Being Dead - A Vampire Count Overview

[DavidWC09]

So have you used Blood Knights yet?

[kroxigor01]

I was just thinking, shouldn't bounds be cast first in the magic phase? (providing your enemy knows that you have them already) Lets take a look at an over simplified example:

Lets say you have 1 power dice and 1 bound spell and the enemy only has 1 dispel dice and wants to dispel the spell you are casting with the 1 power dice.

If you cast with the power dice first and you fail to cast then the enemy is free to use his dispel dice on the bound.

If you cast with the bound first the enemy will ignore the bound and wait for the other spell. If you fail to cast the other spell the enemy 'wasted' their dispel dice by not using it.

[no1cafc]

DavidVC04 no I haven't yet and it will be a while until I do.

Kroxigor01 your simplified example shows it may be better but in real games I can't see that situation happening since casting on 1 dice means it is most likely an invocation whilst a bound will be the corpse cart or book which are a lot more dangerous. So the opponent will try to stop them no matter the order, unless you get a successful cast which will put a bit of pressure on them, since people are more likely to make mistakes under pressure. The way I'm looking at it is the opponent will be planning to stop the dangerous bound spell (in most cases the book) as it is a sure thing to be cast, so by doing the risky bit (cast the spells) first you put pressure on them to stop them while you can rest assured that if the spell gets dispelled it means your bound will be successful.

If the bound is likely to be ignored then yes, use it first. The book of arkhan is not the sort of bound that will be ignored as it uses the best spell VC have and as it used in most VC lists that's the bound I was talking about, I see that I wasn't clear about that so it's been edited.

[DavidWC09]

All the savvy opponents I know save dispel dice for the bounds, so it just depends on if you want to draw dice out early with them or save them.

[Jahpocalypse]

i think the black coach is actually pretty good if used correctly. sure it will always attempt to gobble your power pool dice, but there is only a 33% chance for that to happen. i typically try to have it near my characters in the first turn to try and boost it up then move it out of the 6" range. S7 hits are bad for it, so it's best to try and get it in combat quickly. I think the T6, 4+ ward, and 3+ save can make up for this one weakness. yes, fighting certain armies it does have a big weakness due to being a chariot (aka cannons...), but in most cases it will be deadly and very hard to kill. i have had this thing take out demon princes and made ranked units flee, i've seen it hold monsters in combat without taking damage, and i've had it flanked by knights only to take 1 wound. however with all that being said, yes i will admit that it may not be the best choice for tournaments due to the fact that S7 kills it could make it disappear in the first turn, of course a lucky cannon ball could also take out your general...

[Dragorakiba]

But the black coach still takes away you power dice making hard to cast your spells and with the VC the spells are an important part of the army and if you move it away it defeats the purpose of having one. I really only see maybe 2-3 abilities that are that good. It cost more than a vampire would why not just take one of them.

[Zarahemna]

I think that the cool factor should be a part of it! I think the black coach is a great model and has a solid presence on the battlefield.

How you play with it is important but it's ok to collect the models you like too...

[Draconia]

Black Coaches in practice are some of the nastiest things ever. Let the Coach suck up as much magic as it possibly can in the first phase, before you really need to Nehek. There are no reliable strength 7 magical attacks in the game besides Dwarven war machines, so once the Coach picks up Ethereal it starts to beat face. Toughness 6, 3+ save, 4+ ward means that even most magical attacks will be hard pressed to hurt it.

My Black Coach, by itself, destroyed a full 500-750 points of a 1500 point Chaos army, and only ever caused one wound. It sucked up one die, got the ability to Fly, rammed a Chaos chariot, broke it, and caused a panic in the full squad of Chaos Knights next to it. They both ran off the board. And I even flubbed my roll for impact hits.

Think about all the High Elf players who always get that annoying first strike. They can barely wound the cart! Become Ethereal, and you can charge Swordmasters for free.