Zombie Slaves for the Dark Elves

[Heinrich of Mousillon]

Alas, the forces of Heinrich Von Carstein of Mousillon were crushed by Dark Elf Raiders raiding an important barrow containing many sleeping servants.

It was a 1000 point battle and it seemed at the beginning to be a glorious day for the undead...at least until turn 2. Turn 1, the vampiric forces go first and create a unit of zombies that are then bolstered to about 20 zombies. No charges yet. Then it's the Dark Elf turn. A unit of spearmen containing a sorceress stay back defending a fence and their general moves with his Cold One Knights along my left flank, however I have a unit of Cairn wraiths and banshee in their path but out of scream range (and yes I did realize HUGE error of sending my wraiths against the one thing that could kill them rather than the Hydra).

Magic phase for the Dark Elves...miscast! Yay! Sorceress takes a wound and can't cast anything!

Then it was Turn 2. My Grave Guard, specially designed to fight and kill the Hydra, move close enough for me to use Vanhel's Danse Macabre for a flank charge! 6 Flaming attack at strength 6, how could it survive? I rolled 4 1's and 2 2's to hit...........NOOOOOO!!!!! The Grave guard was killed in my opponent's combat phase.

This and the horrible deployment of my wraiths were perhaps the main reasons my forces were massacred... The only thing on the board by my opponent's turn on Turn 6 was my general who was incinerated by a fireball...

One highlight i am proud of is that i had created a unit of about 35 zombies (which were also incinerated).

The only victory points i got were for wounding the general and sorceress and squashing a fleeing unit of Corsairs.

I am happy with the list, though it does need a little tweeking and was very unlucky.

Any suggestions on how to fix or improve this list?

Heroes:
Vampire (General) - 195
Walach's Bloody Hauberk, Master of the Black Arts
Vampire - 200
The Flayed Hauberk, Sword of Kings, Infinite Hatred, Supernatural Horror

Core:
Skeleton Warriors - 136
15, Full Command
Crypt Ghouls - 88
10, Crypt Ghast
Dire Wolves - 48
6

Special:
Grave Guard - 154
10, Seneschal, Standard Bearer, Banner of Hellfire

Rare:
Cairn Wraiths - 175
3, Banshee

 

[Campbellstein]

In small battles little things can make things quickly go wrong, but hey, you can play another one pretty quickly.

I think your characters are the main part that needs adjusting. terror is pretty nice, but not all that great against high Ld armies and there is better choices. I would also suggest dropping the sword of kings and taking something else, maybe sword of might or battle, i prefer battle with infinite hatred, use it to carve up rank and file (probably 4/5 kills against most stuff) for a potential auto-break from fear. the sword of kings will only come in handy very rarely and your GG all have the killing blow affect anyway.

I would also probably drop the banshee and get back another wraith. in small battles wraiths are awesome due to low magic offense, so the more attacks the better. the scream can quickly be muted by high leadership opponents and she adds virtually nothing to combat resolutions. you want to max their combat resolution as that is probably the only weapon the enemy will have to kill the ghosts.

these are just my tips, i havent played many 1000pt battles, so i would also like to learn from people comments.

 

[Heinrich of Mousillon]

Ya, I realized taking the Sword of Kings was a bad decision when all he got to fight the whole battle (and was subsequently killed by) was a Hydra.

Taking the Sword of Battle would have helped because even with infinite hatred he always missed one attack and didn't wound the Hydra at all, though maybe the Sword of Might would have been better...

 

[Campbellstein]

the sword of might, obviously against the hydra would have been a help, those things are hardcore and the extra strenght means more wounds and less armor save. shame about your graveguard fluffing their jobs up, but thats why the dice gods make the world so fun.

what is the weapon skill on a hydra these days? maybe you general could try being more defensive and using the helm of commandment, the higher WS of the Graveguard should reduce the amount of incoming hits.

one thing i did notice about your battle report is you didnt say what you did with all your zombie summoning. I would hate to make judgements but I have seen battles lost due to the player getting distracted by something cool that they can do, like raising a shambling horde whilst the rest of the army get mullered.

 

[Heinrich of Mousillon]

What i had done was in the first turn spawn a unit of zombies and then used Invocation of Nehek to strengthen their number, hoping to block a charge from his Cold One Knights, however his Corsairs took the bait but fled when they got flank charged by my wraiths, of course after they had killed all the zombies...

Then I spawned another unit of zombie (the one that got increased so much) and used them to catch and destroy the fleeing corsairs (the only unit I managed to entirely destroy).

Then I had them try to charge the sorceress unit hoping to autobreak them as they were quite close to the board edge, however she killed about half of the zombies with a fireball spell (forget the name) and enough were killed off to not auto break the unit.