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

===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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