Faction Thread 2: Vampire Counts

[Bwian]

Some tricky units here, since I am not 100% how best to handle ethereals. It may just be a case of giving htem a very high defence and no hit-points to speak of ... or it may just be too difficult to adapt things to use them effectively. time and playtesting will tell here!

Units:

1) Zombies

2) Skeletons

3) Skeleton Warriors

4) Grave Guard

5) Wights

6) Ghouls

7) Spirit Host ( issue as above )

8) Wraiths ( issue as above )

9) Dire Wolves

10) Nightmares and skeleton horses for mounts

11) Blood Dragons ( various )

Generals would be either Vampire single models or Necromancers

[Bob the Spork]

Right, a few points on this one.

Zombies and ghouls are fine.

I presume by warriors you mean skeletons with spears, and normal ones with swords/axes/whatever. Also good. I’d advise you include archers as well. Although they aren’t in the main army list, they are included in the army book, as a specific blood dragon army unit. I’m sure, for sake of balance and variation if nothing else, you could include them. They would have to be rubbish though. I mean, really poor quality troops, barely able to hit at ten foot, let alone normal shooting range.

Wrights and Grave Guard… well Grave Guard are wrights. They’re simply one type of unit of them. You could also split Grave Guard into two types if you wish; sword and shield (basic), or a halberd (elite?), as they use both. Black Knights, the other non-character variety of wright, are obviously the heavy cavalry here. Only the one type of them possible I think, though there are slight grounds in which you could split them into 'heavy cavalry' and 'very heavy cavalry' branches.

For ethereal units… not sure how you could do them. Very high defence could work, I guess, but it doesn’t really do them justice. Either way, is there a method of creating morale damage from a unit’s presence? I think there was in RTW, but not sure about this one. Either way, they should, as in the TT version they cause terror.

My Blood Dragons, do you mean the type of vampire? Surely units of vampires, considering even a weak vampire is a powerful hero, are a bit much? If this isn’t what you mean, please explain, because I’m not on the right page.

[Meneldil]

Hum, if you're planning to have Skeletons, Skeleton warriors and Grave guards, may I propose you to use those models as the Warriors, and those as the Grave Guards.

Simply because the first ones (current grave guards figures) really look like dead soldiers (actually, dead bretonnians knights), while the old Wight figures (second pic) have more of a grave guards "feeling". They're not simply dead soldiers raised to serve a new lord, but they have their own (undead-ish) equipement.
That would mean getting rid of the Wight unit, but from what I understood, Wight describe all kinds of not-totally-braindead-skeleton (and thus, include Grave Guards and Black Knights, aswell as the now discontinued Skeleton characters)

Overall, I think leaving out non- Blood Dragon Vampires themselves is a pity. I don't know what is the smallest unit size possible in MTW2, but wouldn't it be possible to have squads of like, 4 or 8 Lamhian, Strigoi or Nercrach vampires ? Yeah, that would be overpowered, but one could say they're newly born vampires, and give them a huge upkeep.

[uanime5]

Also good. I’d advise you include archers as well. Although they aren’t in the main army list, they are included in the army book, as a specific blood dragon army unit. I’m sure, for sake of balance and variation if nothing else, you could include them. They would have to be rubbish though. I mean, really poor quality troops, barely able to hit at ten foot, let alone normal shooting range.

I don't think you can change the range of the archers, though you can reduce the number of arrows they have and give them poor moral.

For ethereal units… not sure how you could do them. Very high defence could work, I guess, but it doesn’t really do them justice. Either way, is there a method of creating morale damage from a unit’s presence? I think there was in RTW, but not sure about this one. Either way, they should, as in the TT version they cause terror.

For the Wights you could increase their hit points to make them harder to kill (they would need to take more damage before they died). It is possible to make units that can fighten infantry and / or mounted units.

[Bwian]

Mounts have a 'fear' effect ... never tried it with footsoldier! anothe rtest fo rthe weekend!!!!

[Casuir]

Theres lots of units that cause fear isnt there?

[Ciaran]

In RTW it was possible to give any unit fear-causing ability, I´m not sure about M2TW, though.
But if you´re refering to "Vampire Counts", does that mean you´ll try and include all of the bloodlines, or will you emphazise the Carstein line? If the former, you´d probably need more factions in the Vampire "culture". However, I wouldn´t know how to simulate the Strigoi, Blood Dragons and Necrarchs adequately on a campaign map, they don´t hold territories, so the best I could imagine woud be rebel units.