conversion / lore questions

[Woolly.Mammoth]

I'm familiar with 40k rules but i haven't started WFB yet and I have some conversion questions.

I want to make some black knights as vampires on undead horses. Is this too much against the lore? Do they have to be skeleton knights on skeleton horses? If so I can make them blood knights i guess and come up with something else for black knights.

I want to make crypt ghouls as humanoid patchwork zombies with poison daggers. Would this work? What if i made them lesser vampires with poison daggers?

I heard there's something like a potion that makes a unit fly. If i took a model and gave it wings is that not a good idea if they technically have no other means of flying?

If I want to play at games workshop do i have to bring only models mostly based on GW models? I think maybe 100 non-GW zombies might be risky but what about a non-GW hero?

 

[Blutsauger]

My only problem would be that there are already Vampire Knights in the army, and there are already Zombies in the army.

I personally couldn't see lesser Vampires acting like Ghouls. Blood Knights are lesser vampires, and look at them! But it's your army, so whatever floats your boat.

I can't think of any potion that gives flight. We have a vampiric power upgrade that allows a character to fly, and wings are perfectly acceptable for him. We have a spell that allows units to move in the magic phase, but I wouldn't bother modelling wings on your models to represent that.

 

[Borgnine]

As far as I heard, WFB is much looser when it comes to WYSIWYG - you can convert many many things and as long as they are in similiar size, on the right bases and your opponent knows what is that it's all fair game. You can add wings to your vampire guy and use that model even if he doesn't fly in that particular game - they can be a decoration or a real power of flight. Reversly - you can give the flying power to a vampire without wings and say he turns into a bat when flying an then morphs back. Of course, there are rules and guidelines in the book, but in the end, they are Your Dudes and as long as you keep the beforementioned minimum it's totally good.

As for playing in GW stores - it depends on a particular store - in some of them you can get away with heroes or fillers or simple additions that are not from GW and in others you won't be able to use that particular hero because his shield isn't GW - there are different kinds of people there. You'll have to find out.

 

[Burnanation]

Base size is key for your models. I can't site a page, but in past editions as long as the model was on the correct size or larger you were good.

i.e. A vampire lord on foot normally 20mm x 20mm could be put on a 25x25 or 100 x 50 or whatever.

Same idea would hold for the height. The hand of a vampire sticking out about 5mm from the top of the base, or an ME only 2 or 3 cm tall wouldn't work, but I think that most people give some wiggle room when it comes to the "big" models.

I wouldn't paint up a bunch of wolves and say that they are special vampire wolves that feed on the fallen vampires and therefore have the stat line of blood knights... but at the same time as long as that's clear from the beginning, I'd allow it.

 

[Woolly.Mammoth]

So bigger bases is okay? So if my lord ends up a little girthy and I put him on a bigger square, thats np?

I can see how smaller bases would be weird, trying to stick a zombie dragon on a heavily weighted 25x25 seems like an attempted exploit.

height worries me. Crypt Ghouls are about as tall as a slouching hobbit, that doesn't leave a whole lot of room for conversions. I wanted to make them much taller, like a humanoid-on-a-rock tall. Is this not allowed? Or is it only forbidden in the sense that you cant make a unit shorter in order to more easily exploit cover?

I agree that vampires are strong in the lore, so I should choose something else. I have an idea I'm excited about, and it involves lightly armored humanoids on normal steeds w/ swords/lances & shields. I can easily convert them to skeletons, ghouls, zombies (or any humanoid) but the skeletal horse is limiting. I think i will make them zombie knights on zombie horses, maybe pulling away their flesh and exposing some bone to represent their lesser nature compared to Barded Nightmares.

I like the idea of having skeletal (hexwraiths) zombie (black) and vampire (blood) knights.

And for my humanoid crypt ghouls, maybe familiars trying to prove themselves to their vampire lords ~ complete with bloody bite marks and slave collars.

Ive seen units with larger versions and decorations, whats the situation with that?

Example: a unit of zombies, but in the middle of the unit, a larger base with zombies crawling over scenery. is that legal in the rules?

Another example: a "giant undead" in the mix. could i say he represents 4 zombies on his larger base? or in a pack of skeletons, could i make a big one and call him the champion?

 

[Markond]

Borrowing an idea from the World of Darkness Sabbat then perhaps i have a solution to your vampire ghoul problem. In WoD the sabbat make what they call 'shovelheads' as a type of shock troop. Hit a human (or twenty) with a shovel until they're unconscious, embrace them and then bury them near where you want somebody dead. Come next sunset out bursts a screaming vampire that just had to claw its way out of the earth starving and confused. They usually don't survive their first night but they're effective even without blood to power their abilities. In warhammer terms it would be something very much looked down upon, but given the strigoi sink to similar depths its not unreasonable as an excuse to have more vampiric units. I do think vampire counts need a vampire troops choice, even just for thematic armies.

 

[Blutsauger]

So bigger bases is okay? So if my lord ends up a little girthy and I put him on a bigger square, thats np?

It's a bit of a grey area, and the general rule is that you should use the base supplied, or that that model is supplied with, if you're converting. Like, if you're converting a Chaos Lord into a Vampire Lord, you should use the 20mm base the Vampire Lord is supplied on.

Having said that, going on a bigger base is generally a disadvantage, as it means more enemies will be able to attack you.

Having said *that*, if a model is on a VERY large base (a 40mm base, for example) then he will take up extra positions in the unit that would normally be occupied by rank and file models, which means you may wind up gaining an advantage by having ranks when you really should. No one will be happy if you take a lord on a 60mm square base, and then only take 31 Grave Guard but run them as if they were a 40 strong horde.

A slightly larger base is ok if it's genuinely done just to fit the model on the base, but I'd probably avoid changing base size if you can.

One idea to consider is that if a model is quite large and over-hangs his base a bit, you can position 'blank' bases around him. You can create a range of bases that might have a zombie torso bursting out of the ground, or a gravestone, or a bat or something like that on it, that take the position of (and are treated exactly like) the model in the unit that they are replacing. I tend to use a lot of gravestones like this.

height worries me. Crypt Ghouls are about as tall as a slouching hobbit, that doesn't leave a whole lot of room for conversions. I wanted to make them much taller, like a humanoid-on-a-rock tall. Is this not allowed? Or is it only forbidden in the sense that you cant make a unit shorter in order to more easily exploit cover?

It's generally fine to make a unit taller, as this will only punish you. Making a unit smaller means it can more easily take advantage of cover, so it's a bit risky.

I agree that vampires are strong in the lore, so I should choose something else. I have an idea I'm excited about, and it involves lightly armored humanoids on normal steeds w/ swords/lances & shields. I can easily convert them to skeletons, ghouls, zombies (or any humanoid) but the skeletal horse is limiting. I think i will make them zombie knights on zombie horses, maybe pulling away their flesh and exposing some bone to represent their lesser nature compared to Barded Nightmares.

You could consider converting Empire or Bretonnian knights (there's a very nice Bretonnian VC blog going on at the moment in the plog forum) or you could try hunting down the old skeletal horsemen on eBay

And for my humanoid crypt ghouls, maybe familiars trying to prove themselves to their vampire lords ~ complete with bloody bite marks and slave collars.

That's a really cool idea! I think the Mantic Ghouls would work really well for this, and it wouldn't be hard to model greenstuff collars onto them.

Ive seen units with larger versions and decorations, whats the situation with that?

Example: a unit of zombies, but in the middle of the unit, a larger base with zombies crawling over scenery. is that legal in the rules?

These are called unit fillers. The idea being that the only ranks where the actual models matter are the outside edges, since they determine who can fight who, and how many models you have remaining in the rearmost rank. Inside the unit, you can have as many or as few models as you want, on any sized base you want. Unit fillers are a great way to get larger units without having to buy heaps of models. The only catch is that once the unit is reduced enough that the unit filler has to be removed, you have to replace it with individual models which can be a hassle.

You could make a larger skeleton and call him your champion, but he would need to be on the same sized base as the rest of the unit so that the same number of models can attack him as usual.

 

[Woolly.Mammoth]

Thank you for all the great info.

In regards to unit fillers, this sounds very cool. so its legal to stick a huge grave stone in the middle and make your unit larger? so then in combat if they kill 4 units you could take out the gravestone to represent the 4 models. In some cases you might have to do some swapping to get the numbers right.

So a filler could be anything then couldn't it? Commonly they'd be grave stones, but couldn't you theoretically have a giant skeleton in the middle of a skeleton unit representing a skeleton that's 4x stronger?

Are fillers legal in GW play? I really like the idea compared to 40k which doesn't have anything like this.

this is what i ordered so far:

- A box of 60 mantic ghouls/zombies that I want to try and combine into a giant troop of diverse zombies.
- Some witch elves to convert to Lahmian familiars (crypt ghouls). This will also start a base of GW-leagal core.
- St. Ghoul King bits which I'm going to try to convert into a skyrim/underword2 style vampire lord
- Isabella its a cool model and shes low points. I'll pick up some others when I have the points to fit them in. I can use her as a generic Lahmian lord or vampire too.
- for Black Knights, I'm going to convert some dark riders into zombie knights which I'm very excited about.

not sure what to do next but maybe i shouldn't think too much about it given the entire WFB rulebook is about to change. But assuming that things will be somewhat similar, what units do you think i should get to expand from here?

 

[Burnanation]

Unit fillers are great. They can really add some flavor to your army. I've got a couple.



Here's a Chaos Warrior on a 20x20



As said above, you can put guys on larger bases, but it does hurt you. Don't have the BRB with me, but there are some rules about how a larger base foot print than the figs in that unit should be handled.

To sum it up, larger base or tall than normal is ok, as long as it doesn't give you an unfair advantage is generally OK, but to make your life way easier, try to put it on the original base.

 

[Woolly.Mammoth]

conceptually having 4 skeletons hanging from a tree (filler on a larger base) is the same as having a giant skeleton (filler on a larger base). I think in all cases you'd remove the filler before the unit is 50% dead although I don't know the exact rules yet so I cannot say.

Other than fillers, i don't want to put things on larger bases. But if I have a really awesome large vampire lord its nice to know i can put him on a larger base without breaking the rules. He might get killed easier, but I'm in it for the art not to win games. Truth be told I've spent a couple hundred hours planning, assembling, converting and painting my two 40k armies, and maybe 10 hours playing the game (there are surprisingly few places to play in NYC).

I hope to play a lot more next year as I'll be moving to place where I have room to set up a table and will have much easier access to a GW. Its probably for the best as i hear rumors the biggest changes WFB history are going down over the next few months.

 

[Woolly.Mammoth]

anything else i need to know about fillers? Can i put anything on a 80x80 base in the middle of my unit?

 

[Blutsauger]

anything else i need to know about fillers? Can i put anything on a 80x80 base in the middle of my unit?

Yeah, pretty much anything. I mean, don't try and model for advantage by putting a huge mountain inside your unit and then trying to hide other units behind it. So long as you're modelling in good faith just because it looks cool, then go for it.

 

[Burnanation]

I'm brought back to a very good rule of thumb I read on the forums here a while back.

If it looks cool, do it.

Coolness outweighs lots of other stuff.

 

[Woolly.Mammoth]

I'm leaning twords making my crypt ghoul conversions lesser vampires, as I found lore to support it:

Vampires are those blood-kissed undead who have survived past their blood lust and can now act on their human drives. The older a vampire, the greater their strength and control over their need for blood and is now a powerful Vampire Lord.

"While the crudest of their kind exist only to feed, some lust after temporal power and conquest of the living." (1)

Given Vlads "blood drinker" sword & Isabella's Blood Chalice, we can also derive that older vampires have a greater understanding of blood consumption and it's regenerative effects, whereas a blood-crazed new vampire will know nothing but a lust for blood.

"For the youngest vampires, this unnatural thirst is very strong. At this stage, they are often rash and easily caught and killed by Witch Hunters..."(1)

Also, the kings of ghouls are not ghouls at all, but vampires

"The pallid creatures known as Ghoul Kings are in fact once proud Strigoi Vampires forced into a troglodytic existence." (2)

"In their desolation, many of them lost their sanity completely and became solitary, pathetic parasites, wary of feeding on humans for fear of attracting the attention of witch hunters..."(2)

Its not hard to imagine a pack of lesser Strigoi, once young vampires who never knew more than their crypt-stalking life and with a deep fear of feeding, completely insane and weak, never gaining any vampric healing, having never fed on a human.

In regards to Blood Knights, they are not lesser vampires at all. They are the bravest and most honorable of the the Order of the Blood Dragon. Now as vampires, they continue their own personal pursuit of honor and loyalty, as vampires are free to pursue their own once-human drives. They have the same S, T and LD as any vampire hero. Their WS, I & A are lower, which we can attribute to the limitations of charging on a steed. As for their lack of Wounds, I'd say that the fact that they have shunned their own innate magical abilities as vampires has resulted in a lack of magical vitality.

-So then, you can imagine a group of young weak vampires with poison daggers, in a frenzy of blood lust yet still lacking any regenerative ability, brought to command under a great vampire lord.

-Or A group of mindless ancient strigori, lacking any vampric abilities or hunger, having fed only on impure blood and driven completely insane, and having the same poison attacks as their more powerful (once lord) Ghoul Kings.

(1) Vampires [pg27]
(2) Strigori Ghoul Kings [pg32]