Faction Thread 2: Vampire Counts

[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?

[DrZoidberg]

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?

Since we've got Wights in the list and Black knights simply are Wights on horses, (Nightmares) it does make sense to include them.

[DrZoidberg]

If by chance they will be included I threw together a Black Knight unit card description. I won't start crying if this doesn't get used.

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12) Black Knights

In the ancient times heroes where buried in mounds of earth and stone, in full battle gear and all their worldly wealth. These are raised with powerful magic and are called Wights. The spells to make them rise are so powerful that once they have risen they can last for many centuries. Even though they have more capacity of independent thought than skeleton warriors they are still the slaves of the vampires. Occasionally they are led by Wight lords.

The wealthiest of these ancient buried heroes where sometimes buried with their warhorses and together they are known as Black Knights.

They wear well crafted heavy bronze armor, as is their heavily armoured skeletal warhorse. They are armed with exquisite enchanted long swords and shields.

[Bwian]

What we must bear in mind is that the number of actual models we can have in the game is limited. As is the number of unit variations.

The stock MTW2 units, as in all the Ca games, use the same model with a different texture as often as possible. This allows them to get the maximum number of units for the minimum expenditure of PC resource.

We are more restricted in this approach. You can re-use an orc mesh for a few things, I can use the same chaos units for the different factions with different skins ....but we can't do what the stock game does, which is to use...for example .... the same peasant mesh for multiple factions.

We have to be economical with the units wherever possible if we are not to find ourselves restricted later on. Once we have a solid core for each faction, we can start adding in 'fancy' units!