Faction Thread 2: Vampire Counts

[Bwian]

The Lhamians also do not fit on the map. There has been much juggling and thought about the map and what parts we can fit onto it, and Lhamian territory does not fit.

Additionally...there is no need to worry about whether a faction has human subjects ... it's not an issue.

Lastly ... as has already been stated ... the Tomb Kings are in. They are also STAYING in. They have a unique look, make an attractive spectacle, and offer some interesting challenges. They also have a significant proportion of their units complete and in game, and with what I know can be done with skeleton/animation routines, we can also do all the exotic units they need too.

On the faction front, I think you have pretty much covered the essentials there.

[DrZoidberg]

The Lhamians also do not fit on the map. There has been much juggling and thought about the map and what parts we can fit onto it, and Lhamian territory does not fit.

Lhamian vampires do not live in Lhamia any longer. They where expeled and queen Nefarata and her court resetled in Silver Pinnacle in the Worlds Edge mountains. She has built herself a palace and from there she sends out spies and vampire agents to infiltrate the courts of the Old World plotting her return. She has a vast army of Zombies that she uses for protection and all her generals are hot chicks. It's all on pages 6 and 7 in the Vampire Counts army book.

Unless the Worlds Edge mountains have been bumped from the map which would be a shame :) I maintain that they would work great as a seperate faction. If we want and need them that is. Just because we can use something doesn't mean we should. Off-course.

But I got the message. Lhamians will have to wait and the von Carsteins are included.

I've got a question. Shouldn't we have vampires as units? They're not in the army list now, but I think they should be. We can have them as super elite and one of those units with only 20 men in them. Since we are including the Blood Dragons units, it makes no sense not to include the regular von Carstein blood line vampires. In Warhammer Battle the vampires thralls do plenty of fighting. Not only the vampire lords.

Another unit which are central to the vampire counts are the necromancers that's been omitted. Could it be possible to make then use some sort of invisible cannon and make the projectile fired to be a huge skull or something. It's pretty much what they do.

[Jargon]

If you wanted to unify the vampires into a single faction, could you turn the bloodlines into traits? So, if they are 'born' from a faction leader, they have 100% chance of getting that trait, and if they are randomly spawned, they have equal chance of becoming one of the 4-5 clans ? Each could come with anti-traits of the other clans, preventing multiple bloodlines from appearing on one character. This way you would have a Kingdom comprised of multiuple vampire families, although i'm not sure if this makes sense Lore-wise.

Otherwise, the Von Carsteins do sound like the natural choice for the Vampire faction from what you ahve described.

[Bwian]

The Lords would be the general units. I don't really see them as a 'unit' in their own right, since they would be far too few in number to actually form up a large unit. It would also be the only way we can have a unque model for the Vampire leaders. to show up against the rank and file.

As far as the magic goes, I am also nervous about making units of magic throwing warriors. There is a minimum unit size, and this would be a problem. There would be a handful of Necromancers at most in a an army...more would look wrong. If I can find a way to mess about with things to get around this, then I will.

I managed to fool RTW into letting me use a human skeleton in an elephant unit ( with invisible riders due to the lack of a saddle bone ) and this worked well for me. It greatly reduced the size of the unit. There were some issues...and I could not make the archers on the back fire ... but it's an avenue I can explore for magic firing units.

Having a massed rank of these is out though... just looks silly and unrealistic.

[DrZoidberg]

The Lords would be the general units. I don't really see them as a 'unit' in their own right, since they would be far too few in number to actually form up a large unit. It would also be the only way we can have a unque model for the Vampire leaders. to show up against the rank and file.

As far as the magic goes, I am also nervous about making units of magic throwing warriors. There is a minimum unit size, and this would be a problem. There would be a handful of Necromancers at most in a an army...more would look wrong. If I can find a way to mess about with things to get around this, then I will.

I managed to fool RTW into letting me use a human skeleton in an elephant unit ( with invisible riders due to the lack of a saddle bone ) and this worked well for me. It greatly reduced the size of the unit. There were some issues...and I could not make the archers on the back fire ... but it's an avenue I can explore for magic firing units.

Having a massed rank of these is out though... just looks silly and unrealistic.

Maybe I'm totaly wrong here, but isn't Vampire Thralls just plain vampires, but belonging to the bottom rungs of vampire society. But they're not core units so we could drop them without losing the WH feel. My only real beef here, (and it is minor) is that it would be nice with a vampire faction where we've actually got some vampire units in battles we can play with.

Otherwise we're in full agreement. If we can't make something in the Warhammer world work well in the MTW2 engine, we should drop it.

[Casuir]

Vampire thrall are single characters, theres no actual unit of vampires in the tabletop game, core or otherwise. The very most you could do without making stuff up is include them as officers but given the amount of unit models to be made that would be low priority.

[DrZoidberg]

Vampire thrall are single characters, theres no actual unit of vampires in the tabletop game, core or otherwise. The very most you could do without making stuff up is include them as officers

But Warhammer battles are as a rule skirmishes. Tiny encounters between small numbers of troops. I think you'll have to scale it up a bit for MTW2. I could very well imagine units of Thralls in major battles. A Thrall is worth 10 times more points, (80p) than the common foot soldier, (8p). So it wouldn't be such a stretch to put them in squads of 20 and jack up the price.

It all comes down to what play style we want to have for the undead. Me personally I'd like to see a combination of crap and gold. Where the job of the garbage is to make sure the powerful units aren't outflanked or ganged up upon. As it is now the only powerful units Vampire Counts have are Blood Dragons and the general Vampire Lord. I'd rather have Vampire Thralls included into a von Carstein army than Blood Dragon. Just by looking at the story of Warhammer, it makes more sense.

Yes, I agree Blood Dragons look cooler.

but given the amount of unit models to be made that would be low priority.

Ah, yes reality. What a nuisance it is :)

[Casuir]

Well I think its better to wait until the armies are done and playtested before we start deciding they need units because they're unbalanced. Adding special characters as units is imo a bad idea unless its absolutely needed, you do it for one particular model and theres no excuse for not doing it for the rest. As for the scale thing, warmaster doesnt include thralls as a unit so I'm guess gw doesnt feel theyre needed either.

@ bwian, I notice Black Knights arent on the list, this intentional or an oversight?

[Meneldil]

Lhamian vampires do not live in Lhamia any longer. They where expeled and queen Nefarata and her court resetled in Silver Pinnacle in the Worlds Edge mountains. She has built herself a palace and from there she sends out spies and vampire agents to infiltrate the courts of the Old World plotting her return. She has a vast army of Zombies that she uses for protection and all her generals are hot chicks. It's all on pages 6 and 7 in the Vampire Counts army book.

Hence why they should be in IMO :D They could just have the same unit as the other Vampire faction (Von Carstein ?), but with female generals.

[Casuir]

Which would require their own culture, which are in short supply.

[Meneldil]

Which would require their own culture, which are in short supply.

Aren't generals (both on the campaign and battle maps) defined by their factions and not culture ? Or do they have to share a single model for each culture ?

If that's so, well, that would be a shame, a female-oriented faction would have been trully great IMO. Let's hope CA allow us to mod more culture in a futur patch.

[Casuir]

Yes, portraits arent though.

[DrZoidberg]

Yes, portraits arent though.

We could have a drag king thing going. Would be a hoot to have a guy with a beard called Selena :)

[Raz]

Edit - *cough, cough*

[alexader]

Did anyone said something about Mordheim? I think that is a place that fits to a vampire city because it is ''cursed'' city so it is intersted to be(for the von carsteins right?).What do you think?......

[Krazysigmarite]

Mordheim was destroyed by a two-tailed comet during the Imperial Civil War after it became corrupted in many different ways. Most citizens in the Empire saw this as Sigmar smiting the city for its sins. Mordheim no longer exists and is not in anyone's memory, as the city's ruins were utterly razed and destroyed by Magnus the Pious's armies after the victorious Great War against Chaos. After the destruction of the ruins, Mordheim was removed from all Imperial history. 'Modern' Empire citizens would have never heard of Mordheim.

The city/province you are thinking of is Sylvania, the cursed lands where the Von Carsteins first made their rise. Castle Drakwald is the specific center of terror and shun.

[alexader]

the campaign that game workshop had realesed with the name mordheim city of the damned says that many warbands go their to search for treasures and for wyrdstone and in the city have been found many undead and stranger creatures wandering the streets.I think mordheim still exist and it's very common to be an undead city,it's only my opinion and Bwian decides (but many shops that i go and play say that mordheim still exist because GW tells)

[Krazysigmarite]

The game Mordheim takes place before Magnus the Pious razed the city. It's a pretty fun little skirmish game, you put together a warband and battle it out with other gangs, search for treasure, etc. The hunt is based around finding pieces of warpstone. The ruins of Mordheim were tainted by chaos because of the large amount of warpstone in the comet that leveled the city - hence why Magnus destroyed the ruins.

[alexader]

I know the story,i am playing this game recently,but the only thing i didn't know is that it takes place before magnus the pious razed the city beacuse i didn't find it anywhere in the sourcebooks or even the rulebook of mordhiem ,so have anyone alse an opinion about mordhiem? Ok if Bwain don't want mordheim i will not insist.The end

[Ciaran]

the campaign that game workshop had realesed with the name mordheim city of the damned says that many warbands go their to search for treasures and for wyrdstone and in the city have been found many undead and stranger creatures wandering the streets.I think mordheim still exist and it's very common to be an undead city,it's only my opinion and Bwian decides (but many shops that i go and play say that mordheim still exist because GW tells)

The important thing is to look at the timeline. In some point of time, Mortheim did exist as a regular city, at another point as the ruined city and finally it didn´t exist anymore at all. And not all Warhammer universe scenarios are placed at the same point in time, it´s just an impression you tend to get because there´s not much in the way of technological progress in the Warhammer universe. Much like the Lord of the Rings, people there are rapping each other over the head with swords for three Ages, almost nine thousand years, and no progress at all. As a comparison t the real world, that´s somewhere in the Stone Age.

[Dead Guy]

I was thinking about Ghouls and their poisoned attacks. I guess it can't be mimicked in the engine like it works on the tabletop, where certain hits automatically wound or whatever it is, been too long since I played FB... If I remember correctly you're thinking of solving it by just increasing attack rating?

Would it be possible for poisoned attacks to induce the rotting cow effect? I have a feeling it's been discussed before so sorry if it's already been ruled out. I searched but didn't find it...