Editing Warhammer/Tactics/8th Edition/Vampire Counts (section)

==Magic==

<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%"> The magic Lores that Vampire Counts casters can take by default are the Lore of Vampires, Lore of Death, and the Lore of Shadow, though the Lore of Shadow is not available to Necromancers (Master or not).  There's also the Forbidden Lore, where a vampire character can use any of the main rulebooks lores excluding Life.
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====Lore of Vampires====
No matter how you play, you will end up with at the minimum a Level 1 caster in this lore. 

The Magic Phase of Warhammer Fantasy is basically a glorified game of chicken arbitrated by dice. Approach Lore of the Vampires from this perspective: how can you scare the wits out of your opponent? The short answer: the healing power of your Lore attribute, Invocation of Nehek spamming, the Dance Macabre, and Curse of Years. These three spells are the core of what makes the Vampire Counts terrifying: endeavor to have all three of them available to you, preferably with a redundant Invocation every turn on a Vampire or Necromancer Hero. 
They're all cheap spells (low casting values for what they do, combined with the ability to reduce their casting values with different options in your army) and have effects that dictate the flow of the game. Taking a Level 4 Master Necromancer or the Hero level Mannfred in games where you can't afford a kitted out Vampire Lord caster is always your best bet. The Magic Phase is where Vampire Counts have a huge advantage: if you want to play the army to its fullest, exploit the shit out of it.

The lore attribute, Curse of Undeath, allows you to allocate one healed wound to the caster or a model within 12 inches of the caster of any spell in the lore. For great times late game cast spells around your Coven Thrones to keep that rape train running and make your opponent cry as the ladies cause their troops to hit themselves. Early on it's the primary way to keep your Mortis Engine from self-destructing. Note that this doesn't require the target to be undead, therefore being funny in allied games

*Invocation Of Nehek: The signature spell and the army's bread and butter. 6+ cast value to affect all models in a 6 inch bubble, or at a 12+ cast value all models in 12 inches, and at a 18+ cast value all models in (you guessed it!) 18 inches. It's an augment that heals infantry for D6 plus the caster's level. Thanks to the newly dead rule, zombies get 2D6 instead. Ghosts, vampires, and large targets heal exactly one wound from it (two if you factor in the lore attribute).  Characters (and their mounts) are not affected by the spell.  Everything else heals 1 plus the caster's level. This is the spell that stands up all our terrible infantry to fight another round. At least 2 casters should have this at all times, no exceptions. 

*Vanhel's Dance Macabre: 6+ Augment with a range of 12 inches on a target Undead unit (so no throwing this on living allied armies in 2v2 games) or 12+ to affect everything in a 12 inch bubble. Models reroll failed To Hit rolls in close combat until the next Magic Phase, and if they aren't busy they can move another 8 inches immediately like it was the movement phase still. Say it with me: Movement wins games. Your army is on par with snails (or worse, Dwarfs!) without this spell. With this spell, you are one of the fastest armies in the game. Your troops are also 100% close combat, so if they're not in combat, you're losing. You want to guarantee that you have this spell in every game, even if it means taking the Book of Arkhan in every. Single. Game. The rerolls to hit just make this spell even better: the AoE version is cheap, and with a Corpse Cart or two it can turn your army into an unstoppable murder machine. Factor in a Mortis Engine or two and 12+ can be achieved with just two power dice by a level 4 caster, negating miscast issues. In big games, two Corpse Carts and two twenty-strong hordes of Crypt Ghouls accelerated by a caster with this spell and supported by multiple castings of Invocation will steamroll the opposition. Your opponent will cry when each block of Ghouls tosses out 30 ASF poisoned attacks with rerolls to hit, and then the casualties he manages to inflict just get back up and keep killing him. If you manage to get two casters with the AoE version, watch your opponent's face when your army covers 20" in one turn and drink the sweet despair. Also wonderful in other lists since Zombies can become terrifying when they hit first (see Corpse Cart) and reroll hits. This spell can also be used to push Hexwraiths across enemy units and trigger more hits from their Spectral Hunters rule. With some good positioning and multiple casters with access to this spell (Mannfred and Kemmler get it automatically through Loremaster, and it comes in a bound form on the Book of Arkhan) you can yo-yo a unit of Hexwraiths back and forth across your opponent's line to devastating effect. There used to be some debate about if this was legal, but the the April 2013 FAQ for Vampire Counts explicitly says that Spectral Hunters works with Danse Macabre. 

*Hellish Vigour: 8+ Augment to affect one Undead Unit within 12 inches, or all Undead within 12 inches for 12+. Reroll all failed To Wounds until the next Magic Phase. As you can see, combined with the above spell our base infantry murders everything it touches. Woe be to the foe if we get a magic phase all to ourselves. Put on Grave Guard for ultra lulz. Most players won't let you get off both of course, but even Zombies can chew up some Special options if you can get Vanhel's and Hellish Vigour on them. A horde of Ghouls with both goes beyond broken, and with a score of lucky rolls can obliterate almost anything they get their hands on. Bear in mind that it has an expensive casting cost for what it does by itself, and is only really effective when cast on a lot of bodies. Danse Macabre is far more effective in most situations if you have to decide between the two. 

*Gaze of Nagash: 9+ Magic Missile with a range of 24 inches, 48 inches with a 12+. 2D6 Strength 4 hits. Not huge or game changing but will ruin Beastmen and other Light Armor-only armies. Also useful for picking off lone wizards.

*Raise Dead: 9+, unique spell. Within 18 inches anywhere at least one inch from any terrain or Unit, you can spawn 2D6+3 Zombies. For a 14+ instead, you can spawn 2D6+3 Skeleton Warriors. It becomes a new Unit with no upgrades and does not award Victory Points but also can't be dispelled once they hit the table. Amazing since it can be cast in combat. Get your main mob of zombies or skeletons in combat and let the flank charges begin! May not add a whole lot but if you get it on less than Fearless units the Fear test alone can win the fight. If you roll it keep it, provided you have the models to support. It can be especially useful in summoning models directly in front of your opponent's gunlines to soak of their fire. You can also eat the turn of a warmachine by tying it up in Close Combat. That being said, this spell shouldn't take priority over Danse Macabre or when there's a nice opening for one of your other spells. 

*Curse of Years: 12+ Hex with an 18 inch range, no boosted version. Remains in play until the enemy manages to dispel it. On casting, roll D6 for every model in the target Unit. For every 6, they take a Wound. At the end of every Magic Phase (yours AND your opponent's) every turn after, roll a D6 for each model, suffering Wounds on a 5+ that turn, a 4+ the next, 3+ the next, to a maximum of 2+ if your opponent's Wizard is staring at the sky not even trying to dispel it. No Armor Saves are allowed against it. There's absolutely NOTHING bad about this spell. It is one of the best in the game, for various reasons. It's painful to your opponent when it's cast on his point-expensive deathstar Unit because it ignores Armor Saves (bye-bye Ogres, sayonara Warriors of Chaos, don't forget to write High Elves!). It's a fire-and-forget spell, letting your opponent dictate what's going to happen. Once it's on the enemy, their top priority is getting rid of it as whatever it's on will be devastated in three turns so your opponent will burn dispel dice getting rid of it, only to leave himself open to your Augments or you just recasting it. Oh, and did you catch the fact that it can be cast into Close Combat because it's a Hex? Unless your opponent has a Lord level spellcaster (unlikely for most armies below 2000 points) then he's going to having to get very lucky in his dispel once he burns through his Dispel Scrolls and even if he does have a Wizard Lord you can try to nail them using a Feedback Scroll or some sniping; in this case, cast this as your Lord level caster character (doesn't matter if it's a Necro or a Vampire) and cackle like a witch as your opponent has to write off whatever this spell hits as doomed, then cast it on another Unit next Magic Phase until the field looks like a very dusty pantry.

*Wind of Death: 15+ Remains In Play Magic Vortex with a small template, 25+ for a large template. Once it's been placed <s>(anywhere you want)</s> (no, it's a vortex and follows the normal vortex placement rules as stated in the BRB), you choose the direction it'll go. Roll one artillery dice and multiply it by 3, which is how many inches it'll move. Anything it passes over takes D6 Armor-ignoring Strength 3 hits, Strength 4 at the higher casting value. If you roll a misfire on the artillery you begin the template on the caster instead of where you chose  and roll a scatter and a D6 to determine the direction it'll move and how far. If you roll the Hit side, it'll move the direction of the hit instead of the direction you chose. Regardless of where it starts you throw an artillery dice in the direction a scatter dice indicates with a misfire causing it to fade away. Use this spell to thin deathstars, or superior hordes such as those of Orcs & Goblins. Anything with low Toughness also suffers, such as the armies of Elves. The only problem with this spell is the chance of it fading and the possibility of consuming yourself on top of the high cast value. Curse of Years is far superior in every way, except against armies with lots of small Units.

====Lore of Shadows====

This can be a useful lore on a Vampire as it comes with several Hexes and damage spells that increase the effectiveness of your own Units by reducing the stats of enemy units, firing off cannonball lines of pain, or dropping nasty templates. 
This lore will only really be seen in games over 1500 points as Lore of Vampires takes priority on at least 2 Wizards, preferably the higher level ones.
The spell lore, Smoke and Mirrors, allows the spellcaster to switch places with a friendly character of the same model type within 18 inches which can be useful for getting them back and forth in your mage bunkers, but that's situational at best. 

*Melkoth's Mystifying Miasma: Can be useful for taking away enemy movement, otherwise not very effective as your own stats will be far above or far below theirs. 
*Steed of Shadows: Generally not great, Danse is far better despite having a higher casting value but it works on the whole Unit.
*The Enfeebling Foe: Hell yes this spell is great! It can cripple a Dragon, it can make those nasty little White Lions as weak as a Goblin, and so forth. Best used to reduce the pain of charges, or keep your tarpits un-alive. 
*The Withering: Fuck yes a spell that lowers Toughness! Fuck Ogres, fuck Daemons, and once again those Elves are gonna be equivalent to Gubbinz. 
*The Penumbral Pendulum: Forget using this on Elves, throw this against those desert-dwelling Tomb King fogeys and those crazy Mexican scalies and wipe out chunks of their army easy.
*Pit of Shades: Init Test or die, not as nasty as Purple Sun or Dwellers Below, but at a discount casting level. If you combo with Melkoth's Mystifying Miasma it can even work on Elves in a reduced capacity.
*Okkam's Mindrazor: situational as few of your models have a decent Leadership score. You can still bump up by a few points in some cases though, like making Grave Guard and Black Knights S6 or Ghouls S5. But packing a Vampire Master General into a Unit of Zombies can get them S10!

====Lore of Death====

Short-ranged sniper magic is a good way to describe most of this lore. Spell lore is Life Leeching, each Wound a Lore of Death spell causes, roll a D6 (and Purple Sun things killed get one roll for each Wound the model had). For each 5 or 6, add a die to your Power Dice for next turn. 

*Spirit Leech: Signature Spell and one of the best anti-monster spells around as you will normally have at least 2 more LD than your target and very few monsters have Ward Saves.
*Aspect of the Dreadknight: Since everything you have causes Fear, the only use of this is Terror which lets you cause Fear to other models with Fear. As such, great for slowing down Ogres and the like, otherwise meh. 
*The Caress of Laniph: Easily cast spell that's great for taking out Wizards and other low Strength models, will cause 2 Wounds on average to a S3 target and ignores Armor. Pretty good.
*Soulblight: Good for helping you win a single combat or making your opponent panic come his turn as the tides turn against him.
*Doom And Darkness: This will make those Fear test lot more likely to be failed, combine with Aura, Fear Incarnate, Screaming Banner, and Supernatural Horror to all but ensure your opponent goes running. 
*The Fate Of Bjuna: Much like caress but instead targets toughness, and wounds on a 2+ instead of a 4+, another Wizard-hunting spell. Averages 3 wounds to a T3 model. Better than Caress because of the Stupidity effect.
*Purple Sun of Xereus: Init test or die, this spell is quite capable of ending games (and friendships) in a single cast and due to Lore Attribute giving you a lot more power dice to keep the magic rolling.  Be warned, your own troops have lower Initiative as well, and once the unit's wiped out they're not coming back except for Zombies.

===Forbidden Lores===

With a Vampire upgrade (meaning only Vampire casters can do this) that rings in at 25 points, you can take any Lore from the Core rulebook other than Lore of Life. This generally isn't ideal since the default Lores are pretty well suited to the army and don't burn 25 points, but by no means is it a BAD idea to do. Also great for fluff lists or throwing your opponent a curveball.

====Lore of Fire====
Turning the spell lore most popular with Sigmarites and [[Witch Hunters]] against them? Hell yeah!
While Fire is probably the bottom of the Lore tier list, it isn't by much. Lots of S4 damage that gets better the more dice you pump into it, and it's devastating against models with Regeneration, and those nasty Wood Elves and dusty old bones Tomb Kings. 

The lore attribute, Kindleflame, reduces the casting difficulty of each Lore of Fire spell when targeting a Unit you've already hit with one by D3. The spells themselves are not difficult to begin with, allowing a level 4 Wizard to unleash hell on a budget. Using Black Periapt, this is perhaps the army best at using this lore in fact. 

*Fireball: Signature spell, the lowest level is easy to cast, not bad and a great way to open up for the attribute for a higher level spell. It's a good substitute for your lack of a shooting phase as well. 
*Cascading Fire-Cloak: A pretty good spell, it's cheap on top of being fire and forget (no pun intended) and can deal a fair amount of damage if your opponent lets it stay, so you'll eat some of their dispel dice. It's another great way to make Zombies and Spirit Hosts more than just a tarpit. 
*Flaming Sword of Rhuin: It's decent, not better than your Lore of Vampires augments but if you can throw it on a unit of Grave Guard, it's wicked. 
*The Burning Head: Once again, better found in another Lore but good as it stands. 
*Piercing Bolts Of Burning: Good against TK, O&G, Skaven, and anything else trying to get Stubborn by being in a horde. This is one of the better spells in the Lore for once again removing opposition to your tarpit, this time by clearing out your opponent's anvil. 
*Fulminating Flame Cage: This spell is very nice, as it will more or less halt a low armour low Toughness horde for one turn or inflict heavy casualties. In addition, enemy Frenzy units or those with Stupidity and crap LD are almost assured to take those hits. One of the best spells in the Lore. 
*Flame Storm: While Cage affects one Unit, this spell affects a large number of small Units. It can entirely miss anything however, so it does have some added risk. Still not bad, and cheap for a template spell.

====Lore of Beasts====
Remember that the Vampire Counts set up shop in [[Albion]] and [[Lustria]], which is a good fluff basis. Strigoi, or frontier Vampires works too. 
Lore of Beasts is one of the better Lores in the game. Contains some good and cheap Augments and a Hex that really help bulk up VC troops, and one of the potentially most risky and broken combos in the entire game. 

The Lore Attribute, Wildheart, makes the spells 1 point easier to cast on Beasts, Monsters, Cavalry, Chariots, Swarms, Monstrous Beasts, Monstrous Cavalry, or anything Beastmen.  It's absolutely fucking boring and pretty much a non-factor. 

* Wyssan's Wildform: Signature Spell, and there is literally nothing bad about this spell, nor is there a bad way to use it. Your penny bodies suddenly stand up like dime infantry. Since it comes standard with the Lore, you can throw it on a Level 1 Vampire caster and get the best possible spell here every time. 
*The Flock of Doom: On one hand, it's cheap. You probably wouldn't need more than one dice to cast it. On the other hand, the likelihood of it killing anything higher than T3 with no armour is very low, not worth it. 
*Pann's Impenetrable Pelt: Augment. Nice way to keep your Vamps alive, particularly in magic-heavy, combat character-less lists. But the return is iffy. Use it situationally. 
*The Amber Spear: Not only is this a ranged attack, it's an artillery attack. Covers a hole missing in the Vampire Counts arsenal nicely, wasting those nasty monsters and cavalry off nicely. 
*The Curse of Anraheir: Pretty neat ability, the reduction to shooting saves you some casualties while racing into melee and during those nasty charges. Making all terrain dangerous is another way to dominate the Movement Phase.
*The Savage Beast of Horrors: Expensive spell, but holy shit will it devastate.  Lather in your opponents tears, then rinse off in their blood when the battle ends. 
*Transformation of Kadon: The main problem with this spell is, since the Magic Phase is after the Movement Phase, you must be already in Close Combat for it to do any good. That means you will probably Charge, not knowing if the spell will work or not. But all other rules, including Vampire Powers, continue working- imagine a Mountain Chimera with Red Fury and Quickblood.  That's 4D6+1 (so average around 13-17) poisoned ASF attacks at WS7, S7, I5, generating new hits on every successful wound.  Let that sink in.  That said, it's one of the higher risk plays in Warhammer Fantasy, but if you can pull it off the rest of the match will be a mop-up.

====Lore of Metal====
For your self-respecting Vampire Dwarf list. 
A fairly decent Lore, although it's generally overshadowed by the darker Lores (and Life). 

The main benefit of this Lore is for low survivability armies or against highly armored armies, and as such this is a good Lore for VC. 
The Lore Attribute, Metalshifting, means your rolls to wound are equal to the opponent's armour save, and the hits are also flaming and armor-ignoring.  As a result, this is a good Lore for killing heavily armored stuff in addition to being fantastic against armies like Warriors of Chaos, but on low armour armies it's not nearly as good.

*Searing Doom: Signature Spell that's great against heavy cavalry or high armoured anvils.  High casting cost though, especially when boosting (although successfully boosting this against heavy cavalry will be brutal).
*Plague of Rust: PERMANENTLY reduces the Armor by one point of an ENTIRE UNIT. You can cast this every fucking turn, stripping your foe essentially naked (2lewd).  This spell is one you want to cast on something you don't intend to blast with another spell from this Lore, but otherwise this is one of the best spells in the game. 
*Enchanted Blades of Aiban: Armour Piercing Ghouls? FUCK YES! If you CAN cast this spell, you should. 
*Glittering Robe: Once again, almost everything can benefit from this. Grave Guard and Black Knights become downright diamond-hard with it. Also, they'll look FABULOUUUUS!~
*Gehenna's Golden Hounds: It's cheaper than Searing Doom, and you'll hit the best targets in the Unit most likely, but the chances of hitting your target are low. Conditional spell. 
*Transmutation of Lead: When you could cast Glittering Robe, Plague of Rust, and Enchanted Blades of Aiban there's no real reason to use this spell. You could stack it with some of the others, but chances are good that would steal power dice from your Invocation casting and would probably be overkill.
*Final Transmutation: A very nice spell, and the most widely useful "save or die" spell overall since it doesn't rely on a specific stat to work but instead is based on luck. It generally won't match the sheer killing power of, say, a Purple Sun against Ogres or Lizzies, but on average, a third of what you cast it on dies. If you take out the General or BSB (although the odds of them being affected are lower), then the chances of that Stupidity roll go through the roof which gives you one turn of Movement dominance. Great spell. Plus, if you manage to win a game using it you can really give a cheeky poke to your opponent by obtaining one of the same kind of model you turned to gold last game, painting it gold then mounting it on the Coven Throne or Mortis Engine like a hood ornament.

====Lore of Light====
Taking the spell lore utilized to cleanse the world of the Undead as a Vampire? Actually quite possible, since the Lore is equally effective against Daemons and Chaos (which most Undead are NOT fond of). Lahmians infiltrated the [[Sisters of Sigmar]] long ago, and there's also non-evil Vampires running around (mostly those who have self control combined with the aforementioned hatred of Chaos). This lore is actually a solid choice, as it helps get around some of the shortcomings of the Vampire army.  The lore attribute is super situational (the two damage-dealing spells do extra damage against undead/daemons... yay) and probly won't come into play.
*Shem's Burning Gaze: signature spell, gives a decent magic missile that can be boosted to be a fairly nasty magic missile.  It's a flaming attack (you know, because it's "burning"), so it helps against regenerating stuff.  
*Pha's Protection: as the name suggests, it protects your target unit from being hit by things, whether it's shooting or melee.  Can even prevent cannonballs from shooting you.  Can be cast in a bubble for extra love.
*Speed of Light: so your troops generally have lousy WS and I.  Well guess what?  Here's the fix for that.  Can be boosted to affect a bubble around the wizard.  
*Light of Battle: a morale boost for an army that doesn't have morale.  Can be useful as a contingency- if your general dies, this spell suddenly becomes helpful with those crumbling tests, especially if you boost it for the bubble effect.  But if you're at that point where you need to rely on this, then things probably aren't going well for you.
*Net of Amyntok: potentially stops an enemy unit from moving or attacking you.  Especially useful against shooty units or warmachine crews, who generally have S3.
*Banishment: the other damage-inflicting spell.  A decent magic missile that can be boosted for extra range.  Especially useful against units that rely heavily on ward saves (like daemons or High Elves) because it forces rerolls of successful ward saves.
*Barona's Timewarp: gives bonus attacks plus ASF and extra movement.  Combine this with Speed of Light and suddenly your wimpy skeletons become kinda terrifying.  And this too can be boosted into a bubble effect.

====Lore of Heavens====
Who's better at astrology and astronomy than a race who spends all their waking hours at night? What's a better profession for a long-lived master of the undead in a world where you can actually read the future (or at least possible futures and big events) with star charts, and with a [[Morrslieb|moon that causes necromantic magic to grow stronger or weaker?]]  As for the crunch, this isn't an ideal choice considering your other options.  To begin with, it has one of the least useful attributes of any lore- it does some free hits to a spell's target if that target happens to be flying.  Woot.
*Iceshard blizzard: gives an enemy unit a penalty to hit and to their Ld; has a 50/50 chance of causing artillery to not shoot.  Can be boosted for double range.  Not a bad spell, especially if it does manage to protect you from enemy artillery.
*Harmonic Convergence: a buff that gives one of your units (or boost for a bubble) rerolls on to-hit, to-wound, and armor save rolls of 1.  Not terrible, but you have better reroll spells (which also heal you) from your own lore, and most of your stuff doesn't have much for armor anyway.
*Wind Blast: pushes enemy units around a little bit (can be boosted to push them slightly further), and can cause some minor damage if they bump into stuff when you do it.  Might be useful for mucking with enemy charge ranges and such, but meh.
*Curse of the Midnight Wind: the opposite of Convergence, forces an enemy unit to reroll 6s on those same rolls.  Not bad, but considering you generally have lower WS than most enemies, not super useful except possibly to prevent poison and killing blow.  Can be boosted to affect a bubble of enemy units around the caster.
*Urannon's Thunderbolt: a high S magic missile.  Fairly high casting cost (gonna need about 3 dice to reliably cast unless your level 4 wizard is feeling saucy) and doesn't do a ton of hits; can be boosted for increased range.  The one time you do 6 hits and thrash a unit of Chaos knights it'll be awesome but otherwise meh.
*Comet of Casandora: the big daddy.  It has the potential to do a TON of damage- at a bare minimum, 2d6+1 S5 hits to all units (friend or foe) within 2d6 inches of the impact spot.  Ouch.  This also means that it's useful for area denial- don't want your enemy to march straight at you?  Drop this right in their path so now they have to make a tough choice.  This is a great albeit slightly unreliable spell.
*Chain Lightning: basically an unboostable, harder to cast version of the Thunderbolt but has a chance of jumping around hitting additional enemy units.  Possibly useful if your enemy has their army really bunched together but the high casting cost and 1:3 chance of it not really doing any more than a Thunderbolt makes it less attractive.

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