It's official

The New VC's are just plain stupid.

Matt and I did a rematch of our final that we had at the tourney.

Once again the Grave Guard took it on the chin from the Slaneshi Chosen with the Rapturous Standard. This time, Matt was wise enough to get my Lord into combat with a lone Marauder so I could not used his WS 7 on the Grave guard with the helm of command..

But after a couple of turns of fighting, even after killing my BSB with the Regen Standard in the first round of combat, the Grave Guard were back at full strength with all the Invocation. Eventually his chosen were flanked by a unit of skellies, and that's all she wrote. They fled and were destroyed by running into a 10 man unit of zombies previously summoned.

The sad thing is that are probably even more abusive ways to use them that I haven't figured out yet.

VCs are just plain broken, horribly at that, you can spend 3-4 turns taking down a unit to just one guy left, and then one massive invocation has the unit back to full strength, GW did no playtesting whatsoever when they made that book.

luis the young wrote:VCs are just plain broken, horribly at that, you can spend 3-4 turns taking down a unit to just one guy left, and then one massive invocation has the unit back to full strength, GW did no playtesting whatsoever when they made that book.

That's exactly what happened... the skellies to my front were down to one man, then back to 22 strong and I got flanked by the grave guard.

Damn that's cheesy! Stupid GW.

Yes! Those are my VC's! GO GO GO!!

Yes, with 4 Vamps in the list and something like 15 power dice...and casting Invok on a 3+ or 4+ is just stupid...to combat it, one must take just as many magic users all kitted out with scrolls...no fun. Only answer is to hope the VC general doesn't take all magic users in his list, but as all Vamps count as magic users...kinda hard to do...or, VC general could take only 2 heroes/lords, but his army would suffer movement pentalies possibly at that point...damned if you do, damned if you don't...stupid list (should have had Invok be the second spell and cast on a 5+ or even 6+, making the VC player use at least 2 dice to get it off). Then again, an entire army that has ASF is just as stupid...yeah GW!!!

Yep, very annoying an dfrustating army to play against, i really dont see how they can be beaten unless you have lods of shooting to whipe out a whol eunit in one round or cannons to bounc einto the general . I just played stephan with my TKs, i hit this graveguard unit arround 5-6 times with the Screaming Skul Catapult, direct hits all of them, i took the unit to 3 models at one point, i as killing arround 9-10 guys a shot, he would just raise the unit back to full strength on his magic phase. 2000 point game, he would get around 13 powerdice, summoning casts on a 4+ because of magic item, all he needs is one dice and BOOM all units that took hits back to full strength. I was rolling good, really good, and i only killed 2 units of wolves and 1 unit of skells, a whooping 160 points total, and the black coach, an that only because i got super super lucky with the coach. TK magic is very strong for what it does, but is just no match to the ammount of magic VCs get and their ability to raise obsence amount of units a round, not countign raisign units over the starting size, or raising new units.

Very frustating army to play against, specially if controlled by someone thats good. I got an idea for next time i play them and im gonna try it out, but in a tournament setting it may not work because is gonna be very anti magic setting, we'll see.

good game stephan, even i fi hate the VCs

I agree Sam. Its not only broken, its extremely dull to play against.

Yeah, I saw Luis try his best today using his Khemri against Stephan's VC's. He reduced a unit down to 3 models 3 times, but Stephan was able to raise them all back up. Its fucking frustrating.

Yeah..
I can see that playing with the Uber-Necro army is gonna get old quick for people... I'll reserve it for people who feel they want a real challenge.

lol, is not about facing a challenge, is just that i think that VCs are almost imposible to beat unless you have an army that is tailored to fight it. I mean, you werent even rolling that great with your summonings, and yet i couldnt kill your units because the crazy ammount of powerdice you had at your disposal, and i was actually rolling good. Like i said, im gonna try a different combo next time i play you, this was the first time i have faced against the new VCs and all the horror stories ive read about them are actually true. They are just the army to beat at the momment, i coul ddeal with all their other crazy rules, but the ability to raise dead on a 4+ and just using one die when you have 13-15 at your disposal is just to damn broken. I just dont see any downside to the army.
1- very expensive characters : not a prob, you can just raise a whole new army, or do what you did and take small units and raise them to 20+
2- zombies suck, but you can summon a unit of 90 and still only gives me 50 points, not counting the fact that they are the ultimate tar pit unit.
3- no shootign at all! again, not much of a big deal, the average army has some shooting, unless is dwarves-empire-woodelves, you can do tons of damage, that gets healed back up with no probs in one magic phase.
4- Blood dragons are uber expensive! yeah, but look at what you get, guys that have 3 attacks each at a strg 7 when they charge, and the combo banners/character you can give them, make th eunit just th emost disgusting thing to face.

I think thats it, i dont see any other negatives.

We'll see how the Demon armies and the Dark elf armies play, i hope TKs get redone soon !!!

We need to learn how to adapt to this. While I hate playing broken lists as anybody else, it looks to me like things aren't going to magically get better, so:

That being said, here's some advice that I've discovered about beating the VS:

1. Armies like the one Stephan brings out rely ALOT on the Vampires to do their casting for them. So, cut the head of the serpent off and be done with it. Target out the Vampires, who if are tooled out to be casters won't be crazy fighters and never have great armor anyways, and pick them off one by one. Don't be afraid to let your unit run after you knock out a vampire or two as you'll quickly notice the magic phase not being nearly as long once a vampire or 2 are gone.

2. Isolate and destroy. Against an army like VCs I think you can't go with a full frontal approach. Send multiple units of your best CC troops and just overwhelm a unit at a time. The same is true for shooting. You need to simply focus EVERYTHING you've got on a single unit at a time and I think particularly against the weaker ones. Skeles are not hard to beat down with some shooting.

Example: In your case Luis I would rather have focused my efforts on the skeleton units completely. You know the graveguard are nasty, particularly with that regen banner. However, if your SSCs had landed a couple of on targets on the skele units and your CC chariots broken them through combat res, suddenly he's lacking a vampire (who was with that unit) as well as a unit to add forces too. Once the magic is gone hitting the Grave Guard won't be as difficult.

3. Shoot just enough. This is a tactic which can only work if you have any leftover firepower from Step 2. Take a unit and blast into something the grave guard or vargulfs with. You may kill like 2 or 3 grave guard or do a couple of wounds to the vargulf. In your opponent's turn they are gonna more then likely waste some dice restoring those "hard hitters" to full strength. Let those spells go right by as you want to dispell the ones that are geared towards the units your smacking around with step 2 (the all-at-once approach). If he ignores those wounded or lost guys then you can continue to knock away at them or if you get them low enough wipe them out via step 2 (shooting, magic, or CC). This can help save your power-dice and dispell-scrolls as you focus on particular units.

4. March-block. With no shooting to speak of, almost all of magic focused around buffing up the army, and the new vampire marching rules it seems obvious that VCs are interested in getting into combat ASAP. However they are just as prone to the march-block rules as anyone else (execpt dwarves of course). As such, I think units of scouts or fast cav or flies are required in order to slow down the stupid rambling horde. The more turns that you can dictate what happens (via steps 2 and 3) before they are upon you the better. Forcing failed charges, march blocking from the rear, and making flanking units overrun into the middle of the board, blocking the advancing main army are all tactics which I think are critical for defeating any army, particularly one that keeps coming back!


There's a couple of suggestions to throw out there for you guys. Feel free to contradict them as I've only played against them once but I feel these are pretty sound.

Is impossible to target the vampire when he's sitting behind his whole army, any unit fast enough to get arround it is not gonna be strong enough to kill it, a flying character on a mount might have a chance, but he can just raise a unit in front of him to block the charge.

I tried concentrating fire, but when you can go from 3 to 20 in one round of sumoning, is pretty hard

I need to learn how to use my chariots better, they dont pack the punch on their own of normal chariots, but with almost 1000 points going into my 4 characters in a 2000 point game, i dont have enough units to target one with 2 and so on, TK characters aer VERY expensive, and i have to rely on my magic as much as VCs do, only diff is, that i cant increase the size of my units, cant raise as many and cant raise new units.

We'll see, i'll just keep on playing against them until i figure a way, i never said i wouldnt play them again, just that it was VERY frustating !

Yeah Luis, I guess having a magic phase where a person needs 12 dispel dice to stop you is kind of nice huh... oh but you knew about that already didn't you. I'm sorry that your 4 flaming magical catapult attacks per turn weren't enough, or maybe your 12 automatic strength 7 killing blow attacks in cc per turn weren't enough either. oh and I'm sorry about the fact that your burrowing strength 5 toughness 5 killing blow scorpions for 80pts each couldn't do anything either. You're just bitter that your cheezy ass list didn't win. Matt needs to play you're army a few more times to get a sense of how frustrating it is to beat.

Isolate and destroy. Against an army like VCs I think you can't go with a full frontal approach. Send multiple units of your best CC troops and just overwhelm a unit at a time. The same is true for shooting. You need to simply focus EVERYTHING you've got on a single unit at a time and I think particularly against the weaker ones. Skeles are not hard to beat down with some shooting.

Dan, the problem with some of your tactics is that while you're trying to overwhelm a unit at a time, the other units are flank charging you, or at least getting ready too. In a game where you need to break your opponent on the charge, the undead never break. This has ALWAYS been the difficulty when facing the undead, besides the fact that they cause fear. The new incarnation of VC's makes it simply too easy to resurrect models. So whereas in the past you could whittle down a skelly unit in 2 turns, now it takes you like 4 or 5.

Flanking them is obviously helpful, but unless you wipe out the unit, which is difficult, you are gonna end up getting flank charged in return, either by an adjacent infantry block or by a vargulf.

The fact that the helm of command makes the target unit WS 7, makes it that much harder.

Here's what helped Sam draw against me in the tournament, (and he actually had more VPs in the end. )

1. Despite the fact that I had overwhelming magical dominance, Sam used his magical defense wisely. Although I have to admit that I rolled an appalling amount of 1's and 2's on my invocations. But judicious use of anti-magic is very important.

2. Sam Lured a skellie and Zombie unit away by not being afraid to flee. He fled with his swordmasters because they were about to get flank charged, thanks to Van Hels. That saved the swordmasters who then came back and hacked through both the skelli unit and helped destroy the zombie unit.
People are afraid to flee with expensive units, but I've seen sam do it time and again, only to rally them and come back in the later rounds.

3. Sam's White Lions had a banner that made them immune to fear. This held up my grave guard for 5 turns. They eventually fled, but did what they were supposed to do.

4. Target Vampires.. Like Dan said. Sam killed all my vampires except my Lord. I've since remedied this vulnerability in my newest list, but they are still vulnerable to high strength attacks.

So anyway, I'll be bringing my empire for the next time we get together, so I don't have to hear people crying.

Hey stephan, look at your comment about my cheezy list and all the things you said i did against you, and after ALL THAT, all i had managed to kill was 2 wolf units, 10 skeletons and the black coach on a one in a million roll

Magic defense sucks with TKs, with 3 priests in a 2000 point list all i was able to get were 5 dispell dice and 2 dispell scrolls

I wish i had the option to flee with undead, all i can do us hold, cant even stand and shoot. Is sometimes tough to elect to flee with some units, with my orcs i almost never elect to flee, is a lot easier for an elf to rally on a 8-9, than for an orc to do it on a 7 and a NG on a 5

Scorpions are broken as hell, but they have a good chance of scattering way off, or coming up late, or actually not showing up at all rolling a missfier! Scorpions need a point increase, they are way to cheap for as good as they are.

Funny thing is that you werent even using a cheese list, your list was pretty basic as VC lists go from what ive seen, MY list was cheesy, 2 catapults and 3 priests, and it still did very poorly against the counts

Luis, 5 dispel dice and 2 scrolls is not bad for everyday magical defense. and that's the problem with certain V.C lists is that with every friggin vampire being a wizard, you're going to get at least 7 power dice in an all vampire list.

The list I was using is cheezed out not because of the Drakenhoff banner but because of the 12 powerdice in a 2000 pt game.

But people have the same problem against the Tomb kings.

If I had played my empire army that I had there against your Tomb kings, I would have probably been destroyed after turn 3. I had 1 lv1 with 2 scrolls, and an arch lector. So that's 5 dispel dice and 2 scrolls. But a few hits from your catapults and my men would have gone running. that's that, end of game. you get off 2 spells with your king, and what like 4 spells with your priests, most of the time needing 2 dice to dispell. So in order to dispell your magic, at the least, you need 6 dispel dice. But if any of your spells go off on a 7+, I'm boned.

Only a tailored army will beat this VC list that I've been playing with. And when I mean tailored, I mean, 7+ dispell dice, 3+ scrolls, and a bonus to dispels.

To make things really gross, you can take an all Zombie horde and give your vampires Master of the Black arts, instead of their normal stuff. This will give you 6 for the Lord and 3 for each Vampire giving you a wopping total of 17 powerdice in a 2000 pt game.

Problem with this is that

A. You need a buttload of Zombies
B. Vampires can't sit inside zombie units so are more vulnerable.

and dont zombies cause fear?

DUDE!!!! I WANT A ZOMBIE HORDE NOW!!!!
They never kill anything but they never die!!!

yeah.. You surround all of your vampires in a Necro Bunker, hunkered down between 8 units of 30 zombies. You put all your vampires in the front rank of a 10 man skellie unit with the Drakenhoff banner. Warmachines and ballistic units on a hill will get like 2 turns of shooting at the vampires, at which point Zombies will be raised in front of them and then charged with Dance Macabre. After that, it's all over.

lol, insane , just insane.

naa, dont bring your empire, bring the VCs, i gotta learn to play against the bastards, as frustating as it will be !

What's funny is that I'm so disgusted with 10+ power dice lists right now that I feel guilty about building a Tzeentch Daemons list hahahah

Diosamblet wrote:What's funny is that I'm so disgusted with 10+ power dice lists right now that I feel guilty about building a Tzeentch Daemons list hahahah

Looks like GW wants to go back to the days where magic rulled the games, lol, im waiting to see what crazines the new Skaven book will have for magic, their magic was always ...interesting.

Im thinking of getting me another army, but undecided between Skaven or Lizardmen, i gotta convince some poor sucker in bartertown to trade all my Tau for His Skaven or Lizardmen

Ya know, it is interesting to watch and read how you feel about the VC and what the TK have and all the magic the Demons have. It maybe that GW is leaning toward magic. REMEMBER, what was said, themed armies with the codex fluff isn't cool. Winning is the game, and is all that matters, at all costs. It only matters to power up a army and chez it, then crush your opponnet and show your superiority and greatness. To hell with the scrubs, geeks, newbies, and fluff / themed armies!! Domination is Life, Praise be to Crush.

That's just the thing Dale, the Vampire army, as is, with all it's powerdice, DOES fit it's fluff. A vampire Lord would naturally have vampire vassals. And if he happened to be a vampire well versed in necromancy, wouldn't his underlings be fairly well versed as well? And being that they are good at Necromancy, wouldn't it make sense that the army would primarily be composed of skelletons, zombies, and grave guard. The only thing someone could say doesn't exactly fit the fluff would be having 2 vargulfs.

Same can be said of Tzeentch and Tomb Kings. Seems like GW is making their fluff fit the abusive type and less the well balanced type of armies. Look at the High Elves. They changed the fluff to make them even a more elite army then they were.. So now, if you try and take a balanced high elf list, with Silver Helms and Spearmen, you're actually being UNFLUFFY.

BTW, Luis, please go for the Ratmen, as we have only 1 skaven player. I am halfway done building my lizardmen and don't want you copying my ideas

Chessy lists are what they are and I personally grow tired of them very quickly. As with any game you can easily find ways to bend the rules and make the game nuts.

I'd love to see a tournament where the players had to have the majority of their points in core selections. Make things a little more interesting I think. Then again who knows.


Either way, the most recent Fantasy armies (save for Hordes who are getting redone) have all been major power boosts. The question is only how high will they try to go, because every army out recently (High Elves, VCs, and Deamons) all have had quite nasty potential. It's really about how you play the game. I just hate playing chessy lists.