Vampire Counts 1600pt Starter Army

February 3, 2012 by beerogre

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Andy and Darrell put together a cool army list to get you started with the Vampire Counts... one that hopefully won't break the bank!

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Proportions: Heroic Scale: 28mm

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musteatbrains

13 years ago

Let´s see… I´d drop the Vampire BSB and take two lesser heroes instead. While the Scrwaming Banner is awesome, you don´t actually need a BSB in your army, especially with these large Blocks that can soak up combat result damage anyway… if you insist on a BSB, make it a Wight Lord instead. It might not get the -1LD power, but it´s still T:5W:3

The Zombies really don´t do anything. I think opponents would just have to take care of the Vargheists (which are great on the offensive, but they are still just 9 T4 wounds without save per unit, so they are quite the glass cannons).

The Fell Bats are only good of the opponent really has artillery or other small blocks; against solid infantry they are not nearly as helpful. I´d bring them down to one unit of 5, jsut for support.

With that many Zombies, you really want a Corpse Cart in your army! Especially if you plan on spamming Invocation. Rember that Zombies affected by Vigor Mortis get to strike first, NOT just loose their “always strikes last” and then attack at I1. AGAIN: Zombies STRIKE FIRST. (just to make sure it get´s through 😉 ). With 3 Hordes of Zombies, that´s a LOT of S3 attacks, even if the mostly hit on 5s.

I think at so low points costs, skipping the Rare section altogether is not a bad idea, even though a Varghulf or Coach might come in handy…

As I see it, the list as it stands now in your video is too passive. The only thing actually able to do damage are the Vargheists, and they are more vunerable than they look at first glance. Zombies without any support (like the Vigor Mortis, or strong characters in *each* unit)) will simply not do anything, especially with your battle plan of standing around and raising more. It´s nice to have big units, but if they don´t get to do any damage, they are still wasted points. Unless you plan on using them to tar pit the opponent, but then you really don´t need 3 blocks of them

All in all not a bad starting point, but I feel the list still needs a lot of fine tuning…

t9nv3

13 years ago

Interesting list. Not sure if I’d ever want to play it, but It looks like fun.

Just though I’d mention that aura doesn’t stack with other vamps with the same power. The rule says 6″ of one or more vamps with the power are at -1. It does, however, stack with other Ld effects.

One other things to consider is having a Vamp hero in with your Black Knights. I like the idea of runing a vamp hero with aura and beguile. …he’ll make those black knights so much better. Give him Glittering scales and put him on a barded nightmare. Even a chaos lord will only hit this guy on a 5+, and even then he’ll have to reroll those 5’s if he fails his ld test a -4. I’m running this in a unit of bloodknights…those 20 ws5 st7 hits are going to hurt something.

demyse

13 years ago

for an undead army that wont break the bank use mantic minis

decaramas

13 years ago

Hi Musteatbrains,

You changes sound interesting, I am building an undead army at the moment. What do your changes do to the cost/points value of their list?

Rgs
Dec

musteatbrains

Reply to decaramas

13 years ago

Hey Decaramas,

not sure at the moment to be honest – I´ll go over it tomorrow (just came home and it´s almost 4 in the morning, I nedd some sleep), and post a more detailed list with points costs if you want. Overall, the changes shouldn´t actually change the total costs too much, so I think it would still be a 1600ish points list. That being said, I might do the extra work and see how it would be cheapest wto set the army up, Mantic Zombies being the most important thing about it (besides being the best on the market at this point anyway)

elbisrever

13 years ago

Guys, the Aura of Dark Majesty does NOT stack with each other! Read the rules again: “Any enemy unit within ONE OR MORE vampires with this power get -1 LD”. It does stack with all other modifiers, so yes with beguile, but only on a -4, not -5.

maddog95

13 years ago

As a Lord choice I’m a big fan of a Master Necromancer.
Being so magic dependant why not get a (relatively) cheap lvl4 (200p.) with the Book of Arkhan for 25p so you have Vanhel’s Dance Macabre for sure.
Besides summoning extra zombies each turn he’d be able to have them zombies march another 8″ or reroll to hits for those Black Knights to avoid those rubber lances.
Although admittedly I’m more lenient towards Skellies so I usually have Master of the Dead as well on him.

harald85

13 years ago

Why are zombies so much better than skeletons?

davidwolf

13 years ago

Zombies are the only troop type that you can raise above there starting unit strenght without taking an upgrade of some type. In addition when raising them using invocation of Nehek you get +D6 models back. This is due to their Newly Dead special rule.

This means that in our starter army example above each level 1 Vampire can raise 2D6 + 1(for the Wizard lvl) Zombies per turn. Average of 8 say per Vampire, so 16 models per turn have to be killed by the enemy just keep up.

As mentioned in the Vid the only real downside compared to Skeletons is that they can’t take spears.