My frequent gaming buddy wants to see if he’d enjoy collecting Vampire Counts, so today he fielded his dwarves as proxies for a Vampire Count army. Saurus Old Blood, Carnosaur, Armor of Destiny, Dawnstone, Potion of Fool Hardiness (5), Sword of Striking Skink Chief , Ancient Stegadon, BSB, Stegadon War spear, Light Armor, Shield , Blowpipe Skink Chief, Terradon, Spear, Light Armor, Shield, Blowpipe, Venom of the Firefly Frog, Dragonhelm , Opal Amulet 30 Saurus Warriors with Spears and Full Command 24 Skinks with 3 Kroxigors and Full Command 25 Saurus Warriors with hand weapons and Full Command 25 Saurus Warriors with hand weapons and Full Command 13 Skink Skirmishers with Brave Salamander Hunting Pack with extra handler There were two rivers cutting across the short side of the table on the left. Both turned out to be non mysterious (we house ruled that mysterious terrain in only mysterious on a 5 or 6). A charnel pit was rolled and since I lost the roll off for first terrain placement my opponent placed it in the dead cetner. A windmill (ordinary building) was on the right side with line of fences on right side that provide a minor inconvenience for some of our troops to wheel around. A watch tower was on the other side of the river on the left never came into play. My side left to right: Skink skirmishers, hand weapon Sauri, Stegadon BSB, Saurus spearmen, Hand Weapon Saurus, Skroxigor, Carnosaur, Salamander. Terradon Skink chief vanguard moved forward mostly straight flying around the windmill slightly. A Black Coach was deployed across the river. Then just across the river were 10 Black Knights, then a horde of crypt ghouls, a horde of grave guard, and another horde of crypt ghouls. Then there was a gap in his line followed by three cairn wraiths, one of which was a banshee which I underestimated to my detriment. Next to them was a Vargulf and some a small unit of dire wolves. Behind the grave guard and a unit of ghouls was twenty-something skeletons and his vampire lord who was a level 2 caster with lore mastery of the Vampire lore. LM Turn 1 My Terradon Skink Chief long glides over the dire wolves and kills one with some rocks. My carnosaur advanced up the side. All the Saurus marched forward. The Skroxigor followed wheeling to avoid the building and fences while doing so. My Salamander didn’t have chance of getting into fire range and ended up squeezing between the Kroxigor . The skinks moved up towards the front of the fork in the rivers. Magic Phase: I had no wizards, but I still produce power dice and the Black Coach feeds on both player’s power dice. He sucked a power die away and gained an extra impact hit. Shooting: Skink Chief kills another dire wolf with his Venom of the Firefly blow pipe shots. VC Turn 1 Black Knights charge the skink skirmishers who stand and shoot. The Black Knights fall far short of the required charge range, and lost two members to javelin throws. With the Terradon chief behind the wolves, they failed failed their march test and moved forward unable to run past my Carnosaur’s charge arc. The Vargulf and wraiths passed their march test. The wraiths moved behind my terradon chief. The Vargulf pointed at my Carnosaurs flank barely outside my charge arc. The two ghoul units and grave guard advanced up just enough so two of three of them could gain the benefits of the charnel pit if my units charged them. Magic, I got three dispel dice, versus eight power dice (after he got his two bonus dice plus one channel). He got a really poor roll and failed his first spell. Ending the phase prematurely Shooting: My skink chief takes three wounds from the tomb banshees ghostly howl. The Opal Amulet provided me a ward save against the first wound but two wounds will kill a skink chief. LM Turn 2 My carosaur charged the dire wolves flank, my opponent lamented that undead can’t flee and therefore draw units away. My three Saurus march forward with the Skroxigor and Stegadon following the line hanging back ever so slightly. The Salamander moves around the windmill near where the Carnosaur and direwolves were about to start close combat and angled a shot against the closer unit of ghouls. Magic: the black coach sucks three more of my power dice, gaining killing blow, magic resistance, and hatred. Shooting: The front row of the skinks was in javelin range, scored some hits but inflicted no damage on the black knights. The salamander hits eight ghouls and two skeletons, killing one ghoul and both skeletons Close Combat: The Oldblood easily slays the dire wolves and over runs 10 inches VC Turn 2 Knights and a unit ghouls charge the Saurus on my right flank Saurus, the black coach charges my skirmishers who do perhaps the best stand and shoot roll I’ve seen followed by the best batch of saving throws I’ve ever seen. Then we realize that I forgot to take a Terror test (which they failed despite being within 18” of my BSB), so none of that stuff we rolled happened. Also we negated discovering that the mysterious river was a Raging Torrent (when we actually had a unit reach the river for the first time it turned out to be normal) The rest of the undead blocks moved up a bit. The Vargulf moved forward around the windmill. Magic: I got 4 dispel dice, versus seven base. Black coach stole a power die and gained ethereal. Then he got his bonus two and another successful channeling roll. He threw max dice at Winds of Death getting irresistible force. He killed two Saurus and one of the crew of the Stegadon which generated a three wound spirit host that he put in front of my Stegadon Skink Chief. Then the Vampire Detonated losing the rest of his power die and killing his the skeleton unit champion and three rank and file skeletons. Shooting: the banshee inflicts three wounds on the Carnosaur (the no armor save is painful), and two on the Oldblood (who saves one due to his 4+ Ward) Close Combat: The Vampire lord uses helm of command to transfer his WS 7 to the nearby ghouls. Knights kill two Saurus, Ghouls kill four, skeletal horses killed nothing, Saurus kill three ghouls, Saurus failed to get snake eyes to hold (but got an impressive three). The ghouls restrained and reformed to face the Stegadon chief’s flank. The knights ran the Saurus down. LM Turn 3 Stegadon charges the spirit host, Spear Saurus charge the grave guard, surviving hand weapon Saurus, Skroxigor, and Salamander all charge the other ghouls. The Carnosaur moves to the flank of the vampire’s bunker. Magic Phase: The Black Coach gains Fly completing the maximum amount of powers it can gain from stealing power dice (though it would continue stealing power small amounts of dice for the rest of the game). Close Combat: I did the combat Stegadon chief first hoping I would overrun into the Saurus combat (the spirit host was put there in the first place to try to prevent that). The magical impact hits plus magical lance hits kills them all in one turn and the Stegadon does roll enough to overrun into the graveguard. The Saurus spearmen failed their fear test despite the nearby BSB due to the Ld penalty from the nearby charnel pit. Impact hits kill six graveguard, skink chief and crew kills four more. Graveguard concentrate all possible attacks against the chief and kill him. Saurus killed a bunch more undead and I got one more squashed with the Stegadons thunderstomp (two came back to regeneration saves from the charnel pit). The graveguard killed a whopping 17 Saurus. Stegadon breaks despite Stubborn (once again the one point penalty from the charnel pit screwed me over), but the Saurus hold In the other combat, skinks and salamander kill two ghouls, due to good saves the ghouls only kill two Saurus and three skinks. The Saurus whiff their attacks and Kroxigor kill two ghouls. I won combat by three, causes three ghouls to crumble. VC Turn 3 Ghouls charged the Stegadon who was already fleeing. Stegadons are immune to psychology and cannot choose flee as a reaction. Fleeing units cannot choose not to flee if charged. We ruled that immune to psychology would not apply while fleeing. The ghouls failed a redirect into the Saurus spearmen. The Vargulf charged the fleeing stegadon from the opposite direction. The ghouls caught the Stegadon and barely clipped to my surviving hand weapon Saurus. Due to the Stegadon being dead the Vargulf had a failed charge and moved forward four inches. I forgot about ethereal so the skinks stand and shoot did nothing at all against the black coach. On the plus side the knights failed a test for a swift reform and had to make a regular reform. He forgot to move his other wraiths into shooting range on the Carnosaur. Magic: 11 power dice vs. six dispel dice. He rolled Vans Hels dance to magically move the wraiths into shooting range of the carnosaur (effectively erasing his earlier mistake). I didn’t want him to get another banshee wail off but he got such a good roll on the spell, I wanted to save my dispel dice. He cast an attack spell at the Saurus in the grand melee which I dispelled with all my dice. He then regenerated seven ghouls on the unit in the grand melee with two separate casting of the Vampire lore’s free spell. Shooting: A banshee wails kills my carnosaur out from under my old blood. Close Combat: The black coach slaughters most of the skinks and runs down the last three survivors. The last few remaining Saurus spearmen kill four graveguard, and the graveguard proceed to obliterate the unit. They reform to face the flank of my Saurus warriors in the grand melee. In the grand melee my various skinks and salamander kill two ghouls. Then the ghouls (with WS 7 from the vampire) proceed to kill two skinks, wound the salamander twice, and one take down a Saurus. Saurus and Kroxigor kill three more ghouls. We tied, but I had a musician so I won by one, and one ghoul from each of the two engaged units crumbled. LM Turn 4 My Saurus general charges into the flank of the vampire lord’s skeleton bunker. Everything else I have is already engaged into combat. Magic: No more power dice for the coach to drain. Shooting: Everything I have that can shoot is either dead or in CC. Close Combat: Saurus general drinks his potion of fool hardiness and tears into the flank. He issued a challenge but the vampire refused. My Old Blood killed three skeletons, then two crumbled from losing combat by two points. With the vampire’s unit being engaged in close combat, he couldn’t transfer his weapon skill to the ghouls and my forces did much better than last time. Skinks kill a ghoul. Every ghoul that could attack the Salamander did, but they all whiffed. The rest of the ghouls kill a mere one skink and one Saurus. Saurus and Kroxigor kill another five ghouls. Six ghouls crumble from each unit. VC Turn 4 Vargulf charges the back of the Saurus, Graveguard hit the Flank of the same Saurus. The black knights and black coach are way on the other side of the table so they begin trudging back towards where the action is. Magic: Three dispel dice versus seven. He then proceeds to spend four dice getting five ghouls back on the more beaten up of his two ghoul units. He tries it a second time, and I dispel it. He casts it a third time with one die, and gets six more ghouls back. Shooting: Apparently banshees can shoot while in close combat! Another wail inflicts a second wound on my general. Close Combat: I was sick of the banshee wails and didn’t want my enemy to have two points for a rear charge, so my general turns to attack the wraiths killing two of them, but due to modifiers I still lost combat so the wraith champion didn’t crumble. The rest of my units where in the grand melee. Salamander and Skinks kill three ghouls. Once again the ghouls attacking the salamander failed. Ghouls kill four skinks and two Saurus, the Vargulf kills four Saurus and end up taking the flanking crypt ghoul unit of combat (but the newly arrived crypt guard was more than able to pick up their slack. My Kroxigor kills three ghouls, crypt guard kill eight Saurus. The Vargulf’s thunderstomp killed two more. Saurus fail to get snake eyes (I got a three once again), and are run down by the graveguard. The graveguard were unable to flank my Skroxigor however because the Vargulf beat them there and blocked them. My Salamander also broke bolted towards the side of the board. My Skroxigor were still steadfast, so they were able to hold. The ghouls fighting the Skroxigor reformed out of horde formation for additional ranks to deny me steadfast next turn. LM Turn 5 The Salamander decides not to rally and flees off the table. The vampire challenges my general who accepts. The vampire inflicts one wound which gets past my re-rollable armor save and ward save killing him. Now that the vampire is no longer engaged, he can once again make the ghouls have WS 7. The Skinks kill a ghoul, then Vargulf and ghouls kill seven skinks, then Kroxigors kill another ghoul. I lost combat by a lot and broke. The Vargulf ran what’s left of my last unit down. I got 90 points for the spirit host and dire wolves. My opponent completely destroyed or routed 2500 points of my army and scored 300 bonus points for standards and my general. It was bad luck to have a charnel pit in the center of the table (for the Ld penalty more than the undead regeneration), but on the whole I got very lucky rolls with armor and ward saves, so I can’t blame luck on this loss. I made lots of mistakes and my opponent capitalized on all of them. My list was admittedly less competitive than it could have been. I figured since my friend never played Vampire Counts before and I frequently played Lizardmen I’d have an edge in experience (I was wrong). I chose a Carnosaur Oldblood instead of a Slann because I never got to use him versus my friend’s dwarves. Also for future reference I wanted to see what Vampire magic could do and figured it’d be overshadowed by a Slann. I didn’t deploy my carnosaur well. It never even got a single attack off. I put it on the flank with the idea that I could set up some nasty flank charges. Also I figured my old blood’s magic sword would make short work of the incorporeal wraiths, but they were skirmishers and were able to avoid close combat until my oldblood was already pinned down. Not only did I underestimate what a banshee wail could do, but the carnosaur would done a lot more good in my center. I should have sent my cheaper Terradon chief at the wraiths instead of worrying about the dire wolves. I’d say my skirmishers could have taken care of the wolves but they were my first placement. I also wanted to experiment with some skink chiefs. I thought a skink bsb on an ancient stegadon would be an okay idea since I wanted a skink with the Stegadon Warspear anyway. The eighteen inch range did help me get some rerolls but bad luck caused me to fail the rerolls. I don’t regret taking the mounted skink BSB. The chief and Stegadon performed well, killing many enemies, before the charnel pit’s Ld penalty led to them breaking and being destroyed. Banshee screams killed a carnosaur and terradon skink chief single handedly. Banshee wails inflicted two out of three of the wounds on my Old Blood. I will never underestimate the Vampire Count’s one ranged combat unit again. I expect my friend will include them in nearly every VC army he makes from now on so I need to come up with a plan to take it out quickly or stay out of range.
My main oponent is Vc and one game he got to choose where the charnel was placed. The game started really well for me by destroying a unit of 50 zombies with shooting leaving just one alive. and one bad combat near the charnel pit cause my unit to break which cause another unit to break and so on. my whole flank ended up fleeing cause of that 1 peice of terrain. The one zombie on his own charged the fleeing salamander unit and wiped it out. Was a very fun game even though i lost.
Unfortunately for your friend, he picked a bad time to start the VCs. I'm told they are being remade and a new book is coming out in Jan. I know this because a friend of mine decided to start a VC army a month ago. When he went to our huge local hobby shop, they didn't have a book or very many core units. And they keep every book on stock at all times and you can get any core unit at any given time. If they don't have something the order it for you and give you 20% off. But when he asked one of the owners about why, he was told that GW wasn't giving distributors VCs because they are releasing a new book mid Jan. And that they don't tell them anything about changes untill a week before the new book is in their hands. But 8th edition rules screw with VC magic phase and i guess that is getting a complete overhall. IDK. My friend is still collecting them dispite him being all about their 7th addition magic. We played a 1500 match a few days ago.(he ebayed about 2k pts, but wanted extras to raise) It was a blow out in my favor. I controlled his magic phase with a level 2 skink. And he had a level 2 vampire and 2 necros. But with the way the winds of magic phase is played now, my level 2 can attempt to dispell anything he trys to cast. And when he casts a 3+ or 4+ raise spell with a necro, it is essentially a 1 die roll off with me having a +1 advantage and I win ties. And vs his level 2 wizard it is a roll off where I win ties. Sure he gets a few more dice then me most of the time since i brought Diamon of Power. But If he rolls a 1 or a 2 the spell auto fails, that wizard can't cast any spells, and i don't have to throw a die to try and match him. It really is a bad spot for the VCs with no shooting to take out my solo ~90pt worth of skink screwing up his 200+ pionts of magic models. Not to mention I reconized the banshee threat when it was fielded. Dropped my wizard in front of it and on my first magic phase I thunderbolted it. Rolled a 6 for wounds, then pushed it d3+1 (rolled a 5). I got 4 a inch push straight back into a unit of dire wolves killing the wraiths before he got off a scream and I think 2 or 3 dire wolves with it. And he positioned his necros behind his big blocks of army and I was taking shots at them with my sallies (i put them on the board last, after he had placed everything he had). He wanted to quit before cc even started because i didn't even more forward on my turn. just wheeled to get flank charges on units he would charge when he got to me and protect flanks. And with 3 skink skirmishers, 2 skrox, 2 sallies, 2 magic missles on my mage, and his underwhelming magic phase, I was easilly ripping his army apart way faster than he could raise it. We made it throw all rounds and all I lost was 2 units of skinks and all he had was a varghoul and a unit of skelitons his general was in. He said next time he is going to skip the wriaths and take his black coach. He feels like the wriaths will never stand a chance against my army even though I told him he can dispell my stuff as good as I can his, and that rolling a 2 and a 4 into the same spells again is as unlikely as getting both off in the first phase in range of his wraiths.