Vampire Army for Colonial

So I have played some more games, and I am really liking the Vampire Counts. There are a couple of different builds out there that I think could work, but with the Colonial restrictions it makes some of them hard to run.

So here is what I am thinking for the Colonial:

Vampire Lord- 366
Lvl 1 Vampire Lore, Heavy Armor, Enchanted Shield, Dragonbane Gem, Sword of Might,
Red Fury, Quickblood and Talisman of Endurance

(This guy is awesome, he puts out 5 St6 attacks with additional attacks for each wound he gets through. ASF and with his high initiative will usually get re-rolls. He has a 3+ armor and 5+ Ward which will be a 2+ against flaming.)

Master Necromancer- 255
Lvl 4 Vampire Lore, Black Periapt

(A must have with Vampires in my opnion. I havnet used the Periapt in any games so far, but in every game I wish I had it. I was running a Ward save on this guy, but to be honest, if you get to him he is dead either way. He is not the general so him dying only hurts in the magic phase, and when he has died it has been way late in the game.)

Necromancer- 90
Dispel Scroll

(Just there to spam Invoc. He will just add another 2D6 to any zombie block near him and heal wounds on anyone else.)

Vampire- 206
Lvl 2 Shadow Lore, Heavy Armor, Shield, Dragon Helm, Quickblood
and Sword of Battle

(Lore of Shadow is awesome as we all know, and helps out with combats for the Vampire Counts. Spells like Enfeebale and Withering make my Ghouls and weaker combat blocks a lot more deadly. Mindrazor doesnt help my army all that much with the FAQ making each model use their own WS. Zombies actually get weaker with the spell and Ghouls and Crypt Horros only become str5. So the lvl 2 will be fine with the lower spells anyway.)

40 Zombies- 130
Standard & Musician

25 Zombies- 85
Standard & Musician

40 Ghouls- 410
Ghast

5 Dire Wolves- 40

5 Dire Wolves- 40

(The core is simple really. The 40 man Zombies block is the tarpit, the 25 man Zombie block is a bunker for the lvl 4 and other necros, while the 40 ghouls are a small hammer unit of sorts. The amount of attacks that are posion really help out when the zombies lock someone up. Dire Wolves are good redirectors, warmachine hunters and good at going after skirmishers that are in the way.)

20 Grave Guard- 240
Standard and Banner of Eternal Flame

(Not a 100% on these guys, Colonial keeps you at a 28 model limit of these dudes. No great weapons, mainly becuase mine are not modeled that way, and they can get expensive. I think with 20 they wont get too much attention from shooting, and can still be a pain in the ass. We will see over a couple more games.)

Spirit Host- 45

Spirit Host- 45

Spirit Host- 45

(These guys are the %$@@!!! They redirect, block, and tie up monsters like Hyrdas, Sphnix, and anything else that doesnt have magical attacks and a lot of combat res. With a possible 12" move they can get in the way and fast.)

8 Crypt Horrors- 304

(I am liking these guys more and more as I play with them. They dont hit very hard, but they dont die either. T5 is hugh, and outside of a unit with Mindrazor or great weapons that ASF or have mulitple attacks, most units will have a hard time dealing with 8. Its 24 ST4 attacks with poison and they get stomps. A good tarpit that can still hurt, and will be tough to widdle down unless you through most of your army at it.)

Black Coach- 195

(Great little punch unit. The coach is awesome now that it doesnt take your dice away from your pool and can get ramped up pretty quick. I need to stop throwing it away though. I send it in too quick and it dies from combat res. It should target small units and combo charge with units that wont loose combat by much.)

So thats what I have for now. It may change, but it fits my playing style and can really tie people down if they are not careful. The only thing I am in question about is the GG, I can get 5 Blood Knights if I take them out and drop a couple of points here or there, and I think it would give me another hammer unit. But more play testing is needed.

I would really like to run the Black Knight bus, but I think it is boring and I am limited to 15 knights, and the list I wanted to run had 17 knights and 4 mounted Vampires.

Comments are welcome and encouraged!

As long as your are not a douche or just right stupid stuff with no evidence to back it up.

the biggest thing that killed it that turn you charged was you couldn't get the grave guard into the charge as well. So you pretty much sacrificed it to the Sarus hero cav unit of doom.

I'd be up for playing you with my beast list sometime if you were interested in practicing some more. I'm available mon, tues, sat, sunday Unless I have something come up that i need to do.

No I charged the Ghouls in with the Coach, and with the character rules the way they were the coach got displaced while the challenge was going on. I also only rolled 3 impact hits on D6+1 and did two wounds which he saved with two 6's.

The turn before that I tried to charge the GG into the Cav bunker and failed it by one, as I did with most rolls that were important.

The biggest part of that game that could have swung it my way was the Speed of Light that I needed to dispel and missed by 1....again!! That unit would have broken most likely and put the lords unit and the Crypt horros out of the arc of the Cav.

But thats why we play a game with dice, its all random.

Yeah lets play next Tuesday bro. What time can you get up there?

haha, that is true. I forgot about the ghouls who had charged in. the Coach got displaced due to the challenge?

I can get up there sometime after 2pm

okay Joe is this the same list you used yesterday or are there some tweaks to characters. I like the 3rd spirit host opposed to 2. they can also go kill war machines fast. Yes i agree about the black coach thing we figured that out yesterday. kill small units until its either ridiculous with the buffs or until you get a triple charge on something. I do not like the 20 grave guard they die to fast and too easy in most cases. the killing blow is nice and all but if they kill 1 character and then die due to combat res then there's no point because at that point they aren't worth the points. I think the only way to have grave guard good are with great weapons and in a bunker of like 40+ . That is just my opinion. Maybe try 5blood knights and see how well they hold up against things. The biggest worry with them is war machines will destroy em fast.

Oh btw joe you could have just declined with the champion you didn't need to accept so your black coach could fight. I was hoping you would accept.

Yeah the whole front of the unit was characters. I should have asked who was challenging before I accpeted I wasnt thinking. I will not make that mistake again, I should have just ignored the challenge and the coach would have gotten all of its attacks. Not that it would have made much of a difference, but its me getting into the habit of remembering %$@@ like I used to.

And lets play next tuesday at 3:00, is that cool?

Josh I was just writing that as you posted.

I am still getting used to the rules and the finer points. I should have declined, but I will know for next time.

Great game Josh you played it well and the way you should have.

Have you tried the bat swarms yet? Interested to see how they do.

I agree on the Grave Guard. You could get another good sized Zombie unit out of that and some other smaller units to play games with.

No Bat Swarms yet, I think that the ASL is nice, but I worry about them just adding combat res that is going to hurt in the long run.

I think if you run the Black Knight Bus they would be worth it. The Bus will do plenty of wounds and help out with keeping the bats alive.

In my list, I just dont have enough punch to keep them alive for very long, and the spirit hosts help me alot more.

Hmmm I don't know. Guess it depends if your using them with a Creatures of the Night caster. You can give up what 5 CR with a one base swarm but get 2 CR from the rear charge if they are in the back and that is not counting the attacks if they manage to hit and kill anything? Not sure.

Hey I haven't used them so I can't say for sure. But I also don't use summon creatures either, a bad magic phase or two and they aren't being healed or boosted and that magic could have been spent raising zombies.

So here is the Black Knight bus list I was thinking of running as well. Little less thinking invloved and the bus unit is pretty nasty.

Vampire Lord- 380
Lvl1, Vampire Lore, Barded Steed, Heavy Armor,
Charmed Shield, Dragon Bane Gem, Ogre Blade,
Red Fury and Quickblood

Master Necromancer- 225
Lvl 4, Lore of Vampires and Dispel Scroll

Vampire- 222
Lvl 1, Lore of Vampires, Barded Steed, BSB, Heavy Armor, Shield,
Quickblood, Dragonhelm, Dawnstone and Ironcurse Icon

Vampire- 195
Lvl 1, Lore of Vampires, Heavy Armor, Shield, Barded Steed,
Sword of Might, The Other Tricksters Shard and Quickblood

40 Zombies- 130
Standard & Musician

25 Zombies- 85
Standard & Musician

40 Ghouls- 410
Ghast

5 Dire Wolves- 40

5 Dire Wolves- 40

12 Black Knights- 352
Full Command, Lances, Barding
And Banner of Eternal Flame

Spirit Host- 45

Spirit Host- 45

6 Crypt Horrors- 228

2 Fell Bats- 32

2 Fell Bats- 32

2 Fell Bats- 32

Total - 2493

The characters are not really my build but I liked them so I stole them.

I like this list it has more punch then ur other list in my oopionon

Yes it does and by alot. I also like it because certain matchups become easy wins, barring dice that is.

I think I might test this out and see if I like playing it.

Yea I agree. I love llist with calvary. It will catch people off guard not prepared for it

Heh I think I still have Joe's old Empire Black Knights. Looks good Joe.

Joe sick list when do you want to get a game in I'll play deamons DE O and G just let me know what you want to see...

I'm thinking you should take the re roll banner joe, if only for the way you roll cause you would have won that game easily if you didn't fail those two charges with the cav unit, an alternate thought is going back to running one of the vampires into one of the units and not running all the characters in the one block and keeping maybe 2 vamps in the block of knights keeping their punch and boosting the combat of one of the zombie units. Because if you had one vamp in one of those zombie units you would have had a strong chance of killing knights before doing all the damage they could do with always strike frist. I personally don't like bunker units because if you can't kill anything then you don't really do anything but keep points. the unfortunate fact for that is your zombies and ghouls are really brittle against anything with lots of attacks or a strong save. One vampire in there could easily make the unit become extremely useful though and much more survivable against either the attack and save combination or even both.

Greg it was a great game we played the other day, and yes very frustrating with the Cav bus missing two charges in a row. But that is one down side of running a unit like that, if you get some crap roles then you are up shits creek.

I could have taken one of the vampires out to help with the Zombie or Ghoul block, but with the fact that you had a Dragon lord, Cold Ones and 2 chariots all lined up to overrun each turn together even the Vampire wouldnt have kept them from dying. At best I kill 3-4 knights but Combat res still gets rid of them all.

But I like the list and the bus unit will roll trough a lot of units and can take some damage back.

I would seriously look into taking the banner for re roll charges though!

Greg dont worry at this point it is almost a certainty with the way I roll. If I dont take it my bus will never see combat and will just look pretty on the table.

haha well at least they will look pretty, if you miss a charge with tehm again you should play the song "I'm so pretty" each time they fail a charge. Hahha =P

Touche sir and I will put it on my iPhone for the Colonial and have it ready during each game.

That knightbus is very awesome. John smashed me with a similar unit at the practice for border raids. Also you have crypt horrors, which are awesome. Digging the list, hope you do well!

Thanks Angus, if my dice would just be average at the Colonial I think I might do alright. I will hopefully have battle reports of each game after the event.

Awesome! I love battle reports