# Starting Vampire Counts



## elsmiff (Jan 8, 2012)

Hi, I've just started playing fantasy and was wondering if you could help me out. When I found out about the new vampire counts, I had to start with these guys! So far I've got the battalion and Vlaad Von Carstein, I'm getting the army book next week but wanted to know what the experienced players used. If you could comment with recommendations to grow my army, it would be a real help.

many thanks, elsmiff

edited for English... this is not a txt message, use proper letters/words like a big boy. "2 no wot" is NOT an acceptable level for anyone over the age of 5
Tim/Steve


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## Blackhiker (Dec 28, 2007)

The most common recommendation for growing a VC army is to get ghouls for core and Grave Guard for special. Of course massed amounts of skeletons and zombies is always useful, since for both you should have at least twice as many of them at the end of the game as at the beginning.

Besides that picking up some characters will help keep your army alive. 

that is my $0.02


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## Tim/Steve (Jan 25, 2009)

With the points cut of skellies and zombies and the boosted stats of zombies I think that pretty much all the core units are now pretty good once more. If so then just take what you like, but VC players will have seen a lot more games then I have and might have more of an in-depth view.


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## olderplayer (Dec 11, 2009)

The old core ghouls and grave guard horde was the standard build with vamps with vampiric power that gave them extra power dice and allowed one vamp to lend his weapon skill to a key unit. 

That is gone. I'd suggest a basic character set of one vamp lord (lvl 1 or lvl 2), one master necro lvl 3, and one vamp BSB (lvl 1 or 2). You can run a large grave guard unit as your killing unit, but with the new Nehek lore rules, you can consider running a black knight unit with mounted vamps (max their armour saves) and back them up with a unit of skeletons with the master necro having master of the dead allowing him to boost the skellies above core. Consider crypt horrors, one corpse cart with balefire due to its area effects, dire wolves run close enough to the vamps if running black knights to regrow them with Nehek, bat swarm unit (makes enemy have ASL). 

Look at vampiric items beguile, aura that gives enemy -1 LD on one vampire, the ability to get +D3 to casting Nehek (makes it harder for enemy to dispel and easier to cast), the high cost vampiric power that lets you re-roll one winds of magic dice in you winds of magic phase can be worth playing. 
On the magic items, book of arkan is well worth playing for bound spell casting Danse and Nightshroud is an interesting choice on a well armoured vamp lord mounted on a barded mount with dawnstone (re-roll armour save and night shroud takes away strength benefits of mundane and magical weapons meaning that a 1+ armour save will usually give you a 2+ or 3+ re-rollable armour save but you do not have a ward save to deal with items that by=pass armour). Another combo might be nightshroud with the 4+ ward and something else on the vamp lord and the BSB can take armour of destiny for the 4+ ward save and with a mount a 2+ armour save. Consider the earthing rod on the master necro. 

If your are new to the game, stick with basics. Vampires are based on extremely good fighting characters (vamps and wight king) combined with tarpit and interference and diversion units that keep getting regenerated and specialized killing units. Skellies and zombies good core for tarpit units (zombies get 2D6+ level models with no limit but will lose a lot of combats, skellies are a bit harder to kill due to armour and shields and can be growth above their starting size by a master Necro with master of the dead). Zombies can start a bit smaller and be grown up while skellies need to start out bigger and deeper in ranks and bunker the master necro in that unit. Use ghouls for a much tougher and heavier hitting core unit (Nehek regrowth raises as many ghouls as skellies that have been killed) and can wound very tough units with poison. Use dire wolves to fill out core. 

The special slot should be grave guard, black knights, crypt horrors (excellent price and Nehek regrows 1+ level wounds previously lost), and vargheists (flying vampiric can go after light units and war machines). Terrorgheists and corpe carts are some of the unique units to consider. Also, consider wraiths either as heroes to alow you necro to stay in the second rank of its bunker unit (get look out sir in unit and can stone units attacking that lack magical attacks). Grave guard or black knights should be in a larger unit and one unit should have banner of the barrows for the +1 to hit benefit because the more you hit the better the chance of getting killing blow hits. 

I kind of like black knights more now. Black knights now benefit from Nehek regrowing 1+ level lost models per successful cast in range. They can provide a bunker for mounted vamps (to increase their armour saves and gain a good look out sir). They can keep up with dire wolves and crypt horrors to allow those units to stay within the range of Nehek spells from vamps and to regrow those units more effectively. On the other hand, grave guard are a lot cheaper per wound, are cheap enough to run as a horder unit, and get D6+ level regrown models per Nehek casting.


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## MrPete (Mar 5, 2011)

The beatiful thing about the new VC book is that its essentially 3 army books in one - strigoi, vampires and necromancers.

If you're just starting out with VC, i'd go with the ghoul core/Grave Guard special combo. Knights can be cool if you're running stuff to help them out, but they need supporting more in this edition I think. If you want a boost in the magic phase take a Mortis Engine, and you should always try to get the boost from it for your magic phase to raise more models.


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