And has a tendency to nuke the vampire. Straight up smack down.

That’s exactly how I feel.

Basic vampire with enchanted shield, lance, crown of the damned and maybe a magic weapon on an abyssal terror seems like a pretty good beat stick

Vampiric Powers not having something that clearly screams "Blood Dragon-power!" (or just something that helps in Close Combat in general) is a bit of a letdown, especially since Lhamia (Beguile), Necrarch (Master of the Black Arts) and Carstein (Lord of the Night) are all represented, and Strigoi Ghoul Kings get their own entrety. Still, therere are ways to build really powerful and fun Vampire Counts. My main gripe with them is that they are only I6 and Ld8, and can't cast spells in armour...

Precisely my thoughts as well, I do hope that in the future, with enough fan demand they'll fix the no blood dragon powers and absolute b.s. leadership scores on vampires (+ options for full plate and casting in armor).

they dropped empire from the allies, too.

bat swarms are unit size 3+

spirit hosts 3-6, not 2+

Sounds good in theory but will probably be hard to pull off in practice for several reasons: Need to actually bring 10+ Knights, need to not have them all die off in one turn, need to not have your IoN-users in close combat, need to actually succeed with IoN (BSB helps, but still Ld8). IoN is amazing, don't get me wrong, but this is one of those "HOLY SHIT THEY CAN DO WHAT!?"-moments that will rarely if ever happen in reality.

10+ blood knights is almost always illegal due to costing more than 25% of the army.

@@lestrike2707 a 10 man unit of blood knights with full command is 411 points well under the 500 points limit.

@@Alex-bc3gz yes you can fit in 10 but if you want 10+ you‘d have to scrap the plate armour and drilled. :)

Huh..then where do they go at all?? not in hexwraiths surely

@@krilc nowhere. Single characters have cool rules in this edition though, you can't really snipe them

​@@krilc Spirit hosts I guess.

@@moiseman Yea but they loose combat and die easily.......

​@@abyssus9304 Yeah, sadly I'm not seeing much use for the Cairn Wraiths. Their strength is too low to wound anything that their ability to inflict multiple wounds matters for other than some heroes, but those heroes have higher initiative and are likely carrying magic weapons and will just kill the wraith. Plus the wraith only gets two attacks.

I’ve been enjoying all of these, just realized I had a little extra at the end of the month and wanted to show appreciation.

No Blood Dragon/Close combat powers is a letdown, but I don't think the powers are all bad; between Curse of the Revenant, Dark Acolyte and Supernatural Horror I'm pretty content.

Given the way initiative works this edition Vanhals looks really good. D3 roll but anything that helps units strike first is very powerful

@@andrewcharlton6080 Agreed! The buffing/debuffing a LVL 4 Necromancer can dish out seems very tasty!

@@grlmgor or just stand not to far from a bsb. Also maybe try and stop cavalry and monster that only bring 2 and 0 static combat res.

@@grlmgor also your calculation are incorrect the musician don't bring +1 combat res. It only does this on a tie. So you natively crumble only 4.

@@grlmgor or a bsb and between 1 and 3 kills depending on the bsb roll... Or just sending them into monster or a unit with less static combat res. Also 3 spirit hosts is 147 pts. That's 12 wounds that assuming you are doing 0 wound and you are neither supporting them with a bsb or a necro into a 4 static combat res unit are still gonna stick around for 3 combat phases blocking any elite infantry for that long. And that's the worst case scenario with the crapiest of roll. A more probable result is that they will be doing 1 to 2 wound, losing their combat by 2 to 3 and crumbling an average of 1/2 wound per combat phase if near the bsb. Add in a necro to give them 5 wound back once in the game and all of a sudden your 250+ points of black guard/hamerer.... are effectively stuck there for the entire game regardless of your static bonus. And that's assuming you sent them into a +4 static res unit while they could also just be sent into monsters and cav where they don't need the support of anything to stay there for at least 6 combat phase (or forever in the case of monsters). Because with mvt 6 and reserve move you should not be that easily cought by a block of infantry. Not even speaking about the hexwraith. I wouldn't call them crap. Are they the be all and end all, no because magic attack exist in some armies and heroes can have magic weapons.... But the issues is that they are not evenly spread around the armies and that's a stat check.

​@@grlmgorthat isnt that many

Try Thorium Reader, I've found it works great.

A Wight lord BSB with the accursed armor and the banner of the barrows, put it on a horse and when he joins your black Knight unit they hit on a +3 and wound on a +2. The guy is in a full plated armor with toughness of 6

My go-to Vampire Count on foot-build will probably be: Heavy Armour, Shield, Ogre Blade (or Sword of Kings, I like both options) and Crown of the Damned. Powers: Curse of the Revenant, Dark Acolyte and Supernatural Horror. My go-to Wight Lord BSB on foot-build will probably be: Heavy Armour, Shield and Helm of Commandment. Vampire keeps the rather fragile Wight Lord safe by standing b2b with him and killing everything in contact. Plonk them both down in a unit of Grave Guard with Drakenhof Banner and you're set. A level 4 Necromancer with Sceptre of De Noirot and either Hand of Dust or Ruby Ring of Ruin stands in a unit of Skeletons /w spears behind them and keeps the unit going by ressurecting 8+2D3 Grave Guard / turn. Remember that VC (and TK) BSB's allow you to re-roll Leadership-tests, so you can re-roll both failed Stupidity-tests from Crown of the Damned, and failed IoN-tests.

@@MinscS2 Why put the Necromancer in the Skeleton blob? As a lone character he can't be shot/targeted if he's within 3" of friendly units. And alone he is much more maneuverable so that he can get line of sight for his spells. I don't know if Grave Guard + BSB + Banner + Vampire isn't just too many points in one unit. Will probably slap very hard though. A combat Necromancer with Hand of Dust mounted on a Mortis Engine might be funny. Don't know how viable that is but the idea seems appealing.

@@Onk3lM0Lone necromancer is also susceptible to getting charged by, well anything. It's probably not a bad idea to have him on his own, it might even be better, but for now my 7th Ed-monkey brain says "put him in a bunker". :P It's not that many points tbh. You want Grave Guard (Core), you def. want a BSB and you probably want a Vampire Count, and *if* the Count not on a cool mount, then there's no better place to put him than in the Grave Guard, especially since the regen-banner kicks in and improves the survivability of both the Count and the BSB. Yeah you can make a pretty decent close combat-Necromancer on a Mortis Engine with Hand of Dust and any other Assailment spell. The main issue I have with this build though is that you don't really want your Necro in combat to begin with, because it prevents IoN. But desperate times call for desperate measures...

@@Onk3lM0I’d prefer to put The Hand of Dust on a lvl1 necromancer and stick him in my GG, then stick my lvl4 with Sceptre of Deniro on the Mortis Engine if I was taking a Mortis Engine

I think you just can't get the ap2 when it's behemoth vs behemoth, otherwise you can stomp everything

@LordMacragge31 ive been reading it over and over again and thats kinda what im thinking too. Thanks for the help!

You have stomp if you have stomp on your profile. Behemoths and (most) Monstrous Creatures have them. Behemoths have AP2 on their Stomps as part of their core rules. Monstrous Creatures have AP0 unless they have rules that say otherwise. You can Stomp everything and anything, but Behemoths lose their AP2 against other Behemoths.

No, page 203 of the BBB: "Unless specified otherwise, the model that carries that Battle Standard cannot be the General." Yes, roll the D3 and see what ends up being higher.

@@MinscS2 thx pal, kind regards to Boo^^

yeah man i think your being rash. Iv played almost every army by now, the legacy armies are great.

LD 8 vampires??? Fucking bret lord is better then a vampre lord,but hey.....they gotta sell brets...

My playgroup will still allow it for fluff reason. Hello Sylvania Crossbowman

No, you're still restricted to 1 unit of Grave Guard per 1000pts

Yes, that's 3 units in a 2k points battle

so 1 yes and 1 no... anybody else ?

@@totamaurice6585 It says 1 unit of Grave Guard may be taken "AS core", NOT "also counts towards". In other words, 1 unit of Grave Guard that you take IS NOT a special unit, therefore, that 1 unit does not follow ANY of the requirements listed under "Special". tl;dr 3 units in a 2k battle.

It's a bit weird, but he'd probably only have Stomp Attacks (2) at most if he where to have them, at AP0 because he's not a Behemoth. Would've been nice but it's not the end of the world for me. He's still an amazing flanker.

It used to have hatred too... although I guess everything has been dialed down now. I still think it's wrong Bret Dukes have MORE wounds, attacks and Ld than a Vamp Count (and same strength...) grrrrrr :/

@@Symred86 Yeah the Brett Duke existing at all is one of the weirdest things in TOW. It feels like he (and the Chaos Lord) breaks an unwritten rule about Hero- and Lord-level characters by introducing a new "tier". Ah well, a Strigoi Ghoul King with the +1W power does have 4W and A5 and can hence pretend to be on the same level as a Duke/Chaos Lord. Minus the armour and with a slighly smaller magic item-allowance...

But it doesn't specify that the three Banshees all use Wailing Dirge, so it's still a single shooting attack not three.

the bsb section in all the army compositions at the start

Your magic banner is separate from your magic item allotment.

@@obbiem9274 thanks :)

@@jessethomas293 cheers :)

I’m playing Total War so was slightly distracted but what differences were there, in the sections I was paying attention there didn’t seem to be any differences.

one thing is many chaff or war machine hunters have larger minimum unit sizes in the release version.@@andrewcharlton6080

Nah they fit just fine, did it yesterday

i spare you the abomination of building metal bloodknight with superglue.....

I've had mine on 25x50mm for years now, 30x60mm will be a breeze.

Bloodlines haven't been a thing since 6th edition, you are getting frustrated by something that happened 15 years ago and that's coming from someone who still uses his Blood Dragon vampire models.

@@cormacgeraghty1710 but bloodlines were awesome.

​@@cormacgeraghty1710They were in 8th each even add 3 special caracthers.

Wraiths do seem very niche sadly. I can still see a point in taking one to lock down monsters and other heavy units with little-to-no static CR without magic attacks. (Monsters do have Close Order for +1 CR, but Wraiths have Indomitable(1) so dont care.)

@@MinscS2 but a banshee does the same and you can kill the monster with screams while its locked down.. I can't see running them in anything but a 1k ish list.

@@crimsonsun2000 A Banshee is almost twice the cost of a Wraith, but I see your point.

I think Wraiths will serve as chafe/warmachine hunters

@@neiljunco5751 If you have a good way of getting them into the back field and avoiding giving free vps to any wizard with the weakest magic missile in the game.. then maybe.. But they are move 6, can't march, no reserve move. T3 with no armour.. so anything that so much as looks in their direction with magic kills them.. with 2 ws3 str 3 attacks they aren't even bringing the pain.. A chaff unit with a standard and musician will beat them in combat by 2 on a coin flip, by enough to cause a wound.. I'm not saying it can't be done, I'm just thinking to get them to do that effectively is likely not worth the cost of admission.. Especially when for 40 points more you can have a banshee that's just plain great and easy to use, with the same issues for being kept alive except she can hide with your units, likely being inside a Hellish Vigor AoE, for move, attack, retreat fun and games.

I was happy enough with this pdf that I went out and ordered a full VC-army. Could I've gotten an even better pdf to make me even happer? Absolutely (no Blood Dragon powers sucks), but VC seems to have gotten off far better than for instance Dark Elves (who are a pale imitation of High Elves) and Skaven (who are just a soulless imitation of themselves, with a bunch of stuff removed and a strict army composition to boot.)

@@MinscS2 I also have a dark elf army, didn’t notice it being that bad, what have you spotted?

@@brett7773 They are pretty much "High Elves - but worse".

This is bad information. Opinion stated as a fact.