8th Ed. Slaughtering Vampires!

I recently played against some Vampire Counts and did fairly well I think, my saurus matched up very well against his zombies and other rank and file troops and my magic phase was pretty strong with a Slann on my side.

So all that went fairly well for me but my biggest problem was his tooled up vampire lord. Massive WS, high Initiative, attacks, etc. I'm terrified of super combat lords while I'm playing lizardmen.

So what is your advice? Try to take an Oldblood and destroy him 1on1? Just hide from him all game? Try to tie him up with a giant block of infantry?

And since we're on the subject, I'm similarly scared of chaos lords, what do you do against them?

well i play my lizardmen armies with out any saurus, so this advice might not work for u , but it did for me

i usually tend to death snipe heavy combat characters,
or you could go in combat with his unit, and have:

lore of life; 20 tg with toughness 8 and regen, his lord wont do anything
lore of light; increase your ws to 10 and cast -1 to hit in combat

its hard to negate a vampire lord, since he moves as fast as our skinks

as i said in ooooone of my other posts my oldblood build

oldblood
hide of coldones
tali of pres
warrior bane
sheild


has been tested against a lot of vampires as thats what i play against most.
even the dreaded quickblood redfury and ogre blade vamp takes 3-4 turns to kill him and 9/10 the old blood has killed him or reduced his attacks.

the strength 7 from ogre blade still needs 3s to wound then the oldblod gets a 5+ armour save and 4+ward. He then pumps out 5 attacks that hit on 4s and wound on 4s. vamps usually only have heavy armour so no armour save just a ward if they have one. Any wounds that go through means less attacks coming back.

forlustria said:

oldblood
hide of coldones
tali of pres
warrior bane
sheild

Click to expand...

And as I've said repeatedly, Hide of the Coldones is a terrible item. Armour of Destiny plus Dawnstone is cheaper and better.

I disagree with the assertion that vamps tend not to have armour. Lots of combat Vampire Lords are mounted and thus have a 1+ armour save (or maybe 2+).

that your opinion but i stick with mine.

lets take my example fighting a standard vamp lord on foot but with ogre blade and heavy armour.

my oldblood
the vamp needs 3s to hit lets say he hits 3/5 times
he then needs 3s to wound due to t 6 thats 1 and ahalf wounds round up 2 wounds.
i now have a 50/50 chance for armour(4+save) and save 1
now 50/50 for ward save lets say i fail 1 wound taken

your old blood
the vamp needs 3s to hit lets say he hits 3/5 times
he needs 2s to wound thats 3 wounds (likely)
you now have 50/50 (assume you have a shield) 1 amd a half round up to 2 saved
50/50 to save last wound with ward
and fail like mine did(only fair)

so they both take 1 wound so are even. yours relies on a rerollerable armour save mine relies on t6.Now apart from runefang swords mine is more likely to survive weapons with no armour save allowed due to higher toughness.

I wouldnt call hide of the coldones usless it just works differently. their are however in the metagame where im from alot of people taking obsidian blade for no AS due to alot of empire and dawnstones. Ive found away around it.

If my guy survives 1 round then next round its likely the enemy character will have less attacks.

Death Magic + Bane Head, yes. That's your only guaranteed answer for Vamps.

Hex Scroll could be fun. Skinnyboy did it in one of his battle reports. Wait for him to cast something and BOOM, frogged. Then just send in the Skinks.

forlustria said:

that your opinion but i stick with mine.

lets take my example fighting a standard vamp lord on foot but with ogre blade and heavy armour.

my oldblood
the vamp needs 3s to hit lets say he hits 3/5 times
he then needs 3s to wound due to t 6 thats 1 and ahalf wounds round up 2 wounds.
i now have a 50/50 chance for armour(4+save) and save 1
now 50/50 for ward save lets say i fail 1 wound taken

your old blood
the vamp needs 3s to hit lets say he hits 3/5 times
he needs 2s to wound thats 3 wounds (likely)
you now have 50/50 (assume you have a shield) 1 amd a half round up to 2 saved
50/50 to save last wound with ward
and fail like mine did(only fair)

so they both take 1 wound so are even. yours relies on a rerollerable armour save mine relies on t6.Now apart from runefang swords mine is more likely to survive weapons with no armour save allowed due to higher toughness.

I wouldnt call hide of the coldones usless it just works differently. their are however in the metagame where im from alot of people taking obsidian blade for no AS due to alot of empire and dawnstones. Ive found away around it.

If my guy survives 1 round then next round its likely the enemy character will have less attacks.

Click to expand...

I love how you try to math it out, without doing any real math Furthermore you don't reroll the 4+ armor save. That aside, you are right on the point that it is a choice for 1 more T or rerollable armor save

Here is a bit of math for it using your stats etc.

Your old blood vs vamp lord:
Vamp hits on 3s: 3,33 hits
Vamp wounds on 3s: 2,22 wounds
4+ armor save: 1,11 wounds
4+ ward save: 0,555 wounds inflicted

Davids old blood vs vamp lord:
Vamp hits on 3s: 3,33 hits
Vamp wounds on 2s: 2,775 wounds
4+ armor save: 1,39 wounds
Reroll 4+ armor save: 0,69 wounds
4+ Ward save: 0,35 wounds inflicted

There you have it. Using your setup it is better to have Davids old blood. There may very well be other reasons why you want the extra toughness and it does certainly help against stuff that ignores armor saves etc., but vs that vampire lord it is inferior

yeah my bad missed the reroll.
not much in it though really if you took it over several rolls. And in any case I was not saying my is better just i prefer the extra toughness due to the amount of no armour save weapons around.

maths never really allows for dice rolls . I guarentee that against that vamp over 5 combats they both would be wounded the same. the difference is that over several combats mine gets more survivable as he has less attacks coming back

The point i was making is dont judge an item because you prefer what everyone else takes.

Well to reply to the original post, you don't beat him. Blender lords will butcher almost anything in front of them, especially the cavalry versions. So just kill the unit around him. I've had and seen more vampires die from CR by a long shot than were killed in close combat... ok except against killing blow dark elf spearmen. I am cursed against those damned things.

As for taking an old blood against him, I'd just say no. I'm not sure what kinds of lords you're facing but my vampire lords have slaughtered anything put in front of them. In the discussion above there are a few holes.

First, none of the calculations take into account re-rolling to hit nor additional attacks from wounds. Now the second isn't that big of a deal in challenges, but the first means there aren't three hits but much closer to all five.

Second, a lot of Lords are carrying the Other Tricksters Shard now. That knocks that ward save down from 50% to 25%.

Third, Beguile is becoming somewhat popular among some vampires (make a LD check at -3 or re-roll successful hits against the vampire). Inside of the Slann's range that still tolerable, outside it drops to a Ld 5 roll probably with no re-roll for BSB which is only around a 50/50 shot. Miss it and the old blood isn't doing a lot that round.

Lastly, consider the Vampire lore and specifically Hellish Vigor. If the lord gets it, the old blood is pretty much done in two combat rounds. Before people say "I have a slann" take two things into account: at 2500 pts you won't have a completely tricked out Slann and the old blood, he'll be close enough (becalming) but not maxed out; the Mortis Engine adds +2 to all Vampire lore casters so a Master Necro can still get targeted Hellish Vigor off fairly reliably even under the effects of Becalming.

So lets look at this again:

- The Vampire Lord attacks with ASF, hitting on three's with a re-roll resulting in roughly 4.44 hits.

- Wounding on three's will net 2.96 wounds.

- 5+ armor save bring it to 1.975

- After ward saves it's about 1.48

- A more realistic look at it would shake out to around two wounds one round and one the next. The old blood will have a damned hard time surviving a two wound round because as soon a two wounds go through that's two more attacks with the odds above.

In short, feed the damned thing a champion and kill the unit around him. It might cost you a few saurus, but the old blood will drop 3-4 ghouls/skeletons/what ever and help tip the CR difference to the "wiping out ranks at a time" level.



Pyre

If you don't have a tooled out Oldblood WITH buff spells, I don't think I'd bother dueling a Red Fury Vampire Lord. Send sacrificial unit champions at him and try to kill his unit.

There are certain things each army excells at. Few armies have more killy lords. Which should compete against Vampire Counts with what we are good at, not what we are okay at.

ramhorn doombull with other trickstar shard works well =D

yeah been looking at all the vampire builds out there and not sure if any oldblood build is good enough. so death slann with bane head and cupped hands but what powers to give him.

forlustria said:

yeah been looking at all the vampire builds out there and not sure if any oldblood build is good enough. so death slann with bane head and cupped hands but what powers to give him.

Click to expand...

Depends purely on your list. But Ruimination and Loremaster are the two obvious ones. I tend to go light on pts with my slanns because they are so good already and it frees up pts for the rest of the army.

Pyre said:

you don't beat him. Blender lords will butcher almost anything in front of them, especially the cavalry versions. So just kill the unit around him.

Click to expand...

I agree with all that Pyre says on the topic, and you guys also forgot to take The Hunger into account, and the fact that he will be healing every round.

Also if you try to challenge a vamp and he lets the unit champion take the fall, I've seen ghoul kings plow through 9 temple guard in a combat phase with an ogre blade and red fury. Blender lords are frightening when they are eating your rank and file for free healing and ignoring your maxed out defensive lord.

Double flee'ing, cheap redirecting skinks, and overwhelming magic are how I've beaten blender vamps, blender lords and their units take a huge amount of points, dont feel bad feeding them some chaff and burning them with ranged shots, salamanders, and magic.

Ferocious said:

ramhorn doombull with other trickstar shard works well =D

Click to expand...

This only really works well with the ASF sword. Take away the re-roll to hit from the Vampire and the Doombull should take him without much of a sweat. Give him those re0rolls though and it gets a LOT more precarious.


Pyre

Pyre said:

Ferocious said:

ramhorn doombull with other trickstar shard works well =D

Click to expand...

This only really works well with the ASF sword. Take away the re-roll to hit from the Vampire and the Doombull should take him without much of a sweat. Give him those re0rolls though and it gets a LOT more precarious.


Pyre

Click to expand...

playing a doombull without asf sword is like going to the store naked an wonder why u get arrested =')

There are so far only really three lords in the game that can go up against a blender vampire lord and have a stable hope of victory, and unfortunately our oldblood is not among them. And neither should he really, since if you kit them both out to max, the vampire is still double the points.

The lords that can kill him (I find) is the Ramhorn Doombull, Bloodthirster or a Great Unclean one with a Balesword. Anything else just gets slaughtered unless the dice gods say otherwise really...

forlustria said:

yeah been looking at all the vampire builds out there and not sure if any oldblood build is good enough. so death slann with bane head and cupped hands but what powers to give him.

Click to expand...

An oldblood with Armour of destiny, piranha blade, banehead and a shield should be able to kill him with each unsaved wound killing the vampire.

Hebus said:

forlustria said:

yeah been looking at all the vampire builds out there and not sure if any oldblood build is good enough. so death slann with bane head and cupped hands but what powers to give him.

Click to expand...

An oldblood with Armour of destiny, piranha blade, banehead and a shield should be able to kill him with each unsaved wound killing the vampire.

Click to expand...

you would not asf spell or hes dead before he attacks

Yeah, unfortunately the best thing to do with a kitted-out Vampire Lord is skoosh the unit he's with- focus all your magic/Salamanders on it, and then Combat Res will out-do him.

Given the cost of a Blender Lord, if he's not killing a swath of guys he's not earning his points back, so even losing an Oldblood is worth it just to hold him back. Since Temple Guard are nigh-unbreakable, it's easier to wipe out most of the Vamp's unit. For this, I tend to kit out characters with lots of attacks. Since Skeletons, Zombies & Ghouls SUCK compared to Saurus Warriors, so it's easy to stomp on them instead of the Vamps.