r/VampireCounts

I am starting the strigoi section of my collection.

Greetings VC Reddit!

Back today after an awesome trip to Kingaroy QLD Aus where I took Vampire Counts to a 3 game tournament. Here to share my learnings as promised, as the list I took was experimental as we continue to find new ways to play our faction.

Overall, I am disappointed yet somehow not surprised by this list. In premise, I wanted to try adding some significant k1lling power to the army by trialling two units of blood knights, each led by a Vampire Thrall - one wielding the Dreadlance and one with Dark Acolyte.

To me, the Blood Knights were uninspiring. Unfortunately for how beautiful the original models are (and the Highlands Miniatures prints I personally used), they just didn’t seem to do me much of a justice. The amount of damage you do into a wide range of targets never seemed to match the math in my head when writing the list, and I really struggled to utilise them well IN COMPARISON to the ‘meta’ options we have currently being Hexwraiths.

The WINNERS of the list:

1. Fell Bats

Just straight up goated. If they’re not collected the enemy baggage train, they’re controlling my own. If they’re not doing that, they’re flying in March 20” to threaten flanks and screen war machines. Absolutely insane unit and I’ll never have a list without them.

2. Grave Guard + Wight BSB

I had Hellish Vigour on the BSB, which I admittedly forgot about half the time. It was great in theory but I needed more reps with this list to remember it lol. Aside from that, total beatstick, never have a list without this unit + character. No one wants to fight them, and if you ignore them they will get you.

The LOSERS of the list:

1. Blood Knights and Vampire Thralls

As mentioned before, just straight up ass. I can see a list with one big unit of these, without the vampire thrall, or possibly including one with dark acolyte. I think you’d need 8 to make it work, complemented by a Hexwraith unit. They fold like deck chairs even with the 2+ save if they lose combat due to crumble, and the way I took them just wasn’t it.

OVERALL LEARNINGS

I can see why our Mortis is the glue keeping our army together. I really missed the +1 to move and initiative, and the +1 to casting. I do miss having two Tomb Banshees as well.

As experimental as it was, I had a blast nonetheless. We went 1x Loss to Empire of Man and 2x Draws against Ogre Kingdoms and Royal Clans Dwarves.

A huge shoutout to Starkey who organised this even in Kingaroy QLD - if you’ve never been and are in the QLD scene, definitely watch Old World Rankings upcoming tournaments and get amongst it.

I’m going back to the practice board next weekend with some more farmiliar units, in preparation for some GT’s later this year.

That’s all from me, bye for now and thanks for reading!

Art by Karl Kopinski. Source

The card Drowned Zombies used for Warhammer Invasion LCG.

Shame the old kit isn't getting used. Combine it with the Empire militia and you got zombie pirate mercenaries.

Brought an eBay save that after some bio strip is coming up quite nicely !!

Analysis in comments

It’s me, your favourite Necromancer back again with a competitive list for this weekend. The Vampires are heading up to Kingaroy in QLD Aus to play against a bunch of great guys in my third WH TOW tournament.

This time around I wanted to give something different a crack whilst staying true to our roots as a competitive faction.

Stay tuned, I’ll provide a recap on Sunday as to how we went with my learnings and potential wins. Any questions about my list, happy to share in the comments! Wanted to steer away from our swingy screams and Mortis given the amount of cannons in the meta right now. Gladly so as this tournament also has 4x Empire armies.

P.S - The Highland Miniatures blood knight kit is gorgeous, highly recommend.

Vampire Counts custom baggage train 🧛 so much fun to come up with and make!

Im looking to get a sense of what to play in BM=battle march 🤔,

Vampire lord / necromancer

4 blood Knights

5 black knights

20 skeleton warriors/ zombies

8 grave guard

Not sure what I. Missing if anyone has ideas please let me know

All are from Highland Miniatures except for the Strigoi Ghoul King

Analysis in comments

Barrow Warden Mystic from Reaper Minis, using it as a necromancer for my army :)

Hello. I have a few different minis by highlands miniatures. I got them printed from eBay as I don’t have my own printer or know the first thing about printing minis. I did however research which scale to get them printed at and I asked for 30mm scale as I’d read that that most closely matches old GW models. This worked fine for everything I’ve ordered so far and they match up well scale wise with both my official GW models and some Mantic and Fireforge models I own, except for the skeleton warriors I ordered.

As you can see in the picture above the skeleton warrior in the middle looks noticeably smaller than the grave guard and the zombie either side of him and I’m a bit surprised by this as they’re the same manufacturer and should have been printed at the same scale so I’d expected them all to be roughly the same height?

My question is for anyone that happens to also own these models/stls and could confirm if the skeletons are just shorter than the other models or if the place I ordered them from has printed them in 2 different scales in error? I’ve tried to find the answer online but can’t find size comparison pictures of them anywhere. Google AI says the zombies are just taller and you should resize them to match but I don’t trust Google AI very much and can’t see where it’s getting that information.

My more general question is whether the scale difference is that noticeable? I’m very aware of it and it jars me a little but I also don’t want to spend more money getting them reprinted at a larger scale to match the rest of my army if I don’t have to and I’m just overthinking it.

TLDR - Apologies this post got far longer than I was expecting 🤦‍♂️😂 but the short version is could anyone confirm if highlands miniatures skeletons are shorter than their other models by default or did my eBay printer make an error with the scale? Thanks :)