I've been away from this site for some time, but feel better qualified to offer an opinion now, especially having been playing VC regularly (twice a week the last 4 months)with our newest book. I wasn't sure about it at first since I had a huge appreciation for all our old "blood line powers". We ARE very MAGIC DEPENDANT, moreso I think than last edition. BUT, GW/Phil Kelly gave us all the tools necessary to compensate for it. I'm not a powergamer making cheesy lists and have always built balanced lists that are a true representation of what VC should be. Doing that, I still have around a 90% win ratio.
So what do you think of the new book?
- Thread starter Disciple of Nagash
- Start date
-
The masquerade of murder returns! A new game of Vampires Amongst Us has begun. Unmask the killers, trust no one, and try to survive the night. Find out more and sign up now!
As mentioned in some of the above posts, it was an HE army with Teclis and an Ogre army with 3 units of 5 Leadbelchers each that gave me my two very brutal defeats.....HE heavy magic and major artillery/shooting.
I'm coming from 6th ed. I skipped 7th because I really hated our book then. This book is a real big improvement IMO but i still miss the bloodlines 
The book is a von carstein fest for characters and most units. There are representations for sure The ghoul king and crypt ghouls for strigoi,coven throne for lahmia, blood knights for blood dragon, and sadly none for my favorite bloodline necrarchs
The book is a von carstein fest for characters and most units. There are representations for sure The ghoul king and crypt ghouls for strigoi,coven throne for lahmia, blood knights for blood dragon, and sadly none for my favorite bloodline necrarchs 
The real beauty of this book is that you can customize any way you like, this means that you can tool up your vamp so that it fits with one of the bloodlines or make your completely own. I've always been af fan of options and customization.
Hanblack Nagash
Vargheist
jonnoc said:I'm coming from 6th ed. I skipped 7th because I really hated our book then. This book is a real big improvement IMO but i still miss the bloodlines
I still think necrachs should be allowed to take the mortis engine as a mount. That way all bloodlines would have a piece dedicated to them
Necrarchs don't get any special characters. I mostly play Von Carsteins myself, when I'm bringing vampires at all, but even I would have liked to have seen a more equitable distribution of special characters across the bloodlines.
That said, I still prefer leaving the bloodlines as fluff and voluntary army themes rather than a rigidly enforced rule structure. As a Carstein fan, I like that all of the bloodline traits are open, allowing me to build caster vamps following Mannfred's tradition or melee vamps following Konrad's tradition in the same army, something I couldn't do back when Bloodlines were a thing.
It's not like you can't build Necrarchs out of the basic vampire stats & traits. There are bloodline powers allowing for caster-oriented vamps. sadly, they're a bit overpriced & under-powered due to an overreaction to caster vamp dominance in 7th edition, but the pendulum effect is just the way of things with GW. Necrarch-style vamps dominated in 7th, now they've taken a hit in 8th, hopefully they'll be back in 9th.
Additionally, the new book added at least one new option specific to each of the classical vamp bloodlines, with the exception of the Blood Knights, who already had their own unit.
Strigoi (one of the big winners this time, which is fine by me, since they suffered the most under the previous book) got ghoul kings, crypt horrors, and terrorgheists to add to their varghulfs. Lahmia got the Coven Throne. Von Carsteins got Vargheists (although I personally feel they fit Strigoi or even Lahmia better) to add to their black coach and special characters.
Necrarchs have increased their reputation as skillful spirit binders with the Hexwraiths, an interesting and potentially quite effective special choice that calls out the NEcrarchs by name as the first to devise a means of binding this unit of ethereal cavalry. With their spirit binding skills specifically called out, banshees, wraiths, and spirit hosts take on added relevance for Necrarch themed lists. And, of course, there's the new Mortis Engine, buffing magic with its blasphemous tome and borne aloft by yet more ghostly spirits.
There's also some units that, while technically not Necrarch themed, can easily find a place in Necrarch lists if you look at them from the right perspective. While the terrorgheist is thematically more of a Strigoi thing, it provides you with a large flying undead monstrous rare choice to represent the monstrous necromantic constructs that were the bloodline's primary thematic element before the new ethereal theme. Nobody's going to begrudge you running that unridden zombie dragon from your long lost sublist as a terrorgheist.
Also Mannfred, while officially a Von Carstein character, looks and acts an awful lot like one would expect from a Necrarch character, and could provide a strong counts-as option for the Necrarchs. He can even ride an abyssal terror, making him a perfect stand in for that old Melkhior model. He was a cooler character than Nicodemus anyway.
It's not a great situation, I'll grant. I'm certainly hoping that Necrarchs get some more attention next time around (same with Lahmia and Blood Knights). But I don't think the current situation is that terrible, either, and I certainly wouldn't say that the Necrarchs, or any of the bloodlines, really, had been forgotten in the current book.
That said, I still prefer leaving the bloodlines as fluff and voluntary army themes rather than a rigidly enforced rule structure. As a Carstein fan, I like that all of the bloodline traits are open, allowing me to build caster vamps following Mannfred's tradition or melee vamps following Konrad's tradition in the same army, something I couldn't do back when Bloodlines were a thing.
It's not like you can't build Necrarchs out of the basic vampire stats & traits. There are bloodline powers allowing for caster-oriented vamps. sadly, they're a bit overpriced & under-powered due to an overreaction to caster vamp dominance in 7th edition, but the pendulum effect is just the way of things with GW. Necrarch-style vamps dominated in 7th, now they've taken a hit in 8th, hopefully they'll be back in 9th.
Additionally, the new book added at least one new option specific to each of the classical vamp bloodlines, with the exception of the Blood Knights, who already had their own unit.
Strigoi (one of the big winners this time, which is fine by me, since they suffered the most under the previous book) got ghoul kings, crypt horrors, and terrorgheists to add to their varghulfs. Lahmia got the Coven Throne. Von Carsteins got Vargheists (although I personally feel they fit Strigoi or even Lahmia better) to add to their black coach and special characters.
Necrarchs have increased their reputation as skillful spirit binders with the Hexwraiths, an interesting and potentially quite effective special choice that calls out the NEcrarchs by name as the first to devise a means of binding this unit of ethereal cavalry. With their spirit binding skills specifically called out, banshees, wraiths, and spirit hosts take on added relevance for Necrarch themed lists. And, of course, there's the new Mortis Engine, buffing magic with its blasphemous tome and borne aloft by yet more ghostly spirits.
There's also some units that, while technically not Necrarch themed, can easily find a place in Necrarch lists if you look at them from the right perspective. While the terrorgheist is thematically more of a Strigoi thing, it provides you with a large flying undead monstrous rare choice to represent the monstrous necromantic constructs that were the bloodline's primary thematic element before the new ethereal theme. Nobody's going to begrudge you running that unridden zombie dragon from your long lost sublist as a terrorgheist.
Also Mannfred, while officially a Von Carstein character, looks and acts an awful lot like one would expect from a Necrarch character, and could provide a strong counts-as option for the Necrarchs. He can even ride an abyssal terror, making him a perfect stand in for that old Melkhior model. He was a cooler character than Nicodemus anyway.
It's not a great situation, I'll grant. I'm certainly hoping that Necrarchs get some more attention next time around (same with Lahmia and Blood Knights). But I don't think the current situation is that terrible, either, and I certainly wouldn't say that the Necrarchs, or any of the bloodlines, really, had been forgotten in the current book.
I was a big fan of the bloodlines and always will be. I hope they fix it in the next book, which will probably be in 4-5 years. I know you can make similar builds of all the bloodlines but expanded rules and units would be great for bloodline specific armies. Just my two cents
There has come WAY more units that's Bloodline specific in 8th edition so I don't really get what you're talking about Kurgan?
The Sun King said:
True. But "WAY" more is not really a lot in this case if one looks at it objectively, and that is the problem. GW managed to both include the bloodlines as well as tear apart their uniqueness at the same time. The bloodlines are there to a very small extent, but there is no flavor to them anymore, as there is nothing unique about any of them any longer, except for the Ghoul King (fortunatly). There are simply not enough unique bloodline units, vampiric powers, magic items, special rules, etc, to distinguish them on the tabletop to any meaningful degree.
The fluff of the "new" book is also quite horrible, in the sense that the "main character" of the book, Mannfred von Carstein, seeems to have turned into a Nagash Minion (and I really dislike having our main character made into a wanna-be minion of a potential other army book somewhere down the line). Even worse, the Mannfred/Kemmler story was the only new piece of history in the book as well, after all these years.. Even though this book might be better than many of the older ones from a pure rule-perspective (and I'm not saying that I think it is great in any sense mind you), at least the older books had some exiting reading in them, leaving you craving for more. This book sure didn't.
There is only one way that GW is ever going to be able to make a decent VC book in my opinion, and that is by increasing the page number from 96 to 128 at the very minimum. I do believe they have the talent needed, but unfortunately the restrictions placed upon them &#¤&" one or more parts of the book up time and time again...
If people want fluff they should read fiction, not rulebooks. Also I really enjoy that they have "freed up" the bloodline powers in such a way that you can build your lahmian or blood dragon, but you can also customize and make up your own bloodline. I really dislike when fluff becomes the basis for rules. It should always be the other way around.
The Sun King said:
Fiction is good, but the fiction of the army books themselves has always been part of what drives the world of warhammer forwards, and have also been the inspiration for numerous novels etc themselves, and just reprinting the old Vlad, Konrad and Mannfred story, and slapping on a new one is simply not good enough, especially if one attempts to give the impression that the bloodlines still exist in some fashion. Paying for the same piece of fluff numerous times is also a it of a rip-off..
Never said I liked the old bloodline vampiric powers system, but I also don't like the new one, as the model you field (lets say you field an old necrarch model) could very well be used to represent an butt-ugly lahmian with next to no magical powers at all, powered up with the ever popular red fury for a nasty and unimaginative surprise... I think some powers should have been left to each bloodline, to retain their individual uniqueness, while some should be more generic in nature.
That is not even my main issue with the vampires themselves in the book though. I hate it that the vamps are undead (ie. have the same selv preservation instinct as a zombie and are subect to crumbling), and the fact that spells are far more likely too keep their wounds topped off, as opposed to the "hunger" special rule. Vampires crave blood damnit, not support necros with a healing fetish... This is a good example of failing to make rules that cater to the fluff, but you can't really change the vampire fluff all that much and still call the book Vampire Counts can you?
I agree the fluff was lacking, and that a Manfred who feared and opposed the influence of Nagash resulted in both a cooler Manfred and a cooler Nagash (yet another reason why in my mind the 8th ed Manfred works better if you just rename him 'Melkhior' or 'Nicodemus').
So yeah, fluff wise, somewhat lacking. But rule wise? I don't want to have to choose one bloodline for the entire army, and have that lock me into 'just' magic vamps, or 'just' fighty vamps, or 'just' vamps who aren't good at anything much at all.
About the only thing I wish was different in the book regarding the Vamps is that I would have liked to see a couple more lahmia-esque powers, and I would have liked ghoul kings to be named something slightly different and given the full magic options of the lord (up to four levels, alternate lores), because a level 4 ghoul king would fit the necrarchs a lot better than a level 4 vamp lord, imo. That and a more diverse special character selection.
But in general, yeah, I'm one of those who prefers the bloodlines to be more a fluff thing (and again, I agree the new book dropped the ball there), rather than a rules thing.
Then again, my preferred version of the undead was the old, pre split undead book, where vampires weren't the overwhelming emphasis to begin with, just the fightiest of your various character options.
So yeah, fluff wise, somewhat lacking. But rule wise? I don't want to have to choose one bloodline for the entire army, and have that lock me into 'just' magic vamps, or 'just' fighty vamps, or 'just' vamps who aren't good at anything much at all.
About the only thing I wish was different in the book regarding the Vamps is that I would have liked to see a couple more lahmia-esque powers, and I would have liked ghoul kings to be named something slightly different and given the full magic options of the lord (up to four levels, alternate lores), because a level 4 ghoul king would fit the necrarchs a lot better than a level 4 vamp lord, imo. That and a more diverse special character selection.
But in general, yeah, I'm one of those who prefers the bloodlines to be more a fluff thing (and again, I agree the new book dropped the ball there), rather than a rules thing.
Then again, my preferred version of the undead was the old, pre split undead book, where vampires weren't the overwhelming emphasis to begin with, just the fightiest of your various character options.
Uziel said:
I don't mind Vampires being undead (It's kinda their thing
), however, I agree that they shouldn't crumble as easily as zombies. It seems like they should have some resistance to the crumbling wounds - such as being able to take saves against them.I also agree about the healing thing. 6+ for The Hunger is just pathetic. if it was 6+ per wound inflicted or per model killed, then that would be a different matter. However, a straight 6+ may as well not exist. 6+ is only good if you're rolling a d20. In addition, I'd expect the Ghoul King to have a better 'the hunger' to represent their savagery.
Thing is, I wouldn't mind if there was some way to improve this. Why are there no Vampire powers that improve The Hunger roll? Why can't we purchase Blood Drinker to improve it to 4+? It's a good idea, but utterly wasted in its execution.
Like most things,it is flawed.I like this army book better than any previous one.I do miss the bloodlines from 6th,all they really need to do is make some bloodline specific vampire statline templates.
I'd like a blooddragon who is not a wizard.just give him ION/VH's as a bound ability.I did like the bloodline specific powers,but I want more options,not less.Some powers would just be better for some bloodlines than others.
I'd like a blooddragon who is not a wizard.just give him ION/VH's as a bound ability.I did like the bloodline specific powers,but I want more options,not less.Some powers would just be better for some bloodlines than others.
Count Lasombra said:
I like the current VC book better than the last one as well, but wholeheartedly agree that a more varied stat-line as well as differentiating the magic lores available to the various vampires would help give them a bit more flavor. This is exactly what I have done in the Bloodline Legacies project in fact.
It also annoys me a little bit that our current character options as far as vampires go, MUST be wizards.. This is not in line with the fluff, and in some cases, just serves to keep the cost of vampires higher than neccessary...
I've never played any previous editions, but I love the VC book.
I feel as though everything is a legitimate choice and can be strong in its own role. I agree that it's unfortunate that we don't have more abilities on par with Red Fury and Quickblood, but eh? It doesn't bother me. Id rather have those abilities rather than have them replaced with weaker versions to make more builds playable.
We have some of the coolest models in the game. Terrorgheists, Mortis Engines, Coven Thrones and Blood Knights. So many awesome models.
Our characters suck and the lore(not the magic lore) is somewhat weak? Yeah, true. It's sad that almost all the characters we have the options to play are dead.
Overall, it is my favorite army and my favorite book.
I feel as though everything is a legitimate choice and can be strong in its own role. I agree that it's unfortunate that we don't have more abilities on par with Red Fury and Quickblood, but eh? It doesn't bother me. Id rather have those abilities rather than have them replaced with weaker versions to make more builds playable.
We have some of the coolest models in the game. Terrorgheists, Mortis Engines, Coven Thrones and Blood Knights. So many awesome models.
Our characters suck and the lore(not the magic lore) is somewhat weak? Yeah, true. It's sad that almost all the characters we have the options to play are dead.
Overall, it is my favorite army and my favorite book.
I haven't played the new book yet, neither have played VC's since 6th edition. The only thing that actually bothered me is fluff-related. I feel that Vampires are underrepresented in the book. They are represented as Lords&Heroes(ofcourse), Vargheists/Varghulfs were once Vampires and ofcourse Blood Knights. Blood Knights don't seem cost effective anymore, which leaves the Vargs~. Here comes my probably very personal problem, Vargheists are fine, but Varghulfs are drawn to Strigois(fluff-wise)which bothers me since I want to run a more "pure vampire"-list and field more Vampires. Don't really know if I'm making sense here, I'm very tired, but anyone understands and feel the same I guess my point is made.
Things I like in the new book;
Black Knights
Hexwraiths (for a Ethereal themed army)
Not as much reliance on our General.
More Synergy in the list.
More customization throughout the army.
Things I'm not too sure about.
Wraiths and Banshee's
Blood Knights (never been a fan really)
There will probably be more once I've reread the book tbh.
Black Knights
Hexwraiths (for a Ethereal themed army)
Not as much reliance on our General.
More Synergy in the list.
More customization throughout the army.
Things I'm not too sure about.
Wraiths and Banshee's
Blood Knights (never been a fan really)
There will probably be more once I've reread the book tbh.