More VC army construction

UPDATED: 1-19-12

I'm still working on the finer points of designing a solid VC army and I'd like to take you guys on a guided tour on how I reach certain decisions.  Hopefully, this short article will help you guys in your army building stages as well.

First, I'll talk about my lord choices:

Vampire Lord = 433
Lore of Vampires
Red Fury, Quickblood
Knight, Ogre Blade, Dragonhelm, 4+ Ward, PoFool

Lv.3 Master Necro (Book of Arkhan) = 190
Lore of Vampires

This here is what I had at first.  I wanted to do this for the following reasons:  Keeping the VL at Lv.1 makes him a mere support caster.  It gives him focus, as he's now a primary melee attacker.  Bigger spells are not really used by him, thus limiting the amount of PD thrown (which in turn lowers the chance to miscast).  This also allows me to fill in a Master Necro at Lv.3 and Book of Arkhan.  It gives him a dedicated role and allows him to cast elsewhere (2 casters vs. 1) while maintaining a good magic item.

However, my list progressed to something like this:

Viktor Draconis (Lv.4 Vampire Lord) = 538
Lore of Vampires
Red Fury, Quickblood
Knight, Ogre Blade, Dragonhelm, 4+ Ward, PoFool

Lv.1 Necro (Book of Arkhan) = 90

Going over the points again, I took a look at my Lv.3 Master Necro and the Vampire Lord and stared at them for a very long time.  I understand the pros and cons of having both a Vampire Lord and Master Necro, but I wanted more than that.  More knowledge, more options, more understanding.  One of the first things a competitive player does when he min-maxes his list is to trim the fat.  He maximizes on the amount of points he has allotted himself and he goes to no end to find a work around one simple concept:  How to get the best bang for your buck?  Then it hit me.. the Master Necro Lv.4 is 200 points on the dot.  To upgrade my Vampire Lord to a Lv.4 takes 105 points.  That's half of the points to unlock the VL to his full potential and gives you a larger array of spells.  The reason why this change is appropriate is because of points:  I can't possibly take a Red Fury Lord and a Lv.4 in the same army list at 2500 points.  The only way I can is to take one person who can do it all:  A Lv.4 Wizard with the speed, power and protection of a fully-armored Vampire Lord.

I decided that the good outweighs the bad:  The good is that you have a Lv.4 in your army and a combat Lord at the same time.  The bad is that you are now the biggest target on the battlefield:  3 wounds, one body, one location, the General and the highest level caster.  Sounds like a bad deal right?  Not for the 100 points saved and the big middle finger saying I'm coming for you anyway (reasoning need not apply).

As for the Hero slots, I'm still a little undecided.  When I show you my army list later, you'll see that I still have ~100 or so points left over.  Here's the combo I have running right now:

Edward Cullen (Vampire) = 202
Lore of Vampires
Aura of Dark Majesty, Fear Incarnate
Shield, Glittering Scales, Scroll

60x Skeletons (FC, Screaming Banner, Spears) = 355

I used to have the Vampire mounted on a horse in a unit of Black Knights and the Vampire Lord, but I decided against that.  One of the reasons why is because it paints a giant target on my head, and since I changed my Vampire Lord to a Lv.4, I don't want an even bigger target placed over my head.  This falls into the "too many eggs in 1 basket" approach.  The combo might be ridiculous on paper, but when you total up the points to see it work, you begin to wonder if it's worth it or not.  I decided that it was not worth it, but instead focus on something that'll improve the overall strength of my entire army:  Adding additional threat!

What's scarier than a giant horde of Skeletons flanked by a giant unit of Grave Guard w/ Banner of Barrows?  When the giant unit of Skeletons you're in combat with is never going to let you go until you're all destroyed.  With the Scary Vampire placed in the giant unit of Skellies, you have an assload of Unbreakable wounds to chew through w/ Fear tests going off every turn that'll make you hate life.  Skeletons suck in combat compared to most things, but they are actually pretty decent when you put them in a horde formation with Spears and give them the ability to make someone WS1.  Hit on 3s with an assload of attacks is going to cause issues to anyone in the game.  Not just that, but they hit you less, you kill them more and it balances out their Undead rule to maybe even... beating units in combat.  Maybe you don't have to pull more Skellies out of every combat.  Maybe, just maybe, I think Skeletons should be scary on the battlefield.

This, completes the goal that I wanted to do:  Expand on the number of threats on the battlefield while reducing the bullet magnet size of the Black Knights.  Kill 2 birds with 1 stone as far as I'm concerned.

Now, we look at another the other obvious combos:

35x Grave Guard (FC, GW, Banner of Barrows) = 500
11x Black Knights (FC, Banner of Swiftness) = 331

7x5 Grave Guard with Great Weapons and Banner of Barrows.  Deploy them next to the Fear-bombing Skeletons and your opponents will most likely sweat.  Think about it:  Grave Guard hits most things in the game on 3s and wound on 2s with Great Weapons.  Vs. a giant Skeleton bunker that's afflicting fear to targets 10-wide, you're looking at hitting things in the game on 2s.  In turn, this also ups the amount of damage you receive because WS1 hits WS3 on 5s.  All of a sudden, being in combat with Grave Guard + Fearbomb gives you the same amount of protection as the now missing Drakenhof Banner.  In fact, vs. higher WS units w/ Flaming Banner, recurring Fear gives you infinitely more protection.

The other unit here is the Black Knights.  I took the Screaming Banner off them so I can spread the threat somewhere else, so I decided to up their count to 11 and give them Banner of Swiftness.  One of the problems with Knights these games is their size, their price, their ability to NOT deny Steadfast and their speed.  I wanted to amend as many of these as possible by upping their unit count to 11 first.  This gives me more bodies to pull, more units to put back because of my new Lv.4 (D6+1 is a lot!), and less models that needs to be there for when Disruption might come into effect.  Being a 6x2 formation also provides a larger number of attacks at the cost of almost no maneuverability.  The Banner of Swiftness gives me additional threat range, and allows me to get in combat quicker.  Honestly, I need to get in combat ASAP with the Lord and his unit to minimize on the amount of shooting I have to face.

So with that in mind, here's my current list as of today:

2500
9 drops

LORDS:
Viktor Draconis (Lv.4 Vampire Lord) = 538
Lore of Vampires
Red Fury, Quickblood
Knight, Ogre Blade, Dragonhelm, 4+ Ward, PoFool

HEROES:
Edward Cullen (Vampire) = 202
Lore of Vampires
Aura of Dark Majesty, Fear Incarnate
Shield, Glittering Scales, Scroll

Lv.1 Necro (Book of Arkhan) = 90
Cairn Wraith = 60

CORE:
60x Skeletons (FC, Screaming Banner) = 355
27x Ghouls = 270

SPECIAL:
Spirit Host = 45
Spirit Host = 45
2x Fell Bats = 32
2x Fell Bats = 32
35x Grave Guard (FC, GW, Banner of Barrows) = 500
11x Black Knights (FC, Banner of Swiftness) = 331

Now I'm looking at a total of 9 drops with heroes.  That's a pretty decent amount of drops and the Fell Bats mean absolutely nothing to me.  If they re-direct some things out of the way, great.  If they don't, it doesn't matter because I still have 9 drops total.  I added the Cairn Wraith in there for another Ethereal re-director and Terror.  Having a Terror-causer in the scary Skeleton unit can give me Fear over Fear-causers, so I think that's great.

Thanks for reading.