Okay, so I cannot resist. I'll have to post this on ulthuan.net as well, I think. This is largely written as I read the report, paragraph by paragraph. I may make some 'guesses' that prove wrong.
A tactical review of the battle.
VC army list
The VC list is easier to review, so I'll start with it. The special characters are effectively a given and they aren't bad characters either. The flying vampire is a decent idea, and fighting Elves is about the one time you'd want Armour of the Night. But with no save, even 6s to hit shouldn't protect him from HE shooting. A Necromancer on a corpse cart can be a good idea so you can hide the cart in a unit ... but why would you ever take a naked Necromancer? At least buy him Danse or a scroll!
The troops are pretty good with only two small things I dislike. Spears on skeletons aren't worthwhile. Even against fragile High Elves, they shouldn't kill much of anything. Standard of Everlasting Death on them is very silly. 50% chance of saving one skeleton is pointless. Secondly, why would you give Grave Guard banner of the barrows when you don't have a wight king there and use shields? Not enough attacks, not enough hitting power for +1 to hit will be worthwhile. But that is roughly 50 wasted points, which is no big deal.
HE army list
The HE army list has a lot more room for criticism. A ton more in fact. Starting with the Star Dragon's idiotic justification for his equipment. Vlad doesn't have an armour save, so the Star Lance does effectively nothing against him!! Then we move onto the Archmage, and his really poor equipment. The Trickster's Pendant is an okay choice, but the Amulet of Light has literally zero affect (no wraiths) and the VC magic usually targets themself, so the Amulet of Fire won't do much either.
Then you move onto the fighting heroes, with a pair of low-quality shields. They don't fight very well either. At least the hero-mage is decently equiped for magic items, but a lone scroll should be irrelevant against VC.
Finally the true weakness of the army, the troops. Size 15 spearelves are begging to be autobroken and don't even provide much rank bonus. Giving one of them a magic resistance banner is even more pointless, as its not like someone would cast spells at them even if they weren't VC. Two units of 16 archers with full command are like handing bonus points to the enemy. The Swordmasters and the Phoenix Guard are okay, but I'd never give such a wimpy unit champion a ward save. The Silver Helms, as always, are pointless. Even in a friendly match, no experienced player would take an army like this.
Overall, the High Elf army looks severely limited by the box contents, while the VC army is not greatly bothered.
Deployment
Despite their shooting advantage and the presence of hills in both corners, most of the High Elf army deploys on the line. Even the archers and an RBT! One RBT goes on a hill to the left, which does make sense. But then its joined by the dragon! As stated, the Dragon is supposed to hunt down Vlad, yet he deploys off to the corner and well behind the line??? Even worse, and despite facing magic missiles from Manfred (and maybe Vlad), two High Elf Mages deploy outside units in open view. Oh, and the Swordmasters are 5-wide, when they should be 7, and are joined by the Archmage, who I would put anywhere else.
On the VC side, the flying guy also stands outside a unit asking to get shot/magicced. The cart-riding Necromancer ignores the primary (only?) reason to combine those two and also doesn't join a unit. Manfred deploys way out on a flank where his huge magic selection will largely be limited to moving the Blood Knights. That isn't a terrible thing, but he'd make better use of having 13 spells if he had access to more of the enemy army.
Turn 1
VC turn 1 displays the weakness of Manfred's placement. All he manages is to raise a few zombies. But without something advancing behind/near them, they shouldn't be any more than a free 50 victory points and a speed bump for the High Elves. The zombies in the middle make a little more sense, as wiping them out instantly is more difficult, but they don't appear to accomplish anything either. They could have screened off the RBT from shooting.
Flying suicide boy seeks rapid death as well. Again, the forward HE deployment meant he could have stayed in a unit and still charged the RBT on turn 2.
VC movement looks even worse when spears attempt to charge the flying vampire, but fear stops them. Plus he handed the Swordmasters a huge move by giving them a direwolf flank. I didn't notice how bad the direwolf movement on the VC turn, but at least Adam did. Overall, the High Elf turn was played almost correct. Except for one huge thing - the dragon DIDN'T MOVE!
Turn 2
Jim continues his unimpressive movement by charging ghouls into Swordmasters. This cannot end well. Other units are diverted that way as well, and corpse cart is left nearby where it does nothing. The right side ghouls stand directly behind the Vargulf, begging for trouble if it dies. But he improves with the movement of the Blood Knights, as they can now ignore the HE left flank and crush the center.
The combat phase goes as expected, and the charging ghouls are wiped out. The chariots needed a little luck to kill the Vargulf, but they succeeded. (It actually shouldn't have gone this well for the elves, as I had forgotten the Swordmasters were only 5 wide and saddled with the Archmage. Wiping out the ghouls was lucky).
Turns out the raised left-side zombies are worth something. Thanks to the cowardly Silver Helms on turn 1 at least.
We discover another error in VC movement as Konrad gets charged by the entire Phoenix Guard unit. Is Jim capable of paying any attention to where the enemy is going? Yet Adam choose not to exploit another mistake, and the Swordmasters sit. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think a charge on the corpse cart would have obliterated it and given an overrun to safety behind the VC army. With both vampire lords approaching and ASF-magic-spam available, the Swordmasters want to get out of the way.
Perhaps not charging was caused by finally figuring out that 5 wide with an Archmage is a waste of Swordmasters. Yet while the Archmage is finally smart enough to run away, the other Mage keeps advancing and is still outside of a unit.
Magic and shooting finally take out the Necromancer that was too dumb to live (aka hide). Guess I shouldn't say "finally", since it's only turn 2.
Chariots do about as expected in close combat and the left flank zombies finally go away. But the elves definitely wasted time killing them, so they were worth creating.
As always in a GW-report, a challenge is accepted that should definitely be declined. Without that, Konrad should be dead.
Turn 3
I'm really confused. Why weren't the Blood Knights required to charge the Swordmasters by frenzy?
Secondly, why are they turning around to look for worthless Silver Helms?
As I suggested, 15 spearelves is asking for failure against VC. Running from summoned zombies even. :)
Losing an entire magic phase at this point could be devastating for the VC, but I'm not sure the Swordmasters are in position to take advantage of it. Certainly the rest of the HE army isn't currently. Although finishing off the VC right flank in the top of turn 3 is a pretty good achievement for the High Elves.
It actually happened the previous turn, but here we learn of another tactical mistake. The HE BSB was positioned in base contact when they charged Konrad. A slight tactical wheel should have kept him out of combat entirely. I started to type further, but then I checked the army list. The dumb BSB doesn't even have a great weapon, so he wasn't hugely likely to kill Konrad. Still, accepting that challenge was dumb. At least now Konrad suffers the appropriate fate for a character wandering around on his own trying to fight ranked infantry.
I'm again really confused. How could the Silver Helms see to charge the Blood Knights?
I don't know why they would want to either, although the presence of the hero we didn't know was there makes it a little less dumb.
Some good luck for the elves in the magic phase, but not so much in the shooting phase. Combat went well for the elves, as Silver Helm attacks should average less than 1 dead Blood Knight and they dropped 2. I suspect they will get back up in a second though ...
Turn 4
Apparently the last HE magic phase wasn't that good, as the VC phase makes that look like nothing.
Having Vlad in the GG really makes the Banner of the Barrows look dumb, but the shields deliver as the Swordmasters don't inflict damage and break. I thought Vlad would need ASF to break that unit, but the flanking zombies were enough. As expected, the worthless Silver Helms die. But the Blood Knights didn't get back up yet.
Adam makes yet another mistake with the dragon and doesn't charge. He has rears available on multiple units in the center, plus a (riskier) rear onto Vlad's unit. Kill something damnit!
(I missed this when I first read it, but the Swordmasters appear to have ignored the rules and not fled the correct direction. Nearest table edge guys, not continued direction.)
Turn 5
Jim displays some magic accumen, finally using single dice castings to make troops. But then instead of healing skeletons or Blood Knights, he casts a magic missile. This would be smart if it was cast one of the foolish Mages wandering around, but instead he goes for the worst possible target - the dragon!
Looking at the picture, the Blood Knights appear to have illegally marched when returning to the table.
Three round of combat fought, no VC magic used, full models fighting each round, and the HE spearelves still cannot finish off a skeleton unit that started combat at the same size. I'm not surprised, but when they cannot fight through nearly their ideal target, why do people ever field them?
Despite that he is clearly winning the game as this point, Adam feels panicced? So after ignoring opportunities for rear charges previously, now he makes a frontal charge when facing Blood Knights in the rear?
Let's examine the losses so far.
VC losses:
Konrad, flying vamp, necromancer with corpse cart
zombies, 2 summoned zombies, direwolves, vargulf and one skeleton unit about to die.
HE losses:
Silver Helms and their hero
one RBT
The tiranoc into the flank of the Blood Knights might be a good move to help cover the dragon, but it could bring the Blood Knights into range to kill the Swordmasters, depending upon how far through the woods the pursuit takes them. But the chariot fails fear anyway.
Star Dragon does worse in combat than I expected, but the ring meant really killing Vlad was extremely unlikely anyway. Breaking not exactly a surprise. Again, how can you ignore the rear charge last turn and take the frontal charge this turn?
Turn 6
Finally Jim does something right with Manfred. About time those foolish HE Mages died. But the summon into the flank of the mounted Mage was stupid, as creating them behind the Mage to catch after he autobreaks is more certain victory. And he certainly didn't need to use the big spell, and risk the miscast, to kill that Mage. Raise Dead would have the same affect.
Conclusions
Adam finally explains his stupidity with the dragon, and admits it was dumb. I feel a bit better about that now, but it still doesn't justify the extremely foolish frontal charge.
Jim admits his own foolishness about not killing the HE Mages sooner, but he makes no admission of his massive other mistakes. Adam made mistakes, but Jim played horribly. I think this is a good example of how NOT to play a VC army.
Review of my list review
The flying vamp. As I guessed, 6s to hit means he still dies. Used terribly.
Necromancer on corpse cart not placed in a unit, therefore dead and useless.
The minor equipment choices I didn't like appear to have been useless, but we don't have the details to know for sure.
Star Dragon equipment ineffective against Vlad. Maybe the armour kept the Prince alive.
Amulets of Light, Fire, both shields, Guardian Phoenix, magic resistances banner ... all worthless as expected.
Spearelves were in fact too small and fled.
16 archers (8 each unit in second rank), and all their command upgrades (226 total points) had zero value this game.