Vampires would just be made into proper Wizards, but here, the developer responsible decided to... experiment. It worked rather well, if you happen to like the Von Carsteins and think they were a bit overshadowed by the other Bloodlines, with only Lahmians seeing less table time. It is, however... a tiny bit unbalanced. Just a little.

The army gets two Grave Markers for turning up, plus one for each Vampire Count or Vampire Lord in the list. After choosing table edges, but before setting up, place these markers on the board (up to half on your opponent's side, but none in your opponent's deployment zone) and scatter them 2d6". They can't go off the board.

In each Army of Sylvania magic phase, each Grave Marker casts From Death Awakened: power level 4 Bound Spell with a range of 6" that summons 2d6 Sylvanian Militia, 2d6+2 Sylvanian Levy, or 2 extra wounds for a multi-wound model. New units may have any weapons and armour allowed by their list entry. This will be important later.

There are a clutch of new Bloodline powers, which are all good. Spectral Attendants (35 points, -1 casting penalty to all enemy wizards, one per army), Wolf Lord (10 points, Vampire may use Invocation of Nehek to raise d3/2d3/3d3 Dire Wolves), Earthbind (10 points, Vampire has Magic Resistance 1). There is a new magic item, the ''Drakenhof Banner'', which is very good: 50 points and the unit gets Magic Resistance 2, while any Summon Bats or Summon Wolves power within 12" generates double the number of creatures.

So far, so good. You can see how it works: the Grave Markers are easy to dispel but they keep the units topped up if they fight nearby; Dire Wolves play a more significant role; the new powers introduce a defence against aggressive enemy magic to compensate for losing Dispel dice from the lack of Necromancers.

Then we get into the list itself.

'''Lords:''' Von Carstein Vampire Lords (PLURAL) and Vampire Counts.

'''Heroes:''' 1+ Von Carstein Vampire Thrall (may be the army general), Wight Lords, Wraiths

'''Core:''' Dire Wolves (one unit may have Scouts, for +1 point per model), 0-2 Bat Swarms, Fell Bats (do not fill minimum Core slots), Sylvanian Militia and Sylvanian Levy.

'''Special:''' 0-1 Spirit Hosts, Grave Guard (0-1 unit may have full plate and greatswords for 15 points per model), 0-2 Black Coaches.

'''Rare''': 0-1 Black Knights (must have barding), Banshees.

You will have observed the S6 Grave Guard, the multiple Black Coaches in SPECIAL, the MULTIPLE Vampire Lords in the 3000+ games GW was trying to encourage at the time. Now we reach the endgame. Let's look at those new unit types.

Sylvanian Levy are Zombies with light armour, shields, and either spears or halberds at 8 points per model.
Sylvanian Militia are Skeletons with light armour, shields, and either a spear and shield, halberd and shield, or a FUCKING CROSSBOW. 10 points a head.

The Army of Sylvania springs Skeleton Crossbowmen out of the ground whenever it can: sure, they're inaccurate, but it's hard to hide from them when they can just be raised anywhere, and it's not like any points were wasted on them. Opponents are march-blocked and triple-charged by Dire Wolf units from all directions, slammed into by double Coach charges, and meanwhile a huge block of Black Knights with Magic Resistance 2 and three Vampires in the front rank just grinds around the table chewing through anything it can charge.

It's not invincible: in particular, it can do very little about magic that doesn't target its own units, it doesn't have the capacity for Dispel Scrolls as the Vampire Lords have better things to spend their points on, and any opponent who can stack bonuses to Dispel rolls can shut the Grave Markers down just by putting a die on them. It also sucks horribly between 500 and 2000 points, where two Grave Markers are increasingly likely to be shut down until the Vampire Lord or Count arrives to take the strain. But it doesn't rely on Vanhel's to be fast or Invocation to get new Dire Wolf units into play, and a lot of the usual tricks like the ''Cursed Book/Book of Arkhan'' power couple, the Wraith librarian and the Wolf Thrall are still very much available if you walk back from the monobuild a little.

While it lends itself to lovely post-mortem Empire conversions and can be played as a fairly straight infantry army, the potential for the Sylvanian Nightmare is always there. And all the Storm of Chaos lists were like this.

And forgive me, reader, I enjoyed every minute of it.

FinAnon has never played with this list but has made some theoretical calculations. In a 2000 points list the only wizard could be a count or a lord and that fourth dispel dice and fifth power dice are very valuable so I'm calculcating with a lord. The lord will have Book of Arkhan. Now the army has three power level 4 bounds which are very annoying to dispel with just one dice. If the markers are in good places, the enemy must sacricife two dispel dice to counter each. Or the marchblockers just appear in random places. After these comes Book of Arkhan and depending on situation, the enemy might want to cancel it without risks so two dispel dice is absolutely needed. The best thing about bounds is the reliability, no miscasts will end your magic phase abruptly. And finally comes normal spells from the lord. The vampire will absolutely surely have Invocation of Nehek so four summons in one turn, the enemy will have hard time to dispel them all. You'll cast two spells in a turn with five dice and since you'll have three spells, at least two will be useful (Hand of Dust won't). The opponent's magic phase could be very annoying but with four dispel dice at least that one crucial spell could propably be dispelled.