Late game vampire counts army

[Molester of all Eggs]

I’m sorta stuck on what a late game vampire counts army is supposed to look like. Currently getting bashed around by empire + their new dlc ranged units. Vargheists don’t cut it against the pressure of so many ranged units and neither do varghulfs. Grave guards were already pretty mid/bad back when I played in mortal empires. Am I supposed to be going for some kind of hero spam here?

[Harukage]

Easy answer - play Isobellas vampire doomstack. Purple Sun and Spirit Leech away.
Proper answer - ranged spamm is useless against Cairn Wraiths and Hexwraith Riders.
Educating answer - proper use of skeleton spears/shielded grave guard combined with 2-3 necromancers on ressurecting corpse carts spamming Invocation of Nehek on your troops and Rise Dead on enemy shooters is a good screen. Black Knights is a cheap hammer when your anvil is set up, or Vargheists if you want things to rout faster. Or Blood Knights if you feel rich.

[ik vind geschiedenis leuk]

14 necromancers, 5 grave guards and a spellcaster lord, and then put your necromancers surrounded by the grave guard as an elite force while summoning waves upon waves of zombies

[Talilover]

Late game you should have heroes and lords that can pretty much solo armies but hexwraiths imo are a very viable option to wipe out ranged units, but honestly if they're flimsy enough (like handgunners or xbows instead of things like qurallers and thunderers) even basic direwolves should be able to rip through them.

I like to tuck the dire wolves in a forest or something and wait for the melee portion of their army to make contact with mine or just run far enough ahead of them to catch them, can even abuse their skirmish mode to make them run farther away from the army before munching on em. Makes a huge difference because 6 ranged units or so getting wiped before they can use their ammo is a big balance of power shifter/ leads to army losses faster. Also nice to have these units run down any unit that routes obviously.

Mentioned the dlc units specifically so yeah you may need hexwraits to reliably break the ironsides but if you meant the long rifles they should fold even quicker than a normal handgunner unit

[Da_Higg]

If there is enough vampire corruption to avoid taking attrition use ambush stance to catch the enemy out of position.

Fell bats are good for clearing out artillery and they are a guaranteed option in the raise dead pool so sending them on a suicide mission to stop hellstorms from firing is an option

[Waterworks]

Hero spam is good. Either lore master or dread incarnate.

otherwise spam low tier junk units and complement them with Necro lunestone and mortis engine. you can punch very far above your wait with that in terms of Bang for your buc

[Waterworks]

Originally posted by martignano16:

Hero spam is good. Either lore master or dread incarnate.

otherwise spam low tier junk units and complement them with Necro lunestone and mortis engine. you can punch very far above your wait with that in terms of Bang for your buc

Yea corpse cart and heros basicly

[Gorgeous_Joe]

I've always wondered what an entire stack of Mortis Engines would do to an enemy army........

[Kel'Thuzad]

As others have said, by late game your lords and heroes should be fairly unstoppable if you know how to use magic effectively.
The rest of the army are just there to stop you routing from being outnumbered, or to hold the ground if all of your characters are flying.

But if you really want to use elite late game units; Blood Knights, Terrorgeist, Mortise Engine.
Vargeists are still very good in the late game at shredding vulnerable targets (e.g. artillery crews). You shouldn't be running them straight into enemy missile fire.
Crypt Horrors can also do a lot of work with their AP damage and regeneration. Just have to be careful not to run them straight into hard counters (Halberds, Slayers, etc).

[Waterworks]

Its about hero traits also. Dread incarnate and lore keeper stacks are op

[Professor H. Farnsworth]

So, Vampire Counts have always been about quantity over quality. There's a few cases where quality is bueno. Corpse Carts, but get Necromancers on them, about 2 to cover an entire front line and Mortis Engines - again, 2 to cover the entire front line - don't put them in the front line if there's ranged units they will target it/them with fierce hatred.

The rest can pretty much just be Skelly Spears.. Really and a few Vampire Heroes/Vampire Lords. They're the real powerhouse of the Vampires. Wind of Death is an incredible spell (still) and the Vampire Heroes and Lords can pretty much solo.. well anything for an eternity so yeaah.

The only thing they sort of struggle to deal with is heavy artillery/ranged units, but you would just send your lord/heroes up to nuke that with spells before the engagement starts.

I still think Vampire Counts are horribly behind in terms of power, because eh.. Their armies are trash compared to virtually all other races and their faction mechanics dull (you can see it was some of the first iterations of faction mechanics).

Originally posted by Gorgeous_Joe:

I've always wondered what an entire stack of Mortis Engines would do to an enemy army........

Nothing as it can only apply it's buff and debuff once per unit.

[Frenker]

high tier units?? like with ever faction ....

just make sure you kill range enemies and you good to go like again with every faction....

[matlajs]

counts friend. vampirish .... counts. simply outnumber tham. let them waste ammo on crapp zombie stack then ruin them with magic and units.

You will win they will loose / You will loose, but will create battle site ===> they will loose in next consecutive battle

[Waterworks]

Originally posted by Professor H. Farnsworth:

So, Vampire Counts have always been about quantity over quality. There's a few cases where quality is bueno. Corpse Carts, but get Necromancers on them, about 2 to cover an entire front line and Mortis Engines - again, 2 to cover the entire front line - don't put them in the front line if there's ranged units they will target it/them with fierce hatred.

The rest can pretty much just be Skelly Spears.. Really and a few Vampire Heroes/Vampire Lords. They're the real powerhouse of the Vampires. Wind of Death is an incredible spell (still) and the Vampire Heroes and Lords can pretty much solo.. well anything for an eternity so yeaah.

The only thing they sort of struggle to deal with is heavy artillery/ranged units, but you would just send your lord/heroes up to nuke that with spells before the engagement starts.

I still think Vampire Counts are horribly behind in terms of power, because eh.. Their armies are trash compared to virtually all other races and their faction mechanics dull (you can see it was some of the first iterations of faction mechanics).

Originally posted by Gorgeous_Joe:

I've always wondered what an entire stack of Mortis Engines would do to an enemy army........

Nothing as it can only apply it's buff and debuff once per unit.

Yes Most of my armies are tier 1 units with a necromancer on a lunestone and a mortis engine. sometimes i like to use balefire also if i have no acces to a mortis engine.

A good trick is to blob up and keep the hole army under the regen of the necromancer and lunestone and mortis engine. Also wen blobbed up it becomes more difficult to hit a single unit with full damage. the damage will be shared between different units and healing will become much more manageble

[Waterworks]

Originally posted by martignano16:

Originally posted by Professor H. Farnsworth:

So, Vampire Counts have always been about quantity over quality. There's a few cases where quality is bueno. Corpse Carts, but get Necromancers on them, about 2 to cover an entire front line and Mortis Engines - again, 2 to cover the entire front line - don't put them in the front line if there's ranged units they will target it/them with fierce hatred.

The rest can pretty much just be Skelly Spears.. Really and a few Vampire Heroes/Vampire Lords. They're the real powerhouse of the Vampires. Wind of Death is an incredible spell (still) and the Vampire Heroes and Lords can pretty much solo.. well anything for an eternity so yeaah.

The only thing they sort of struggle to deal with is heavy artillery/ranged units, but you would just send your lord/heroes up to nuke that with spells before the engagement starts.

I still think Vampire Counts are horribly behind in terms of power, because eh.. Their armies are trash compared to virtually all other races and their faction mechanics dull (you can see it was some of the first iterations of faction mechanics).



Nothing as it can only apply it's buff and debuff once per unit.

Yes Most of my armies are tier 1 units with a necromancer on a lunestone and a mortis engine. sometimes i like to use balefire also if i have no acces to a mortis engine.

A good trick is to blob up and keep the hole army under the regen of the necromancer and lunestone and mortis engine. Also wen blobbed up it becomes more difficult to hit a single unit with full damage. the damage will be shared between different units and healing will become much more manageble

You should alway kill artilery first though so some flyers is a must. Wen fighting choas dwarfs mind the aoe spells. they are basicly the only things that can effectifily deal with a VC healing blob

[Big Moustache]

Free skeletons and necromancers is all you need, really. If you can not beat a doomstack than 3vs1 that doomstack in manual battle. The vampire heroes are also solid in any skeleton army for magic, hero killing and fast flying mounts. Once free skeletons are unlocked you can spam them like the cheating AI spams armies. The only limiting factor is running out of lords 😂