7th Ed. How do you deal with Vampire counts?

[Deminos]

So i will be facing vampire's very soon and im unsure how to deal with them. They seem to be very magic heavy as well having good melee guys.All i know is that they bring ghouls and ghosts in, and raise stuff and dont die. I know the vampire lord is a tough thing to kill and ussually you have to kill him more than once, (if the dice gods dont hate him, which i hope they do)

From what ive gathered they are magic heav as well as having good combat units, so they could probably go on par with my slann. melee units would have to have magical attacks so i can kill knights and such (carnosaur might be good or steggy with EotG) While a priest with cloak of feathers so i can fly around and use missiles on the vampire unit if hes hiding it which he probably will.\

i really need help to beat this army, it seems like its gonna be a pain in the @$$ to deal with.

 

[Eagleblaze]

Ultimately you need to ask yourself, what would I do if...?

The general "if" being, "if I was playing as undead"

The answer is, bog down my enemy with easy, replenishable units, and just pick away at them and protect my general at all costs.

The key to the VC army is the general. Without him all units suffer compulsory losses every turn, as a result the commanding player will want to make this character as tough as they can through either strong magical items, combat stats or both.
Not only does the general keep the undead animated, but also acts as a spell caster, so the loss of a character is felt most in VC armies.
As a result your first priority is, and should always be to kill that vampire.

For this I recommend a kitted out saurus character of some description.
A magical weapon is an absolute given as you will need it to cut through any "magical-only" defences.
LM weapon selection is good here as you can go for BBoC (-2 AS/Burning/magical), among others.
I also recommend taking the bane head to really give you an edge.
Obviously this character, if vampire hunting, needs to be well protected and also manouverable so I recommend a mount of some description. The cold one mount provides a +2 to AS, coupled with a shield and scales you are left with a +2 I do believe alongside a 7M. (However it is subject to stupidity but I am told the statistics of failing that test are well and truly in our favour).

Should it be the case that the general is in a unit a challenge should draw them out, and if you can't quite get there, plenty of vamps to kill and each one you kill is a little less magic they will be bringing to the table that turn.


A VC player's next priority will be keeping up those unit numbers. As a result they will wont a magic heavy phase.
To counter this you want as many lvl 2 or 3 skink priests as you can get, and points permitting, a slann.
Max out on dispel scrolls and you MUST take (I think it is called) the diadem of power. The ability to take 2 power dice as dispel dice is invaluable in these games.
Lore of metal is quite handy here as coupled with channelling you can get down to some serious sniping and what have you.
I recommend taking EOTG's where possible, burning allignment is very handy here.

Ultimately in games of attrition, saurus wont fair well against the undead, however the undead cannot match up against saurus in a fair fight or even a slightly unfair fight. That said, make sure you have some solid flanking units. EOTG's and Cold ones into the flank of an undead unit will cause some serious casualities, negate rank bonuses, and cause those undead to crumble.

So to re-cap:
Undead tactics:
-Protect the General
-Wage a war of attrition.

Lizardmen tactics
- Kill the vampire(s)
- Dominate the magic phase
- Smash those puny units with magic dino power!

Hope this helps
-Eagle-

 

[Wolf]

I have to agree with everything that's been said by Eagleblaze .

I believe that you can't really go wrong with our Lord choices against VC; if you take a Slann make sure you take the Becalming Cogitation, it is worth every point against VCs; just choose his Lord vampire and watch him throw 6s on those single dice .
An oldblood on carnosaur wielding the Blade of Realities is great against VC as (I believe) they only have an average Ld, just make sure that if you get into a fight with wights of any kind (Grave Guard and Black Knights) you kill them all before they can strike back (killing blow is nasty! )

 

[strewart]

Eh, Vampire Lords have leadership 10... Normal vampires only have 7, but they aren't too hard to kill anyway.

I would actually advise against targetting the Vamp lord with a character. People underestimate just how tough that guy is, and he will be in a unit so the unit champ will accept your challenge. The unit champ is always the first model to be raised from their healing spell, so they can repeat that. This does mean that the cold one Eagleblaze talked about has a very important yet overlooked advantage: it causes fear which makes the saurus immune to fear. Beaten and outnumbered by fear causing enemies will be his downfall with their static combat res.

I would also back saurus spearmen, they have a massive amount of s4 attacks they will completely smash undead units! Put them against ghouls and watch them die. Yes they will be raised if you don't destroy the unit in one turn, mark my word I know well the frustration of seeing a single ghoul turn back into 20 of the bas***ds but hell my s3 HE spearmen usually perform magnificently against undead units, and the saurus have higher strength and more attacks! Plus better armour and higher toughness. And while he is wasting spells raising the unit you are going to cut back down in the next combat phase anyway, there is less magic flying elsewhere.

Definitely take an engine or two, that burning alignment is hell on undead. You will want it to cut down the ethereal wraiths before they get to combat too, they hit very hard but are fragile.

Now anyway, back to the vampire lord. Use your characters and hunters (terradons, skink skirmishers etc) to take out the necromancers (particularly any on corpse carts, put all attacks into the necro) and normal vampires. The lord is too tough for anything except maybe an old blood on carnosaur with blade of realities, one of those two is sure to bring him down, but then you also need a second character to stop the unit champ issuing a challenge. The way to get the vamp lord out of the fight is static combat res. Hit its unit with your hardest unit and in the flank at the same time. Actually a combined charge of something big and strong at the front (Temple Guard, cold one knights, saurus spears with a character maybe) and an engine at the flank, with the engine sending out burning alignment in the magic phase, should give you a nice chance to bring them down. If you can cancel their ranks and have a +1 flank charge, then kill a lot, you can very nearly crumble the rest and make the vampire general sweat.

And lots of magic defence as Eagleblaze suggested is a must.

 

[IronShark]

Well, it also depends on the style the VC player is bringing. If you bank on the VC focusing on ghoul-spam, you might have trouble dealing with a Knight heavy VC list, or some such variation.

In general, a Slaan with Temple Guard is a very solid choice. I play VC, and I know the scariest thing that the Lizardmen could possibly field against my style of list is a Slaan with Bane-Head and lore of metal. And the Immune to Psych Temple Guard would be quite handy as well.

Definitely take an engine or two, that burning alignment is hell on undead. You will want it to cut down the ethereal wraiths before they get to combat too, they hit very hard but are fragile.

Just a word of warning, you might want to clear the exact nature of the Engine beforehand. Technically, by the rules as written, it's not magical, so it won't effect Ethereal units, nor is it flaming, so it won't circumvent Regenerate. If you were playing me, I'd grant that it's magical, but some people, well...

The way to get the vamp lord out of the fight is static combat res. Hit its unit with your hardest unit and in the flank at the same time.

If it's a full blown Unit of DOOM, even that might not work. Black Knights or Blood Knights with a Lord decked out for combat, and a BSB with the Drakenhoff banner can take absolutely ridiculous amounts of punishment. I've used that several times, and have subsequently banned myself from using the Drakenhoff banner anymore because it was so utterly ridiculous. I've nonchalantly walked the unit up the field, have it take a charge from half the enemy army, and win, on more than one occasion.

Anyway, if there's the Mounted Unit of Doom riding around, redirect it and tie it up with Skinks, terradons, and whatnot. Use with a Slaan with Lore of Metal for the kill, as the first and last spells for Metal will ignore both armor and regenerate.

Lore of metal is quite handy here as coupled with channelling you can get down to some serious sniping and what have you.

As I've said above, Lore of Metal is probably a good choice, but it doesn't work too well with channeling. The new rules say channeling through a skink priest only works for magic missiles, and only Distillation of Molten Silver is a magic missile.



In the end, I'd suggest taking a fairly standard, balanced list, only with more anti-magic than you might normally take.

 

[Gannon]

IMHO, VC have become the least of our worries. I've played maybe 5x vs VC by now and haven't had a loss vs them yet in 7th ed. Our Anti-magic really destroys them.

Just need a decent slann with focus, rumination and cognitation sit in a block of TG with BSB and warbanner to have a nice +7 CR. Take Light and an EOTG run with ur block. Go forward. get into combat. And start zapping things away. Seriously, Burning Alignment + Cleansing Flare, watch those Skellies burn away.
Even the big block GraveG+ regen banner will have dificulties with this. Together with the spell to make your saurus blocks ItP which makes his Fear- Autobreak which VC need so dearly go away.

Just need terries to march block any Blood Knights or use Razers to protect ur flanks vs them. Cause even with an EoTG if you get BK in your flanks it's over. And in my opinion all you need to stop is Vanhel's Danse Macabre and maybe Wind of Undead.

You could have some trouble if you go without magic defense and full combat. Then I just suggest using units with loads of attacks. Like units of 4 Kroxies and units with lots of CR like TG + BSB+ Warbanner. And offcourse 2 steggies charging in a unit will make them crumble for sure. Just ignore the regen GG unit. Cause you can have as much combat as you want. Without fire attacks that unit will never never die.

 

[strewart]

Just a word of warning, you might want to clear the exact nature of the Engine beforehand. Technically, by the rules as written, it's not magical, so it won't effect Ethereal units, nor is it flaming, so it won't circumvent Regenerate. If you were playing me, I'd grant that it's magical, but some people, well...

If someone tried to tell me that the ability of the engine of the GODS activated in the MAGIC PHASE with specific notation that it cannot be DISPELLED was not in fact magical, I would leave the battle. Granted it doesn't say flaming so we cannot say it negates regeneration until that is cleared up, but there is a specific special rule for flaming, no spells say that they are magic attacks. Claiming the engine isn't magic is just clutching at straws. I will not play my engine as flaming, but it certainly is magic and someone that disputes that is going to dispute lots of other silly little things and not be worth playing against.

Anyway, yes you are right that there are some combos of unit with the vampire lord that are almost impossible to bring down and a combined charge even with burning alignment probably won't do it. These units get close to 1000 points and often have more than 1 character in them, really it is an insane unit and all you can do is destroy the rest of the army and then try to chip away at it. The hero with BSB (if present) can be assassinated to slightly weaken the unit.