Vampire counts

[siriq]

never really met a history teacher i liked. Im sure there may be two or three good ones.

[RARE CHOICE GAMES]

The best history teachers are either the crazy ones who walk on top of desks imitating figures from history (I had one like this) or laid back geeks (not laid back hippies, there is a big difference. Geeks rule and make laid back look good, hippies make it smell bad and ruin everything about it). If you are uptight, take history to seriously, or are a hippie you should not be a history teacher. So yes you have probably ran into some bad ones....I can make a long list of the bad ones I have run into...anyways...You got any figs for your VC yet?

[siriq]

nah, im starting this summer. But I did bring the chaos codex if you want to look at it some time.

[RARE CHOICE GAMES]

If you are going to come to this wednesdays meeting, bring cause I will want to take a gander at it.

[siriq]

will do. Cypher is pretty pimp but he cost like 157 or something like that.

[RARE CHOICE GAMES]

He is 171pts, i think, according to White Dwarf 280. I am not building the army to be point effective, I am building because the cypher character has a great story and it is a kick butt figure. The army will be very themed after whatever his stuff is.

[Pop goes the world]

I have been playing undead in it's various forms for over 15 years, and here is what I have learned- Treat your forces like the inexhaustable cannon fodder they are.
Field a vanguard unit of something expensive as a retinue for your general, or take a zombie dragon or the like. Putting your general in a regiment offers solid protection, though he might be a target for unit-affecting spells. Grave guard can be good for this, but my preference is hell knights. They are good, I don't feel like explaining why, just believe me.

Otherwise, go with assloads of zombies. They are cheap as hell, and you won't be tempted to upgrade them with shields, armor or weapons. If you want to punch them up a little bit, give them a wraith leader or the like. Wraiths are ethereal and pack a good punch, not to mention cause terror.

Dire wolves are good cheap flank-harrassing forces with all the abilities of light cavalry.

Ghouls can be fun, but only in small skirmishing groups. Use them as a screening force, but remember that they are mortal, and will run away easily.

Skeletons are cool, but if you arm them with anything special, they tend to get expensive. Just remember- all of the points you spent on shields could have been used to simply buy more skeletons.

None of the Undead ground troops are particularly threatening in hand to hand, so use cheap units to tie up your opponents expensive forces. If that 100 point unit of zombies can engage your opponent's 400 point chaos knights for just 2 turns, they will keep them from doing any more damage to expensive troops.

Above all, remember that psychology is your friend. You have the ability to field an entire army of troops that cause fear (at the least) and you will be suprised how often you destroy more units with fear tests than you do with actual combat.

Anyway, that is my two cents.

[fallenknight]

I have like 5 armies, vampire counts not being one of them, but I have played them many many many times. I would suggest against putting your vampire leader on a creature, if your going to, zombie dragon is the way to go, but keeping them in a unit is a far better way to go. Reason being...if you fight another nasty character, they can focus on your mount, for example in a tournament game I took my 2 head chaos dragon and chaos lord against their winged nightmare with vampire, and I focused all my attacks on the winged nightmare, killed it, did like four wounds and the vampire did like one back, but lost combat by 4 and had to take 4 wounds, bye bye. Then the army falls apart. Game was over in like a half-hour.

The lots of zombies approach works great with your characters in there, easy to have huge units, and if you win combat and your opponent does not cause fear and you outnumber them, since you cause fear they run automatically.

Banshees and other ethereal creatures do rock as well, if an army is not prepaired to deal with them they are screwed. A skink army with no magic is going to get torn apart. The banshee effects units based on their leadership, skink leadership blows. And skinks have no way to hurt them back, so if a banshee charges in, skinks will outnumber but they get no ranks so they will have one for combat result. On average the banshee will kill 4 skinks leaving them with a minus 3 leadership check at Ld. 2

The black coach rulezzzzz...but like any chariot, watch out for str 7 attacks.

[Pop goes the world]

You will notice that almost everything that can stand alone (i.e. everything but mounts) has a balistic skill stat. I think this is because there is always the possibility that there will be a spell or magic item (or some other nonsense) that could test against a model's BS, like they have spells that test against just about everything else. I am sure they do it just so they don't have to go back and specify what the BS 'would' be for whatever type of model.

[heatseeker]

most of the time, armies aren't equipped with magic items so playing some ethereals really does some major damage. i really don't know what would be a good lizardmen army against vampire counts. I'd say just the basic stuff and a scar veteran or oldblood depending on how many points you're playing with a magic item and jaguar charm. ouch that just hurts thinking about the devastation that can occur with that character.

[Antipaladin]

Ground Troops:
I like skellies, just ebcause they're cheap and dirty, but also able to pretend like they know what the hell's going on. The one or two wounds they score with spears (or three to four if they have Vigor) are usually enough to push it through. Necrarchs especially make good use of these guys because they generally don't have to worry about small unit sizes.
You can take a few ghouls, bat swarms, or wolves for your flanks if you like, just don't expect them to do a whole lot.

Flanks:
Black Knights are a very strong unit if used well. I like mine lead by a wight lord with the wailing helm to really mess things up. Fell bats are decent, as well, and can annoy all manner of ranged troops. Just remember they have low unit sizes, so don't rely too heavily on fear. They can also benefit from Invocation when they're wounded.

Other Specials:
Spirit hosts are good for annoying swarms, chariots, scouts, or anything else in small numbers. They also work as great missile sheilds for your more important units. Otherwise, treat them as you would any swarm unit.
GG are okay, but a big stompy unit of them will only take you so far.

Characters:
As mentioned, keep them in your units until your second lord choice. Below 2000 points, take Noble Blood to make a thrall your general. None of the character choices for VCs are bad, and you'll akways wish you could get more.

Magic:
With Nechrarchs, try to keep the number of non-spellcaster characters to a minimum (max one). Necromancy on a small scale will replace the shooting hits you take through Invocation. On a large scale, it can really tear down enemy units. Be sure to take magic items with bound spells, as well. Keep your opponant on thier toes.

Rare:
Living mercenaries aren't a bad choice to go on the far flank. They can stay away from your general and not really care about what else is going on.
Neither the banshee nor the coach are really worth thier points, even when used well. The best you can hope for with either is a devistating roll (14 for the banshee or a couple failed terrors for the coach).