Tuesday, December 16, 2008

My Vampire Counts Army (under construction)

Greetings
As promised I am back with my Vampire Counts army list in hand to run through my army with you all.
I started playing Vamps after picking up the battle for skull pass box and deciding I didn't like the dwarves and gobbos all that much... so I headed to my FLGS (Imperial Outpost just east of 51st ave. and Thunderbird in Glendale, AZ.) and began perusing through the many army options. It didn't take long as I saw the cove to the Vamp army book (dear God don't call it a Codex) and instantly found my niche. Vampires kick ass and so do zombies and werewolves and the Vamp army has all of these (yes I know the Vargulf is a Vampire not a werewolf, but damn if it don't look like a lycan). So I grabbed the battalion box, a few blister packs and the army book and never looked back.
A few key points about the Vamps that really make the army cool as hell.
- Every single freakin unit and character causes fear, with many options to cause terror. Of course many armies have ways of working around fear and terror, if you treat them as bonus abilities and not base the armies entire strategy around breaking enemy units with fear tests you will always be surprised and never disappointed
- All units are immune to psychology and do not break from combat. The one down side of course is that combat resolution can destroy the army as excess combat rez counts as wounds against the units in combat, but...
- All troops can be resurrected and characters healed, in many cases past their starting levels. Nothing feels better than to drop 10 skeleton warriors on the table as your opponent laughs at the small unit size, then watch his/her face melt as you resurrect 20 more skeletons to ad to the unit right as it smashes into his battle lines.
- Zombie units can be raise from the ground up, meaning at deployment your army may have no zombies and through consecutive magic phases vast units of zombies could spring up all over the board causing all kinds of speed bumps and flee traps for your enemy... oh yeah and the new units of zombies are worth 50 vp so let those dead boys grow baby grow.
-Last but not least, my favorite rule... resurrected models and healed wounds DO NOT effect the VPs of the units, units are only ever worth their starting VP. I love this rule. My buddy Justin (a.k.a. Captain Re-Roll) plays Wood Elves and runs a Dryad heavy (very very very heavy) list. We had a long battle one day and at the end of the fight he was pretty messed up and we decided to call the game with VPs determining the winner. His eyes gleamed with lust for victory as he began adding up what he though were extra VPs for all of the dead skellys I resurrected. With undue confidence he proclaimed "Well I totally win dude... I killed like a bugillion of your dudes and your units are all beat up, thats gotta be like a hundred gillion victory points... (and here is my favorite part)... I GUESS BEING ABLE TO BRING DUDES BACK ISN'T SO GOOD AFTER ALL". He proceeded to laugh as I smiled to myself and handed him the army book with the resurrection rules highlighted in bright Green. I leaned back in my chair and sipped on my Pepsi as I watched the confidence leave his face. "THIS IS F'ING STUPID!!!" Ah Justin, if only you would actually read other army books than your own you might not run into this problem.
Any way that's the kind of stuff that makes Vamps so neeto, so neeto in fact that I have not started another army yet and have been concentrating only on Vamps... no small feat for myself as I typically have multiple army projects going at once. Well now on to my army list.
The following is my 2250 tourney army list. I've played it 4 times now and lost once to a Deamon Army (the next big thing after Vamps)

Characters-
Vampire Lord --- Hand weapon; Sword of Striking; Walach's Bloody Hauberk; Helm of Commandment; Wizard Lvl 3; Dark Acolyte; Master of the Black Arts; Lord of the Dead; 6 Power Dice

Vampire --- Hand weapon; Tomb Blade; The Flayed Hauberk; Wizard level 1; Walking Death; Infinite Hatred; 1 power dice

Vampire --- Hand weapon; Talisman of Protection; The Book of Arkhan; Wizard level 1; Dark Acolyte; Avatar of death; 2 power dice.

Core-
Skeletons X 20 Spears; shield; light armor; full command; war banner.

Skeletons X 20 Hand weapons; shield; light armor; full command; Banner of Hellfire.

Skeletons X 15 Spear; shield; light armor; full command.

Ghouls X 10 Ghast.

Ghouls X 10 Ghast.

Dire Wolves X 5 Doom Wolf

Dire Wolves X 5 Doom Wolf

Corpse Cart with Balefire

Special-
Grave Guard X 20 Hand weapons, heavy armour, shield, full command, Standard of Everlasting Death

Rare-
Varghulf

Well that's it my army. I put my lord into one of the Ghoul units to protect him a little from missile fire and then surround the unit with the rest of my army. The vamp with the Tomb Blade goes in a skelly unit where each wound caused by the vamp raises a new skelly to add to the unit. The book of arkhan vamp goes in my Grave Gaurd and uses the bound spell in the book of arkhan to keep the unit moving. Corpse cart shoots up the middle providing ALWAYS STRIKES FIRST to all units in 6 inches and the Varghulf and the Doom Wolves take flank duty swooping though the field getting at flanks and rears as best as possible. With thew magic phase I have 11 power dice to heal units and rez zombies or pester enemy units with missiles and spells that wither away at their troops. A game of attrition is at hand for my enemies and with the right use of magic I can usually out last most opponents. Any hoo hope you enjoy looking at my list, leave my a comment if you want I'm always up for help. Also if you in the Phoenix/Glendale area, swing by Imperial Outpost, I'm there Saturdays and I would love to meet new players. My name is David Bishop and you can usually find me playing Federation Commander or 40k wishing some one would show up and challenge my Vamps. Also if your looking for an online army list creation tool try out www.armyroster.com its great and the guys on the forums are really helpful with new players.

Your Friend
The Count

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