Tactical Discussion: Since our core suck...
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Yep. Blinders on. Skeletons do bleed combat res, but bring a ton of ranks to negate steadfast.
Zombies bleed way too fast. Way way way too fast
Ghouls are just too costly.
We covered this awhile back in the thread. If you are busing a character on foot skeletons are your best delivery system when 5 wide
Zombies are your best bunker to hide mages in.
Zombies bleed way too fast. Way way way too fast
Ghouls are just too costly.
We covered this awhile back in the thread. If you are busing a character on foot skeletons are your best delivery system when 5 wide
Zombies are your best bunker to hide mages in.
You should be winning combat, because you should have a vampire in the unit generating CR for you. But your right it doesn't matter if you are running character-less(why?)
Sounds like they got put in a bad match, target priority is still important, regardless of character inclusion.
Against a lot of stuff VC don't really have a viable answer in Close Combat.
Sad but true, there's a reason we are a middle of the road army.
Against a lot of stuff VC don't really have a viable answer in Close Combat.
Sad but true, there's a reason we are a middle of the road army.
Vipoid said:
The thing with the infantry bus is that you expect it to lose combat.
For a few rounds.
And after a few rounds, and your blender lord and support characters have shredded 30 enemy models, you can start to win combat.
Don't think of the skeletons as a unit to win combat, think of them as wound counters for a blender lord.
The problem with the infantry bus is that it is often too easy for your lord to be killed, which defeats the entire purpose.
That has not been my experience with infantry buses. I don't shove them against stuff that can easily wipe 5+ skittles per round or drop a baby vamp easily.
Scary units are not a foot bus target... Ever.
Scary units are not a foot bus target... Ever.
HeroZero said:
I can see why you don't like my list in the divide and conquer thread. Your mindset and strategy is timid where mine is the opposite, I'm crazy recklessly aggressive. I'm not taking a personal gab. To each their own. Just realize there is many ways to both win and lose.
HeroZero said:
Depends. In the context of this thread, the proper units to deal with scary enemies are disallowed. No BK bus, no dual gheists, etc.
So we're discussing the potential of an infantry bus instead. If you're running a blender lord on foot with some character support in a skeleton unit, and you don't have TGs or a BK bus for support, then your only option for dealing with scary enemies is to smash them with your infantry bus.
It doesn't matter if you lose 35+ skeletons over a few rounds of combat, so long as in the final wash you come out on top. I'll gladly lose three rounds of combat so that I can win the fourth, if winning the fourth means my enemies are destroyed.
Obviously it's much better to put your lord in a BK unit due to the builds available when you start with a 2+ save, the mobility afforded, etc. But if we're discussing a hypothetical situation in which we must use an infantry bus, well, there you go.
Blutsauger said:
I remember 5 edition. I played empire and a friend was vampire counts. He would get 3-4 blocks of Skellys. Probably 20 strong to start out. And he would throw a thrall in each one. And we literally started to view the Skellys as extra wounds for the thralls. Only one rank attacked then so the effect of one thrall was a good ratio.
I could still see this working. Maybe double up on Heroes/ lords in each unit? 2-3 mini Death Stars?
Sure enough when you tie the hands of better choices those buses look a lot better. I would happily put multiple vamps in units if it didn't cost all of the points ever.
If you absolutely must run infantry, the skeleton bus does its job, may lose a few rounds but ultimately doesn't lose as fast as the other choices requiring additional points in support or investment of your magic phase.
If you absolutely must run infantry, the skeleton bus does its job, may lose a few rounds but ultimately doesn't lose as fast as the other choices requiring additional points in support or investment of your magic phase.
Enough of this skeleton mumbo jumbo. Let's hear it for the dire wolves!
By far my favourite unit in the whole game. They look cool (not the OOP models: they look like cuddly labradors); they have str 4 on the charge, can cause disruption if 5×2 which for BK lists can be superb; and with 12 inch vanguard and a possible 18 inch march. ...man! These things can be so distracting, threatening, beautiful and badass it makes me sometimes bring Summon Creatures of the Night. When these puppies end up 15, 20 big, your opponent is left jaw hanging (lvl 4 invo=5 extra each time!)
By far my favourite unit in the whole game. They look cool (not the OOP models: they look like cuddly labradors); they have str 4 on the charge, can cause disruption if 5×2 which for BK lists can be superb; and with 12 inch vanguard and a possible 18 inch march. ...man! These things can be so distracting, threatening, beautiful and badass it makes me sometimes bring Summon Creatures of the Night. When these puppies end up 15, 20 big, your opponent is left jaw hanging (lvl 4 invo=5 extra each time!)
I recently played against a beastman headstone list, and one of my units of wolves managed to kill one of the wizards and maim the others, granted it was against single characters, but there are favourable match ups for anything, just some more than others. Wolves on a charge are great vs hero wizards (depending on placement)
hsnyder said:
Hi! 1st post ever, woooo! I play very few games but am an avid Theoryhammerer.
Anyhoo, with respect to your initial post in this thread, my understanding of your intent is: Assuming core won't bring home the kills (combat res and therefore win close combat), how can core be used productively?
Seems to me that there are 3 things that core does:
1. Fill it with characters to make it relevant;
2. Use it as chaff, tarpits, and/or filling a flank; and/or
3. Leave it ignored at the back as points denial.
Lately I've been trying to make non-bus lists and came up with the same issue you've got. Overall, it seems that core is there to distract the opponent while you bring the heavies into play.
I'm planning to try to throw blocks of zombs or skellies up the center while my killers position themselves. Skellie-chaff in a sense. I'll use a combo of Vargheists, Vargulf, TG, and Blood Knights against an out-deployed opponent. Then I'll see if any of those "killers" live up to the name!
Hey, welcome to the forum.
Yeah you're basically right, the aim of this thread was twofold:
- what clever tricks we can do with our core, given that they're basically quite bad? (other than the obvious)
- what do people use effectively as hammers, given that we cant really rely on our core to win things. (again, other than the obvious).
The hope was to get a discussion going where people share things that have worked for them other than the bk bus/"deathstar", and the double terrorghiest. It seems like those two are the ones that make life easy, but there have been some interesting ideas shared (multiple varghulfs for example).
For a player in a meta where a good game is better than a victory at any cost, its nice to have somewhat effective ideas for lists that don't focus around 1 or 2 units do do 80% of the work. My meta doesn't even like magic vortexes. And honestly, I'd rather win in the movement phase rather than by rolling a handful of dice and getting two 6s, so I don't really mind it.
Actually, I'll share some more of my recent experiences:
- Vargheists struggle with armour but can make quick work of weaker units that don't have high static combat res. Overall they're a situational hammer.
- HW+S skeletons are approximately as hard to kill as ghouls at half the points. However, their damage output is really, really bad.
- Small units of ghouls on one flank do seem to be a great idea. Rather than following your battle line up, they hunt any scouters or flanking fast cav (worst case, they deny points). Ghouls are also an awesome drop cause players seem to assume that you're gonna put an on-foot vamp in the ghouls. Zombies don't really fool anyone anymore.
Yeah you're basically right, the aim of this thread was twofold:
- what clever tricks we can do with our core, given that they're basically quite bad? (other than the obvious)
- what do people use effectively as hammers, given that we cant really rely on our core to win things. (again, other than the obvious).
The hope was to get a discussion going where people share things that have worked for them other than the bk bus/"deathstar", and the double terrorghiest. It seems like those two are the ones that make life easy, but there have been some interesting ideas shared (multiple varghulfs for example).
For a player in a meta where a good game is better than a victory at any cost, its nice to have somewhat effective ideas for lists that don't focus around 1 or 2 units do do 80% of the work. My meta doesn't even like magic vortexes. And honestly, I'd rather win in the movement phase rather than by rolling a handful of dice and getting two 6s, so I don't really mind it.
Actually, I'll share some more of my recent experiences:
- Vargheists struggle with armour but can make quick work of weaker units that don't have high static combat res. Overall they're a situational hammer.
- HW+S skeletons are approximately as hard to kill as ghouls at half the points. However, their damage output is really, really bad.
- Small units of ghouls on one flank do seem to be a great idea. Rather than following your battle line up, they hunt any scouters or flanking fast cav (worst case, they deny points). Ghouls are also an awesome drop cause players seem to assume that you're gonna put an on-foot vamp in the ghouls. Zombies don't really fool anyone anymore.
Since I've mostly only Theoryhammer'd the game, clever tricks with core isn't my forte.
Wrt hammers, have you tried Blood Knights? There was an exceptional post written wrt use of "Cruise Missile" Blood Knights... effectively you throw 'nilla knights at stuff, and you've 12A@S7. It can obliterate specific targets (wizards, monsters?) and gives your army access to S7 atks (non-VL), which alone is opening your options.
As you mentioned, Vargheists are situational; I'd like to build a solid core that can hold out for a bit on its own, with still enough pts for a TG, a Blood Knight missile, 2 groups of 3 Vargheists, and a Vargulf. I don't know that I've the skill to play that well, but it'd be damn satisfying to pull it off!
The link to the post:
https://www.vampirecounts.net/Thread-Running-Blood-Knights?
see p.1, Post #10
Just checked my Mathammer spreadsheet, and for Ghouls relative to Skellies vs. Empire Swordsmen as a baseline and assuming 5 frontage, full ranks for all units:
Ghoul wnds: 2.778 (18.5% chance/atk); Swordmen wnds: 2.221 (22.2% chance/atk)
Ghouls have +3 from ranks; Swordmen have +3 (ranks) +1 (std); gives 5.778 to 6.221; Ghouls lose by 0.443
Skel wnds: 1.389 (13.9% chance/atk); Swordmen wnds: 1.853 (18.5% chance/atk)
Skels have +3 (ranks) +1 (std); Swordmen have +3 (ranks) +1 (std); gives 5.389 to 5.853; Skels lose by 0.464
Throw a Warbanner onto those skels and that's a win! Also important, that's fewer dudes dead / turn, allowing greater staying power to give time to your hammers.
Wrt hammers, have you tried Blood Knights? There was an exceptional post written wrt use of "Cruise Missile" Blood Knights... effectively you throw 'nilla knights at stuff, and you've 12A@S7. It can obliterate specific targets (wizards, monsters?) and gives your army access to S7 atks (non-VL), which alone is opening your options.
As you mentioned, Vargheists are situational; I'd like to build a solid core that can hold out for a bit on its own, with still enough pts for a TG, a Blood Knight missile, 2 groups of 3 Vargheists, and a Vargulf. I don't know that I've the skill to play that well, but it'd be damn satisfying to pull it off!
The link to the post:
https://www.vampirecounts.net/Thread-Running-Blood-Knights?
see p.1, Post #10
Just checked my Mathammer spreadsheet, and for Ghouls relative to Skellies vs. Empire Swordsmen as a baseline and assuming 5 frontage, full ranks for all units:
Ghoul wnds: 2.778 (18.5% chance/atk); Swordmen wnds: 2.221 (22.2% chance/atk)
Ghouls have +3 from ranks; Swordmen have +3 (ranks) +1 (std); gives 5.778 to 6.221; Ghouls lose by 0.443
Skel wnds: 1.389 (13.9% chance/atk); Swordmen wnds: 1.853 (18.5% chance/atk)
Skels have +3 (ranks) +1 (std); Swordmen have +3 (ranks) +1 (std); gives 5.389 to 5.853; Skels lose by 0.464
Throw a Warbanner onto those skels and that's a win! Also important, that's fewer dudes dead / turn, allowing greater staying power to give time to your hammers.
fishdog said:
The math on Skellies/Ghouls vs non-powerful units is first of all correct, and second very, very important. Against enemy elites/strong core (Witches, chaos warriors, etc.) even a horde of Ghouls gets butchered more or less without doing any damage back, and against moderate enemies, the staying power of the Skeletons generally outweighs the added offensive power of the Ghouls.
Three things of note here:
1) Ghouls benefit more from augments/hexes due to their superior combat stats.
2) Ghouls do have some virtue against high T opponents, where their poison plays a bigger role in wound generation. This is especially true against monsters or MI with a large front and poor armour saves.
3) ...and I'll just need to point out that Skeletons can not take a War Banner in 8th edition, since the price went above what's allowed for the unit.
As for the Blood Knight idea, I used to run it back in 7th edition with quite a bit of success, since 4 Blood Knights had a decent shot at killing a Bloodthirster on the charge back then. Nowadays, where a lot of the targets that you'd want to hit with such a "missile" unit have higher initiative, I think the unit has diminished a lot in quality; it still has the same drawbacks in being insanely expensive and relatively easy to shoot, which coupled with no longer striking first on the charge just makes for a far inferior unit than they used to be.
Thindol
Grave Guard
Gokamok said:
Skeletons can take a banner of up to 25pts. Warbanners are 25pts. Check yer book again lad.
I also don't think it's fair to mathhammer since dice revolve around luck and luck never follows averages. I just spent the last 20 minutes rolling dice and 85% of the time the ghouls won. You also have to take into account fear check. The human swordsmen will fail their fear tests roughly 50% of the time on 2d6 at LD 7. That means they hit on 5s and wound on 5s. You have to take that into account if we are examining things in a bubble with no outside influence. That's why I don't think theoryhammer is a legitimate way to predict results.
Thindol said:
Mathhammer does work pretty well, when you calculate things based on the situation you'll likely be in (or, put more precisely, the situation you're trying to test). For example, if I wanted to use a block of ghouls and a block of grave guard side by side to hit the "center" (ish) of my opponent's battle line, I'd expect the opposing unit to be in rage of a gerneral, bsb, or both. That's why I ignore the fear. In a role farther away from the center, the fear starts to come back in, and the math looks a little tastier. However it's also harder to ensure the ghouls will hit what we want them to hit, etc.
I'd say in my experience, there's one or two really unexpected events in a game (in the sense that something that was totally improbable happens), but for the most part mathhammer is a reliable guide/model provided you keep it framed in your mind as such.
If I accounted for luck, I'd never play the damned game ever! My last set of dice are still awaiting the melting that I promised them.
But if Mathammer says you're about to lose by 13, then you shouldn't test your luck on that!
The point about Ghouls, fear, and center-vs-flank positions argues for Ghouls doing skirmishing work even more. Has anyone tried putting Ghouls in smallish groups on a flank? I'm thinking monster-hunter sort of thing, or whatever else is high T, poor AS and could fail a fear test.
But if Mathammer says you're about to lose by 13, then you shouldn't test your luck on that!
The point about Ghouls, fear, and center-vs-flank positions argues for Ghouls doing skirmishing work even more. Has anyone tried putting Ghouls in smallish groups on a flank? I'm thinking monster-hunter sort of thing, or whatever else is high T, poor AS and could fail a fear test.