Total War: Warhammer/Tactics

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Welcome to the general tactics dump for Total War: Warhammer and it's sequels. Something to help with noobs and lower the bloat on the main page.

Basics

In many ways, Warhammer II plays like your standard Total War game. It features real time battles with an army of roughly 20 units max on each side. There will be at least two armies on the field and whoever is able to completely shatter the other side first wins.

Each army has it's own collection of Infantry, Missile troops, Cavalry, Artillery and Monsters to play with, each offering a different play style. For instance, Dwarfs offer a defensive solitary play style focused around heavily armored infantry and strong missiles where as the Beastmen are an aggressive hit and run faction designed to get in, hit the enemy and break leadership, then get away before the enemy can counterattack. The asymmetrical play style of the factions is a massive part of the appeal.

The battle maps also play a huge role in how battle play out. Some maps are heavily forested, meaning missile heavy armies may struggle due to increased cover for the enemy. On the flip side, some maps have a lot of water, debuffing units unless they have the aquatic trait. It is smart to take a look at your terrains before you plan how you're gonna win.

If you play tanked multiplayer, there will be a limit to how many of a certain kind of unit you can bring, mainly to stop you from missile kiting your enemies to death with a mass horse archer spam. As such, focusing on what you might need for the match up is key.

Units

Every faction has a mix of different kinds of units. While they are all different, they each fall under one of these categories.

• Lords: The generals of your army and your most important unit. He can buff leadership and other stats and usually tends to be a beast in combat either through melee or magic. Problem is that if they die, the whole army suffers for it so you have to protect this man. You can also only bring one.
• Heroes: Your secondary leaders, usually coming in both melee and mage form. Not as much as a badass as your lord, but are usually cheaper and you can bring more than one.
• Melee Infantry: Simply put, the foot boys you are throwing into melee. These infantry tend to be slow but also tend to be pretty good at holding the line and dealing damage in prolonged melee compared to missiles and cavalry. Their job is usually to engage the enemy front line and either hold long enough for your other elements to do their job, or break through and begins pouring into the enemy backline.
  • Swords: Generally tend to be more DPS focused. If you are buying sword infantry, you get them because you want them to deal damage to the enemy frontline. A special mention goes to dual sword infanry, which make short work of expendable units and attack very quickly.
  • Spears: Your more defensive option. Not as good at killing things, but better at holding the line than swords. They also usually come with an anti large bonus, meaning they do more damage when fighting bigger targets.
  • Great Weapons: Infantry that usually carry two handed weapons like great swords and great axes. They tend to have majority AP damage, so they do more damage than normal sword infantry, but also don't have shields so missiles are very effective against them. Most units with great weapons also tend to have a low attack speed, leaving them vulnerable against hordes.
  • Halberds: Great weapons for spears, really. Same thing with great weapons, trades a shield for more AP damage.
• Missile Troops: Your ranged boys. Good at dealing damage from a safe distance but generally suck in melee. They tend to come either with arc fire or line fire. Arc fire like archers can shoot over allied troops and don't need line of sight, but do less damage. Line of sight troops like guns tend to do way more damage, but need to actually see their enemy before they can shoot, so if allies or terrain is in the way, they might not get a shot in.
  • Bow Infantry: Often, but by no means always, the lowest tier of missle infantry you can recruit. Usually trades raw damage for greater range, the ability to fire indirectly and rate of fire.
  • Crossbow Infantry: Basically the same as bow infantry, but they trade range for rate of fire (although not much) and more armour-piercing damage. Notable for covering a large variety of different units, such as the rather mediocre Imperial Crossbowman to Darkshards.
  • Gunpowder Infantry: Loud, smelly, and more often than not more dangerous for their user than the enemy (a mechanic entirely missing in-game), these are all kinds of primitive guns. They hit hard, don't care about armour and usually come in unpleasant numbers for the recieving end. The only major downside to them being that they can't shoot indirectly, so you have to make use of clever unit deployment and/or flanking to get the most out of them.
  • Hybrid Infantry: Sitting comfortably in between ranged and melee infantry, all of these guys (and gals) can switch between ranged and melee combat at the press of a button. The Elf factions in particular use a lot of them (with Great Weapon Shades and Lothern Sea Guard being outright the best options) so be prepared to not charge them blindly with cavalry; nearly all of them are more than capable of dealing with lower tier cav on their own.
  • Weapon Teams: Exclusive to Skaven, these are Clan Skyres crazy contraptions of the shooting, burning and drilling variety. They trade unit size in exchange for an ungodly volume of firepower; once they are properly set up, there is hardly anything stopping them. On top of that, they are also armoured and have large HP pools, giving them a surprising resilience against counter fire from enemy ranged units. Beware of cavalry, for what they posess in offensive power, they lack on the defense.
  • Others: Some kinds of missle only show up on one kind of unit and even then there is only one faction that can use them, so i'm putting slingers, javelins and that sort of things into this umbrella category. Mostly rather weak weapons that either benefit from being used in great numbers (slings and javelins) or really strong weapons that suffer from limited ammo-capacity (Norscan Axe Throwers come to mind).
• Hounds: Technically, these units can be any kind of very fast, cheap melee cavalry and not just doggies but whatever. These cheap puppers are used to harass and interrupt Artillery crews, chase off routing units, chew on squishy casters and Heroes and sometimes take out a ranged infantry unit. They're not tough by any means of the word but they're fast and can hold a unit back in a few crucial moments. Some of them are specialized to the point where they can be used for other roles, like the Poisoned Warhounds that can charge into the backs of the enemy line to apply a rough debuff.
• Cavalry: Boys on horse (or other fun creature) back. Mobile and has high charge but tend to fall apart fast in prolong melee.
  • Shock Cavalry: Lance cavalry with loads of Charge Bonus but little in the way of defense; charge them into the sides and backs of the enemy, retreat after 10-15 seconds and repeat until the enemy is mashed, red pulp on the ground... Or crushed bones, or green shroom-mush or what-else. One of the reasons you bring Spears and Halberds is to keep these dudes away from your lines. They're also often decent at countering other Cavalry units.
  • Melee Cavalry: Rare mounted troops that excel in longer engagements (but not forever; they're still cavalry). They usually use Great Weapons, Halberds or Sword'n'Board. Almost never used alone; they're better at quickly engaging and messing with a line battle you're already engaging with with you troops.
  • Skirmish Cavalry: The deeply annoying yet totally crucial lighter cavalry. Skirmish Cavalry can fight in melee but usually work better as ranged, mobile units harassing the enemy's ranged units, counter enemy Skirmish Cav and shoot into the back of the enemy line.
• Chariots: Those sweet ones that swing low. Chariots are a bit rare and are used to break through enemy lines with impunity, cycle-charging like a maniac. They are dismantled very quickly in prolonged melee and tend to not do a lot of damage unless they're charging. One of the hardest type of unit to use properly because they need to be micro-managed at every turn.
• Monsters: A category that covers a bewildering amount of different units, every Monster does something different for the faction it's found in. Usually they are either infantry-slayers, monster/cavalry-eaters or huge battering rams meant to break up the enemy's line. Some monsters (like Giants) are cheap and cheerful units you can just throw into the enemy for a spell, while others (like the Dread Saurian) can easily eat up a fourth of your money in multiplayer matches. The only faction without access to a monster is the Dwarfs.
  • Monstrous Infantry: Monsters that generally come in a small units size and feature slow, relatively tanky monsters designed to help out in the front line. Here's a tip, do NOT throw them in alone, team them up with other infantry. That way the enemy units will have to split their damage across 2 different units instead of being able to focus your monsters down.
  • Monstrous Cavalry: Faster, harder hitting but also squishier than the infantry option, they are meant to be used a lot like cavalry. Use them as heavy flankers and for pure raw charge bonus and can even be decent in prolong melee. Their downside often comes in the form of cost, frailty and lower model count compared to most cav.
  • Single Entity Monsters: Big super monsters meant to be a gigantic problem for the enemy and generally have impressive stat lines along with a combination of fear and or terror. However these guys tend to be expensive and have a massive target that says "Shoot me" in very language in the Warhammer world, so use them wisely.
• Fliers: Your flying units, ranging from cheap fliers meant to bog down missiles and artillery to fucking dragons. Their edge is that since they can fly they can engage on their terms and you can get them anywhere in the battle they need to. Their downsides comes in needing breathing room to take off again and generally frailty. Even dragons aren't a unit that can stand being in melee for too long, so you got to micro them well.
• Artillery: Your good old catapults, bolt throwers, cannons or what ever crazy contraptions your race can bring to the table. Can lay down an absolute whooping from very long range, some being table to take down even the scariest monsters with fairly little problem. However, they are garbage in melee and are solitary, meaning they need protection more than just about any other unit type in the game. Important to note is that while the contraptions themselves offer cover to their crews, they aren't invulnerable and can be destroyed by ranged units and magic.

Stats

Each unit in the game has a unit card, which shows the player what they are generally good and bad that. Noobs might be confused as to what the fuck all these words and numbers mean, so here is the breakdown!

• Health: Fairly simple, how much health the unit has. If the unit has more than one model per unit, you can divide the total health by the number of models to see how much health each model has. It's important to know that the threshold at which a model actually dies is surprisingly high and the game itself speads the damage units suffer evenly among the models in that unit.
• Armor: This stat helps mitigate damage coming at your unit. If they are hit by a missile or melee attack, a RNG roll goes off to see how much of the non AP damage goes through the unit's armor. The more armor the unit has, the less likely non AP damage is going to get through. More info on AP and non AP damage below.
  • Shield: If the unit has a shield, this is where it's factored in. Shields help block missile fire coming at you it comes in two (technically 3, but you never see gold shields outside of campaign buffs.) tiers. Bronze shields block 33% of missiles where are a silver shield block 55%. Keep in mind this only works on small arms fire and not artillery because a shield isn't gonna fucking save you from a cannon!
• Leadership: How much morale the unit has. The higher the number is, the less likely your unit is going to rout and run for the hills. If it reaches 100, the unit may as well be unbreakable.
• Speed: Fairly simple, the higher the number, the faster the unit.
• Melee Attack: This determines the likelihood of your attacks hitting the other unit. The higher the number, the more likely the attack is to hit against an enemy. This number is often rolled against the next number in this list.
• Melee Defense: Widely considered one of the most important stats in the game. Melee defense is the likelihood your unit has to block the attack of the other unit attacking it, causing it to sustain no damage. If you have a choice to buff either Melee Defense or armor, take Melee Defense. Because what's better than mitigating damage? Not taking damage at all!
• Weapon Strength: How much damage your attacks do. This stat tends to be split into multiple categories.
  • Weapon Damage: How much damage is going to be rolled against the enemy armor to see if it gets through or not. Generally if this makes up the majority of your Weapon Strength you want this unit fighting unarmored units.
  • Armor Piercing Damage: Or AP damage for short. If your attack get through the other unit's armor, this is the amount of damage that's going to get through no matter what. If the Weapon Strength is majority this, then you want these guys going up against heavily armored units to tear through them.
  • Anti Large Bonus: Damage that is not factored into the roll unless they are fighting something the size of a horse or bigger. If they have this stat, throw them against cav or monsters.
  • Anti Infantry Bonus: Same as Anti Large, only meant against infantry or smaller. If they have this stat, they are infantry blenders.
  • Magic Damage: Certain Units and most Legendary Lords inflict a portion of their attack as magic damage, this is useful against enemies with physical resist like Plague Monks and absolutely needed against supernatural enemies like Cairn Wraiths (whom are known for having 80% physical resist, being ghost and all). Overall, the more magic damage, the better, unless encountering enemies with magic resists like pretty much every Dwarf units or the Silverin Guard units from the High Elves.
  • Fire Damage: Like Magic Damage, it deals extra damage to those weak to its damage type (AKA units associate to trees like Treeman, Tree Kin, Dryad and Durthu, because fuck them racist elf loving trees, right?). Unlike the tabletop version, flaming attack deal extra damage against units that are capable of regenerate health (vampire, trolls, ghouls) instead of just stop their regeneration. Apparently, CA hates fire damage for some reason and stated in the game that flaming attacks are weak to heavy armor units even though units iron drake is stated to be able to deal AP damage on the tabletop, due to how hot their flame is to be able to melt armor. We'll just have to wait and see if CA is willing to fix it. Also Like Magic Damage, some units such as Dragon Princess and Iron Drakes has Fire Resistance against its effect.
• Charge Bonus: How much additional damage the attack does if the unit charges. Note walking into an enemy unit is not the same as charging, you have to actually make an attack order against them.
• Ammunition: A stat unique to ranged units, and tells you how much ammo they have. If the unit has 20 ammunition, then they can make 20 shots before running out. This stat goes down as they shoot, allowing you to keep track of how many shots you have.
• Range: Simple enough, the higher the range the farther they can shoot.
• Missile Strength: The same as Weapon Strength, only this stat doesn't worry about Melee Defense. If it hits, it's doing damage. Also has all the subcategories of damage listed under Weapon Strength.

Passive Abilities

Some units have special passive abilities that have a variety of effects; the most common will be listed here.

• Causes Fear:Not to be confused with "Causes Terror", Fear inflicts a penalty on the enemy units' leadership, making them more likely to flee. Most monstrous and/or supernatural enemies have this ability, and some Lords and Banners have it as well. Like Terror, it falls under Psychology, so some units are immune to it.
• Causes Terror: Units that cause Terror can randomly cause enemy units to flee outright, regardless of their morale, although they can come back.
• Frenzy: A unit with frenzy gains a significant bonus to their melee attack as long as their leadership is above 50%.
• Aura of Command: Found on every Lord and Hero, they project an Aura around themselves that increases Leadership for friendly units. Most Lords and Heroes also can be skilled to make their Aura of Command better and/or to include more bonuses.
• Aquatic: Aquatic Units fight better and move faster in wet terrain, such as rivers and swamps. Unsurprisingly, most Vampire Coast units have this.
• Stalker: Stalkers remain invisible to the enemy within a certain threshold, regardless of line of sight. The only things that can break their invisibility are close distance and if they start to attack.
• Strider: Striders ignore any movement and vigour penalties from terrain; they will always move with 100% movement speed, but also can move through obstacles, such as trees.
• Berserk: Once a unit with Berserk falls under a health threshold, they will start a rampage, causing you to lose direct control over them. They will always attack the closest enemy unit they can see. It wears off after a few seconds or if their morale gets broken. Lizardmen call this ability Primal Insticts, it does the same.
• Vanguard Deployment: An interesting ability with a lot of potential uses; it allows for a unit to be deployed outside your normal deployment zone. Several Legendary Lords can aquire traits and skills that give units this ability (or in the case of Skarsnik, basically your entire roster for the first half of the game).
• Sundering strikes: A very rare ability, melee attacks made by a unit with this ability reduces the armour of the enemy hit with it by 30% for 20 seconds.
• Ethereal: All supernatural enemies (such as Ghosts) have this. Ethereal units take next to nothing in damage from physical attacks and only Magic Damage does damage against them.
• Ward Saves and Resistances: Not technically a passive ability, but the game does not do the best job at explaining it, so i'll explain it here. Ward Saves are a flat damage reduction against everything that your unit or character gets hit with, Resistances only against certain kinds of damage. Many characters can have these and in the campaign it is advisable to get them wherever possible.
• Poisoned Attacks: Poisoned attacks reduce the enemies melee stats and movement speed for 10-20 seconds. Some units have different kinds of poison that work in the same way and usually cause the same effects with greater severity. Fun fact: table top version's poison deal constant damage to a unit model each turns, it was changed to stats debuff in this game due to how broken it is when it was put in practice in an actual total war game (In Total War Attila, The Antean faction has a unit called Poison Archers that fires constant damaging poison arrows. If used right, it can annihilate an entire enemy line even on the hardest difficulty).
• Regeneration: Units with Regeneration heal themselves over the course of a battle, up to the Maximum. Usually more "neat to have" than outright useful, but some units (Like Malus Darkblade) can have outright broken Regeneration, so keep that in mind.
• Unbreakable: An unbreakable unit will never flee and always fight to the last man, regardless of losses and the situation on the battlefield. Can be a two-sided sword, as most unbreakable units are very expensive elite units that you most of the time really do not want to lose. Iconic units with this trait are the Dwarf Slayers (because slayer oath) and Empire Flagellants (because they are Sigmar's Zealots).
• Expendable: Your meat-shield ability. Expendable units do not cause a leadership penalty when they flee from the battle to other units except other expendable units. Very important to keep in mind with the more horde-centric factions of the game like Greenskins and Skaven; this makes tarpits possible without having your main line completely collapse.
• Undead: The Undead work differently from regular units in that they are functionally Unbreakable (meaning that they will never flee), but their Leadership status comes in fives steps that are distinct from regular units (here from good to bad): "Stable", "Weak Binding", "Critical Binding", "Crumbling" and "Disintegrating". Starting with "Crumbling", the unit will continually lose HP at a slow, but steady pace. "Disintegrating" is the severe form and only occures when the battle is completely lost or you handled a unit very poorly, the unit will then very rapidly lose all HP and die.

Magic

Magic works in a similar way to the TT game, although there are some differences, but played right, Magic can be a devastating force that can turn a loss into a victory.

First, the Basics: Like in the Lore, how much Magic you can use, depends on the Winds of Magic and how strong they are blowing. On the campaign map, there are visual indicators for how strongly the winds blow but you can also just hover your cursor over any given place on the map and get a number. This number indicates your base power reserve on the Battlefield, certain Lord and Hero traits, followers and skills can increase your reserve. If it isn't obvious enough, you need a spellcaster Hero or Lord on the battlefield to use Magic, of which there are many varities. All spellcasters know a Lore of Magic; this determines what spells they can learn and use, some Lords know two Lores or in the cases of Morathi and Teclis, have an assortment of spells from all Lores. To use spells, you select the ability to best of your knowledge and do what the game tells you, the system is intuitive enough that it doesn't need much explaining. Once you cast a spell, the cost of it will be deducted from your available power which will regenerate over time, but each spell cast will decrease the rate at which it regenerates. The amount of spells you can cast is limited via the overall power reserve; once it is drained, you won't get more unless you use abilities like Arcane Conduit. More on Arcane Conduit later. Spells have a chance to be miscast, inflicting minor damage to the spellcaster. You can, at an additional cost in spellpower and a higher chance of a miscast, overcast a spell for more powerful effects, provided you have the Spell skilled out.

An exception to the afromentioned rules are bound spells; these are spells that come from magical items your Lord or Hero pick up after a battle or are Spells from a second lore of Magic certain characters can learn (Lore of Vampires on Manfred von Carstein as a good example). Bound spells do not cost spellpower or affect power regeneration and have a fixed cooldown, but can only be cast a fixed number of times.

There are a lot of Lores of Magic to choose from, generally speaking, they can be put into three categories: The Generic Lores (Fire, Light, Death, Beasts, Heavens, Life, Shadows) Faction specific Lores (Skaven Spells of Plague, Skaven Spells of Ruin, Skaven Spells of Stealth, Lore of the Big Waaagh!, Lore of the little Waaagh!, Lore of High Magic, Lore of Dark Magic, Lore of the Deep, Lore of Nehekhara, Lore of the Wild) and character-specific Lores (Lore of Metal, Lore of Vampires).

The generic Lores are accessible to most factions with some missing here and there. The Empire generally has the broadest variety of Lores (namely, all, plus Lore of Metal through Balthazar Gelt)to choose; Bretonnia and the Wood Elves the least. Faction specific Lores are usually only available for one faction, with some exceptions through bound spells and special characters. And finally, character specific Lores are only available to certain unique characters. Each Lore comes with a passive attribute. Before we dive into a deeper description of the Lores themselves, a word on Arcane Conduit.

Arcane Conduit is an active ability that replenishes your power reserves and increases the power recharge rate for 30 seconds, after that, it goes on a 60-second-cooldown. Use this ability! Extra spellpower is never bad, and the power you have on hand cannot decay away; your added reserve rate does after the Effect ends. But it's never bad to just use it, it is a no-brainer. Certain magical items as well as some Lore attributes can increase your reserves and recharge rate as well.

Onto the Lores then.

• Lore of Fire: Fire, so much fire that it has the potential to make the Salamanders jealous and a Sister of Battle rethink her career choice. Provides a number of handy buffs, and two great AoE attacks. Not much to say, since it is so straightforward. Lore Attribute makes the enemy more vulnerable to Fire damage, which goes well with a variety of units.
• Lore of Light: Provides some utility, a mediocre but cheap projectile and that's about it. If you want your wizard to primarily buff up your units, this is your Lore.
• Lore of Death: Basically the opposite of the Lore of Light. Consists primarily of spells that debuff enemy units and the single most efficient character sniping spell in the game. Lore attribute increases your power recharge rate, which is never a bad thing. Important to note is that this Lore is the only Lore available to Greenskins other than the Waaagh! Lores. Azhag the Slaughterer uses this Lore (courtesy of his magic crown).
• Lore of Heavens: A bit of an odd lore consisting of exactly one good buff for melee units and three potentially powerful, but random damage spells and a very niche Lore Attribute that weakens flying units. If you like cosplaying as Emperor Palpatine or hurling Meteors, this is your Lore, otherwise, a good skip.
• Lore of Beasts: A very diverse, Jack-of-all-trades lore, with the most significant spell summoning a Feral Manticore your side, otherwise, tends to be overshadowed by other Lores. If you have access to better Lores, you can skip it. The Lore attribute is interesting as it recharges your power reserve as well as increase your recharge rate for 29 seconds when you cast a spell, effectively giving you a good discount on your cheaper spells.
• Lore of Life: The ultimate defensive utility lore, lots of spells that buff the defensive of your units as well as being the only lore that has a healing spell and two decent enough damage spells. The Fae Enchantress and Alarielle the Everqueen use this Lore. The Lore attribute heals all entities (not units, entities!) on the map for some HP, which is convienient.
• Lore of Shadows: A Hybrid Lore, best suited for a more subtle approach, most of the buffs are good enough,Pit of Shades wrecks havoc on many units. What makes it stand out is the Lore Attribute, that gives your units a whopping +24% speed boost, which is not to be underestimated.
• Lore of Metal: Certainly the rarest of the generic lores, mainly focusing on debuffing and buffing armor and weapons. It can reduce enemy armor, increase your own and has some weapon debuffs. The take away spell is Final Transmutation, which is a massive AOE damage spell that gives EVERYTHING a middle finger. Did we mention the passive that gives more AP? Balthasar's preferred lore. Great for fighting factions that love to throw armor at you, but only OK against everyone else.
• Lore of the Little Waaagh!: As befitting for da Gobbos, tons of stuff that give your hordes of Goblins a fighting chance against the enemy. Little in the way of direct damage, but useful nonetheless. Curse of the Bad Moon is one of the optic highlights of the game, and a great spell to boot. The Lore attribute reduces the enemies power recharge rate.
• Lore of the Big Waaagh!: As subtle as a truck racing down a highway with 250 mph ON FIRE. Perfectly orky. Arguably the best faction-exclusive Lore. Foot of Gork is a devastating spell that can potentially end a battle with a single cast, 'Ere we go! is one of the best offensive buffs in the game and combined with the Waaagh mechanic, this is a seriously dangerous Lore for anyone facing against it. Wurrzag the great Green Prophet uses this Lore. The Lore attribute increases your power recharge rate. Decent enough.
• Skaven Spells of Ruin: The first of the three Skaven Lores, and the most offensively minded. Warp Lightning may be the most cost effective damage spell in the game, the other spells are rather niche but nonetheless useful, Howling Warp Gale can help a lot with flying nuisances such as Dragons, leaving them vulnerable to your considerable arsenal of ranged weapons and artillery. Ikit Claw uses this Lore, Warlock Enginners and -Masters use it exclusively. The Lore Attribute lowers enemy Leadership and Melee Attack, giviing your front line a bit more room to breathe, which you can then fill with Warpfire and Warpstone Bullets.
• Skaven Spells of Plague: Occupying the gap between pure utility of the Skaven Spells of Stealth and the pure damage of the Spells of Ruin. Whats interesting about this Lore is that it has not one but two spells that summon Units, and its ultimate spell that causes immense damage as well as debuffing the enemy - did i mention that Grey Seers with this Lore can summon Stormvermin? Perhaps the best Lore, even if the most shiny bits are difficult to access outside of Clan Pestilens, since it requires you to level up either a Plague Priest or a Grey Seer for a considerable time to make full use of it - but when you can make use it, the enemy-things will feel it, yes-yes. Argubly the best of the three Skaven Lores. Lord Skrolk uses this Lore, and is the best candidate for using it.
• Skaven Spells of Stealth: The only Lore in the game designed to be used with a spefific sub-faction and frankly, it does show. It offers a lot of utility and a decent Vortex spell, but gets overshadowed in almost every regard by the Lore of Plague - unless you take the Limitations of Sniktchs campaign into consideration. It's still rather niche and if you're playing as the other Skaven factions, you're better off using either Ruin or Plague.
• Lore of Vampires: Brutal. Possibly the best Lore in the entire game. Wind of Death will wipe entire units off the floor, while providing some general utility with Raise the Dead and the Lore attribute that heals your undead minions, there is little that can beat this lore, which makes it only fair that it is exclusive to the Vampire Counts and Vampire Coast. Manfred von Carstein and Heinrich Kemmler use this Lore, as well as awoken Vampire Lords.
• Lore of High Magic: The ultimate Jack of all Trades lore, and exclusive to High Elves and Slann. It can do a bit of everything. Healing, direct damage, buffs, debuffs, AOE explosions and a passive damage reduction. Has the main drawbacks that Jack of all Trades do, they can do a bit of anything but don't excel at anything, and since High Elves have access to ALL the generic lores, its often better to pick one that fits their specific needs on the battlefield. Eltharion is the only Legendary Lord who specializes in this.
• Lore of Dark Magic: The unique lore of those assholes in Naggaroth. Where as the Asur lore does have a few spells that help out their troops, Dark Elves say "Fuck that, let's just use our magic to torture the other guys!" Home to a really good debuff that can help swing fights, and the stand out is Soul Stealer, an AOE damage spell that heals the caster. Unfortunately, aside from those two, the others are just supbar damage spells, a debuff to armor, and a magic recharge spell that hurts the caster. All in all, has a few spand out options, but not one you really want to go all out in. Malekith specializes in this lore.
• Lore of Nehekhara: If you couldn't guess by the name, it's the Lore of the boney bois. It is a buffing lore, through and through which can give additional damage and anti large, protections and missile power. Given the fact that your average Tomb King soldier is a literally pile of bones that barely knows which end of the sword to poke the bad guys with, yeah this can help out a lot. Settra and Khatep use this lore a lot. Overall it's... ok? The damage spells are VERY subpar, and with access to lore of light and death, there's really no reason to pick it. The passive heal is nice, but won't let you compete with Vampire healing.
• Lore of the Deep: A lore made up by CA and designed specifically for the Vampire Coast. Has three specific purposes. 1. Damage, and can dish out LOTS OF IT (Vangheist's Revenge is one of the coolest looking spells in the game and can seriously lay down the pain.) 2. Buffs to missile troops, which helps any gunpowder faction and 3. Summons. You can summon zombies, zombies with guns and giant crabs to really push the fight in your favor. Cylostra was given this lore by Stormfels, and Luthor Harkon gets it in campaign when you fix his mind. Is it a fun lore? Absolutely, it's a blast! Are the other lores for the Vampire Coast more practical from a competitive standpoint? Sadly, also yes.
• Lore of the Wilds: Beastmen got shafted in a lot of ways in their race pack. Their unique lore of magic was NOT one of them. Wilds has some surprisingly good damage spells, that can really help the goat men clear through crowds. Also a passive that make vigour better is never one you can complain about. Oh, did we mention they can summon a Cygor? As in literally have one crawl out of the ground and throw shit and the bad people? Yeah, people like to complain about the shit missing in the Beastmen DLC (with good reason, mind you) but in terms of their unique magic, Beastmen actually got it pretty good. Malagor's favored lore.