I'm thinking of starting Vampire counts
This army has a theme to it:
I could write up a whole fluff story but I'll leave that to if I decide to buy the army. Basically it's a Powerful Duke of Sylvania who was turned into a Vampire and now he serves the undead legions with him and the few servants and pets who lived his castle before they were attacked and "enlisted". The servants would be a large unit of grave guards or some black knights and a few necromancers. And the pets would be a couple units of dire wolves and some fell bats. Ghouls can be added in there too somehow, somehting about surrounding villages.
anyway the list:
Characters:
Necrach Vampire Count: lvl2(3), Nehekhara's Noble Blood, wristbands of black gold, sword of might
Necromancer: lvl 2, black periapt, book of arkhan
Necromancer: lvl 2, 2x dispel scroll
Necromancer: lvl 2, power familiar
Core:
20 skeletons: full command, spears, light armour
18 zombies
20 zombies
20 ghouls
5 dire wolves
5 dire wolves
Special:
5 fell bats
2x 6 black knights: full command
or
20 Grave Guard: halberds, shields full command
2000pts
12 power dice+black periapt (so probably another one)
8 dispel dice+2 scrolls
109 or 117 models+ 4 magic users with invocation
At first look it doesn't look very solid, but when you add strategy to it, it looks much more promising. The basic stragety will have all my heros in the skeleton unit. I'll have my vampire and 1 necromancer raising the dead into the skeleton unit for a few turns with the lord using 3rd lvl invocation and the necromancer 2nd. And the other 2 necromancer using 2nd lvl on the 2 zombie units that will be infront of the skeleton unit and have a front rank of 10 for proper screening. If I use the black knights, the ghouls will also go behind this zombie screen, if im using grave guard the ghouls will screen them.
If using black knights, the will run down the flank and detroy units with one unit of knights in the front and one in the flank, or if possible, both in the flank so I avoid spears and champions.
the fell bats and dire wolves will be doing their usual business of stopping march moves, fleeing hunting lone mages or characters or taking down warmachines.
So what do you think? I personally think it looks good but I have no experience playing with the vampire counts and little against them.