Beginner VC List - 1500 Points

[Generation_Terrorist]

Tatics
M. Necro goes in zombie unit and raises and replenishes a bunker from turn 1.
Not sure where vamp will go - in with skeletons or GG?
Varghulf - chaff/war machine destroyer and flank hitter
Dire Wolves - drop and war machine/chaff hunters
Skeletons - solid central unit
GG - face wrecker (I hope..)
CH - unsure of their place as of yet. Debating between them and Hexwraiths.

Enemies
Possible enemies include Skaven mostly, but possibility of Dwarves in future.

Firstly, thanks to Aren and Duke Danse Macabre for their help in this thread: https://www.vampirecounts.net/Thread-Yet-another-new-player-clamouring-for-knowledge-RE-first-purchases

I had some thoughts regarding this list which I hoped some with more experience at the game would be able to critique/advise me upon:

1) Is the GG unit big enough to both make an impact and function as a bunker for the vampire? Or is it a better idea to put the vampire in the skeleton unit?
2) Skeletons - spears or HW w/S? I know spears seems to be a poor choice due to lack of both a parry save and a fully formed tarpit (zombies would have to be raised), but would giving the vamp the LoS (in the hope of mindrazor) make this option more viable? Admittedly, I don't really know much about this decision (only what I have seen mentioned as a good combo), and thus am more than likely to go with the safe option, i.e. sword and board.
3) Sort of following on from this point - is LoV the best lore for both necro and vamp?
4) Is the Lvl. 2 upgrade worth it on the vamp, or should I leave him as a purely killing character and save points?
5) Was umming and ahhing about 4 CH or a unit of 5 Hexwraiths. I leaned towards the former to make up for the relatively small GG unit. Wise option over hexies?
6) Master of the Dead worth it for necro?

Many thanks for any advice you can give! Much appreciated.

 

[Aren]

Master of the dead, good good. I am not going to get into the massive skellie v ghoul debate but the more the merrier, even if it is just skellies.
Too much chaff killing. Generally you are not going to care about the chaff, if you really need to kill that unit of slaves then just look at them with nagash (gaze of nagash) and they will run. For skaven it is basically-chaff chaff chaff ABOMINATION chaff chaff chaff RIDICULOUS HERO chaff chaff chaff CANON. What you need is something to kill big stuff. CH are nice but they would need good luck to kill an abomination, most likely they will get pasted in the process. Ergo, I would go rather for a black knight unit tbh, more killy and much better save. Though that would cost more points, so maybe drop lvl 2 off the thrall vamp. Black knights would cost you about 200 ish points (just go no command on them...or command if you can spend the points) but you will love the power. Up to you but from my PoV that army lacks a bit of punch, CH are more survivability than killyness.

As for lores, I adore the VC lore. We have possibly the best signature spell, using it near GG might win the game (6 GG back is amazing...and you can do it every turn!!!) so I would go VC lore every time, raising zombies to stop charges, making your units go ninja fast or reroll to would, aging the enemy and of course giving them a dirty look (GoN) so yeah, I love it.

20 GG is enough....to kill mostly anything in skaven. We are an elite horde , not like skaven who are just a horde.

One last thing: DRACULA!!!!! Turn on Wojciech Kilar's Dracula music and you will win. Every time. Its epic.

 

[Generation_Terrorist]

Cheers again Aren. Edited list based upon your recommendations.

Lords

Master Necromancer (G)
Lvl. 4, LoV, MotD, Book of Arkhan - 245pts

Heroes

Vampire
Lvl. 1, LoV, Heavy Armour, Enchanted Shield, Sword of Swift Slaying, Talisman of Protection, Red Fury - 239pts

Minimum Core

Skeleton Warriors x50
HW & Shield, FC - 280pts

Dire Wolves x5 - 40pts

Zombies x20 - 60pts

Special

Grave Guard x20
GW, FC, Banner of the Barrows - 320pts

Rare

Varghulf x1 - XXXpts

I now have 176 points left over. (Reduced Dire Wolves by 1 model; reduced Vamp's level by 1; gave Necro MotD)

With regards for the BK unit, I'm going to assume that barding and lances are always-taken upgrades. However, that only gives me 6 BKs (1480pts - 7 will push me over the 1500 limit) with no command. Would you say that such a small unit would be very effective? Especially considering the vamp is on foot, and so won't join the unit? Anything else I can maybe cut out/reduce in order to buff the numbers of this BK unit (e.g. lower the number of skellies), or is there another hitty alternative for similar points?

Thanks

 

[Aren]

Well, you have chosen a Master Necro and a vampire hero, a lot of points. At 1500 I would have probably gone for a Vampire Lord but that is just personal preference....Then if you wanted to you could have the lord lvl 4 and still have 50 pts left over or lvl 3 and have 85 pts left over to upgrade him and 109 pts left to add to your 176. Sorry, thats badly explained With a 375 pt lord you get 285 pts for your BK, which should be enough for 10 with lances, barding,hell knight plus standard bearer, enough to kick-ass.

The lord you can make quite blendy, if you are facing High elves then give him nightshroud, red fury and a magic level. Then they dont strike first and dont reroll to hit but you do, they loose their strangth (this guy munches swordmasters) and red fury lets you do some more carnage while you still have a lvl2 caster. Not ideal for magic but every high elf on the board will avoid him like hellfire, they would have to snipe him with shooting (no canons though mwhahahaha) so they would have to rely on bolt thowers and magic. No idea how good a bolt is but it shouldnt kill a lord outright and most of the time he will be in combat, with that juicy unit of GG. The BK are not to be used against HE though, here the crypt horrors work better as when the HE attack first the CH can weather it better. The BK are lethal though to skaven or Orcs and goblins....usually anything that relies on toughness to win the game and not high killyness (dwarves then really). CH use for any army which deals out a lot of damage.

Now here we have two lists really. The Master necro with CHs and the Vampire lord with BK. In the master necromancer one use a corpse cart to maximise the hitpower of your units. Try both lists, see what you like and come back with the pros, cons. The Lord list is very killy and smashes the enemy ( and is quite fast, BK and vargy) and the Master Necro list is tough and hard to kill but it doesn't dish out that much damage ( no very blendy lord and no BK). The Lord list works well against- dwarves, skaven, maybe O&G, Ogres (The lord very much so, though shame we dont have the 1 hit kill blade) while the Necro one is good against empire (canons and shooting and cavalry oh my!) WoC. TK are a bit of a hit and miss, they can be very tough or very killy, really depends on your opponent.
Against HE use a hybrid, lord and CH (which would give you some points for another character or corpse cart) as HE would crush the poor BK (White Lions-s6, asf, reroll to hit...the BK are turned to dust).

Another point....I find that against TK if they bring a sphinx only my TG can kill it, the thing is t8 so GG wound on 6s...which is a shame. They cannot get back up as well as us though, so if they suffer a crushing charge then we can usually out grind the unit. They have low leadership so bring on the banshees and TGs.

I hope that helps, I did kind of reorder your army but that is what I would do....still, there is more than one way to skin a cat, maybe your build is better than mine.

 

[Generation_Terrorist]

Sorry, thats badly explained

Nope, perfectly explained!

I hope that helps, I did kind of reorder your army but that is what I would do....still, there is more than one way to skin a cat, maybe your build is better than mine.

It did, a lot - thanks! And believe me, if my list is better than yours, it's purely beginner's luck!

As I'm going to be facing Skaven quite a bit, I'll head in the direction of the BK/Lord list i think, though I'm going to try and find a way to have a necro in there somewhere, as to me, it's not a VC army without a necro or four raising the undead in there somewhere... :skull:

I'd imagine in ensuing points, if I go the BK route, my lord will eventually get a mount and go in that unit. A quick question if you will about the BK bus, which seems to be the direction this build would go in a few hundred points time: is there a way to make BK viable without committing to the bus (As I'd heard without character support, at higher points their lances turn to rubber)? I'd just feel a little weary about investing so many points into one unit at risk of it suffering from 'too many eggs in one basket' syndrome, as I vaguely recall reading that a proper bus has something like a mounted lord, about 2 thralls and a necro with about 12 BK or something like that? Expensive!

 

[ATP485]

Sorry if I repeat something, I skipped a few posts.

The problem with putting a blendy vampire in with the skeletons is that the skeletons will bleed more combat res than your vampire can generate.

If you put your vampire in with the grave guard he will work well but could also be described as overkill. A unit of gw graveguard supported with magic (rerolls to hit/wound & invocation) should be fine on their own.

If you think about units and heroes in terms of how much combat resolution they can generate vs different WS/T, and how much they give away (remember saves), you can start to think about where to put characters and what roles each unit fills.

Bust out some army summary sheets and crunch some numbers.