2500 Vampire Counts list

[Kinslayer]

Thought I may as well share this on here as well as on Carpe Noctem. This is the end result, hopefully, of my 2500 points Vampire Counts list.

The army is all plastic / resin which was the main thing, so I can't use the black knights, fell bats, bat swarms, spirit hosts or black coach without converting them, and I'd rather wait and see what models GW produces before I decide to make alternatives. The army is also themed around the vampiress character from my RPG, Eaun Tvar, who fights with a unit who in life were the elite of house Tvar, the Zukhil guard. Hence, the army had to feature a vampire lord in a pretty big grave guard block. It also fits the theme to use more skeletons than ghouls, despite those generally being better for their points. If you notice, my characters can up the size of my skeleton units pretty well,



Vampire Lord – 455
Blood Drinker, Heavy Armour, Shield, Dragonhelm, Dawnstone, Ruby Ring of Ruin, +1 Magic Level
Avatar of Death, Dark Acolyte, Forbidden Lore, Lord of the Dead
(Lore of Shadow)

Vampire – 195
Tomb Blade, Flayed Hauberk
Dark Acolyte, Lord of the Dead

Wight King BSB – 225
Drakenhof Banner

Necromancer – 55
Vanhel’s Danse Macabre

30 Skeleton Warriors – 270
Full Command, Banner of Hellfire

30 Skeleton Warriors – 260
Full Command

40 Crypt Ghouls – 320

5 Dire Wolves – 40

5 Dire Wolves – 40

30 Grave Guard – 465
Great Weapons, Full Command, Banner of the Barrows

Varghulf - 175
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2500



Vampire Lord: level 4 shadow loremaster, which suits the character perfectly as she is meant to be good with magic. I want her in with her elite guard really so gave her the blood drinker to replenish them as they die. Avatar of Death gives her heavy armour and shield, which with the dragon helm and dawnstone gives a 3+ rerollable armour save. She also has regeneration from the bsb, and if flaming attacks nuke that gets a 2+ ward instead. Splendid. I threw in lord of the dead with the extra points as I want to up my skeleton units in size, I went for 2 slightly smaller units instead of 1 big one so I could do just that.

Vampire: this one goes in one of the skeleton units to keep them marching, probably the one with magical flaming attacks because the enemy are more likely to throw their elite at the unit with the character than the one without (which are more likely to be regenerative, or contain characters unaffected by non magical attacks). I think together that makes for a fairly strong unit, his tomb blade means he keeps adding to the unit (the armybook doesn't say replace one lost wound, it says add one more model.) He's also a level 2 caster again with Lord of the Dead.

Wight King: obviously sits in the Grave Guard unit, giving them and the Vampire Lord regeneration and benefiting from the banner of the barrows that unit holds at the same time. Since he'll be a grave guard conversion he'll fit right in too (but I will make him stand out of course).

Necromancer: like the new model and this way I definately get at least one VDM.

Skeletons: Plan is to draw out the enemies dispel dice with other spells on turn 1 and maybe 2, then throw some dice into IoN with all three casters when the enemy is out of dice. Coupled with Lord of the Dead on the Vampires, I should be able to get it off at least a couple of times before making contact with the enemy, hopefully boosting each unit to around 40 models. Nice.

Ghouls: It fits the theme to have more skeletons than ghouls since the character the army is based on uses skeletons and her elite guard and hasn't used ghouls yet, but I'm sure she would (and will) make use of a few. I think having this big horde of ghouls gives the enemy two main units to worry about too, so they hopefully divide their attacks and cause wounds I can just recover. If they do nuke one, the other should get through to combat relatively unscathed.

Dire Wolves: Split them as suggested but kept them over fell bats because they're plastic and I like them.

Grave Guard: Pretty standard tactic from what I gather. Regeneration from the Wight King, casualties replenished by the Vampire Lords' blood drinker, who can also cast wither etc to weaken the opponent. Banner of the Barrows for obvious reasons I made sure the unit had a champion so both him and the vampire lord are protected if a monster enemy steps up and challenges them, I can just answer with the champion.

Varghulf: gives me another Vampire, I can run it close to the Vampless skeleton unit just to march it up, then use it to support said units charges.