Best Zombie Dragon Lord Build

[Patrunkenphat7]

Hi all,
What do you think the best build is for the Vampire Lord on a Zombie Dragon? I would never run a Zombie Dragon Vamp Lord at less than 3000 points (and yes, I know most people say it's not competitive and dies immediately to cannons)… So for the sake of this discussion, we will assume it is for a 3000 point list. This means 750 points max for lord allowance.

Here is my proposed build:

Vampire Lord on Zombie Dragon

-Level 4 Wizard, Lore of Vamps

-Lance
-Shield
-Heavy Armor
-Nightshroud
-Talisman of Preservation
-Other Trickster's Shard

-Red Fury

739 Points

I don't feel like I can forgo the level 4 Wizard… I'm just asking to be stomped by the opponent's magic phase if I don't have +4 to dispel. The level 4 invocation is also pretty important to have in an army.

Notable exclusions that I wish I had room for are Quickblood and Beguile. OTS and Nightshroud help this guy slay the large Daemon models.

 

[ATP485]

Some older discussion on zombie dragon builds to get you started

 

[Burnanation]

The major question to ask is, "What do you want him to do?"

If you're going to drop the points on a zombie dragon, you want to get him into combat, and I'd go more offensive. I love the night shroud with quickblood because it means you're rerolling all your attacks.

If you are going for a flying blender, it might make more sense to use an AT, or you might hold off until you can play a 3.5k or 4k to really trick out your VL.

 

[Hanblack Nagash]

Hi all,
What do you think the best build is for the Vampire Lord on a Zombie Dragon? I would never run a Zombie Dragon Vamp Lord at less than 3000 points (and yes, I know most people say it's not competitive and dies immediately to cannons)… So for the sake of this discussion, we will assume it is for a 3000 point list. This means 750 points max for lord allowance.

Here is my proposed build:

Vampire Lord on Zombie Dragon

-Level 4 Wizard, Lore of Vamps

-Lance
-Shield
-Heavy Armor
-Nightshroud
-Talisman of Preservation
-Other Trickster's Shard

-Red Fury

739 Points

I don't feel like I can forgo the level 4 Wizard… I'm just asking to be stomped by the opponent's magic phase if I don't have +4 to dispel. The level 4 invocation is also pretty important to have in an army.

Notable exclusions that I wish I had room for are Quickblood and Beguile. OTS and Nightshroud help this guy slay the large Daemon models.

I do like the build but my personal preference is to drop one level of magic and take quickblood. It very rarely makes a difference in magic phase the lack of one level but your attacks in combat will be much more efficent. Especially with opponent allways striking last you must take full advantage of your hits.

Other than this our builds match. I play this size fight alot, the zombie dragon is great fun when he brings his 3 terrorghesit mates along for the ride too.

 

[Patrunkenphat7]

I do like the build but my personal preference is to drop one level of magic and take quickblood. It very rarely makes a difference in magic phase the lack of one level but your attacks in combat will be much more efficent. Especially with opponent allways striking last you must take full advantage of your hits.

Other than this our builds match. I play this size fight alot, the zombie dragon is great fun when he brings his 3 terrorghesit mates along for the ride too.

I think that's definitely a good recommendation. The extra 5 points I'm dropping from the level also lets me take Beguile which is nice . Pretty sure at that point about the only thing that can take him out is a cannonball… haha.

Vampire Lord on Zombie Dragon

-Level 3 Wizard, Lore of Vamps

-Lance
-Shield
-Heavy Armor
-Nightshroud
-Talisman of Preservation
-Other Trickster's Shard

-Red Fury
-Quickblood
-Beguile

749 Points

 

[Ripper]

For 750 points you could bring 55 grave guard with great weapons, full command and the banner of the barrows and still have your full lord allowance to bring a level 4 lore of vamps master necromancer AND a level 4 lore of death master necromancer AND the black periapt.

I honestly haven't taken any vampires at all in a while, they're just too expensive for what they do.

That said all the builds here look FUN but not particularly competitive.

I'd rather bring a ghoul king with Skabscrath on a terrorgheist and 2 more terrorgheists from the rare slot if I wanted to have fun and not worry about winning.

 

[Patrunkenphat7]

For 750 points you could bring 55 grave guard with great weapons, full command and the banner of the barrows and still have your full lord allowance to bring a level 4 lore of vamps master necromancer AND a level 4 lore of death master necromancer AND the black periapt.

I honestly haven't taken any vampires at all in a while, they're just too expensive for what they do.

That said all the builds here look FUN but not particularly competitive.

I'd rather bring a ghoul king with Skabscrath on a terrorgheist and 2 more terrorgheists from the rare slot if I wanted to have fun and not worry about winning.

While I somewhat agree with you (I have a GG horde list, Master Necro lists, Crypt Horror lists), I think challenging the status quo is important. Sometimes we get too caught up into the classic "dies to a cannonball" argument. if all I did was read Warhammer forums, I would assume every army brought 3 cannons… haha. This dude can get into pretty much whatever combat you want him to, and he is suuuuper hard to kill in CC. I think he is arguably much more difficult to deal with for a lot of opponents than a horde of GG and a Master Necro. It really just depends. Check out some of Matthew Reeson's videos where he does very well with a Lord on a Zombie Dragon.

 

[Ripper]

Oh, I've seen Matt's videos with the Zombie Dragon. He generally just sort of floats about giving off the 12" march bubble. And the best example I can think of, of how this guy doesn't work is the one time I've seen Matt really commit him to combat. He got stuck in a pillow fight with a Demon Prince and had his dragon killed off by a Chaos chariot.

I used to love running my Orc Warboss on a Wyvern, but I didn't do it in competitive games/tournies because he just got sniped off.

I really hate how some armies can put hero level characters on monsters and some can't. A Wight King on a Zombie Dragon would be a phenomenal hero choice.

 

[Melle]

i think you should consider running vargheists with a champ along with zlord, to avoid beeing outchallenged

 

[Warrick El Rojo]

Why not take the charmed shield instead of the night shroud? It will most likely save that first cannonball hit and if you combine him the with a couple of units occasion Crypt horrors to bus him and the TG's into combat to protect from some short cannon shots he should make combat by at least turn 2 and then smash on. Dread knight may be better than beguile as it means that he should get enough overkill + charge and flank bonus to win the combat while the screams takeaway some ref.

 

[Warrick El Rojo]

For 750 points you could bring 55 grave guard with great weapons, full command and the banner of the barrows and still have your full lord allowance to bring a level 4 lore of vamps master necromancer AND a level 4 lore of death master necromancer AND the black periapt.

I honestly haven't taken any vampires at all in a while, they're just too expensive for what they do.

That said all the builds here look FUN but not particularly competitive.

I'd rather bring a ghoul king with Skabscrath on a terrorgheist and 2 more terrorgheists from the rare slot if I wanted to have fun and not worry about winning.

Would you be bunkering the Master Necromancers behind the GG OR putting them in the GG? seems to me that I would risk a charge at the GG with a blender Lord on ZD if it had a few characters in there especially if 1 was the Necromancer general. Wouldn't you charge in? The killing blow shouldn't be a problem or am I being over confident?

 

[najo]

For 750 points you could bring 55 grave guard with great weapons, full command and the banner of the barrows and still have your full lord allowance to bring a level 4 lore of vamps master necromancer AND a level 4 lore of death master necromancer AND the black periapt.

I honestly haven't taken any vampires at all in a while, they're just too expensive for what they do.

That said all the builds here look FUN but not particularly competitive.

I'd rather bring a ghoul king with Skabscrath on a terrorgheist and 2 more terrorgheists from the rare slot if I wanted to have fun and not worry about winning.

If you are familiar with my posts, you will know that I'm all for strong magic phases and using the Black Periapt. But I disagree that vampires aren't worth their points. Next to Chaos and maybe Dwarves we've got the most powerful combat characters in the game. We can still hero-hammer on a good day. Plus, we can keep that power and hybrid into a full blown caster too. I rarely lose my Vampire Lord, and it usually takes everything else getting killed first.

With that said, something Sunny and I have been noticing while working together is that Vampire players have a number of distinct play styles that can be summed up into playing either aggressively or defensively. The tools (units, characters, lores) and what is valuable changes with how you play. Aggressive close combat lists don't really need bunkers or death magic and do best with vampire lore and blenders engaging quickly. Defensive lists keep enemy units in tarpits, redirected and stalled while they snipe out characters and hex the units so their bunkers turned hordes of zombies take things down. In that style vampire lore is supportive while death magic is the primary lore. There is a lot more to it when you start analyzing every unit from both perspectives and it reveals how diverse our army is (which is why our army is so challenging yet satisfying to play).

With this in mind, I think this is why players on the board can have such differing points of view while still all be playing well and winning games.

 

[Warrick El Rojo]

Would you be bunkering the Master Necromancers behind the GG OR putting them in the GG? seems to me that I would risk a charge at the GG with a blender Lord on ZD if it had a few characters in there especially if 1 was the Necromancer general. Wouldn't you charge in? The killing blow shouldn't be a problem or am I being over confident?

I'm missing the fact that of course you can decline the challenge and then get loads of KB attacks! That'll hurt.