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8th Ed. Beating Vampires

There are lists for the VC that really don't rely heavily on magic. Couple of cheap mages for Invocation can do a lot. Those screams are rough too, especially against skink-troops.

Skeletons aren't much man for man, but if there's a unit of thirty of them you're going to need to work to kill ALL of them or else they'll keep coming back. That gets even more difficult if they're just a Vampire delivery system.

I wouldn't take the Cube with Lore of Life, because you end up sacking your own magic phase as well, killing Throne and Shield of Thorns. Just a Scroll would do.
 
I would still take the cube and life. If they roll high for magic dice you can cap the phase on the first spell. Losing two remains in play isn't the end of the world if it means you shut down all that res.
 
Fair enough. Any ideas about super killy vampires?
 
Oops, sorry about that mix up with the armor. Just downgrade it to armor of fortune instead. Thats still 3+ AS, 5+ ward with enough points for VotFF for all the above mention unit chewing goodness.

Also, I think people are severely underestimating how much the Unstable special rule can swing a game in your favor.

15 saurus vs. 30 skeletons, both 5 wide.

WS3 vs WS2 means we hit on 3+, they hit on 4+

S4 and T4 vs. S3 and T3 means we wound on 3+, they wound on 5+.. we lower their AS by 1 they don't touch ours.

The skellies have I2 so they go first. 10 attacks at 4+ mean and average of 5 hits. Those 5 hits only have a 1 in 3 chance of wounding due to the 5+.. so roughly 1-2. With an AS of 4+ and a parry save that means on a good round of combat that are taking out one saurus.

The saurus go next and throw 15 attacks due to 2 attacks on profile and 1 support from second rank. on a 3+ thats means a 2 in 3 hit ratio.. so thats 10 hits. again 3+ is a 2 in 3 ratio so we are looking at 6-7 wounds. Skellies have an AS of 5+ that is dropped to a 6+ and a parry save. That means on an average round of combat we are taking out 5-6 skellies with UNMODIFIED saurus.

Assuming both sides have full command that is 1 each for standards, skellies get 3 for bonus ranks while saurus only get 1, but skellies only get 1 for casualties while saurus get 6. combat CR goes in favor of the saurus by 3 which means an additional 3 skeletons are removed as casualties. meaning you have dropped that unit of 30 skeletons to 21 and and are close to taking out 2 entire ranks while they managed to knock off ONE saurus. Now add in magic.. or banners that give extra CR.. couple it with cube of darkness to shut down their magic phase so they don't get a chance to recoup. With LESS points worth of Saurus you can rip apart undead by flipping around their battle of attrition. They NEED their magic phase to scare us.. if you can take it away they crumble.

Also, for those not going with magic heavy VC lists, just take lore of death on your slann and snipe their lore of vampire necros. Take all of them out of the picture and you've basically won.
 
Yes, but what do you do about a unit of skeletons... with a horrible vampire of murderous death!?
 
Go lord for lord? Field a minimum cost Slann and take an old blood on foot and give him piranha blade and bane head. Nominate the vampire lord as your target and now every unsaved wound you would cause against the vampire lord multiplies into 4 wounds (becomes two from piranha blade then doubles because of bane head).. a cheesey move? Yup.. but it works.

Side note, this is also awesome for tearing through ogres like tissue paper.

Edit: Forgot to mention that Vampire Lords only have 3 wounds. So if you get one wound through with this build the model is dead. You can also do this combo with a scar-vet if you chose to.. but he won't have any defenses to be able to take hits as well as dish them since almost all the 50 magic item points are poured into the weapon and bane head.
 
Actually.. holy hell, Bane head + Lore of Death is insane..

*starts building a list immediately based around this*
 
The death slann has another great advantage to consider in the form of the leadership modifier spell. This is normally useless against the undead but if you have enough die to cap the general then if you get this spell off on some thing like grave guard or black knights then you have just upped your crumble kills by 3 at the end of the round.
 
Hello,
Vampires Have LD 10 S5T5 so they aren't good targets for sniper spells in my opinion. Also Don't worry about skeletons, nobody uses them, either zombies (because of thier cost and 2d6 rising witj IoN) or Ghuls(they are still very good). I played vs a VC with a Heaven Slann with Great effect! The Lore Atribute helps you deal with bats, Curse of the midnight wind is awesome vs Ghuls and GG, low casting value and Direct damage spells make it even better. I know the whole point of taking a Slann is to use a diffrent lore than the lore of Heavens, but I'm so used to this lore that I can't get enough of it.
Also I take z Burning Blade character (the amout of Regeneration is crazy!)
 
They may have good stats, but if you take bane head on a lore of death slann and nominate their big nasty vampire lord then even if you only get one wound on them that multiplies into two. On a model with only 3 wounds that would mean that if you can roll well enough to only get two wounds through they are dead. 15 points to double the wounds caused against a specific hero/lord with sniper spells? Yes please.

So with Caress of Laniph they have S5, the average roll on 2d6 is 7, minus 5 is 2. These then roll on 4+ to wound with no armor save allowed. again on an average roll you are looking at 1 wound getting through that multiplies into 2 if they don't ward save it.

Fate of Bjuna is even better odds. The average roll result on 2d6 is 7 against T5 so again we are looking at 2 hits. The difference being these ones wound on 2+ with no armor save. We are now looking at good odds of both wounds getting through unless they ward save, which multiplies into 4, which equals one dead vamp. If that isn't enough then any model even hit with this spell is subject to stupidity for the rest of the game. A little Doom and Darkness can have a 50/50 chance of making that killer vamp do nothing for a turn due to leadership 7.

For Spirit Leech if you hit them with Doom and Darkness first then you drop then down to a 7 leadership (as mentioned above) compared to our Slann's 9. This gives us a 2 point lead in the roll off. In the event of you rolling a 6 on that die then even if they match you that is still 2 wounds with no armor save. If they don't ward save it then that multiplies into 4 wounds from bane head.. that means one dead vamp.

That is 3 solid chances every magic phase of roasting the vamp lord then you can focus on picking off the necros. Once they have no lore of vampires on the field their units start crumbling which is then only enchanced with more castings of Doom and Darkness.
 
I tend to treat them like any army, 3 stegs into an infantry unit = dead unit.
 
I have to disagree on stegadons against VC. Leadership of 6 means they are gonna get torn to shreds by the VC screams/howls. So unless you mount a character on an ancient steg and find a way to boost it's leadership then I'd be very hesitant to field them.
 
I find EOG works well against VCs, Burning Alignment works against pretty much everything in they're army. I mean it has for me anyway.
 
Doom and Darkness Done't decease the LD for the signatue spell, As it is written in the FaQ that the unmodief Ld is that that is on the model with no bonuses (like Doom and Darkness and strenght in numbers etc.)
Also Vamps are undead and therefor ITP so stupidity dosen't work on them:(
Other than that You are right, When you take BaneHead and Death It becomes some serious threat vs the enemy... And the EotG is Great vs VC because they don't have a lot of shoting (cout out screams) so He will freely charge and fire up his flare:)
 
i recently played 5 games at 1,500 pts agaisnt my brothers VC list over a couple days.
We both changed up our lists each game and I also rotated my slanns magic trying lores of Life,Light and death.
To sum up the magic side life was great used with a block of temple guard, holding agaisnt a tarpit an a flanking unit they held all game,
Light I had an unusually bad run with the winds if magic so unfortunately didn't see many sauras buffs (I will defiantly be trying a few more with this lore)

Then death magic, this was the great at this points size. I had bane head, an extra dice for him. by turn 2 I had 1 shotted his terageist using leech (ld 9 slann vs ld 4) inflicting 9 wounds befor regen save.
also sniping his necro with bane head an getting muti wounds killing it.

in larger games where there are multiple undead casters Im not sure whether I would take this lore, but at this lvl it reduced all his magic to 1 lvl1 vamp casting nehek which I could usually dispell.

additional note, I found that spear sauras are machines agaisnt undead units namely zombies gouls and skeles,
agaisnt these groups u barely ever need to rolls for your parry save so why take it? putting in the extra 6 attacks is better.
my 24 sauras spears where killing 12 zombies losing 1, losing 1 rank bonus leaving 10 to crumble. 22 dead to my 1. agaisnt units of skeles are stats mightn't be as impressive but still worth it. u only need to shutdown 1 Rez and that unit is gone.

I found the only way to tackle GG with G/W was to do this tactic as well. these guys are S6 negating all sauras armour, I opted for spears for 6 attacks over 6+ parry. u have to kill them quick
 
Just thinking...might this be a game in which a Skink Chief finally is worthwhile?
First, put him on a Terradon to assassinate necromancers, since they rely so heavily on their key spells.
Second, give him the Sun Staff to hunt ethereals.

Thoughts? Does this make sense, or am I just desperate to see these brave little Skinks do something helpful?
 
I had some major luck against my friend's Vampire Counts today- 3000 point battle in which I killed all his units by Turn 5.

Luck played heavily into it- in a key Magic Phase, he rolled snake-eyes for his magic and I Dispel Scrolled his one key "resurrection" spell that could have brought a ton of his guys back.

Salamanders did ridiculously well- their first Shooting Phase killed 1 guy (1 Misfire, 1 only moved 2' forward), but their second rolled 3 4" results in a row, causing the Flame Template to arc over the entire Grave Guard unit THREE TIMES, killing probably more than half of them. After that, they hit my Temple Guard, and even 2 Vampires in the unit couldn't help them.

On a one-to-one level, Saurus can take any of VC's basic infantry easily. Even characters can barely turn it over. If they don't take enough crazy stuff on the side, their units will falter badly. Add to that the fact that Slanns can use extra Power Dice (something that'll probably be nerfed eventually- it's WAY too good a choice). Watch for the Mortis Engine- it's power boosts Magic, Regenerate Saves & it's also pretty fighty. THEN it does tons of damage when it dies (to everyone around it)- kill that thing with Magic at a distance if you can.

I think Lizardmen stack very well against Undead- our units have ridiculous Leadership, have tons of attacks, and are hard to injure, which does well against Undead stuff. The Skinks are less efficient (note: a unit of 10 still darn near killed a Level 4 Necromancer with javelins- both poisoned attacks wounded!) because of general Undead Unit Size, but still useful for charge redirection. Lore of Light is quality for the Magic Missile damage on Undead, but the hex/augment stuff is great, too- a game-changer was casting the "enemy is -1 to hit" on the Saurus taking on a Skeleton Horde. I think people REALLY underestimate that debuff, as you can kill almost have of an enemy's successes with it.

It's just a pity Slann are such a default, because I'd love to have a Carnosaur eat up his troops, too.
 
Lawot said:
Just thinking...might this be a game in which a Skink Chief finally is worthwhile?
First, put him on a Terradon to assassinate necromancers, since they rely so heavily on their key spells.
Second, give him the Sun Staff to hunt ethereals.

Thoughts? Does this make sense, or am I just desperate to see these brave little Skinks do something helpful?
Click to expand...

The success or failure of a Skink Chief deployed like this depends on him being able to avoid things that scream: Banshees, the Mortis Engine, Terrorgheists, and lords with the Scabscrath.
 
Had a battle against VC last night and won 17-3.

Simple pointers to help win based on my experience.

Run Lore of Light!! The shooting spells actually become pretty damn good (3D6).
Net of Amyntok on ghouls or skellys (big units of 30 or 40 are held still for a turn or 2, NICE!).

Speed of light and Bironas on a bunkered TG unit (I run 26) allowed me to cause 19 wounds to an already depleted pack of ghouls, they did 2 wounds in return (saved by EOTG ward save), they crumbled - 400 point unit wiped out in 1 phase of CC!!!

Skinks - pour shots into Terrorgheists (I had to fight 2), both were dead by turn 3, I then fed the vamp lord these units of skinks whilst I killed the rest of his ghoul units.

Slann - the 2 shooty spells from magic (forget their names) created havoc with his crypt ghouls, shot all 8 off by turn 4.

ALWAYS ALWAYS dispell his regens (he ran with 2 x level 1 with this spell). I let his get of some hitty spells but never once allowed him to cast his regen. This meant anything I killed never came back.

I know this is probably of little help to others but the 4 things that won it for me were - Lore of light, skinks concentrating on Terrorgheists, buffing the hell out of Temple Guard, with WS10 and I10 they have 3 attacks and re-roll to hit, Sick sick combo and finally shutting down his magic phases (mainly regens).
 
Hi guys!
I'm new: both to this forum and to Warhammer in general. Since I'm writing here, you can safely presume that I've chosen Lizardmen as my firsy army.

I've got problems with VC. They're run by a guy who showed my WFB, so he knows a lot more about rules than I do. He ususally uses an infantry-heavy army with several heroes for casting lots of Invocations of Nehek. Here's a list of problems I've encountered:
1) Zombies. Might seem funny, but being buffed by both Corpse Carts and Mortis Engines (also mentioned below) they are almost equal to my Sauruses. Any hints, apart form using Salamanders (which I haven't done yet)?
2) Corpse Carts and Mortis Engines. I've no idea how to deal with them.
3) When my Sauruses finally get through his zombies, they numbers render them almost helpless against Grave Guard.
4) Big, tough heroes like Mannfred. I've seen a topic somewhere around the forum but failed to see any conclusions apart form "stay away, do not engage".
5) How do you "dominate the magic phase"? By simply dispelling the right spells? I'd like to point out the fact that dispelling every single Invocation of Nehek might be a bit tricky since at least one of them is cast by his lord near a Mortis Engine and that means +6 to his result.

Any tips related to killing Vampires are welcome.

By the way, forgive my wandering off the point, but why on a Lizardmen forum there is an emoticon showing shooting a dinosaur from a bazooka? Isn't the main reason of us being here that we love scaly animals? Or is it a "memento mori" for your troops?
 
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