Undead Tips?

[David McMurdo]

I started playing as "Undead" in the fourth edition of the tabletop game, and have played as undead factions of various kinds ever since. That remains true in the Warhammer video games. I tend to play as Heinrich Kemmler, Arkhan the Black, or Vlad Von Carstein, in that order of interest.

However, for some reason I find that the undead only perform as I'd expect when playing as Vlad. Perhaps it's because Vlad has a superior starting position and is super tough in battle himself, but I find the campaigns of Kemmler and Arkhan extremely challenging. I particularly have trouble against dwarfs.

A friend and I sometimes have multiplayer battles, and he composed this dwarf army that has a frontline of basic dwarf warriors, and lots of crossbowmen behind. I find it impossible to beat with any variation of undead. I obviously want my general to remain close to my troops, but as soon as I'm in range my friend will just target all of his crossbowmen on him. My undead warriors can't stand up against his dwarf fighters anyway, and my cavalry quickly gets dissolved if I try to flank his army. Even the likes of hexwraiths. My friend himself admitted that he would have no idea how to deal with his army if he was undead.

Unless I'm playing as Vlad, I just don't feel that the undead are as effective as they should be. The fact that they can't run away should be an advantage, but I find their binding mechanic to be more of a punishment than an advantage. Enemies like dwarfs seem nigh unbreakable themselves at times.

So I guess I'm just looking for tips on how to play the undead, and Vampire Counts specifically. Not tips for specific campaigns, but general tips.

Much appreciated.

[Hieronymous]

I think it's an even bigger problem in the game than on tabletop, as early on you'll be very limited to mostly cannon-fodder units.

Unlike the tabletop, however, you can show up to the battle with as many stacks as you can. That's how I survive early undead games, anyways.

Note that vampires have a tech that makes skeleton or zombie upkeep 0.

[Greymene]

Maybe you should try to flood the Dwarfs with cheap (or even upkeep-free) zombies, supported by raise dead spells and regeneration (don't remember the name of that one), until the Dwarfs simply run out of ammo. Then move in your grave guards and other stronger, more elite units. Might work?

[Agemouk]

Early game Arkhan the Black should simply avoid fighting the Dwarfs until he has AP Ushabti. Give them gifts, sign a NAP and even a trade deal. Keep them sweet. Vanilla TK has nothing that'll really scratch a half decent dawi force before constructs. The only way you could to it is to take two (or even three if you have the army cap) armies against their one (which you can do by turn 14 onwards) and literally throw a full army of skeleton warriors under the bus to simply exhaust them, then come in with the second army and try and do some damage. Even then, early game, you'd probably require extensive use of magic to pull it off.

[Princemousey]

Maybe play as the Vampire Coast.

[Wyvern]

As kemmler, beat up on the brettonians, mop up the stunties later. Just churn out stacks of skelly trash and youre golden.

As vlad(you should start as isabella for better bonuses btw) you can spam vargheists and heroes early on(seize drakenhof from vlad and get the crypts there to get early vampires), which will tear apart just about anything you face. You dont even need that many, just half a dozen or something and the rest can be skelly trash.

As Arkhan just dont fight the stunties until youve wrecked the brets and got access to constructs. Often times you can get trade and NAP's with them anyway. If you really must fight them bring chariots, multiple armies, use the soulblight debuff, and cycle charge like mad.

In normal MP custom battles, you can cater your build to the matchup. Grave Guard, Grave guard greatweapons, cycle charging varghulfs, black coaches, a lord on a hellsteed to juke out crossbows+spam summons, maybe some wraiths and banshees, and you can dismantle most dwarf defenses pretty handily. For tomb kings theres different approaches, i personally like carrion+SEM like tomb princes on chariots/settra on sphinx+tomb guard and skellytrash frontline

[Cleftin Twain]

Well I can't speak for multi-player, but I would think if you know he's going to being a lot of ranged, bring artillery and out range him if possible. Bowshabti are great for dealing with armored units and can out range and out run Dwarven ranged units. It would take some micro but I imagine they may do some damage. They may be you best bet there actually as the other artillery has magical damage and dwarves are resistant.

But for campaign, after countless numbers of restarting and playing Khalida campaigns to about turn 115 or so, my experience with undead starts is that the answer to every problem in the early game is just "more bodies". I call it the "Zapp Brannigan" strategy. Throw hordes upon hordes of your own men at them until they reach their kill limit.

Basically the idea of your early game, at least for TKs, is just to bury your enemies in bones. Skeleton spears for TKs, zombies for VC due to cost. They are there for the soul purpose of dying (again) while the good units you start with do the killing.

VC actually benefit from this by being able to raise dead from battle sites so the more casualties you can add from flooding the field with corpses the better your undead pool will be. TKs have no upkeep so they flood as many as they can field. Units get tired, lose stats and armor, and your elite units can kill them easier while your weaker ones can bypass their defenses. This is literally the only way, as Khalida, to handle Kraq'Gar if he declares war on you as soon as he sees you which is usually around turn 20.

Once you get your tier 3 and higher units it gets easier but tier 4 is where TKs start to shine and I think that's roughly the same for VC with the exception of their raise dead pool which can be quite a bit earlier.

I've also found that jump starting to tier 3 as TK is possible using the Ptra rite if you choose a necrotect as your first hero. You basically just sack and raze whatever settlement you want at tier 3, use the Ptra necrotect hero to rebuild and get all those building slots but most importantly access to Ushabti. Get a Ushabti carver Necrotect hero and you now have two Ushabti boys and an anti infrantry hero to heal them or give you campaign sight.

Hopefully that helps. That's all I have time to add right now.

[wrought82]

the main issue is how ridiculously low cost basic dwarf units have, add to that that infantry is generally very strong and that undead have little antiinfantry and you got a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ situation.

But really the main issue as far as i can tell is how low cost dwarves are. i ran a bunch of tests and the only unit i could find that could fight them head to head was minotaurs. Empire antiinfantry wrecked them though.

Generally the VC roster is a little weak and the lack of good antiinfantry hurts a lot.

campaign this doesnt matter too much but VC have weak economy. Tomb kings are among the strongest in the game though, just spam chariots and send enough armies

edit: ok so after much trial and error i finally found a VC army able to beat dwarf infantry: black coach is antiinfantry albeit slow working,so combine that with all the cheap infantry you can get, starting with zombies. lord defo worked best with zombie dragon

[Cleftin Twain]

Originally posted by wrought82:

the main issue is how ridiculously low cost basic dwarf units have, add to that that infantry is generally very strong and that undead have little antiinfantry and you got a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ situation.

But really the main issue as far as i can tell is how low cost dwarves are. i ran a bunch of tests and the only unit i could find that could fight them head to head was minotaurs. Empire antiinfantry wrecked them though.

Generally the VC roster is a little weak and the lack of good antiinfantry hurts a lot.

campaign this doesnt matter too much but VC have weak economy. Tomb kings are among the strongest in the game though, just spam chariots and send enough armies

I may try a VC run after I finish with Khalida so I can get a better understanding. I actually don't use chariots in my TK armies if I can help it as I can't micro them enough to make them useful and they get bogged down so easy they end up crumbling before doing anything useful, even against other TK archer units they struggled under my control.

I mostly just spam spears and archers and then only put in chariots when I can't field anymore archers. This is all while having to go against Saurus which have no equal early game as far as I can tell. I've had campaigns where I just have to leave my starting territory and circle around capping their settlements while mine get sacked and taken until I have enough bones to throw at the Saurus.

[David McMurdo]

Well I just beat my friend's dwarf army taking into account some of your good advice, but it was very close. You can watch the video on my Facebook page where I also explained my thinking.

Now it's true that my vargulf died without doing anything at all, but hey, someone had to absorb all of those crossbow bolts.

https://www.facebook.com/DavidMcMurdoPersonal/videos/682283332527729/

[Tricks]

When playing VC my first order of business is generally rushing the tech that makes your skeletons free. At that point you can spam skeleton armies, keep them reinforcing one another and send your enemies to the bone zone.

Other than that, blob your trash armies of skeletons into condensed formations and abuse invocation of nehek to keep them healed. Necromancers riding corpse carts in the middle of the blob is also a good strategy. Be careful with ethereal units such as cairn wraiths as even with all their physical resist they die quickly on their own due to having such low health; I prefer to mix them in with other, heartier infantry to protect them.

I'm going to disagree with attacking Bretonnian factions before killing the dwarfs you start next to as Kemmler. If you don't root out those dwarfs early on they will be a pain in the neck to deal with later as they do nothing but turtle multiple armies on their settlement. With enough skeletons you can beat them before even attacking Bastonne.

When playing Kemmler I'd also say... it's honestly not even worth putting points into Krell's skill line. Before long you will be reinforcing Kemmler's army with skeleton trash mobs and I've found I rarely even had an opportunity to summon Krell after the battle starts as my army was full. The amount of points you have to spend on his skill line are better spent rushing Wind of Death. Krell really needs to be made into a proper legendary hero with a mount. As it is he spends most of his time struggling to reach his targets and getting knocked down more often than not.

[wrought82]

Originally posted by Bad Player AI:

Originally posted by wrought82:

the main issue is how ridiculously low cost basic dwarf units have, add to that that infantry is generally very strong and that undead have little antiinfantry and you got a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ situation.

I may try a VC run after I finish with Khalida so I can get a better understanding. I actually don't use chariots in my TK armies if I can help it as I can't micro them enough to make them useful and they get bogged down so easy they end up crumbling before doing anything useful, even against other TK archer units they struggled under my control.

I mostly just spam spears and archers and then only put in chariots when I can't field anymore archers. This is all while having to go against Saurus which have no equal early game as far as I can tell. I've had campaigns where I just have to leave my starting territory and circle around capping their settlements while mine get sacked and taken until I have enough bones to throw at the Saurus.

The micro needed to use chariots is: group them click to attack a unit, when the unit breaks click on the next unit. they are much more efficient when microed a little and much more vs less sturdy infantry than dwarves/saurus. but chariots are extremely cheap, dont think of them as some elite unit, if you just charge headlong and use them as infantry they will still vastly outperform lowtier infantry/archers

[Wyvern]

Originally posted by David McMurdo:

Well I just beat my friend's dwarf army taking into account some of your good advice, but it was very close. You can watch the video on my Facebook page where I also explained my thinking.

Now it's true that my vargulf died without doing anything at all, but hey, someone had to absorb all of those crossbow bolts.

https://www.facebook.com/DavidMcMurdoPersonal/videos/682283332527729/

That battle basically came down to a single wind of death, lol, but fun engagement. I do think you have quite a few composition errors, and do keep in mind that playing without unit limits opens the way for all sorts of imbalanced nonsense(didnt see that here but just to keep in mind)
1)no bats, if your friend brought 1-2 gyrocopter brimstones they could snipe out almost all of your high value targets. Always bring bats vs dwarfs, since they beat gyros and can harass the backline well.
2)too many zombies. They slow your whole army down and provide no punch. You want to be summoning zombies on your opponents backline, but i think bringing more than a few to tarpit is a waste of gold(even a few can be too much)
3) bloodknights. You dont need antilarge, they cost an arm and aleg and are easy pickings for a cannon or organ gun. You can get 2 black knights or nearly a black knight+black knight with lances and barding for the cost of the lone blood knight, and with a little micro theyll do at least as well, if not better. Similarly a varghulf and bats for the price of blood knights can be immensely strong too.
4)odd lord choice. Vampire lord is arguably the worst lord choice besides ghorst since he brings nothing unique to the table. If youre gonna go on foot youre better off with vlad or a strigoi ghoul king. Id recommend something more mobile, a lord on a horse or hellsteed or even dragon lets you dodge enemy shots and drop summons in their backline.

Then of course micro, you let your varghulf get shot to death for 0 gain. A varghulf is fast enough to dodge most bow fire with micro and can ping pong among infantry with nearly no risk of getting caught barring rune snares or dragonback slayer snare. A roving deathball of varghulfs can bounce around, striking enemy ranged and running away before slayers can help, while your lord drops zombies to block slayers.

[fmalfeas]

The first time I beat dwarves relatively early in the campaign as VC was as Ghorst.

I'd been under attack from all sides for quite a while and been flopping cities back and forth trying to keep up, so my production buildings were...lacking.

But old Ghorst was fairly leveled up from all that. It was him, a generic vampire lord, and a LOT of zombies. The vamp was fairly low level still because Manny had gotten wounded and the vamp was a backup to fill the gap.

So, I gathered two armies of just zombies (buffed heavily zombies, but still zombies) on the field in one formation and ordered the attack. As the wave of rotten meat bumped uselessly against the dawi ranks, with the vampire standing idly in the middle of the zombies (he was supposed to be trying to help, but ended up just being a leadership battery because he got mired in zombies) the Brothers Ghorst cart slammed into the mess. Somehow, the dawi did a terrible job hitting Ghorst, so he took almost no damage as his cart slowly, very slowly, chewed away at their health. It took a full 45 minutes to win that fight, with only Ghorst left standing.

That's not a battle I want to repeat.