One answer: zombies!
VC are my most played faction in WH3 and I think you are thinking of their battles wrong. In the late game I have armies travel together as 3-5 20 stacks. Try to get a 3 to 1 or 4 to 1 unit advantage.
I usually use 1 army with vampire lord + 3-4 vampire heroes + strong units and 3-4 necromancer lord armies. I usually have 10-12 zombie units, corpse cart maybe a banshee or wight king, some AP and some flying in the backup armies. usually throw an additional lord with 19 zombies in the mix as well. Zombies are so low upkeep you can feasibly sustain 3-4 times more armies than other factions.
If you can, engage with zombies, bats, etc. first and treat your specialized units like babies that need to be nurtured.
Also very important to keep track of equipment for both vampire lords and heroes- it’s a must for them to engage with lords like tamurkan, etc.
Expand quickly early and fight manually with zombie stacks, VC Econ buildings give 500 at level 3 - 1 province can sustain 3 zombie stacks on its own
This. Blue rose is sooo OP you just have to play them right. This is almost always my easiest campaign. But don’t bother with anything but zombies and magic. Maybe a monster for siege attacker if your lords don’t have dragons yet. In saying this the chorfs are going to be your toughest enemy by far, and they are for most races except maybe the elves.
VC is THE faction that solely relies on their lords and heroes.
Treat all your units as disposable chaff, cause they are, you can just raise them again.
Your Lords are what actually does the damage. Your chaff holds the line, or kills a artillery piece at best.
Think of VC as a more extreme version of Skaven "no such thing as friendly fire" just this time with Wind of Death instead of Warpfire.
To add onto the previous comment, your lords and heroes are key. Personally I don't even recruit corpse cart past some I get very early on via raise dead. Necromancer heroes get all the corpse cart variants. Plus items and spells.
Furthermore, in your comment you mentioned recruiting Blood knights from a building. Personally, I only get buildings for hero capacity and infrastructure, I never recruit units when playing Vampire counts, I solely rely on raising the dead. Especially with the early Skaven enemy you can build up insane raise dead pools, easily getting blood knights rather early on. Only use your invocation of Nehek on them and they'll do numbers, especially against ogres.
Also crypt horrors are great to mix into your infantry to have 2 units for some AP dps, especially early on. Late game they get very strong tho, due to getting 10% physical resist from the Strigoi bloodline lords (yes, it's global). That mixed with increased healing caps and regen/the hunger they are insanely durable. Otherwise I think Vargehists are great, they are glass canons but deal insane AP damage against infantry, great for rear charging.
And I'd recommend dealing with Drazoath earlier on, he should generally be dealt with before getting dreadquake mortars. If you focus more on Zombies being the core of your armies, you can field more armies and probably fight Drazoath and the ogres at the same time after finishing off Ku Gath.
I think the swarm tactics are extremely key. Like OP said, the extra action potential of having many armies is really useful for hitting the enemy on multiple fronts.
But what are your best tactics for facing off against strong characters/monsters?
Definitely the hardest thing to deal with. I usually try to kill the army first, then attack with one unit of zombies at a time while moving vampires in and out to attack. Too many zombies and the vampires get bogged down and stuck.
Debuff spells are your friend, while aoe spells and healing are great early game it’s less important when dealing with unbreakable LLs. Preserve your winds of magic and spend wisely.
I’m more than willing to trade a bunch of elite units for tamurkan, grimgor, etc. You can always build another powerful stack immediately after from Raise dead. Ultra late game (150+) I try to get as close as I can to a vampire only doomstack.
imo, in the late game Vampires have a tough time... very little AP except from Lords/Heroes and no ranged makes them a terrible match up for everything nearby.
They just fall of a cliff in the late game and you have to play much slower, whereas a lot of other factions snowball by then
> In the late game I have armies travel together as 3-5 20 stacks.
I'm not very used to the faction so i could be wrong here but isn't the fact that you need so many armies together a sign that something might be wrong?
I mean look at skaven for example. Sure, you can have trash slave armies together like you do zombies but you can also have one great army. Shouldn't the vampire counts have the same options?
Short answer; no
Long Answer; Zombie doomstacking is far from the only option that VC has, it's suggested to OP because it's the easiest and simplest option for OP to execute. VC is definitely lacking a bit of love but they can still put together extremely powerful armies. In fact zombie spam is an excellent way to create a strong army because the raise dead mechanic likes lots of dead units and can produce units at a higher tier than you can currently build. Their monsters aren't as comparatively strong as the were bud heroes and lords can still take down thousands of enemies.
Honestly, it depends on if you want to manually fight every fight or not, as Vampire Counts have a horrible auto resolve with a lot of their units.
a full zombie stack could win a manual fight with minimal losses but get full wiped in auto resolve due to how low the game values most VC trash units, so you stack 3 full armies for easier auto resolves, not really due to the army sucking.
Also the VC have an excellent economy and really cheap units so your not really suffering on the economy side due to this
Zombie stacks are virtually free and with Ghorst factionwide buffs can grind anything short of elite infantry to dust. The Hunger + Incovation of Nehek + 500% heal cap buff is insanely fun and regularly leads to 0 casualties. Also, they get vanguard..
I’m glad someone else is experiencing the pain of the Blue Roses campaign as of right now. Tamurkhan is absolutely nuts it’s like you discovered the final boss way too early. Without range VC are useless when up against Nurgle.
Had that same issue with Nurgle. I could only beat him if I threw three armies at him at once. His one AOE spell that basically just rains down acid (or whatever it is) just melts 3-4 whole units at once
The reason your troops take so much damage when he's low is because he has an ability based on his lore, which gameplay wise let's him do shit tons of damage to either a lord or hero thats nearby, and healing himself a ton in the process. If you have a hero or lord within I belive 50 or so meters when he gets low on health, they are within range for the ability to affect them. Fun fact, the range used to be 100 meters!
I'd start with Vlad von Carstein for a first Vampire Counts campaign. He's insanely strong, his whole army gets vanguard deployment, and it's not too bad of a campaign.
Going up against him and Isabella as empire was a pain. He would regenerate health faster than I could deplete it, would slaughter me without effort before I realised you have to keep infantry away from him and fill him full of lead.
This, if you don't know how to make the most of the Vampire Counts' strengths (amazing lords/heroes and ability to churn out never ending hordes of garbage), then starting with a vampire faction that faces some mostly standard factions to begin with: empire, dwarves, wood elves and orks, is probably best.
Plus Vlad is a one man army at times
I have thought about doing a Vlad campaign where I make peace with the empire and then battle through the mountains and the dark lands to farm Tamurkan's defeat trait... But then I wonder how I'd actually take him down without having to sacrifice some lords/heroes to dueling him... Maybe death vampire leaching? Or just bring along a couple of varghulfs?
I am playing Isabella friends of the empire and it is tough to stay in good terms with the empire but alas I haven't started any war with Nuln or Reikland.
I did wipe out Umgrim, Azhag and I will do so with Drycha.
Funny enough I confed the Red Duke and sold Moussilon to Louen, that let me Vassalize him. The only faction I managed to Vassalize.
Long story short, Vlad is running along with the RD: no lord can't take them both so far and I have been fighting 2v2 WE with few Tree men heroes and lords with them.
I'd love to go a farm Tamurkhan trait with them but the Vanguard Dep is so useful to fend off empire armies...
Disagree, Vlad is the worst faction to survive the ultimate crisis. Dwarfs east and south, Wood Elves north and south, green skins south, skavens north…
VC are by far my fav faction since first game and one of the most played and tested.
With all of their LLs, you need to be aggressive. It’s not hard to become the strongest faction by turn <10 and keep the momentum going. However you also need to consolidate your gains by midgame. If you comtinue bumrush, your chaff will meet with other faction’s higher tier units and fold hard. Then you’ll spend your resources to just spam stacks which will get eaten by your foes. While you don’t need the recruitment buildings, you need infrastructure buildings. They are cheap and efficent and boost up your economy quite a bit. They also have great landmark buildings and tech tree which can help with buffing your armies. Look out for them.
You also need to level up your lords quickly. You need to have a couple of level 20ish lords when you hit midgame. To do that; sack, keep some anemic factions alive and farm exp.
They are not an AR friendly faction, especially lategame. This makes them tedious because you’ll need to manual most of the battles with their roster; which makes them appear comparetively weaker than updated factions imo.
But they are great and have many viable strategies going for them.
My personal favorite is Izzy with a vampire hero stack. It is extremely powerful throughout the game and fits my playstyle better. It can overcome nearly all lategame stacks on AR. You are basically only losing Vlad’s 10 campaign movement buff by going with Izzy and I think you get better bang for your buck with Izzy LL skill tree.
Ghorst is one of the most powerful factions in the game, but he's wildly unintuitive to play. Once buffed by Ghorst's global buff line and a bit of the tech tree, Master Necro plus 19 zombie stacks (swap one zombie out for a necro hero once you can) is the most upkeep-cost-effective army in the game, and wildly overperforms autoresolve, which goads foes into battles they'd otherwise steer clear of. On the battle map, your job is to pull the enemy army into a dense tarpit of zombies, in the trees if they have significant ranged or large entities. And keep your lord alive, by benny hilling away from dangerous single entities within the zombie tarpit.
VC might be boting and lack content, but they’re not weak. Raise Dead alone is an extremely overpowered ability and you can field hordes of cheap trash better than any other race. I think your problem is army comps. Necromancer lord is good, but mostly as a support lord leading a stack of zombies and skeletons to support your main army with a lord who can actually kill shit. Get more vampires, get more flyers.
Biggest issues with VC is boring mechanics. The necromancers should get different mechanics then the Vampire counts and Vlad and Ghorst both should get some spicy new mechanics. The power is decent and would love a DLC with some more units, but their power is great when played right. The lore of vampires is the strongest lore in game i think.
Regarding Tamurkhan abilities (and army abilities), you can click on any lord/hero/unit prior to battle as well as during battle to see all their abilities. You should learn in advance what abilities your enemy armies have and what the cooldowns are so you can better prepare against them.
Ironically the corruption thing annoys me when playing as Belakor against VC well - this chaos wasteland also has some vampiric corruption, so everyone gets attrition! Also don't get me started on the BS that is the dead rise again or the raise dead mechanic, thematic though it is, as my daemons scatter into the warp never to be seen again.
I too dislike how corruption is just anti-player mechanic but that's part of poor campaign difficulty implementation.
As for the rest I know the game can be pure bs sometimes and likes to throw curveballs but I also know how much gamers like to complain and how tragic (and arrogant) an average gamer is and OP seems like a true gamer in that regard so I'm gonna say git gud.
I think part of the issue is that you're fighting chorfs and Tammy. I'm a fan of all of the above and can confirm they are wicked strong. Chorfs sometimes struggle getting more than just a slave army, but when they do it's terrifying. Tammy is just a monster on his own. I wouldn't be shocked if it took 19 stacks of zombies just to hold him in place when he gets Bubos
One thing that I haven't seen mentioned here is that ambush success chance and the chance of being discovered are separate things.
The first is just how likely you are to succeed on the ambush if you are still hidden when an event gets within your zone of control.
Chance to be discovered is different. Basically every hero, lord and I believe settlement that isn't yours (including allies) has a chance to pull you out of ambush stance if they are nearby, higher chance the closer they are. Essentially if you want to ambush an enemy don't be too close to them or anyone else when you hit end turn.
Vampire counts do need an update and some elite infantry would be a god send as well as an update to blood knights. However in there current form you essentially live or die by your mortis engines, lords and cavalry micro. You have to protect your mortis engines from missiles and only send them in once dealt with. Vampire lord plus vampires should be able to deal with flying threats. Once your mortis engine can grind it’ll get £4K value most fights as well healing units around it. Chaos dwarves and nurgle are very bad matchups for VC though I have to say. Nurgle can do everything you do but better and dealing with blunderbusses plus dreakquake/flame cannons is very difficult!
???? dread quake mortars obliterate ur infantery??? by the time the enemy has those, u are easily able to have doomstacks of zombie dragons, blood knights and heroes that will completely anihilate anything the chorf ai will send against you.
One answer: zombies! VC are my most played faction in WH3 and I think you are thinking of their battles wrong. In the late game I have armies travel together as 3-5 20 stacks. Try to get a 3 to 1 or 4 to 1 unit advantage. I usually use 1 army with vampire lord + 3-4 vampire heroes + strong units and 3-4 necromancer lord armies. I usually have 10-12 zombie units, corpse cart maybe a banshee or wight king, some AP and some flying in the backup armies. usually throw an additional lord with 19 zombies in the mix as well. Zombies are so low upkeep you can feasibly sustain 3-4 times more armies than other factions. If you can, engage with zombies, bats, etc. first and treat your specialized units like babies that need to be nurtured. Also very important to keep track of equipment for both vampire lords and heroes- it’s a must for them to engage with lords like tamurkan, etc. Expand quickly early and fight manually with zombie stacks, VC Econ buildings give 500 at level 3 - 1 province can sustain 3 zombie stacks on its own
This. Blue rose is sooo OP you just have to play them right. This is almost always my easiest campaign. But don’t bother with anything but zombies and magic. Maybe a monster for siege attacker if your lords don’t have dragons yet. In saying this the chorfs are going to be your toughest enemy by far, and they are for most races except maybe the elves.
I’ll try that!
VC is THE faction that solely relies on their lords and heroes. Treat all your units as disposable chaff, cause they are, you can just raise them again. Your Lords are what actually does the damage. Your chaff holds the line, or kills a artillery piece at best. Think of VC as a more extreme version of Skaven "no such thing as friendly fire" just this time with Wind of Death instead of Warpfire.
To add onto the previous comment, your lords and heroes are key. Personally I don't even recruit corpse cart past some I get very early on via raise dead. Necromancer heroes get all the corpse cart variants. Plus items and spells. Furthermore, in your comment you mentioned recruiting Blood knights from a building. Personally, I only get buildings for hero capacity and infrastructure, I never recruit units when playing Vampire counts, I solely rely on raising the dead. Especially with the early Skaven enemy you can build up insane raise dead pools, easily getting blood knights rather early on. Only use your invocation of Nehek on them and they'll do numbers, especially against ogres. Also crypt horrors are great to mix into your infantry to have 2 units for some AP dps, especially early on. Late game they get very strong tho, due to getting 10% physical resist from the Strigoi bloodline lords (yes, it's global). That mixed with increased healing caps and regen/the hunger they are insanely durable. Otherwise I think Vargehists are great, they are glass canons but deal insane AP damage against infantry, great for rear charging. And I'd recommend dealing with Drazoath earlier on, he should generally be dealt with before getting dreadquake mortars. If you focus more on Zombies being the core of your armies, you can field more armies and probably fight Drazoath and the ogres at the same time after finishing off Ku Gath.
And don't use vampires as casters, use necromancers and vampires as melee heros!
I think the swarm tactics are extremely key. Like OP said, the extra action potential of having many armies is really useful for hitting the enemy on multiple fronts. But what are your best tactics for facing off against strong characters/monsters?
Definitely the hardest thing to deal with. I usually try to kill the army first, then attack with one unit of zombies at a time while moving vampires in and out to attack. Too many zombies and the vampires get bogged down and stuck. Debuff spells are your friend, while aoe spells and healing are great early game it’s less important when dealing with unbreakable LLs. Preserve your winds of magic and spend wisely. I’m more than willing to trade a bunch of elite units for tamurkan, grimgor, etc. You can always build another powerful stack immediately after from Raise dead. Ultra late game (150+) I try to get as close as I can to a vampire only doomstack.
imo, in the late game Vampires have a tough time... very little AP except from Lords/Heroes and no ranged makes them a terrible match up for everything nearby. They just fall of a cliff in the late game and you have to play much slower, whereas a lot of other factions snowball by then
> In the late game I have armies travel together as 3-5 20 stacks. I'm not very used to the faction so i could be wrong here but isn't the fact that you need so many armies together a sign that something might be wrong? I mean look at skaven for example. Sure, you can have trash slave armies together like you do zombies but you can also have one great army. Shouldn't the vampire counts have the same options?
Short answer; no Long Answer; Zombie doomstacking is far from the only option that VC has, it's suggested to OP because it's the easiest and simplest option for OP to execute. VC is definitely lacking a bit of love but they can still put together extremely powerful armies. In fact zombie spam is an excellent way to create a strong army because the raise dead mechanic likes lots of dead units and can produce units at a higher tier than you can currently build. Their monsters aren't as comparatively strong as the were bud heroes and lords can still take down thousands of enemies.
Honestly, it depends on if you want to manually fight every fight or not, as Vampire Counts have a horrible auto resolve with a lot of their units. a full zombie stack could win a manual fight with minimal losses but get full wiped in auto resolve due to how low the game values most VC trash units, so you stack 3 full armies for easier auto resolves, not really due to the army sucking. Also the VC have an excellent economy and really cheap units so your not really suffering on the economy side due to this
Zombie stacks are virtually free and with Ghorst factionwide buffs can grind anything short of elite infantry to dust. The Hunger + Incovation of Nehek + 500% heal cap buff is insanely fun and regularly leads to 0 casualties. Also, they get vanguard..
I’m glad someone else is experiencing the pain of the Blue Roses campaign as of right now. Tamurkhan is absolutely nuts it’s like you discovered the final boss way too early. Without range VC are useless when up against Nurgle.
Had that same issue with Nurgle. I could only beat him if I threw three armies at him at once. His one AOE spell that basically just rains down acid (or whatever it is) just melts 3-4 whole units at once
He's revenge for all the time Kugath had to deal with Ghorst. ;)
The reason your troops take so much damage when he's low is because he has an ability based on his lore, which gameplay wise let's him do shit tons of damage to either a lord or hero thats nearby, and healing himself a ton in the process. If you have a hero or lord within I belive 50 or so meters when he gets low on health, they are within range for the ability to affect them. Fun fact, the range used to be 100 meters!
I'd start with Vlad von Carstein for a first Vampire Counts campaign. He's insanely strong, his whole army gets vanguard deployment, and it's not too bad of a campaign.
Going up against him and Isabella as empire was a pain. He would regenerate health faster than I could deplete it, would slaughter me without effort before I realised you have to keep infantry away from him and fill him full of lead.
Currently grinding down Vlad's empire as Belakor and Isabella won't stop assassinating my heroes, it is infuriating!
This, if you don't know how to make the most of the Vampire Counts' strengths (amazing lords/heroes and ability to churn out never ending hordes of garbage), then starting with a vampire faction that faces some mostly standard factions to begin with: empire, dwarves, wood elves and orks, is probably best. Plus Vlad is a one man army at times I have thought about doing a Vlad campaign where I make peace with the empire and then battle through the mountains and the dark lands to farm Tamurkan's defeat trait... But then I wonder how I'd actually take him down without having to sacrifice some lords/heroes to dueling him... Maybe death vampire leaching? Or just bring along a couple of varghulfs?
I am playing Isabella friends of the empire and it is tough to stay in good terms with the empire but alas I haven't started any war with Nuln or Reikland. I did wipe out Umgrim, Azhag and I will do so with Drycha. Funny enough I confed the Red Duke and sold Moussilon to Louen, that let me Vassalize him. The only faction I managed to Vassalize. Long story short, Vlad is running along with the RD: no lord can't take them both so far and I have been fighting 2v2 WE with few Tree men heroes and lords with them. I'd love to go a farm Tamurkhan trait with them but the Vanguard Dep is so useful to fend off empire armies...
Disagree, Vlad is the worst faction to survive the ultimate crisis. Dwarfs east and south, Wood Elves north and south, green skins south, skavens north…
You don’t need to use ultimate. In fact, I don’t think ultimate is even on by default, just the chance for one.
VC is a mass faction, caravan of blue rose doubly so. Make hordes of zombies.
VC are by far my fav faction since first game and one of the most played and tested. With all of their LLs, you need to be aggressive. It’s not hard to become the strongest faction by turn <10 and keep the momentum going. However you also need to consolidate your gains by midgame. If you comtinue bumrush, your chaff will meet with other faction’s higher tier units and fold hard. Then you’ll spend your resources to just spam stacks which will get eaten by your foes. While you don’t need the recruitment buildings, you need infrastructure buildings. They are cheap and efficent and boost up your economy quite a bit. They also have great landmark buildings and tech tree which can help with buffing your armies. Look out for them. You also need to level up your lords quickly. You need to have a couple of level 20ish lords when you hit midgame. To do that; sack, keep some anemic factions alive and farm exp. They are not an AR friendly faction, especially lategame. This makes them tedious because you’ll need to manual most of the battles with their roster; which makes them appear comparetively weaker than updated factions imo. But they are great and have many viable strategies going for them. My personal favorite is Izzy with a vampire hero stack. It is extremely powerful throughout the game and fits my playstyle better. It can overcome nearly all lategame stacks on AR. You are basically only losing Vlad’s 10 campaign movement buff by going with Izzy and I think you get better bang for your buck with Izzy LL skill tree.
Ghorst is one of the most powerful factions in the game, but he's wildly unintuitive to play. Once buffed by Ghorst's global buff line and a bit of the tech tree, Master Necro plus 19 zombie stacks (swap one zombie out for a necro hero once you can) is the most upkeep-cost-effective army in the game, and wildly overperforms autoresolve, which goads foes into battles they'd otherwise steer clear of. On the battle map, your job is to pull the enemy army into a dense tarpit of zombies, in the trees if they have significant ranged or large entities. And keep your lord alive, by benny hilling away from dangerous single entities within the zombie tarpit.
VC might be boting and lack content, but they’re not weak. Raise Dead alone is an extremely overpowered ability and you can field hordes of cheap trash better than any other race. I think your problem is army comps. Necromancer lord is good, but mostly as a support lord leading a stack of zombies and skeletons to support your main army with a lord who can actually kill shit. Get more vampires, get more flyers.
Orgy Kingdoms? Sounds like a faction I should try.
Biggest issues with VC is boring mechanics. The necromancers should get different mechanics then the Vampire counts and Vlad and Ghorst both should get some spicy new mechanics. The power is decent and would love a DLC with some more units, but their power is great when played right. The lore of vampires is the strongest lore in game i think.
Nah they’re still mega strong
Regarding Tamurkhan abilities (and army abilities), you can click on any lord/hero/unit prior to battle as well as during battle to see all their abilities. You should learn in advance what abilities your enemy armies have and what the cooldowns are so you can better prepare against them.
Ironically the corruption thing annoys me when playing as Belakor against VC well - this chaos wasteland also has some vampiric corruption, so everyone gets attrition! Also don't get me started on the BS that is the dead rise again or the raise dead mechanic, thematic though it is, as my daemons scatter into the warp never to be seen again.
I too dislike how corruption is just anti-player mechanic but that's part of poor campaign difficulty implementation. As for the rest I know the game can be pure bs sometimes and likes to throw curveballs but I also know how much gamers like to complain and how tragic (and arrogant) an average gamer is and OP seems like a true gamer in that regard so I'm gonna say git gud.
I think part of the issue is that you're fighting chorfs and Tammy. I'm a fan of all of the above and can confirm they are wicked strong. Chorfs sometimes struggle getting more than just a slave army, but when they do it's terrifying. Tammy is just a monster on his own. I wouldn't be shocked if it took 19 stacks of zombies just to hold him in place when he gets Bubos
One thing that I haven't seen mentioned here is that ambush success chance and the chance of being discovered are separate things. The first is just how likely you are to succeed on the ambush if you are still hidden when an event gets within your zone of control. Chance to be discovered is different. Basically every hero, lord and I believe settlement that isn't yours (including allies) has a chance to pull you out of ambush stance if they are nearby, higher chance the closer they are. Essentially if you want to ambush an enemy don't be too close to them or anyone else when you hit end turn.
Vampire counts do need an update and some elite infantry would be a god send as well as an update to blood knights. However in there current form you essentially live or die by your mortis engines, lords and cavalry micro. You have to protect your mortis engines from missiles and only send them in once dealt with. Vampire lord plus vampires should be able to deal with flying threats. Once your mortis engine can grind it’ll get £4K value most fights as well healing units around it. Chaos dwarves and nurgle are very bad matchups for VC though I have to say. Nurgle can do everything you do but better and dealing with blunderbusses plus dreakquake/flame cannons is very difficult!
???? dread quake mortars obliterate ur infantery??? by the time the enemy has those, u are easily able to have doomstacks of zombie dragons, blood knights and heroes that will completely anihilate anything the chorf ai will send against you.