ASF Homebrew Vampire Counts Arcane Journal - updated

[Sception]

I've withdrawn from the homebrew bloodline projects on this forum, partially because I realized my design sensibilities were enough at odds with them that I wasn't really contributing and would only get in the way, but mostly because of the sentiment expressed in this XKCD comic:

Old World has been out for over a year now, efforts in this direction have already been undertaken, and IMO our own efforts, such as they are, are better spent choosing and promoting and playtesting and providing feedback to the best of the existing efforts, rather than adding an entirely new version of the same thing, only further fracturing and fragmenting the landscape, resulting in less likelyhood that any individual effort 'breaks through' to see use across the wider landscape.

And what was already IMO the very best of the homebrew Vampire Counts arcane journals out there, the one from Always Strikes First (link), recently received a major update and revision that includes in particular more detailed bloodline and vampyric power rules and army variants, with an effort to both enable more precisely themed 5th/6th edition style bloodline armies while retaining and still offering goodies to the more individualistic 7th/8th/oldhammer versions of vampires. It's very cool stuff, while remaining fairly true to official Old World design, to say nothing of the included vampirates variant army, which I haven't delved into as deeply yet.

LINK HERE

There are of course areas of concern and critique. Off the top of my head it does things like allow lahmian vampires to take tomb kings archers without accounting for the fact that the two armies technically have different undead rules and don't interact properly, or likewise to allow lahmian's to take a few bewitched mortal heroes even though such units couldn't join undead units - though that might be intended? These are extremely minor contentions though, not fundamental problems with the approach or what's included (though, again, I understand my approach isn't really completely in line with others here). There are likely balance concerns, especially as Vampire Counts are already among the strongest non-Cathay factions so any addition to them needs to be very careful, etc, but that's something that can only be ironed out via playtesting what's there

All in all the bloodline rules here look very good, a big step up from the previous version and very much the kind of thing I believe we wanted to see, and again I think we'd do more good promoting these rules and providing feedback to refine them, maybe even reaching out to ASF to see if they'd be interested in collaborative efforts (not just rules feedback but also eg artwork, photos of painted minis, lore snippits, pdf layout formatting, etc, in order to make the document more closely resemble the appearance and format of the official AJs), rather than trying to reinvent this wheel from scratch. I strongly encourage any old world VC players here to take a look at it and post their thoughts / send them on to ASF.

 

[Disciple of Nagash]

I've just read through the linked rules in detail, and there's definitely something interesting there.

It's probably worth referencing that CN's bloodline armies, which of course I have an element of bias with having help create and test those rules in the 7th/8th were created for a very specific reason, which I think the Always Strikes First list comes close but doesn't quite resolve. Many players got bought into the bloodlines, both their strengths and their limitations. Creating a quick beguiling Lahmian army that was hampered no amour (inc magic) or weapon options, or Necrarch's powerfully magical but quite poor in combat. Through the iterations of our homebrew constant feedback was to keep a Bloodline army just that - limited to only one Bloodline (with the exception of a specific Carstein power which made sense). For those players who were not bothered and wanted to mix it up, well the core book did that perfectly fine.

At the moment that was the ASF list misses for me, unless I'm misreading, only the Strigoi have some limitations in terms of only having Strigoi vampires. The additional options some list have don't really appear to have any downsides - apart from notably the -2WS in Nehekhara’s Noble Blood.

I do appreciate your point however - too many people try to create competing homebrews risks diluting the whole with less acceptance by the community. I would absolutely love to see if the author will be willing to collaborate with us on this. Do you know much about them Sception?

 

[Disciple of Nagash]

So I reached out to ASF and they are interested in collaborating with us! Just discussing how but will be fun to see what we can create together

 

[Sception]

So I reached out to ASF and they are interested in collaborating with us! Just discussing how but will be fun to see what we can create together

That's fantastic!

To answer your earlier question, no I don't have any connection to ASF and have not interacted with them in the past.

.....

Regarding restrictions on bloodline vampires, yeah I think that's the main thing that's missing. I don't think it needs to be elaborate or to go overboard with it though. personally I don't think most bloodlines need stat modifications outside of specific powers, and I like the model here where ancient powers are divided by category & theme rather than bloodline, with specific bloodlines being specialists in specific themes (ie, having a different category that can take duplicate powers) while being barred from access to others.

My main thought is that there should be some sort of encouragement for necrarch and lahmian vampires to not take armor in light of the existence of the Square Based Renegade Pack. Outside of the Renegade pack such an incentive/restriction isn't needed since in the pdf on its own vampires can't cast in armor and those bloodlines are going to want casting ability. Arguably there the issue might be giving blood dragons a reason /to/ wear armor.

Again, though, and I know I harp on about it too much, but I try very hard to promote that renegade pack, which I think does a ton for the playability and enjoyment of legacy factions in general, arguably for all the other ones even more than for us. And that pack lets vampires cast in armor, which again creates the need for necrarchs and lahmians to have some other reason not to.

The quickest and easiest ways to do that that I'd suggest for the rules as they are is tacking on 'may not wear armor' restrictions to 'Nehekhara's Noble Blood' and 'Quickblood', while reducing both of their costs by 5. In contrast, I might tack on a 'may not cast spells (with no restriction on dispelling) onto red fury?

This would require necrarch and lahmian vampires who want to take the biggest draw powers of their bloodlines to skip armor for the privilege (& conversely force blood dragons to skip casting for theirs, which then encourages them to wear armor at all in non-renegade-pack formats), while still allowing for atypical vampires within those bloodlines who do take armor at the cost of those iconic abilities. Which I think is important! I don't think every vampire in a bloodline army should be a lesser clone of their progenator. In addition to being way less interesting, that also just doesn't fit with the lore and the fiction that we have. Vampires are far more individualistic than that, their powers related to their personal flaws and failings and obsessions, with similarities within bloodlines more about the tendency to seek out scions who already have similar dispositions rather than the blood re-writing the personality of the recipient or powers being purely inherited.

After all, the most famous bloodline, the von-carsteins, had an iconic dracula type at it's head, but with a bride who was more lahmian and two most notable scions who were respectively more necrarchy and more blood dragony in their kits and abilities. And while I'm not as familiar with Lahmians in old world fiction, in AoS stories Neferata occasionally has some very martial type armored blood knight lady vamps working for her.

.......................

My other thoughts on the pdf as it is are...

1. The strigoi list feels like it's missing something for lack of a lower tier vampire hero. I'd like to see a 'ghoul prince' type hero, restricted to the strigoi army specifically, filling the role of 'vampire thralls' for the other bloodlines
   
   
2. There needs to be some sort of callout for how rules for skeleton archers and maybe swains (if they're meant to be able to join undead units, they might not be) work in lahmian armies given incompatibilities with the vampire counts undead rule.
   
   
3. I would like an option to mount Neferata on a coven throne. This was never a thing in old rules, if only because neferata didn't have playable rules during the editions where coven thrones were a thing, but it just ~feels right~ in terms of the character's personality, disposition, and aesthetic. Obviously there might be balance concerns, but I'd like an old world version of Neferata to retain some of her AoS centerpiece grandeur. Maybe this one's just me.

I'm not sure I have any more feedback than that without playing the stuff yet. The ancient powers and Bloodline entourage as presented are already very much what I personally wanted to see out of bloodline rules. Though again, I understand my sensibilities aren't necessarily in line with the rest of the vamp count community here. I was after all an old warhammer undead vet who never really got onboard the vamp counts / tomb kings split to begin with.

........................

In terms of collaboration, I'm so far out of the art game that I don't think I can contribute there, sadly, but I could work on getting some models painted for pictures, make copy edit passes, try to get some testing in.

I also would like to incorporate some of the work into side projects, not in the sense of copying/reprinting ASF's journal but instead referencing it. The two homebrew projects I most want to work on for old world are campaign supplements - one re-telling the Von Carstein wars, and one an original campaign in nehekhara with Khatep and Khalida repelling a seige of Khemri by Arkhan and Neferata while Settra & most of his loyal vassals are away in the north.

The former would include special character rules for the Von Carstein family & their most notable Imperial adversaries, & I'd love to just reference ASF's arcane journal rather than coming up with separate rules for a Von Carstein army of infamy since I think they already did a better job of that then I would and because again I don't want to have a bunch of different conflicting versions of the same concept running around.

The latter would like to reference Neferata and the lahmia content for the same reasons, which would free me up to focus rules work on Arkhan and his own variant tomb kings army, along with Khalida and Khatep.