# New Player: A couple of general questions and Vampire Counts or Warriors of Chaos



## Green Tiger (Aug 6, 2010)

Hey guys, 

I played 40k about five years ago and loved it though I kept looking at the fantasy line and saying 'if only I had the money to start a new army'. I stopped playing 40k because my friend that I played with moved away and the couple times I went to a local store to play all I found was young power gamers who whined more than they played which was a turn off and I got rid of my armies (Dark Elf and Space Wolves). I played well with DE, but the glass cannon mentality was not necessarily enjoyable. I loved the durability of my Space Wolves but my opponents Tau and Tyrannids often chewed them apart with sheer numbers.

My impression of Fantasy is that it attracts a slightly more mature and friendly group of players on average. Is that a fair assessment?

I am in a bit of an odd situation because I'm in Afghanistan with the military currently. I've ordered the 8th edition rulebook and read it cover to cover. I also ordered the army books for Warriors of Chaos, Orcs and Goblins, Vampire Counts, Empire, and Bretonnia. After reading them I found that I really liked the fluff for Warriors of Chaos and Vampire Counts. Orcs and Goblins was ok, but the idea of my units fighting each other at the most inopurtune times was a real turn off. Empire seemed a little generic, and Bretonnia really surprised me at how uninteresting they are.

I'm not concerned with having the 'best' army necessarily. I am concerned with having a competitive and fun army but after reading the rulebook and seeing the shooting, magic, and close combat phases I thought, 'Hey, I'd like an army that can often win two of those phases'. Is that something I should be concerned with? 

I feel in both armies I am automatically losing the shooting phase. 

With vampire counts I feel I can reasonably expect to do serious damage in the magic phase and to spawn tons undead. I also played around with the idea of giving the vampire lore of shadows so he can jump from unit to unit everytime he casts a spell and keep him in battle. On the other hand I feel that the hordes of undead will be cut down in droves and cause little damage because of their generally bad statline.

With Warriors of Chaos I feel like I can dominate the CC phase - if I can get to the enemy. THat I see as a bit of a risky proposition against many opponents. I also feel like I really have to choose either CC dominance with weakish magic or CC adequacy with good magic. I would be interested to hear thoughts.

Admittedly, I like the fluff behind Dark Elves again but I want to stay away from the glass cannon aspect. On the other hand I haven't read their army book but assume they are the most balanced of the three.

If I can decide between the two armies, or if anyone has other suggestions for me to consider. I want to start converting some models here on the days off I get and then paint them when I go home early next year.

Sorry this post rambles a bit, but I feel like to get good advice I have to let the more experienced heretics know both my background and why and how I narrowed down the list of armys.


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## CursedUNTILLDEATH (Apr 25, 2010)

Vamps- The point of the Vamps is ,yes thier troops do suck, but you can bring them back and they dont break and they cause fear. Vamps themseles are some of the best charcters in the game, having the ablitly to use magic and destory in CC. Cast Invoction of Neheek (cant spell right) alot and you will see that no matter how many troops die you always can jsut bring more back. You can raise Zombies to use as screning units and ghouls are good vs light units (keep them away from heavy armor as they will do jack, even with poisned attacks), dont ever pay points for zombies, and skeliles with spears are the way to go. Cant help you on the lore of shadows as i never use it.

WoC-Yes, you do dominate CC. You get marks, a +4 armor save, WS 5 and [email protected] Chaos warriors are very hard to kill, they almost always strike first and thier magic is not to bad (i cant really say on this as i dont see thier magic used much). Mark of Tzeencth can protect you against anything and Mark of nurgle(while a little more expasnvsie) can aginst anything non-magical. Marardurs make good screeing units and chaos knights...they just rape.

However if you want Dark elves they play a little differnt then DE. They are some what of a glass cannon, their play style is very aggesvie, and you can easliy wittle down the enemy with Reapter crossbows before they get to you. You will lose lose a war of attriton but with Haterd and WS 4 you can put out serious damgage in the first round of combat. I dont play them so i cant help much more.

Hope that helped 

PS-I have found that more adults tend to play WFB then power gamers and little kids. This dosnt meen they arnet out thier though...thier always out thier.
And welcome to Hersey:grin:


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## Vaz (Mar 19, 2008)

Hi. another military guy. There's a few of us on here. What outfit are you with?

Not any more you can't. Vampire Counts suck, as they cannot spam spellcasters. 

Only possible way is about a Necromancer + 6 L1 Vampires (that's 7 castings of the spell). Basically, the only way to do that is 3K+ games, so you'll have to settle for "just" the Lord and a single Count with a Necromancer - or 3 IoN's.

Warriors of Chaos... Nope no such thing as Adequacy in the army list, unless you go for Marauders. Most armies would kill to have Elite Infantry even in their army, let alone as Special/Rare options.

I've found the Tzeentch Lords and Heroes are pretty much Guaranteed now, other than the odd Slaanesh Sorceror. There's 2 Magic Items, which combined with a Warrior Lord/Hero provides you with a 3+ Ward Save in addition to a 1+2+ Armour Save.

These are: Armour of Morrslieb (functions in Close Combat and range, but not against magical attacks/spells), and Golden Eye (functions against Range and spells). In addition even the Heroes are the equivalent of other Lords in combat, with higher attacks, initiative, WS and strength than most enemies.

WoC magic is quite nasty. There's an option for a Tzeentch Wizard to get a +7 bonus to casting spells. Thats a one dice Gateway, haha. Combine Pandaemonium (miscast on a double), with the Infernal Puppet, and you're looking at making enemies blow up as soon as they miscast.

No no no. Despite the Nurgle Nerf, WoC are still fairly competitive. I never leave home without at least Dual Tzeentch Warshrines now, along with 30 Khorne Chosen w/ Razor Standard (entire unit gains AP) and Terror Mask. 10x3 unit, putting out 50 S6 (hopefully) AP attacks at an initiative that makes units weep.


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## Sethis (Jun 4, 2009)

Green Tiger said:


> My impression of Fantasy is that it attracts a slightly more mature and friendly group of players on average. Is that a fair assessment?


It depends entirely on who lives near you. The average age of WFB players tends to be slightly higher, but as far as I've noticed the dickwad level remains constant between them.



Green Tiger said:


> I'm not concerned with having the 'best' army necessarily. I am concerned with having a competitive and fun army


Warriors are more competitive than Counts, at the moment. Only you know how important that is to you, but on a scale of 1-10 (1 being best army in the game, 10 being worst) I'd rate Warriors as 2 and Counts as 8-9. They are that far apart.



Green Tiger said:


> I feel in both armies I am automatically losing the shooting phase.


Correct, but Fantasy has always been about the combat, really. It's nice to have some kind of shooting, but it's not going to win you the game by itself. I have yet to see a Gunline win a game convincingly.



Green Tiger said:


> With vampire counts I feel I can reasonably expect to do serious damage in the magic phase and to spawn tons undead. I also played around with the idea of giving the vampire lore of shadows so he can jump from unit to unit everytime he casts a spell and keep him in battle. On the other hand I feel that the hordes of undead will be cut down in droves and cause little damage because of their generally bad statline.


You're dead right with the latter part of that paragraph, but unfortunately wrong with the preceding part. Undead *used* to be able to dominate the magic phase, and spawn undead by the dozen, so your opponent could not keep up. That is why they used to be arguably the best army in the game. There are several crippling alterations to the new rules that drop their power level badly.

- You're limited to a max 12 power dice. Previously some VC armies had over 20, easily...

- Add in the fact that you auto-fail a spell if you roll a 1 or 2 on a D6, and a wizard that fails to cast cannot do anything else that phase...

- All of which means that you raise D6 of the undead of your choice on average 3 times in your magic phase. An average of 10 men. That's assuming you cast *nothing* other than ressing spells. Against any army that is good in combat (Elves, Chaos, Lizardmen, Dwarves, Daemons... you get the picture) that's just about enough to replace your losses from *one* round of combat. Hardly a great investment for the points you spend on Wizard characters. And then they get to beat on you in their turn as well, and you can't replace those losses.

- Fear is much worse. You cannot auto-break anyone, and WS1 for 1 turn is hardly amazing.

- Everyone elses Horde units are better than yours; either through better stats or costing less, because your Core choices are overpriced for their statline, because when the book was printed, it was assumed you'd be raising dozens of the buggers.

Basically, I consider Vampire Counts to be a non-competitive army until they get a new book, which they badly need. Either that, or one of the genius tournament players needs to find a way to win with them that does not revolve around resurrecting the dead. Ironic, huh? :laugh:



Green Tiger said:


> With Warriors of Chaos I feel like I can dominate the CC phase - if I can get to the enemy. That I see as a bit of a risky proposition against many opponents. I also feel like I really have to choose either CC dominance with weakish magic or CC adequacy with good magic. I would be interested to hear thoughts.


I play WoC myself, and we do dominate the CC phase very nicely. Generally speaking, I have had little trouble reaching a gunline army. We have a 3+ save vs shooting (if you have shields), Toughness 4 and Mark of Nurgle. The three combined means anything that isn't a War Machine causes at most 2-3 unsaved wounds (and often not even that). The most I've lost so far has been 1 unit of 16 Warriors and a Shaggoth before I hit combat. Then the other 30 Warriors, Warshrine and Chaos Lord happily ate their way through an entirely untouched 2000pts of shooty units with no losses. Shooting is nice, but as I said before, it won't win you the game by itself.

Magic is actually (in my mind) perfectly balanced for Warriors. You can have none, some or depend on it, and all of those options can work. I have various 2k lists written with anything from no Sorcerer, to a Level 2 only and one with Vilitch and 2x Level 2s. They all do fine. Tzeentch and Nurgle are unusual in that their Lores in the Army book actually compare just fine to the new ones in the Rulebook. Most other players dropped their army-specific lores like a hot poker as soon as they saw the new ones.

My advice would be as follows: If you want to win games, go with Chaos. If that doesn't matter too much to you, go with whichever army you prefer the models of. In the long run, I find that I enjoy playing, painting and assembling models more if I like the way they look, regardless of how they actually perform.


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## Khorothis (May 12, 2009)

Vaz said:


> I never leave home without at least Dual Tzeentch Warshrines now, along with 30 Khorne Chosen w/ Razor Standard (entire unit gains AP) and Terror Mask. 10x3 unit, putting out 50 S6 (hopefully) AP attacks at an initiative that makes units weep.


 Holy shit, I'd weep too, especially if they get +1T, Fear, Stubborn and a 4+ Ward Save just because you can.

I have to find a way to make decent plastic Chosen so I can spam them.  By the way, does the original Chosen pack have halberds? Or only Great Weapons?


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## NagashKhemmler (Apr 28, 2009)

I've been working on some vampire builds and I have managed to create quite a few competitive vampire builds, they are nothing like their predecessors however, they have become an expert army now, rather than an anybody army.


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## Green Tiger (Aug 6, 2010)

Vaz said:


> Hi. another military guy. There's a few of us on here. What outfit are you with?


I'm with a route clearance convoy.



Vaz said:


> Not any more you can't. Vampire Counts suck, as they cannot spam spellcasters.
> 
> Only possible way is about a Necromancer + 6 L1 Vampires (that's 7 castings of the spell). Basically, the only way to do that is 3K+ games, so you'll have to settle for "just" the Lord and a single Count with a Necromancer - or 3 IoN's.


This is exactly why I had taken Vampire Counts off of my list originally but put them back on as a possibility when I realized they can cast necromancy spells multiple times per turn which means I don't need 7 spellcasters to get off 7 ION's. The limited number of power dice was a bigger concern - that and if they fail casting the caster is done. Still, I see your point.



Vaz said:


> WoC magic is quite nasty. There's an option for a Tzeentch Wizard to get a +7 bonus to casting spells. Thats a one dice Gateway, haha. Combine Pandaemonium (miscast on a double), with the Infernal Puppet, and you're looking at making enemies blow up as soon as they miscast.


Ohhh, I hadn't noticed either of these options yet. Both are very sweet.


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## Green Tiger (Aug 6, 2010)

Thanks for all the input guys, Vaz and Sethis both kind of glued up some of the points I was iffy on and I'm going to use Warriors of Chaos as my army. I will probably still pick up some Vampire Counts characters just for the enjoyment of painting/converting them. 

I'm going to chew over an army list and will post it for critique in the appropriate forum.


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## mynameisgrax (Sep 25, 2009)

7 Vampires? I thought you could have up to 3 of the same unit (in normal sized games)? Or am I misunderstanding the rules?

Vampire Counts and Warriors of Chaos are actually similar in ways, in that their main strategy is to force their opponents into close combat with their core units, and to either destroy them there, or hold them there long enough for their more powerful units/characters to hit the enemy flanks. Both armies also have a good amount of offensive spellcasting, but few 'buff' spells, and little to no shooting.

As others have mentioned, however, Warriors of Chaos presently work a lot better, mainly because their core units are a lot stronger than the Vampire Count's. What really hurts the counts is that they have to spend 25% of the points in their list on zombies/skeletons/ghouls, which they could've summoned after the battle started, instead of paying for them.

Warriors of Chaos have both a cheap core choice (marauders) and a highly elite and resilient core (warriors). Together, they make for a very powerful and resilient force, that even the most efficient gunline probably won't break before close combat is reached, or at least not without magical help.


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