Machen, just to let you know - one of my mates Ol has been playing VC for the best part of twenty years. He loves the models, the fluff, the play style, everything about them. Despite this, he has just sold all 6000 points of them on eBay, on the basis that they are literally unplayable under 8th, with no immediate plans to replace the book. Now, that may be a bit of an over reaction on his part but nonetheless, I really strongly suspect that Vamps are not the army to start learning the rules with right now ...
Tim, thanks for letting me participate at this late hour. Diabolist, cheers for the heads up on the VC in 8th ed - unfortunately I've just bought four boxes of ghouls, some dire wolves and a varghulf so I've already rather committed myself! Oh well...
I wouldn't write 'em off just yet.
If you are playing from a fluffy point of view it really doesn't matter.
Just make sure you play your games against me and you will be fine... I also play from a fluffy - visual aspect, and not at all competitively, so you may find them pretty effective against my high elves lol.
Also, it just gives you more of a challenge as a general
I wouldn't write them off either. They have quite clearly stated that there will be FAQs for all the armies to bring them in line with 8th addition, and with the High Elves getting Elite Army (so you have no special and rare % restrictions) I am pretty sure the VC will be getting some special rules on character allowance. Also, their book was released reasonably recently, definitely while they were developing 8th edition, so I would think that this has also been taken into account.
Yeah, I'm definitely coming at this from a fluff perspective - at least provisionally - so I think I'll stick with the VCs. I'm also up for a challenge, so agree that working out how to use what might be a lower tier army effectively (especially as a noob to WFB - primarily a skirmish games and 40k player prior to this) will at least be interesting.
I think the doom-mongering on VC is nonsense. The old way doesn't work so well, but your casters are still excellent, you can boost the power pool easily, you can spam your best spells, you can add your casting level to simple raises, you have the best cavalry unit in game which is more controllable now, the best banners, the black coach is insane now (everyone has a pool, and has to roll), and you still cause fear and people will underestimate fear protection. Oh and Grave Guard are ace with great weapons (10 S6 KB attacks each round...with banners to improve hits!).
Vampires are still very good, just different and people hate change and don't want to reevaluate the army. And to people that spam one dice casts...suck it up.
not sure how TK incarnations/"thy will be done will" work in the 8th Ed. The rules state to be treated as a bound item but the power level of their incarnations is not anywhere. Unless they are treated as a power level three "3" Also the TK rules means you have to use two dice and pick the highest ( or 3 for a higher level chap) . Am assuming in the FAQ this will be overruled !
Yeah VC are fine, but TK on the other hand...they seem to be on the fail truck headed for out dated town.
They get a few nice buffs (skull catapults are lethal - and you can take a bone giant as well as 2 of them!), but the killer nerfs (characters in chariot units apparently cancels fast cav - ouch! and TK casting) seem to render them hard to use in 8th.
However word on the fickle street is that TK are next for a new book - which would make sense. I would also speculate that Brettonians are next as their book is also in trouble (peasants being craptastic).
Chris, I agree that any doom-mongering of the 'oh woes is I, I haven't played yet but it will be fail' type should be ignored. However, Ol's had the 8th book for a while (retailer advance copy) and has tested Vamps. He has tried various combos - in fact the character limits are really not the problem (cheap multi-Necromancer list with a couple of vamps works). It's more the low stats of everything except the Vamps meaning they get obliterated in combat; plus the winds of magic meaning that if you get a low roll when you really need to raise some stuff back up, you can have no army left before you know it. I think that going for combat vamps rather than the tedious bunker-and-play-for-a-draw lists will make things better. Nonetheless, I think he's got some valid points.
TKs - yeah, they're in trouble until the FaQ and hopefully new book.
Bretts also need updating, though arguably no more so than before 8th came along. Mike's currently painting a Men-at-Arms horde in the naive / insane belief they are worth the effort
In good news, I had my first game of 8th last night (against Veldemere) and it turns out WoC are the new stealth cheeze! I made some massively dumb mistakes, but other than those the army plays v well now. Looking forward to schooling Dark Elves on a regular basis now ... [/hopeless optimism]
I'm rather looking forward to fielding war shrines! They went from 'meh' to 'alright!'. The gift of chaos is a brucey bonus rather than being an annoyingly random point sink.
But the fact that chaos warriors finally 'work'...amazing!
I'll wait and see on VC, but I usually run them combat heavy anyway - and I think toning down the sub-par infantry (ghouls are ok I suppose - 2 attacks and a support attack = many poison attacks) by supplementing with nasty grave guard might work. And the heroes all get hatred which is nice. I can see they'll have issues against chaos (who will probably rip them a new one in close combat now) but they're probably ideal against Empire gunlines. I'll reserve judgement (and they'll get a new book eventually - historically VC were within the first 4 books redone each edition).
I'm interested in having a look at the new mission-based style of play, too: I have a(n entirely unfounded) sneaking suspicion that a lot of the MathHammer 'this army is nerfed' proclamations only really apply to pitched battles rather than the more narrative styles of play that GW seem to be pitching 8th edition towards. That may not turn out to be the case, but I think we still need time for the meta-game to materialise (by this I mean the actual meta-game, as opposed to what Tournament players describe as the meta-game).
In addition, as other people have mentioned, FAQs are to be released alongside the rulebook for all armies which should go some way to individualising the way each force plays, and I imagine some of the immediate concerns will be rectified in those.
Tim, don't expect scenarios to change things all that much. There are six basic scenarios in the book, plus a whole bunch of wierd and whacky 'missions' (ie narrative scenariors). Because the themed scenarios aren't exactly balanced, I think you'll find most people will go to the basic six - which are all pretty much variations on pitched battle.
I don't mean this in a critical way, personally I see nothing wrong in pitched battle, and the variations make deployment more interesting. However, you just won't see the variation in mission objectives that are in 40k. All games will be some version of 'Run forward and hit him with an axe until he's dead. A lot.'
Oh, bum. Ok, I was hoping that the emphasis would be the opposite and that the narrative scenarios would have taken precedence.
I'm doin a vc list aswel, but that is mainly because I've always wanted one and wouldn't do it while they were an uber death army, so starting one in 8th is getting me v excited.