zombie horde or not?

[Grassman]

Most people argue that zombies are a waste of points because they are crap and can be summoned easily but I still find them quite attractive as an unstoppable horde army. (sometimes you need to see more than only the outside :grin: )
So now my question: Is there still room for a zombie horde army or are they to weak now and how is it best supported?
Has someone tested it already?

 

[Master Vampire]

lol, you kidding? Of course it's possible! If you look at the new rules, it can be great. 4 pts, the extra attacks when a unit runs... it's seems great to me. You can squeeze in a lot of them under 2k, and, correct me if I'm not, they are the only unit being raisable beyond starting size.

In essence, the man difference will be that you won't raise that many zombs per round anymore... But still potentially a unit per turn (20?).

 

[benccowan]

the vampire counts is a teamwork army thier is no point having the zombies without tha nights/beasts etc to smash the enamy in the flanks as the same for there is no point having nights without zombies to keep the enamy in place and seeing as you cant hide your general in zombies anymore your gunna be done by turn 2 with your low leadership zombies crumbling by the second due to your unprotected lord being taken out.

 

[Kovah]

Just doing it in my head i think you can get
Vampire lord
3x Vampires
2x 10 skeletons with full command
9x 20 zombies with 6 of them with standards

And thats with max points on characters

then all you have to do is tool all character for maxiumum magic, have the Noirot sceptre on your lord with Master of the black arts, dark acolyte, extra level, Falyed hauberk and lord of the dead for example
Then and just overwhelm the enemy with 2-3 new zombie units a turn at least, all being bulked up you can easily have over 250 zombies by turn 2 if you play your cards right. The motto would just be - The enemy has to roll badly sometime? right? -
then just let fear kick in.

 

[benccowan]

admitedly yes but three things crop to mind cost (money not points) repetitavness and being boring also (from experiance) shooty dwarfs played well wont evan bat an eyelash

 

[Grassman]

@ Master Vampire: Zombies aren't the only units you can raise beyond starting size. If you use bloodline powers such as lord of the dead you can raise skellies, ghouls, fell bats,... beyond starting size too. It's just that zombies die so easily you will need to summon dozens of them to maintain your unit (we're only speaking of T2 here and WS1 so hitting on 3's wounding on at least on 3's ) they aren't that survivable anymore and I just found out that they are the only infantry that can't be invocked on 3's unless you use the skullstaff

@ benccowan: skellies are better at keeping units locked in combat as they won't need that many support and can lock them up a bit longer due to there AS and T3

@ kovah: the opponent I mostly play is WE so fear won't do a thing, there has to be support, I just don't know what's best and in what proportions

 

[benccowan]

its what i meant i just wanted to keep it relavent

 

[The Dead of Night]

Zombies are a lot easier to kill these days, and much less likely to do any actual killing. This is a problem, because with zombies you essentially win with static CR.

3 for ranks
1 for standard
1 for outnumber

If you also charge to the flank you get

1 for flank charge
no flanks for enemy.


Now the enemy will have a standard, so that is +1 or maybe even 2 for them.

you essentially have a static lead of 4-5

you have 10 models in base contact with the enemy. a 5x5 formation will have 9 in contact with you (including champion).

WS3 S3 Vs sombies

10 attacks
6.67 hits
4.45 wounds.

ie against the average troop you are very very close combat wise. This will usually be fine because as soon as you win a round they run (though you can't persue, so you need to reduce them below 25% or they will be back). But against anything above average, with say S4 or multiple attacks (A2 or spears) or a good magic banner (Ro Courage on longbeards anyone?), or immune to psych (try playing a forest spirit heavy army) you're in trouble.

You really really need to be backing up your zombies with something else. Skellies will at least die less, ghouls might cause a few wounds, BK are always nice et cetera. The pure zombie horde is relitivly unfeasable imo, and even an army with a considerable Zombie presence might find it difficult.

That being said using zombies isn't a bad idea. You do get to raise them above starting level, and they are raised at D6+4. You can take the staff of noriot or whatever for an extra 5 per cast. There are certainly builds that can take good advantage of zombies.

 

[benccowan]

zombies are extremely usefull and great but only for bogging down units and waiting for the big guns

 

[Kovah]

Surely with over 200 zombies the wood elves wont have the upper hand, if they out manouver you then you can raise a unit purly to meet them untill support- flanking zombies or even a vampire with a skeleton unit. Dryads admitingly are pure filth ( i used to play a Dryad army) but with so much magic you may get a gaze of naggesh which only requires 3 power dice, or 2 dice and a skull staff .
Maybe 9 zombie units to start was a little extreme, you could loose 3 and free up 240 pts, that can get you a vargulf- high mobility will cut down WE advantage and its hard.
If you loose 4 units you can get 2 vargulfs- now there is a team.
Just 5 Zombie units to make your horde with enough magical support might be enough as they do what zombies do best, hold something up untill Vampires, wights or Ethereals get to them.

 

[benccowan]

i still think you need to ease up on the hoard idea leave it to the skaven nd goblins

 

[The Dead of Night]

Surely with over 200 zombies the wood elves wont have the upper hand, if they out manouver you then you can raise a unit purly to meet them untill support- flanking zombies or even a vampire with a skeleton unit. Dryads admitingly are pure filth ( i used to play a Dryad army) but with so much magic you may get a gaze of naggesh which only requires 3 power dice, or 2 dice and a skull staff .
Maybe 9 zombie units to start was a little extreme, you could loose 3 and free up 240 pts, that can get you a vargulf- high mobility will cut down WE advantage and its hard.
If you loose 4 units you can get 2 vargulfs- now there is a team.
Just 5 Zombie units to make your horde with enough magical support might be enough as they do what zombies do best, hold something up untill Vampires, wights or Ethereals get to them.

The problem isn't that the WE might be able to avoid them, it is that they will cut them down. WE are exactly what I was talking about when I mentioned more elite troops. The forest spirit army is immune to psych so doesn't care a fig about fear and terror, and they will cut down so many zombies that you will lose every combat no matter how many zombies you have. Then you start crumbling.

In a case like this even your supporting units might be in trouble. The zombies get culled so badly that you lose the combat by 3 (or maybe more) then your special units will start crumbling (every unit will lose 3 wounds).

I'm not saying it isn't possible to win. But you are putting yourself at a big disadvantage.

Write up a legal zombie horde list. Look at its strengths and weaknesses. and do a bit of math on how easy it is to kill zombies vs how quickly you can raise them. and look at how many supporting units you have for your army, how hard would it be to kill them, and force you to rely on WS1, S2 and T2 for the rest of the match?

Throw in some senarios like Vs dwarfs. A couple of units of xbows, an OG a GT maybe?

What if they shoot up your support units? You can't have many considering 5 units of zombies, + very expensive characters (which you are relying on to keep your army alive).

Then consider failed raise attempts and dispells. Then consider that it's usually a good idea to use your PD for more than just keeping your army together.

Then consider that you still have to fight elite troops, with a myriad of anti fear banners and CR options....


Now consider that your main tactical idea, summoning zombies to slow them until your suppot arrives, is also available to a non-zombie horde army.

 

[Grassman]

i think maybe with de right support, that can be hidden in the beginning and than charge in the flank or rear of a unit that's stuck in de zombies, such as unbarded BK, wraiths you could do fine for the main part (except against some real nasty armies like the WE spirit army)
Another question you have to ask yourself is: where am I going to put my vampires? If put in de BK they will lose there great ethereal mobility, make them ethereal and you cannot fully equip them, put them in some ghouls then they will be targetted while the zombies are out manouvred
And as we all know no vamps = no victory!

 

[Trevy the Great]

While this may not be the best army strategically, it would be funny as hell (no pun intended) to play. I mena, why do most people play Night Goblin armies?

 

[The Dark Lord Mr Fluffy]

I'm gonna play a Proper Zombie Horde - 200 hundred to start off with! Then raise more everyturn! It won't even be funny after turn 3! "seems I out number you 2 to 1... Mr Night Gobbo player!"

 

[The Dead of Night]

200 hundred? That IS a lot.

 

[Darci d'Angoulême]

200 zombies leaves 1200 points to do other stuff with too. I think you can make an army simply designed with tons of zombies and some fast moving, hard hitting units. You bog down a unit then hit it in the flank, making it lose combat, then they auto run and you catch them with your fast unit.

 

[N.I.B]

It's usually not a good idea to get stuck in a combat where Zombies are involved. They give away too much CR to the enemy, and that's mostly the reason as to why the Zombie horde is in much worse shape in the new book.

 

[mannfred]

An army is slowly coming to me and it dosn't include any zombies at all in the starting line-up, I'll just raise them when necessary to either stop charges or as a tar pit, other than that I cannot think of any great use for them as anything they can do you can guarantee someone else in your army is better at.

 

[The Dead of Night]

200 zombies leaves 1200 points to do other stuff with too. I think you can make an army simply designed with tons of zombies and some fast moving, hard hitting units. You bog down a unit then hit it in the flank, making it lose combat, then they auto run and you catch them with your fast unit.

Well a Vampire lord will easily set you back 300-350 and a magic heavy one could be as much as 450. then a couple of heros for another 300-350.

now you're looking at 400-600 points left for "support" units. These units, as N.I.B. points out, have to compete with the CR that the zombies give away. With only 4-600 points you can immediately dismiss the idea of wraiths or blood knights. Even a corpse cart at 100pts will eat too much into your remaining allowance, considering these are essentially support only and cant add anything to a combat.

Realistically this army isn't getting you anywhere.

Imo Mannfred has the right idea. You could start with a unit or two, but I wouldn't go much (anything) beyond that.

 

[The Dark Lord Mr Fluffy]

200 zombies leaves 1200 points

I'd use those to buy more zombies - then one vampire lord of killy death and horribly overpowerfulness (is that even a word?), just to see how funny it would be to fight them against each other. 1 vamp Vs 200+ Zombies, now thats fun.
I'd ever field less then 100 per match though, mainly because they are basically my rotting children, and for this I'd never leave them out of a good blood bath. Even if it is a zombie blood bath...

 

[Nethirsalis]

4pt zombies are a true gift to the vampires, much better at bogging down enemies than the equal cost's worth of skeletons. I play most often against chaos, and my opponent is a very skilled player. A unit of 20 skeletons will last about 2/3 turns before the knights will plow through them and begin annihilating things that are more worthwhile. my typical squad of skellies costs me 225pts (with champ, musician, war banner and spears), exchanging the skellies in that tactic for a muddy unit of 35 zombies (banner and musician) seems to keep the knights stuck for 4/5 turns and are only worth 152pts when they die.

your enemy can only cut down one zombie per attack, and loosing a few units of zombies doesn't hurt victory points wise.

I take your point about CR guys, but I think dear Mr Fluffy is right. It would be hilarious!

 

[Rammstein]

In a recent Tourney I played in I took 2 units of 20+ Zombies which did a fantastic job of holding up units. Yea they die easily and can't hit a barn door but it meant that expsensive units were held up whilst the Blood Knights danced around the battle field beating stuff up.

I had kept away from Zombies in my lists to start with but they have jumped back into my heart now.

 

[The Dark Lord Mr Fluffy]

always glad to see someone falling for zombies again!