Zombies and Apithanies!

Hi All

I hope you had a good Christmas and New Year and that 2013 is going well!

Well it has been some time since I was on this blog and I feel a little bad, so I though I would put something up.  It was actually something I was going through last night!

I was thinking about my Vampire Counts as usual and ways to make them really work and kick backside! The very few games I have played with them, I have lost more than I have won and for a tiny time, I got a little down hearted with the fang touting armies of death!

I did think "why do they cost so much in points and really not amount to much?" at times and even considered the possibility of changing over to another army - but when looking at them, the fluff and everything else - I still love 'em and want to kick more ass with them! I just have to get on and play more games - to practise more things with them and so on.

However, last night I was thinking about the core unit which we have and that fact that they happen to be the worst core unit in the whole of Warhammer; the ZOMBIE!

Yes they are cheap but they really are bad at fighting!  This is the first thing that came to my thoughts last night was that even when I use them as a tar-pit, they never seemed to amount to much.

I would go into battle with a HUGE amount of these buggers and still the large units would get cut down in what seemed no time at all.  Sometimes they would tar-pit for maybe 2-3 rounds which is good, but I kept on thinking "why do my zombies always get cut down really easily?".  The only way I used to keep these going was to employ the magic to sustain them - Raise Dead and Invo of Nehek.  Even then they would struggle badly!
So there I was last night thinking maybe they are too expensive at 3 points/model (cheap I know but...) for what they really do; they suck badly at fighting due to always striking last, weapon skill of 1 which is BBBBAAAADDDDD and their Ld means that they will be losing every round no matter what and being unstable, they will take a few more smacks in the chops and I will lose more!
I had another look at the codex for these just to see if there was anything else I could do with them; you have the corpse cart which seriously helps once magic has been used (changing them from ASL to ASF!), but was there anything else which would help matters?  And then I SAW IT!....
The salvation of the rotting ones!!!!....
A rule I completely forgot about and have NEVER used;

THE NEWLY DEAD

Yippee that really helps these guys onto better things.  Coupled with Master of the Dead, Invocation of Nehek and Raise Dead - the newly dead really kicks the enemy of the Sylvanian lords of death in the teeth!

Breaking it down....

The Invocation of Nehek gives D6 + caster level wounds back to each unit near the necromancer or vampire lord.  Not dealing with the non-core units (which get only 1 wound back), the zombies will have D6+level zombies back per unit.  HOWEVER(!), the newly dead only applies to zombies which means you get an extra D6 deadies back horrah!!  So working on averages for example - unit of 40 zombies gets cut down to 25 including unstable rule deaths.  The level 4 dark magic bod rolls a 3 which means 7 more appear - but rolls another 3 for the newly dead which means you get 35 zombies left over and only 5 not being accounted for!
Now for the cleverer lord of black death, they might wish to do something like raising a unit of zombies before Invo of Nehek and then increase the new unit with the Invo of Nehek - so once again averages (and don't forget that this needs no dispelling to be successful and yes I know these numbers are averages which means that you could end up with very little or loads more!!!!!!!!!!). Same as above 40 down to 35 zombies but with the included scenario of raising 2D6 + 3 zombies which gives 10 zombies average made up to 13 zombies average total!!!

The moral of the story....READ and REMEMBER the rules of the units you use!!!!!

Catch you all later!
Andy

War Machines in fantasy

Hi All

A post about some misconceptions regarding war machines.  Having fought against a few, many players have their own ideas on what can and cannot be done!

Tonight I fought against dark elves in a 3000 point standard battle.  My opponent had various nasty units such as witches and the like, but he also took along two cauldrons of blood.  My list in all fairness should have dealt with him fairly well but I lost due to several factors and one of the main factors was the fact that I still do not really know the rules that well!

I charged a 40+ strong unit of crypt ghouls into one of his cauldrons.  My opponent then told me that only a certain number of units can attack a war machine very much like fighting inside buildings.  It worked out that 9 of my ghouls could attack the war machine.  I was licking my lips at the prospect of 18 poisoned hits to be dealt out.

Misconception No.1

My opponent told me that after his dark elf warriors have finished slicing and dicing my ghouls (with their many attacks and higher initiative), there would be no rank at the front to fight the cauldron operators.  This is wrong!  The casualties are removed as in usual combat – from the rear and presuming there are enough models left in the unit.  The rear models basically climb over their dead comrades to continue the fight.

Misconception No.2

Only 6 models can attack and no more (of course on the understanding you have at least 6 models in the charging unit!).

Misconception No.3

You strike and attack the war machine itself and therefore use the stats of the war machine.  No this is not the case!  As far as I can see in the rules, you strike against the war machine as a unit but using the operator’s WS, S and T and not the machines stats.  This makes perfect sense when you consider the old days when a cavalry would “charge up the guns”.  They would go for the cannon men and not waste time in denting their sabres against the cannon muzzles!  Shooting at war machines might be different though due to their size.

Now if I knew this, I would have made mincemeat of his cauldron, which would have allowed me to crash my ghouls into the side of one of his nasty witch units.  The battle would have gone vvvvveeeeeerrrrrrrryyyyy differently!

Cheers

Andy