They're far from their
whfb peak, but still quite potent. But they share a world with chaos lords directly powered by the dark gods and elven masters who were studying the blade before necromancy was a twinkle in Nagash's eye.
The biggest problem with vampires rules-wise is that they're a jack of trades combination of two jobs that don't really blend all that well in the current rules. casters lose a fair bit of their utility when in combat, while combat characters lose a lot of their durability if they shed their armor to cast spells. And doing both at the same time comes at a points premium that makes the more specialized necromancers and wight lords/kings just feel like a better deal.
That said, while Vampires maybe aren't as strong and certainly aren't as points efficient as they should be, they're still pretty darn strong if built properly. regen plus ward can create a respectable defensive layer even without armor, their stat line is nothing to sneeze at in the context of old world as a whole, and some of the melee spells can be strong especially on top of a decent melee profile & mount. Zombie Dragon, decent ward & magic weapon, level 3 caster, illusion magic with lore familiar to guarantee the melee spell, and you have a very intimidating combat package. Vampire Counts maybe weren't the very strongest dragon riding melee hero, but they were certainly up there, and dragon vamps did post some good event results, and only weren't more popular than they were because of how good necromancers on mortis engines were. As with my comments in the other thread, though, I haven't played since the recent core rule updates, so I don't know if this sort of build is still as good as it was a few months ago.
Apart from that, Vampires problems aren't so bad as to make them non-playable in casual games. While they don't really reach their latter day
WHFB heights, they are pretty true to their oldhammer origins from before the
VC/
TK split, where they were also a maybe a bit overpriced jack-of-trades mix of combat and casting without being top of the game in either category. They weren't bad then, and I don't think they're bad now.
And it takes very few tweaks to make them much better, with a couple notable community efforts to do just that:
The Square-Based Renegade Legacy Pack - a community driven faq & errata for legacy pdf factions, makes a couple very minor tweaks to vampires - they can cast in armor, counts can buy full plate, dark acolyte uses the vampire's wizard level if they have one so a lv 3 vamp count heals the same as a level 3 necromancer. Just these few changes allow vampires to perform their dual caster/combat character role much more effectively. This pack also increases vampire counts leadership to 9, which is both a buff and a debuff since you can't then have a vampire lord to throw into combat and a necromancer general safely tucked in the back ranks, but imo it's a fluffy change and a reasonable penalty to balance out the much appreciated buffs. A few events have used this pack already - admittedly mostly those run by the pack's creators, but that does lend some legitimacy to it. This pack is definitely worth floating to your local play group to see if they'd be willing to run it. Ime it's likely to be accepted if there are other legacy faction players. Skaven, lizardmen, & such are in much more need of help than Vamp Counts are, and benefit much more from this pack than we do.
The pack does probably need another update round after the recent core rule adjustment, but it's not any more out-of-date than the legacy pdfs themselves, so that shouldn't be an issue.
Always-Strikes-First's Vampire Counts Arcane Journal - The best and most complete attempt at a homebrew Vamp Counts arcane journal that I've found, this makes very few changes to the core army list, mostly just a few new magic items & special characters, and the bulk of the document is dedicated to a vampire coast variant army. However, it does adds bloolines back in the form of several new bloodline based vampiric powers. As mentioned, one of the things holding vampires back at the moment is the lack of specialization, so a handful of powers that focus on specific roles and concepts would theoretically do a lot for them, especially if combined with the square based pack above. Blood Dragons in particular get a version of the old Red Fury that should be pretty scary. I say theoretically however because unlike the Legacy Pack above my regular opponents haven't been as enthusiastic to let me try this one out, so I don't have any actual experience with it.
If I have one criticism of ASF's homebrew arcane journal, and the reason why I haven't pushed harder to get my local group to use it, it's that in their effort to keep the core list changes as minimal as possible their bloodline rules are /only/ in the form of new vampiric powers, not any changes to the base stats, abilities, or options of the vampires themselves. A blood dragon count could combine red fury with melee magic. If using the above legacy pack a lahmian count could combine quickblooded agility with full plate armor.
