Heroes Best on Foot, Horse or Flying Mount?

[Ashantai]

Been playing for ages and usually I've always just mounted my heroes, some flying, some just on horse.

But I'm planning an Isabella campaign with her vampire hero swarm. What is best for them? Foot, nightmare or winged nightmare? I'm thinking specifically about being able to deal with enemy heroes and enemy troops in combat. If I have 4-5 in her army what is best?

[Inardesco]

You want her to do magic, not combat. Thats Vlads territory.

[Ashantai]

I meant for her vampire heroes.

[Winger]

5 heroes and the lord leaves room for only 14 units for battlefield presence so getting surrounded and flanked is inevitable. You definitely don't want them on a mount as they will be large targets who will turn into projectile magnets and more models will be able to poke your heroes from all sides. A good deal of those will have anti-large as well.

I'd go with all on foot, otherwise they will melt under missile fire & flanking attacks from being surrounded. You can try both styles and see the results for yourself though, you can always unequip mounts.

[Darbie]

Last time I played an Undead faction I put my vampires on Helsteed. The speed and mobility made it so enemy lords couldn't get away, and I just used them as hero/lord killers.

You could also do a mixture.

[A.Pot]

It can be a bit situational but generally speaking, best to go with flying mounts.

[Tsuyara]

Horse mounted lords, while usually a little worse in combat (larger hitbox, slower attack animations, worse shields and worse hit reaction chances), more than make up for it by not being knocked around easily and mobility. Flying mounts are generally better, but pegasus-type stuff is iffy. They will be better for everything except getting surrounded by enemy flyers and chasing down enemies. Still, alone the ability to fight on walls makes it worth it imo.

[funkmonster7]

Get flying mounts for all of them, but dismount them after getting their mounts.

You never mount them all. Always go for all on foot or some on foot some on mounts.

Mount your caster heroes (and lords), but only put them on flying mounts if you have flying bodyguards (Isabella's Vampire heroes can also act as bodyguards, but probably not Vlad's).

Mounted heroes are for chasing down fleeing lords and heroes, or flanking artillery units. Foot heroes are for destroying blobs.

Isabella can have all-on-foot heroes plus herself, have everything blob up around them and they can kill everything around them, because when they are all together in a small space and each hero deal so much damage, they insta-kill most things while most things can barely do any damage to any one of them before dying. Also you can drop a Wind of Death or Pit of Shades without risking hitting your own Vampire heroes.

Most of the time, Isabella and Vlad are reinforcing each other. So what you can do is place a few Blood Knights in Vlad's army, use Vlad to initiate battle, when battle begins, collect Isabella and the Vampires and put them together with Vlad, send them all down the middle except the casters. Then everything else except the Blood Knights, other cavs and flyers. Finally, use the cavs and flyers to flank anything ahead of them.

Putting them on mounts usually give them more trouble than advantage, because anti-large will skewer them, at least from my experience. There are more units with anti-large than anti-infantry, but Vampire heroes usually have very little MD (I think 48 max by default?), so they're sort of glass cannons, which means anti-large or anti-infantry bonuses will work against them. (Isabella can have 100+ MD, so a mere +10 anti-infantry or anti-large on a unit with 40 MA won't mean much against her.)

Anti-large bonuses are also usually larger than anti-infantry bonuses, so that's another thing to think about.

[JediMasterDraco]

With spellcaster heroes, I prefer to have them on a flying mount since that gives them a lot of mobility and the AI isn't all that great at prioritizing lone flyers. And in the case of the Vampire Counts, they can really dominate the air with Fell Bats, Vargheists, and Terrorgheists (certain mods also allow you to nab Hellsteed Cavalry and Zombie Dragons).

[Fendelphi]

For Isabella and her group of Vampires(around 5), I would go for flying. With a horde of Vargheist, Hounds and bats, she has a very fast army. And with Vlad as the "Inititator", with a typical undead ground army, she can easily reinforce(to gain the benefit of their trait) and take out key targets with all that mobility.

Leaving her and her vampires on foot means she will not be able to reinforce Vlad very fast(who, due to Vanguard, starts already in the opponent's face). Put them on a regular steed, and she wont be very effective in sieges.

For Vlad's army, I would much rather have a Necromancer(Corpse Cart) and a Wight King(on Foot), with a lot of troops.