Vampire Counts vs Orcs and Goblins 2,400pts

[Mangaroca]

Hi,

I am a beginner in the world of Warhammer but the hobby is quickly taking more and more of my time. I have only played twice with my Vampire Counts but every game I learn a lot of new things and I try to do better. The outcomes are not always satisfactory but the fun is simply amazing.

This Saturday I will play against my friend's Orcs & Goblins army. We have set the point limit at ~2,400. I have been preparing for this for a long time and the upcoming battle took most of my "thinking power" I know O&G are very good in Close Combat and their new Army Book is considered by many to be overpowered. The guy I'm playing against is also more experienced then me. However, I (think I) did my homework and upgraded my army slightly by buying new units. Please, have a look at the list and layout below. What do you think?

Unit List:

1x Mannfred the Acolyte
1x Vampire Lord (Master of the Black Arts, Dark Acolyte [can I even take two Vamp. Powers on the same Character??])
2x Cairn Wraith & 1x Tomb Banshee
5x Hexwraiths
3x Vargheists
20x Skeleton Warriors (Wailing Banner or Screaming Banner)
30x Crypt Ghouls
20x Grave Guard & 1x Wight King (Banner of the Barrows & Armour of Destiny)
20x Zombies
1x Corpse Cart
10x Dire Wolves

You can see my Layout attached below.

The idea is to advance forward and catch him in the 30-Ghoul trap, surrounding his middle units by Skeletons and Grave Guard. My two heroes will IoN GG, SW, CG and Z. I have 20 more Zombies I will summon in the course of the battle in a desired place. Left flank is mostly Ethereal. I will try to brawl with Vargheists, scream and Chill Grasp with Cairn Wraiths + Tomb Banshee and flank and finish with Hexes. That's the idea at least Right side is more of supportive with Dire Wolves trying to lure his Fanatics out and the Cart helping Vamp Lord with the Unholy Lodestone. I do not know what units exactly he will field but he did mention he has more Goblins then Orcs. I do know he has a Giant and a Troll. His general is an Ork on a Hog . Magic-wise, because Mannfred is a Loremaster I will swap the spells every round, trying to cast Winds of Death and Curse of Years. Depending on the Vampire Lord's spells Manny may as well summon the 20 remaining Zombies later. Both wizards will have Signature spell to support the regeneration of my troops. I have never played with an or against an army of this size so I don't know what to expect but if I resurrect my units faster than he can kill them I could win this...

OK, what do you think? Please, feel free to comment on the layout and my ideas. Are they all totally wrong? ;> I hope not...

Thanks!

 

[hairyjeff]

1. Avoid black orcs
2. use ethereals & wolves to pull out fanatics
3. don't let him flank you
4. don't use zombies in multiple combats
5. watch out for steadfast enemies- they can ruin your day.
You don't have a serious killing machine vamp, which could be a problem against a kitted up orc lord. Also, grave guard are a little small to my mind.
good luck.

 

[Powl]

Yes, you can fit multiple Vampiric Powers on the same character.
I would field the zombies & skeletons, and even GG only 5 wide to have more ranks and limit the number of enemy models in base contact. Put the Vamp Lord with the ghouls or skellies to increase killing power of the unit, and get through all the ranks of goblins. Agree with hairyjeff, a Lord tooled up to fight is a must have IMO, one bad magic phase and you'll have a problem.
Keep the corpse cart closer to the grave guard and ghouls, they will benefit more from the ASF because they will get rerolls to hit. And maybe deploy it at the front, it only has M4 so it will be left behind if Vanhels doesn't go off.
Split the wolves in 2 units of 5.
Be careful not to have the Vargheists make a frenzied charge (and be destroyed by fanatics), so keep them close to your general for higher ld or deploy them facing away. Usually OnG outnumber you, but there may be a weak flank that your Vargs can smash through and then attack from the rear/flank.
Good luck & enjoy!

 

[Mangaroca]

Thanks for the clues so far. Keep them coming!

I have updated the initial layout of my army. Does it look better now? It surely feels better - the mid became stronger, the units are now easier to manouver and both flanks can go out in search of the Fanatics...

Have a look at my updated attachment! The circles are the IoN ranges.

Thanks!

 

[Powl]

I don't have the army book with me, which one is the general, Manny or the Lord?
Maybe move the zombies next to the skellies, and put the vargs on the flank / behind the zombies or wolves; they can move 20" and can fly. Then maybe Manny can be placed somewhere behind the skellies; he & the Lord can heal each other using the Lore attribute (should it be necessary) and you can fit more units into the march bubble. As it is now, I feel Manny will be very exposed as the vargs will fly away and the zombies are not much of protection.

 

[excessiveswagger]

I play O&G as my first army and just moved to VC to mix things up a bit so I know quite a bit what makes them tick . Here is what to watch out for

Lords

The greenskin army has rubbish leadership so you will often see players making sure their general has the stuff to stay alive, a dead greenskin general and the entire army can be heading for the hills in seconds (I know). At 2400 points expect a level 4 caster and perhaps an orc lord as well. Most common caster is a lvl 4 savage orc shaman with shrunken head which ill get to later.

Advice: Is your vampire lord a lvl 4? If not you will struggle to get any spells through. Mannfred may look great with his loremaster but with only +2 to cast an enemy lvl 4 will shut him down almost entirely. Without a lvl 4 to dispel the dreaded gorks warpath spell can wreak havoc (I once had it stomp 7 times and wipe out 2/3 of my opponents army, IT... JUST... WOULD... NOT... STOP...!). Even with a vampire lord level 4 with so much lore of vampires spells available you should seriously consider mortis engine with the tomb upgrade for +2 to casting. +6 from the VL and +4 from mannfred will see you get a lot of critical spells through. Just watch out for the miscast reroll, think carefully before using more than three dice on anything or your VL could be taking a one way trip to the realm of chaos. Mortis engine will also help your regen which i'll discuss later.

Critical units

Savage orcs: You will likely see these bad boys, and equally likely as biguns with AHW. 3 WS 4 Str 5 attacks in the first round makes them a serious contender for hardest hitting unit in the game. Their frenzy will make them ITP so no fear tests either. As if things weren't bad enough your opponent will likely put his lvl 4 shaman in with the unit with an item to give them a 5+ ward save as well. No unit VC can bring to the table can really stand up to these guys in a head on fight, whats a guy to do?

Weaknesses: Animosity + frenzy means if any of your units is in range he will have to take two tests a turn not to charge against his will. Frenzy also means he is forced to overrun. Place direwolves at an angle in front of his unit. He will likely have to charge them and then overrun at an angle. Have another unit waiting to charge his now exposed flank (grave guard, vargeists and crypt horrors are a good bet). He will get few attacks back and you should win combat easily. He will lose frenzy and choppas and so next round will only have 2 str 4 attacks each and also test for fear. If you charged with grave guard your ranks have a good chance to deny steadfast and his overrun often takes him outside leadership range. You thus have a good chance of breaking the unit and running it down for an easy 400+ victory points and the loss of his main caster which may well win you the game then and there.

Black orcs: Will often take flaming banner to handle your regen. Impressive offensive capability but usually not so great defence unless they use sword and board. Keep your monsters and monstrous guys away as he will take out his great weapons and demolish them. Tying them up with zombies until you deal with other threats is probably your best bet. That or duke it out with GW grave guard which you keep raising back.

Night goblins: O&G versian of tarpit, he will try to engage your best units with them so dont let him or you will be there all game. Throw some skeletons at them to keep them busy all game and forget about them.

Squig herd: Amazing offence, worthless defence. Too bad VC have no shooting. Use regenerating guys like crypt horrors to take them on as they will really flatten your infantry if given half a chance. Alternatively their inability to ever get magic attacks makes them a perfect ethereal tarpit.

Advice to you as VC

Grave guard can put banner of the barrows on their generic standard bearer, you should always place it there as then they will never lose it. This frees your wight king to take magic items. Use a bigger GG unit than 20, you need them to perform.

Orc and goblin have strengths but armour isnt one of them, their best armour unit is a 3+ save boar boy unit that is often not taken due to innopportune animosity charges. Hexwraiths therefore seem like overkill. Use your cairn wraiths to draw out fanatics and then use them to tarpit a non magic unit. They can also hold up monsters like the giant or arock.

I wouldnt worry too much about warmachines, you can raise back as fast as he can hurt you really.

Good luck!

 

[Tomfoolery]

I also played OnG for years.

Their low LD is the key here. Every game I ever lost was due because of LD 7 and 5 troops failing things like panic and terror. Get one unit running and they'll go in waves.

Kill the General and the BSB ASAP. Do whatever it will take. Snipe them, Purple Sun, Vamp Lord beat downs, whatever. Those two models are OnG lynchpins.

 

[excessiveswagger]

Hey fellow greenskin player always a pleasure meeting another Ay, a wise greenskin player will go to great lengths to protect their leaders as they need them more than pretty much any army except skaven.

Which makes death snipes a bit of a gamble. Unless you take a level 4 death he will counter most of the critical ones. Even if you can get the odd one through magic resistance in the savage unit will make the characters all but invulnerable to it.

Fully agree that taking out general or bsb is a game winner, but be careful not to focus too much on it if they are well protected. Ive won games as O&G before because my opponent spent so much effort trying to kill my defensively kitted leaders that he ignored critical threats like flanking squigs, giants etc that caused huge casualties (never let a squig unit flank you)

 

[Mangaroca]

I died terribly

Thanks all for help and ideas! I'll need to reorganize the army and get a few crucial units.. A dark and cozy coffin for now, though..

 

[hairyjeff]

losing is learning

 

[excessiveswagger]

Yeah, so what went wrong? Tell us and we can help for next time

 

[Mangaroca]

Well... First of all I knew I needed a nice melee hero riding on something fast. I aimed for Vampire Lord on Abyssal Terror but I was told I'd need to wait four weeks for the model... That is why Mannfred the Acolyte joined my army instead. As a Lordmaster I had the opportunity to cast what I wanted and I thought that with my other Vamp Lord (not mounted) who was a lvl4 wizard I will pawn my enemy with magic. Off course I was wrong... Dice rolls were unfavourable and in the end I got using only one mage.

Other problem was the fact that even though he only had one lvl 2 wizard I forgot about the possibility of him having a magic weapon with one of his other heroes. I lost one Cairn Wraith that way.

His only catapult actually scored two hits on three shots (!) and that did not boost my morale

But the worst thing was my Vargheists failing leadership test and charging his orcs because of frenzy... They died instantly...

There is also a problem with Unstable rule... Instead of using it to my advantage (no running away etc.) I keep loosing my troops after they loose the close combat encounters (every point equals a wound). My opponent told me that cavalry such as hexwraiths doesn't charge frontally (doh) but rather from the flanks but it was something I already knew. It was the unstable rule and its implications that I forgot about. Out of my 5 hexes only one survived the round only to die in the next (lower initiative). Units that I thought were "safe" with the enemy I sent them against died out of my lack of knowledge of the rules...

Discouraged by the dice rolls I didn't even try to summon my zombies...

The only two things that worked were the winds of death spell that travelled the whole 24" obliterating his units of goblins and dire wolves which successfully dragged out the fanatics and eventually made them kill each other...

Well, as you can see I have tonnes to learn. Nevertheless, I had a great time! Too bad I was taking more models off the board then my opponent. I will get better though and my revenge will be sweet...

 

[excessiveswagger]

Good summary dude. Ya you need to be careful with frenzy units. If you have a few a bsb is useful to reroll any failed tests. Vargeists arent frontal assault units. With only toughness 4 and no saves they die easy. Use them to kill warmachines and then charge from the rear . Crypt horrors are your frontal unit

 

[Powl]

Spirit hosts are also great; whenever I use them against my OnG opponent, he isn't pleased They pin squigs and trolls (for later screaming at, or just not to have them charge), draw out fanatics and kill mangler squigs without taking hits... but be careful of magic weapons, and lots of ranks. Better luck next time, but a good thing you've had fun and are eager for revenge!

 

[Xander]

We counter literally everything about orcs an goblins. They tarpit? We have a bigger tarpit that heals. They want to fight? We have grave guard and arguably the best fighting characters in the game. They want to fight out characters? Haha nice try... They have fanatics/mangler squigs and we can just step on them with ethereal or just give them zombies. This army has next to no magical attacks save for characters so our ethereals work very. Their leadership sucks too. Kill the general and scream the army off the board. In all honesty when I get matched against an OnG list at a tournament I have already won. (Then again I guess I've played against them for about 7 years about every weekend from one friend). As a beginner like yourself though if I was you I'd try out a blender vampire as your general. Blender meaning something like The Ogre Blade, Red Fury, Quickblood, The Other Trickster's Shard and Talisman of Preservation is a pretty normal build. Basically has 5 attacks at strength 7 with rerolls because of asf and additional attacks because of red fury all while forcing your opponent to reroll successful ward saves for those pesky characters and you have a 4++ ward for yourself too.

 

[rothgar13]

Agreed - bring a blender and some Ethereals, and those greenskins won't know what hit them.

 

[Mangaroca]

My fellow Vampires... I feel like the cold of my grave has been my home long enough... Preparations for my revenge need to be made! As soon as my local Games Workshop opens I will get upgrades... erv:

Thank you all for help and suggestions! I will post my new army layout soon. Please, help me get it right this time! :konrad:

 

[Mangaroca]

Hi,

This is what I came up with:

***

1x Vampire Lord (leading Grave Guard):
- Lore of the Vampires Level 1
- Great Weapon
- Heavy Armour
- The Ogre Blade
- Talisman of Preservation
- Dread Knight (or The Other Trickster's Shard?)
- Fear Incarnate
- Red Fury
- Quickblood

1x Necromancer (Solo):
- Lore of the Vampires Level 2
- Master of the Dead
- Magic Items for up to 50pts

1x Wight King (leading Skeleton Warriors):
- Great Weapon
- Magic Items for up to 50pts

2x Cairn Wraiths & 1x Tomb Banshee

5x Hexwraiths

4x Spirit Hosts

40x Grave Guard:
- Full Command
- Great Weapons
- Banner of the Barrows

40x Skeleton Warriors:
- Full Command
- Screaming Banner

40x Crypt Ghouls

***

Crypt Ghouls are a type of offensive block/bunker. If I'm lucky defining the spells I also have 40 Zombies ready for raising but no Loremaster anywhere so I might not be able to use them. Skeleton Warriors add to the Core Points Pool but perhaps at this size will be able to actually do something (I currently only have 20 of them and their combat logs are appalling...). Wight King and the banner will support the unit. I need your help in deciding what items the King should take. Grave Guard with my Vampire Lord prepared as you suggested would be the tip of the spear. I can see the benefit of taking the The Other Trickster's Shard but wouldn't Dread Knight be better in this situation? Also, the Necromancer would follow this unit solo to IoN fallen GG. I need some assistance in deciding which items I should give him too. Spirit Hosts, according to what I read, are perfect tarpits for non magical enemies (is this true?) so I thought of getting 4 and setting them up as 4 separate units along the front line. Hexwraiths is something I bought earlier but not yet seen it's full potential. Since you said Ethereals are the key here they should consider themselves on board. Same thing goes to the Cairn Wariths and Tomb Banshee which will be a much more offensive version of the Spirit Hosts.

The army is all in "the Green" (2,5k pts) with the points distributed according to the rules. Please, let me know if this is entirely wrong or is there still hope for me and my planning

Thanks!

 

[Johnny-Crass]

Knights are not worth it and IMO neither is fear bomb due to the only units you will fight are ITP

 

[Powl]

Hi there!

looks like a nice list, with big units. Even though the skeletons are not very good fighters, you have 40 so they should last a bit, and maybe deny steadfast to the enemy unit .
For your Lord, I would take the Trickster shard. If you take Dreadknight, you will have to issue a challenge and waste all your ASF + Red Fury attacks on a champion. It's killing lots of models you want with him! Also, taking Dreadknight will take you over 100 pts for Vamp powers. You have kitted the Lord with both great weapon & Ogre blade, you'll only need one go for Ogre Blade to get rerolls.
On the necromancer, I would take a Dispel Scroll or Book of Arkhan, in case you don't roll Vanhels. Maybe put him on a Nightmare for better mobility, in case he has to run?
Ethereals can only be hit by spells and magic weapons. So be careful of characters, they can carry one. Also beware of big units, ranks & a banner will already be CR+4 so they don't have to hit you and still be able to kill you.

 

[excessiveswagger]

Yes lose the great weapon and take enchanted shield instead. This will give you a 3+ 4++ which is pretty damn nice and you will also have rerolls to hit at str 7. You don't really need dreadknight as ws 7 is more than enough for almost everything and you don't want to risk getting challenge locked by cheap goblin heroes and nasty skulkers.

The rest of the list looks pretty good, however with 4 spirit hosts and 5 hexwraiths your cairn wraiths and banshee are a bit overkill and could be swapped for something else imo. You have no monsters so a vargulf or terrorgheist could be good things to invest in. You may also consider swapping the skellies for two units of 20 zombies and spending the extra points elsewhere (like getting a level 4). A couple of ion before combat will see those two units swell

Your biggest glaring weakness is no level 4 and no dispel scroll. Your magic is very weak and your opponent will make you sorry for that with his magic. Upgrade your vamp lord to level 4 at the very least. This will also give you full access to lore of vampires spells and make your ion more powerful. Just don't miscast! :O be very wary of using more than three dice on anything with your vamp lord. However as a level four three is all you need for most spells

 

[kevin.hopkins7]

You can only have 3x spirit host units (3 special choices of the same type).

Edit: Not sure if you meant 4x units, or combined into one 4 strong unit. Either way, you will want them as individual units. This gives you more deployment drops, they're more maneuverable, and one base can do the same job as a larger unit. Solo spirit hosts rock! I'd take 3. Good Luck!

 

[Mangaroca]

Thanks all so far!

I'm down to 3 Spirit Hosts and made my Vamp Lord a level 4 caster. Dispel Scroll lands on the Necro. Those are decided...

However, I cannot make my mind up regarding 40x Skellies vs 2x20 Zombies (+10 Dire Wolves to get back "on the green").
Also, I'm so tempted to get a Terrorgheist OR Vargulf but I'd need to get more Core if I choose to.

What do you think of the above? Oh, and any suggestions for items for the Wight King?

Thanks!

 

[excessiveswagger]

Why would you need more core if you get the monsters? Anyways nice to see your magic on the up . Now many people swear by the terrorgheist but against greenskins it may not be so great. The reason being units are often inside general range and cheap costs means smoking a few guys with a scream isnt such a big deal. What do others think? I think vargulf might be better in such a situation as he will hit on 3s with rerolls with thunderstomp and has regen for 50 points less

As for wight king greenskins generally lack killing blow (except skulkers). Aside from black orcs and bosses with great weapons they actually don't have that much strength either. Thus the toughness 5 of a wight King is pretty good. Tricksters helm forcing rerolls of wounds might be pretty good then and also give a nice 3+ save. If you get it you really only need worry about the warboss fighting him and frankly if he runs his warboss into a unit full of killing blow you have already won

Skellies vs zombies is really up to you. Skellies make a good place to put your blender Lord as they are more resilient than zombies and will help deny steadfast to break the opposing unit. Zombies are a better tarpit. It's up to you

 

[Mangaroca]

Hi,

Thanks for the reply. Hmmm, a few things I don't understand:

1. You said why would I need core if I have monsters... Well, doesn't the core need to be 25% or more of the army's points? Vargulf or Terrorgheist are both rare so will increase the army total points and the already "on the edge" core will become too small.

2. I must be missing the obvious but... where does the Vargulf get the Thunderstomp from? It is not among his Special Rules... (confused)

3. My Vamp Lord will be with the Grave Guard unit (and with the Wight King... that IS allowed, right?) so Skellies would sort of look lonely... I think I'll get the Zombies that all together with Ghouls and Spirits will create tarpits easily flanked by Hexes, Vargulf/Terrorgheist (not decided yet) and Cairn Wraith/Tomb Banshee combo.

This could work... :]