Post: #1

First game with my new Vampire Counts (been playing High Elves for the last 15 years and needed a change!). Also my first time using BC so the pictures aren’t an exact turn by turn record but should be fairly accurate hopefully. Also thanks for all the great threads on this site I avidly read up on before this game!

Battle of the Pass, 2500pts

My list:

LORD 1 Vampire Lord
Level 3 upgrade
Dread Knight
Infinite Hatred
Red Fury
Dragonhelm
The Other Tricksters Shard
Crown of the Damned
Blood Drinker

HERO 1 Wight King
Wight Blade (HW)
Heavy Armour
Shield
ASB
Drakenhof Banner

HERO 1 Vampire
Master of the Black Arts
Helm of Commandment
Warrior Bane

HERO 1 Konrad Von Carstein

CORE 35 Skeletons (5 wide with Vampire)
Hand Weapon
Light Armour
Shield
Champion
Musician
Standard Bearer

CORE 40 Crypt Ghouls (10 wide)
Hand Weapon
Crypt Ghast

SPECIAL 29 Graveguard (10 wide with Konrad and ASB)
Hand Weapon
Heavy Armour
Great Weapons
Seneschal
Musician
Standard Bearer
Banner of the Barrows

RARE 6 Blood Knights (with Vampire Lord)
Hand Weapon
Lance
Heavy Armour
Shield
Kastellen
Barded Nightmare
Musician
Standard Bearer
Royal Standard of Strigos

Daemons (not totally sure on all upgrades):

Lord of Change (Tzeentch magic)
29 Plague Bearers + Herald ASB (reroll to wound banner)
34 Bloodletters + Herald (flaming sword)
3 Blood Crushers + Herald (flaming sword)
6 Flamers



Daemons got first turn and moved everything up. The Lord of Change kills a bunch of my Graveguard with ‘flaming’ magic. I move up, I get my Graveguard back to full strength with SUH and also use VDM to charge my Blood Knights and Vampire Lord into the Flamers hoping to smash through them into the Bloodcrushers. They fail miserably however only killing one flamer.



The Blood Crushers counter charge into my Blood Knights, the Bloodletters charge into my Ghouls and the Plague Bearers into my Graveguard.

The Plague Bearers take a pasting from my Graveguard ovr the next couple of rounds including the Herald being killed. Lord of Change continues to blast away at everything (including that annoying every unit within 12” one) but I counter by bringing them all back from the dead including healing my ASB back to full strength (wounded in the combat vs Plague Bearers). I lose my Blood Knight Champion and one other Blood Knight and continue to struggle to kill the Flamers (even with Tricksters shard on my Vampire Lord).

The Bloodletters and Ghouls combat is even with lots of killing on both sides mostly helped by my Vampire in the skeletons lending his WS6 to the Ghouls.



My Vampire Lord miscasts a couple of times including rolling a double 1 on the miscast table – the S10 template wipes out my last 3 Blood Knights leaving the Blood Crushers unengaged but the Vampire Lord luckily doesn’t get dragged into the warp. The Flamers finally get wiped out as do the Plague Bearers. The Bloodletters continue to die and I continue to raise back the dead Ghouls in my Magic phase.

The Graveguard reform having wiped out the Plague Bearers and turn to face the Lord of Change behind them, I then charge the Lord of Change with them in my turn. The Lord of Change challenges which I except with Konrad. I manage to inflict 2 wounds with Konrad before he is killed. The Lord of Change then fails his break test by 3 losing its last 3 wounds.

My Vampire Lord goes Stupid for a turn being well out of my ASB reroll.



The Bloodletters are wiped out by the Ghouls (they really kick out a lot of poisoned hits in horde formation) and the Bloodcrushers charge my Skeletons with Helm Vampire - wiping them out in one round through the unstable rule (no chance to bring them back then!), they overrun into my Graveguard who take loads of casualties (get taken down to 5 left from 30) and the Crushers are all killed back leaving just the Herald (he already had a couple of wounds on the unt/champion from previous combats). In my last turn my Vampire Lord brings the Graveguard back to around 25 models and the Ghouls and Vampire Lord charge the crushers in the flank and rear. I challenge with my Vampire Lord (2+ ward as the Herald has the Fireblade item) and the Herald is killed.



Victory to the Vampires!

Some key points I found:

I was really surprised at the effectiveness of the Ghouls (I’m used to seeing that Bloodletter unit murder everything it touches!).

I found the Vampire magic really strong with the extra dice from MotBA though I did find I didn’t cast hardly anything other than SUH and IoN, would have been nice to vary it up a bit but then equally I kept all my units up at full strength for most of the game.

Disappointed with the Blood Knights first outing (especially at £10 a model, eek!) but I always underestimate how tough even a flamer unit is with the 2 wounds and 5+ ward, blowing most of the Blood Knights up with a miscast didn’t help either I guess!

Konrad is as glass cannon as expected, having him with 4+ regen from the ASB is a must I reckon though it didn’t help against the Lord of Change’s flaming attacks – ultimately he gave his life to take the LoC out though…

Thinking Earthing Rod might be a necessity on my Vampire Lord.

Thanks for reading.

J

Post: #2

Gratz with the victory.
Good read and the illustrations you made look great.
Think I'll try out a Ghouls horde myself next time.

Post: #3

Well done! Digging the battle chronicler report, I'm trying to figure out how to use that program.

It's always nice to see VC (or really anyone) knock out a deamon army. It's just something you don't see too often.