TOOTH AND CLAW

side from their potential to be powerful wizards, Vampires can be a real handful in close combat. They have an impressive profile and with the help of magic items and Vampiric Powers you can turn your Vampires into deadly combat monsters -- as with your magical powers, the only real limit is how much you want to spend on them. Even if you don't go over the top and give them loads of equipment, they can still turn the tide of an otherwise evenly matched combat. If you give a Vampire Dread Knight or Avatar of Death it gets all of the armour and weapons it need to be a decent fighting hero. Add either the Flayed Hauberk or an Enchanted Shield and he becomes harder to kill, so will stick around longer -- important in those battles of attrition that the Undead excel at.

If it is more out-and-out killing power that you want, you could give him Infinite Hatred or Beguile, as well as a magic weapon. I prefer to either keep my Vampire cheap or give him a decent save so he will survive. It can be very tempting to make him hit really hard, but if you forget to protect him, you will likely end up with a very expensive corpse (the bad, dead kind, not the Undead kind that we like!).

Whilst we love magic and dead guys in combat, we shouldn't forget the slightly less direct but no less useful powers. A flying Vampire might not be as tough or as hard-hitting as his mounted counterpart, but having a flying, Terror-causing Vampire in your deployment zone isn't fun for any opponent. Another great trick you might like to try is to give one of your Vampires Ghoul Kin and put your flying Vampire in a Crypt Ghouls unit. This mean he gets to tag along with the Crypt Ghouls on their free march before the first turn -- then he can charge on turn one! Walking Death is a very handy power -- an extra +1 combat resolution bonus is not to be sniffed at, particularly on a Battle Standard Bearer with the War Banner. That's +3 to your combat score all in one go!

All the powers in "the Master" category are worth thinking about. These allow you to increase the size of certain units beyond their starting size. This means that you can save points in your starting force by buying these units a bit smaller than normal and then bring them up to full battle strength during your magic phase. This will work best if you've spent a few of those saved points on bolstering your magical abilities.

Different kinds of Vampires will be lend themselves to different tactics with the army as a whole. It is very important that you equip your Vampires so that they work together with the rest of the army. Otherwise, you run the risk of having units left on their own and characters left without the necessary support -- both of these things are particularly bad for a Vampire Counts army.

Next: The Dead Heart of the Army
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