Vampire Lord - bully or assassin?

[TeflonTron]

What I mean by the title of the thread, is do you see your combat vampire lord as a rank and file killer supreme who slaps around multiple models per turn with impunity or do you use him as a way of seeking out and shutting down the elite characters that the enemy army has? As we all know we struggle against any unit that can hit hard, whether it be Witch Elves, Black Orcs, Savage Orcs, Chaos Warriors (I'll stop there as the list will get very long!) but our lord can rack up such a huge amount of kills that he can swing it back in our favour. Alternatively he can go toe-to-toe with virtually any combat monster in the game and things like Dwarf Lords, Ogre Tyrants or Orc Warbosses are made humble indeed.

So - bully who keeps our Core in the combat or moon-kissed god of the night who stares down whatever the enemy can chuck at him?

 

[von Tebring]

Disclaimer: Im not, what one would call a pure winner at warhammer...

...but i will give you my five cents....

Either option is good, but I get a feeling that its hard to get it righ.

You do a troop killer lord, and he will eventually end up in a combat that you will be either losing big time, and his extra attacks wont swing it much, or you will be wining big and the oponent will already be loking for snake eyes.

You do a character killer lord, and a skilled oponen will shut down you important movment spell and tarpit you, or even if you go character killing, going toe to toe with a killer lord toled up to similar points is still a gamble, he might as well kill your lord, and poof there goes your general...

Im more and more inclined towardsa support style character, preferably a good wizard, with enought survivability and damage out put to at least give some support to its units, and leave the killing to our units, Vlad looks great on paper for this, or a other vampire caster for 2500 points game.

Again, most of my ideas convince me on paper but goes wrong when i play, so dont give to much credit to my opinion.....

 

[Jacques Dauger De Cavoye]

What are you talking about? I don't see why a Vamp Lord can't do all of these, as well as being a caster. Everyones favorite Red fury Tricksters shard vampire can kill any hero, does enough damage to swing combat in your favor, and can cast level 4 spells. your also looking at 2+/4++ on average at toughness 5. He can kill everything. Sure some armies might see him running into a road block, but even i fhe dies some else can take up general. Personally I feel a hybrid lord is the best choice.

 

[fjhamming]

In my experience casting proved to be too unreliable to have that on my undead general. Therefore i even played a combat vamp in 7th.

Combat vamp that kill RnF can turn fights in your favor (big time, if they kill eleven sword masters and therefore also reduce the rank and take away their steadfast.)

Duel character with dreadknight also seems very viable. One could still take a second red fury vamp hero to do the sword master slaughter, and take the nasty chaos characters and possibly even assasins with the vampire lord. Then after the dual is finished he may continue and help the mass murder RnF sequence.

 

[Sharkyman]

My lord is everthing; except magic-heavy. I use the master necro for that.

Offtopic: I'm unsure about that setup btw... Save 100p, but all eggs in one basked.

 

[Gokamok]

In my opinion it's quite possible to make a character that fills both roles quite well.
You'll want Red Fury and Quickblood in any combat oriented build, so for powers, it comes down to the choice between Dread Knight, Beguile, Fear Incarnate, or saving a few points. I'd personally go Beguile all the time, since it's awesome for challenges, and doesn't force you to spend your gazillion attacks on a unit champion, like Dread Knight does.

I find that Nightshroud is incredibly good on a Vampire Lord, since it takes away most of the threat from enemy troops (S3 Swordmasters aren't that scary), and since most challenge-characters tend to have +S weapons as well, it's quite good for that purpose too.
Add in a potion of Strength for the tough challenge (or the combat where you REALLY want to butcher that cavalry bus in one go), and then sprinkle with offensive/defensive gear as you see fit.
If you're into the fun department, Warrior Bane (yes, the 5-point weapon that noone uses) could probably make Star Dragons and Bloodthirsters cry.

So, maybe something like this:

Vampire Lord
-Red Fury, Quickblood, Beguile
-Nightshroud, Dawnstone, Warrior Bane, Potion of Strength
-Heavy Armour, Shield
414 points (add magic levels to taste, or mount him if you feel like running a bunch of Black Knights with him)

Probably more challenge oriented, but I guess that killing 7ish rank and file a turn should be enough most days anyway

EDIT: Bloodthirsters are still problematic if you're not mounted, or if they have killing blow.

 

[N1AK]

I tend to build my Lord/Ghoul King to be a unit killer with lots of S5 attacks and then give him the Potion of Strength. The potion has downsides, most people don't play it correctly and declare it at the start of combat rather than the start of the turn. Thus you need to tell your opponent that you're using it before he charges, or before you declare charges (and he can either wait or flee) to waste it.

 

[Bravo_10]

Personally, I prefer to just take the Ogre Blade for S7 instead of chugging the Potion. 5 attacks is already pretty awesome, and he can hack through around 8 core models per turn. That should be more than enough to swing combats in your favor, unless your Lord is standing in a unit of Zombies or something. In any case, it's really hard to go wrong with this build:

Vampire Lord
Heavy Armor
Red Fury
Quickblood
Dread Knight
Ogre Blade
Enchanted Shield
Talisman of Preservation
Potion of Foolhardiness

Add a few Magic Levels to accommodate your points level, and you've got yourself a caster-killer of doom. There are few things this lord build can't kill. Maybe an Arachnarok Spider? It's still very possible to do 8 wounds on a T6 creature with this thing. Plus, if you're in combat with a bunch of RnF (and aren't going to get challenged out with Dread Knight), pop the Potion of Foolhardiness for the extra attack.

 

[fjhamming]

If i'm taking dreadknight for a challenge lord (and ogre blade is a logical choice then) i would never consider red fury. As it will be a waste of points quite some time. I'd rather take an extra wound if i'm going to challenge chaos lords.

 

[Burnanation]

Last game I played I used VL on an AT. I tooled him out to deal with rank and file, but he can still put a hurting on any other Hero/Lord.

Magic Level 2 Hvy Arm, Shld, Night Shroud, Sword of Bloodshed, Quick Blood, and Red Fury 564 pts.

Also he ended up with Hellish Vigor as one of his spells.

Each combat he + mount added at 9 or more to each CR. Granted I did pick and choose my targets, so that I could keep him plowing into new units.

Reasons I love this build:

- Always strikes first, always, always (assuming enemy doesn't have something to negate Nightshroud).
- With the exception of some of the greater daemons, an elf or 2, and maybe 1 other non special char he'll always get to re-role to hit.
- Sword of Bloodshed gives him a sickening 8 STR 5 attacks. If he's going to go against rank and file it's going to leave a huge gaping wound. And then the Red Furry attacks.
- Large target + flying = more flexibility in what you can pick to charge, which means you can keep him moving and not getting bogged down.
- The model I converted looks lovely



He's not the best against a "survival Hero/Lord," but not too bad either. We can math hammer it out and he's still pretty darn good. let's look at someone with WS 7+ tough 5, 2+ AS, and 4+ ward. 8 Attacks --> 4 hit, reroll misses, 6 hit --> 3 wounds, 1 saved from armor, 1 saved from ward --> 1 unsaved wound. One more attack! Then the AT gets to go.

From the stat line above you'd have to sink some serious points into any model that has that kind of survival skills. So it's fair to assume unless that lord/hero is sitting on a dragon they aren't going to have too much offensive might. So with loss of STR bonuses because of the Nightshroud, and the VL's Tough 5, that alone can become a pretty big hurtle to do dmg to the Vampire, then you factor in 2+ AS. Far from invincible, but one tough cookie to crack.

So this is my Lord, he can be blown up by a cannon, he can be killed by magic, but that's gotta happen in turn 1 or he's going to wreck some rank and file dudes

 

[Raedwald]

The build i've been using with a lot of success is this;

Vampire Lord
Red Fury, Quickblood, Dreadknight
Barded Horse, heavy armour, lance, shield
Talisman of Preservation, Nightshroud, Other tricksters shard
453pts

Quite expensive, but with a 1+ AS, 4+ WS, and enemies not getting strength bonuses and going last, he is very hard to kill, and with his ASF 5 WS9 attacks at strength 7 on the charge (which you would hopefully get), re-rolling misses and generating more attacks with the enemies re-rolling ward saves, not much at all is safe from him.
This lord can cut a swathe through rank and file, or handily butcher a character with almost no damage done in return, so I love this build. One may want to add more wizard levels, but I feel he's fine as is. (Also got a nice blood dragon conversion based on mannfred for him)

 

[MexiMan]

I built my lord with the idea of both taking out characters, and making mince meat of RnF troops.

Vamp Lord
Lvl 3
Shield, Heavy Armour
Nightshroud, Talisman of Endurance, Sword of Might
Red Fury, Quickblood, Beguile
- 484 Points

 

[MadLarkin]

My lord goes against the biggest baddest mofo the opponent has to offer, which suits blood dragon play style. For that reason I always prefer 5 s7 attacks over 7 s5 attacks. I don't want anybody to have much of an armor save. I run

VL
Red fury, dread knight, quick blood
Nightshrous, ogreblade, talisman of protection
Heavy armor, shield, barded nightmare, lvl 4

I do think red fury is great on challenge lords because most often he'll an enemy character with the extra round of attacks he'll get. Even though he has a good as, and there's no strength bonus for the enemy, 6++ means I'd rather they not have a chance to swing in the first place.