Hello, fellow generals of the Cold Blooded races! My room mate has recently picked up a nasty VC army and i'm wondering how everyone would build a list to combat it with the new book. His key elements are: Blender Lord in a black knight bus. Terrorgheist Mortis Engine Two Skele blocks (both with a caster). Couple groups of Hexwraiths and Dire Wolves. All three of his casters use Lore of Vampires. He's got a well thought out and researched list/plan of attack and i'm still trying to find my niche with the new stuff. Things I definitely want to incorporate: Slann (High Magic) - Channel Monkey (200-250 SS range) 2 x 3Rippers Other than that everything else is fair game!
I'd concentrate on getting the hexwraiths and terrorghiest early on, as they can make a real mess of things for lizardmen. After that, the black knight bus needs dealing with. Either avoid or go in with everything, because half measures will end up doing little when they start raising the unit back. In my experience it's quite hard to avoid the black knight bus due to van hels and the fact it's pretty fast to begin with, so avoiding it is out for me (or maybe I just need to learn to do it better!) Therefore, that leaves trying to kill it. If I was designing my list specifically to play VC (I usually play tournaments so this isn't an option), I would probably have a go at taking a tank saurus character to try and neuter the blender lord; off the charge, the black knights don't hit hard at all, with even a minimum of buffs any of our combat stuff should be able to grind them down. Not sure what the tank saurus character would actually look like though... maybe glittering scales + fencers blades?
My thinking is along the same lines. Our first match up didn't go so well for me. His list was very well thought out and mine definitely was not. Lady luck had it in for me aswell (second turn miscast sucked my slann into the warp - SNAKEYES!!!!). I'm toying around with the idea of a "cheap" Slann to squeeze in an Old Blood cowboy with the very gear you mentioned and a Potion of Speed perhaps.
I would go with a big unit of kroxigors and high magic on the slann, use Walk Between Worlds on your kroxigors and place them in front of the Black Knights, and then make more wounds than him! Strength 7 almost remove that armor save A Ancient stegadon should be able to take down that screaming dragon, just make sure he don´t scream first ^^ else just some skirmisher to poisen that shit ^^ hmm hexwraiths, well change a spell to Fireball!!! and make a cowboy to face them maybe? Good luck!
Shameless Self promotion of posts: activate http://www.lustria-online.com/threads/vampire-counts-tactica-detailed.12533/ If you are taking High Magic you want to swap spells out for Death spells. Spirit Leech is a good anti-Terrorgheist and a bunch of other stuff too. If you roll the Caress of Laniph or Fate of Bjuna too you can try to assassinate blender lords. Arcane Unforging should take them down a peg too. Soul Quench should handle the dire wolves and hex wraiths pretty well. If you get one Fiery Convocation on a big block you can probably swap it since odds are you won't get to do it twice. Searing Doom (or better yet Golden Hounds if you roll it) will let you soften up his knight bus. Your local VC player seems a lot tamer than my local meta. Only one Terrorgheist, no walls of Cairn wraiths, skeletons instead of zombies, no Crypt Horrors. I'd be thrilled to fight his army
Lol! He's new to the VC, actually. Only a month into them but he's clever and i'm sure i'll eventually see all of the above. I'm a year into LM but have only faced his Skaven and TK up to this point. I'm very confident with LM vs. those two armies. Then again our "meta" consists of us and my best friend who plays O&G and low point dwarves. Nearest hobby store is a couple hours out of our way so we just set up in the apartment. I really like your work on the tactica(s)!! Very well done!! Seems like it comes down to well placed magic and spray and pray skink shooting, lol.
Played a game against him last night and here's a recap: My list: Slann Priest Disciplines: SoS, BC, HC, FoM BSB: Standard of Disc Staff O Channeling Egg of Quango Skink Priest (Beast) w/Dispel Scroll Skink Priest (Beast) w/Cube Skink Priest (Beast) 3x10 Skirmishers w/Jav&Shield 35 Saurus w/Spears; FC 2x3 Ripperdactyls 2x5 CoC w/Spears; FC 2x Ancient Stegadons w/EotG, SH 33 Temple Guard w/Flaming Banner; FC This fight battle went the full 6 turns with a VC victory of close to 200 points! Much better than my first showing. I'm not used to using so many skirmishers OR skink priests in my list so my movement was handled with two left feet. The Slann was the MVP. Jabba Nootz did nearly ALL the damage as my magic dice were HOT and he avoided the TG unit like the plague. 2nd Turn Terroghiest snipe (Spirit Leech) and a 5th Turn Mortis Engine Banishment. My skinks and priests underperformed mostly due to my inept movement and poor planning. Saurus block was obliterated in the first round of combat against his blender-bus. They took just over 30% losses and fled into a hexwraith unit. The blender is absurdly dangerous! Ripperdactyls were poorly maneuvered/utilized aswell. All in all I feel very confident with this set-up. I just need a couple more games to get the movement of the skirmishers and rippers down.