Vampires are susceptible to three things - Fire, Combat Res, and Losing their Characters.
Fire
Across the Board, Barring one named character and the Black Coach, there are no true ward saves anywhere in the army - your opponent will be relying purely on Regen once you are breaking thru his armor. Even the mighty Terrorgheist is effectively naked with only a 6up Regen. Due to their low costs they are also low on armour, meaning once you can eliminate the ward, they have no defense.
For Magic Phase, nothing you can really benefit with here, although if you had the Ruby Ring of Ruin on a Peg Pali flying around, you could strip regen from something before hitting it with your spells (Ruby Ring of Ruin followed by Urannon's Thunderbolt against a Terrorgheist would be D6xS4 Flaming + D6xS6 + D6xS4 from the Lore - Couple that with Archery Below and you would statistically kill one in one turn).
For the Shooting Phase, I would suggest at least 3 units of 12 Bowmen - 36 Shots into anything that has regen, even hitting on 5s and wounding on 6s, will statistically yield a wound (Nobody with regen has T5 and a 4 or better
AS.) You can then land the Trebuchet onto whatever you hit now that it has no regen for the remainder of the phase.
For Close Combat, Equipping a Paladin with the Wyrmlance so that he can strike at a higher initiative and strip Regen before all the slower knights strike is gold. Also useful if you are getting chaffed. Flaming Banner would also prove useful but you may not have enough units to have this.
Combat Res
Although the opponent will never break, due to the unstable rule, any
CR you can rack up is effectively a wound they have no save against. Against Rank and File I have seen 2-3 rows disappear, but this really comes into its own if you can trap individual characters / models in losing fights. Anything you can do to tilt the CR in your favor is thus a nightmare for your opponent.
Magic Phase if you want to capitalize on this become all about maximising combat effectiveness. Forget about Direct Damage and Magic Missiles, this is all about making your troops better and either negating their CR generation, or buffing yours. Go To Spells (In probably the Order I'd be wanting to get them off) are:
- Harmonic Convergence - Great All Round Buff - Hit More, Wound More, Pass More Armor Saves
- Curse of the Midnight Wind - The Reverse of Harmonic, make them fail more (Really great if they are wounding or hitting on 5s and 6s)
- Wissians - Higher Toughness = Less Wounds coming Back
- Iceshard Blizzard - Even Harder to Hit You
- Savage Beasts - Just being Greedy by this point, but remember if you are winning combat, every extra wound you do counts twice
Looking at above, I'd be taking a Heavens Prophetess backed up with Beasts Damsel or Two - Make sure you double scroll so that your opponent can't buff his troops up just as much. Don't be afraid to burn them on turn 1 and 2, by turn three you are aiming to have their main caster dead.
Shooting Phase cant really help here, but if you have the opportunity to shave off a rank for CR purposes, might be worth it. Alternatively, using your archers as chaff to keep CR generating troops out of combat for your opponent is certainly viable.
Combat Phase Think OVERKILL. Your goal is not to grind out wins one or two points at a time, it is to have one MASSIVE strike where you generate so much combat Res that your opponent will pop before there is a second round. As long as you aren't going to get flanked, a big enough win on the charge leaves them incapable of ever generating CR from that unit due to lack of numbers and you can pop your opponent without even fighting, static CR can win the day.
This comes down to two issues - reducing their CR and boosting yours. It sounds obvious, but try figure out where their CR will come from and neutralize it. If there is nothing special there, just burn R&F to run up the CR. IF there is a Blender Lord there, something that will just generate massive casualties, throw the Champion under the bus. He may get 5 Combat Res from the Overkill, but he won't score 6 casualties. In Lance Formation that is 2 Ranks right there you have saved. If you get the charge, you have Charge, 3 Ranks, Standard,
BSB (Potentially Warbanner and VIrtue of Duty) - You are starting on 6-8 CR. If you have a character wall, there should be no casualties coming back, and (as an example) a lance of 12
KotR, 3 Characters, and 15 Horses is probably looking at 12-16 wounds before Magic Weapons, well in excess of 20 if you have tooled up characters and Wissians. 20 Dead plus another 20 Crumbling will make anything short of 40 models explode. A Double Charge to make sure, Bubbled Savage Beasts, or a disrupting flank charge to strip away even more of the CR are all also valuable.
Make sure you keep your Battle Line straight so that if you dont pop them in one turn, your other lances can guard your flanks and charge in next turn.
Characters
Even more so than Bretonians, Vampires live or crumble on their characters. Get rid of all their Lore of Vampire casters and the entire army will crumble. Remove their Corpse Cart / Buff Devices and their Combat characters and they will never generate enough CR to hold together against even modest lances. Go for where the heart is, and the rest of the army will fold.
Magic Phase
Most of our Magic will be focused on buffing and keeping troops alive, but if you have the chance, nothing against sniping them out with a Direct Damage (or knocking off the last wound with the Silver Mirror)
Shooting Unless they are riding a Terrorgheist or similar, you wont find too many lone characters. Trebs are always a good bet on the Chariots (or Terrorgheists) but its hard to pick out characters in General.
Combat is again where we can shine. I would be looking at a HKB/ASF Lord, another Character Sniper (Royal Peg/Bracers/Virtue of Confidence), and a tanky BSB (Charmed Shield, Dawnstone, Wyrmlance) as a minimum - all geared to take out their characters. When Charging, make sure you get something in to base to base with their softer characters and make them challenge you - if they don't you can systematically work thru their lesser characters until the General is fighting alone.
(Now admittedly I've never had much luck with Grail and Questing Knights, but...) I might try something like:
Lords
Lord - General, Sword of Swift Slaying, Virtue of Heroism, Gromril Great Helm, Potion of Speed, Warhorse, Shield
Prophetess - Level 4, Heavens, Silver Mirror
Heroes
Paladin - BSB, Wyrmlance, Charmed Shield, Dawnstone
Paladin - Questing Vow, Royal Pegasus, Virtue of Confidence, Gauntlets of the Duel, Luckstone, Dragonhelm, Great Weapon, Morning Star, Shield
Damsel - Level 2, Beasts, Dispel Scroll
Core
12x KotR - Full Command, BAnner of Discipline
12x KotR - Full Command, Banner of Eternal Flame
09x Errants - Full Command, Errantry BAnner
12x Peasant Bowmen - Braziers
12x Peasant Bowmen - Braziers
12x Peasant Bowmen - Braziers
Special
03x Peg Knights - Musician
06x Mounted Yeomen
Rare
Trebuchet
Trebuchet
Use your Pegs and
MY to Vanguard and then de-Chaff the charging lanes for your 3 Massive Busses to charge straight into the enemies bunker - the Pegs especially can then be useful preventing counter-flank charges. There is no subtlety in this list - You are aiming to melt his bunker by turn 3 and watch the rest crumble.
Good Luck in your Battle
Brad
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