Vampire Counts Spell Cards for Download

Spell cards are kind of cool when you get right down to it. But what about the races that don't have them?!?!?

Well...

Here for your gaming pleasure is a set of downloadable Vampire Counts spell cards that I made up. No more will you need to keep referring to the cumbersome army book mid game!

It's a PDF document that you can print on card then cut the cards out. Click on the link to download them.

Vampire Counts Spell Cards

Art by George Patsouras

Tactica: Allocating Attacks

Allocating attacks is one of those little dilemmas that come up during a game of Warhammer. In my experience, it tends to get forgotten completely, with the default being that attacks are made against the normal member of a target unit.

I don’t pretend to be the world’s leading expert on this subject but I do have some opinions based on what has happened to me so far.

There are two possible goals when allocating attacks

1)      Scoring combat resolution

2)      Taking out a threatening opponent

Generally the choice is between weaker troops and tougher troops. The tougher troops could be one or more characters or a second unit in contact of stronger (and harder to kill) models. The question becomes whether you want to risk trying to kill the tough model(s) or to go for the more reliable attacks on a weaker opponent.

Let’s keep it simple:

• Always strike at the weaker opponent to get maximum combat resolution (unless you need to take out a combat character for a specific reason)

• ALWAYS allocate at least one dice to attacking the enemy unit champion. They are just as easy to kill and have extra attacks back

• Always allocate attacks against enemy wizards. They are almost as easy to kill as rank and file and are far more valuable notches on your belt

• Consider striking at unarmoured monster mounts instead of riding characters as this can limit the character manoeuvrability, even if they ultimately win the combat – and it can give cheaper combat resolution 

• Read my Tactica: Challenges for more ideas about battling characters

Deluge of Evil

To the northeast of the fair land of Tempestria lies a forest so thick, it beggars all desire to enter it. And more, the legends of the evil that dwells under its dense boughs are enough to quail and heart with fear and overwhelming trepidation. It is known as the Stygian Wood.

And within that wood, at its deepest valley, further in than any human has ever ventured, and protected by mountains all round it, sits the Drak Heart, the stinking fetid dwelling of the Beastmen.

For years the outer edges of the Stygian Wood have been silent and no man knows what horrors have been perpetrated further in; but Chaos is ascending now. The ancient and evil rocks brought down from the heavens by the dread arch-necromancer Nagash have wakened things that should never be wakened, and now they come, baying and howling, charging down through the thickets of the Stygian Woods toward the open pastures of Tempestria and the castle of Tempest Falls.

After her victory against the Kingdom of the Great Maw, Queen Rachel d’Astatic was ranging eastward along her borders, inspecting the defences she had ordered be placed to guard against incursion. Up until now, the Stygian Wood had been an impenetrable bulwark as significant a stopping-point as a cliff; but now, encouraged by Methuselah, her lover, her ambition to cleanse all the Border Princes of evil required the purging of these woods.

It was as she entered the camp that the howling started.

 Long had tales been told of a threat that might exist from this quarter, but no serious provision had been made to prepare for it. Having said that, Rachel’s own protective bodyguard of knights as well as the garrison already in place would surely be enough to see off all aggressors.

Rachel ordered her archers into position, waiting to do to the Beastmen what they had done to the Ogres, but the Cloven Ones were more wily. They did not run across an open plain toward the ranked arrowmen, they came through the woods obliquely, forcing the archers to redeploy, wasting precious time.  

The knights galloped forward to engage the foul-smelling warriors as Rachel, powerful as ever, incinerated a giant with a single volley of magical Tzeentchian fire, but even as they impacted the front of a large unit of Beastmen Gors, their captain got the feeling they’d been lured into a trap.

And then the trap was sprung, as a huge Ghorgon burst through the trees and into their flank, ripping them apart one by one.

The Beastmen Shaman concentrated, sending out his dark consciousness, and as he walked along entranced, a gargantuan Jabberslythe, under his control, emerged from the undergrowth and darted forward.

A Tusgor Chariot slammed into the other unit of knights as the Jabberslythe descended on them from the side, once again ripping them apart and sending them fleeing.

The rocks thrown by the Tempestrian catapult kept missing their target and then the mechanism jammed, just as a pack of Chaos Hounds leapt onto the crew and started to devour them.

Realising she was about to be charged by the Beastmen Doombull, Rachel turned her horse and fled and the Doombull caught up with the remaining knights, sending them fleeing once more before its mighty axe.

The battle was lost and Rachel kept on fleeing. Powerful though she was, she could defeat an entire Beastmen horde, almost undamaged, by herself. As her archers were eaten alive by the Jabberslythe, she galloped away, frightened for what the future held.

Most definitely for ill, the Beastmen were here. The Drak Heart and the Stygian Wood had opened and the deluge of evil had begun.

On the Painting Table: Wood Elf Characters

And here we have the last of my basic Wood Elf army.

Two characters. A Battle Standard Bearer... 

And a Spellsinger. 

The Standard Bearer came in the Wood Elf hundred pound army box and is an okay miniature I mainly did because he was there and because I love Battle Standard Bearers in the game and think they are pretty much mandatory now.

The Spellsinger is a non-GW miniature. She's a Freebooter Fairy of the Woods that I bought off ebay. But she is nice!

It's time to start playing!

Don't Waste Time on "Quality" Paint Jobs!

Wasting time on miniature painting is stupid! It’s far better to do a quick job than spend extra time making the miniatures look “better.”

And I’m going to prove it!

First off, eighty percent of gamers either don’t bother wasting their valuable time painting their models, leaving them blank and unpainted or use a palette of simple colours. This is because they understand that spending hours on adding depth of shading creating a more realistic miniature is pretty much pointless.

Eighty percent of gamers can’t be wrong!

Here’s my Beastmen Doombull with plain colour.

I’ve done a fairly good job at picking out the different colour areas and it’s fine! As most gamers think, and I agree, there’s very little point in going beyond this point.

I painted the horns Kommando Khaki, the armour Boltgun metal, the axe blade Tin Bitz, the mane Vermin Brown and the skin Graveyard Earth.

I didn’t bother painting the base because it’s unnecessary. We’re playing a board game, not trying to create a visually stunning battle populated by realistic characters and beautiful scenery!

To prove what a waste of time it is going to extra effort I’m going to go through the processes, one pointless step at a time.

So here I’ve done an ink wash: Gryphonne Sepia on the skin and horns and Badab Black on the mane and armour.

I suppose some namby pamby milksop might claim this added depth and weight to the model but I honestly don’t see the point of it.

This is where it gets really stupid.

Here I’ve highlighted the Doombull with Graveyard Earth and Kommando Khaki on the skin, Kommando Khaki and Bleached Bone on the horns, Dwarf Bronze and Chainmail on the axe and Vermin Brown on the mane.

That’s an awful lot of effort and I don’t see any improvement over the first picture above. Does this really look better than a basically painted miniature?

Not really.

At least by leaving the base blank I’m maintaining the look of the miniature as a board game counter. Nothing irritates me more than people who think that by basing a miniature to match the war board they’re creating an exciting snapshot of what could almost feel like a real Doombull getting ready to charge! The closer we can get the game to being simple straight forward counters, the better. Then we can focus on the rules and game mechanics rather than creating a gripping story set in a war torn fantasy realm.

I mean, you have to ask yourself what the point is!

So here he is with a base blended into the board.

I painted the base then dipped it in bird grit (available in large amounts for little money from pet shops), then painted it black. Then I applied patches of overlapping colour through the following: Scorched Brown, Bestial Brown, Bubonic Brown and Bleached Bone.

Seriously, does that really look better than this:

Of course it doesn’t!

On the Painting Table: Wood Elf Glade Riders!

I kind of hate Wood Elves. They are a terrible chore for me to paint.

But they do look nice when they're done.

These guys took me a couple of mionths to do - just because I found them SO TEDIOUS!

But all I need now is to do a couple of characters and I'll finally reach that magicval 1,500 point target, praise the Lord.

At 228 points, this is a very expensive unit so it will be very interesting to see how they fare. Using them to just stand still and shoot is obviously a waste of their speed but getting the most out of Fast Cavalry is not (yet) one of my strong points.



On the Painting Table: Chaos Dwarf First Look!

After three different colour schemes I’ve finally settled on Tin Bitz with a Dwarf Bronze highlight for my Chaos Dwarfs – care of Mantic’s Abyssal Dwarfs, with Adeptus Battlegrey cloth bits.  

This is my first mini unit, now complete. I didn’t do a spectacularly good job on the painting: by the time I got to colour three I think I was flagging a bit – but they’re looking alright... and sufficiently evil.

And they actually look quite nice on these pictures (slightly better; for a change; than in real life).

You may notice that I used some GW dwarfs in there. The Mantic dwarfs give you a bunch of spare heads so (considering it’s basically an upgrade set for normal Mantic dwarfs) I thought, what the heck!

I have the characters arriving in the post any day now and when I paint the other half of this unit I’ll have a very small but playable force.

On the Painting Table: Beastmen!

 At long last, my Beastmen army is painted to a playable level!

Yay!

And here they are in all their glory.

As I can’t field the Chaos Spawn and Beastmen Giant in the same army at this pointage, the maximum I can get to at this stage is 1,000 points. But it’s a fairly nice well-rounded army with some fast units and some heavy hitters and some magic. And the mandatory Battle Standard!

Here is the complete Beastmen Gors unit that finished it off for me (for now). With two characters they’re a bit heavy-weighted but I’ll split off one of these characters as I add extra units.

Not liking any of the Bray-Shaman models available from Games Workshop, I decided to make one of my own! This guy was converted from a bunch of Chaos Warrior, Marauder and Chaos Knight parts. And I am kind of in love with him.

And, once again, I went a little wild making my Battle Standard Bearer. You can't even see him behind it I stuck so many on there!

Heck, let’s take another look at the complete army!

Tactical Review: In the Charnel Wilds

 MIKE:

I took the field with my new army.  I’d given them all names and was actually quite nervous on how the battle would unfold.  Would my hours of careful painting have been wasted.  In short no, and a resounding no at that. 

Although I lost my general (he didn’t even get to move) in the Tomb Kings first shooting phase my little army rocked.  A unit of 5 Chosen took out 22 Tomb King elite who had the killing blow special rule.  My Chaos Knights took out 4 chariots, my marauders and warriors made hay with two units of skeletons, even failing fear checks, and using great weapons they still did massive damage.  My cheeky war hounds even got in on the act killing the Tomb King’s general and second in command with relative ease. 

Things to improve would be to not bother giving a bound banner spell to my knights, I didn’t get to use it once.  What a waste of 45 points.  The rest of the army worked really well and I have another unit of chaos warriors still to paint.  Long live chaos…

TIM:

The irony of writing a Tomb Kings tactica and getting myself thrashed so soundly when playing them twice in a row is not lost on me.

In my defence, I followed my tactica (based on ideas from the official army book tactica) as closely as possible. With a relatively small game (the strategic map movement determined that Mike would have 20% more points than me) from my angle, my choices for magic and combat characters was very limited so my magic (the lynchpin of the Tomb Kings) failed to get off the ground.

The biggest thing against me (and excuse I can make) was the terrible state of the Tomb King rules. In the old rules, Fear was amazingly good, restricting charges, forcing units to flee, etc. With its new restrictions, the points cost of a skeleton warrior is way over the top. I’m anticipating quite a drop in cost here in the upcoming army book unless other improvements are made.

I’ve actually decided to delay gaming with the Tomb Kings until the new army book comes out in early May. This is a tad annoying and my Spider Goblins are lined up to fight them and they’re almost ready to play with!

But what could I have done differently?

Honestly, I still don’t have the right answer on where to put the Hierophant. In or out of units is bad for various reasons and with the units charging away from them they ended up being left behind. I saw no gaping gaps in my tactics really. It’ll be interesting to see if I suddenly start getting wins when the update comes out…

In the Charnel Wilds

Warriors of Chaos (Mike) vs Tomb Kings (Tim)

In the south west of the Devil’s Pathway, north of the Black Gulf and close to the centre of the Border Princes, is a desolate plain that stretches for miles: almost devoid of life and a place few men dare to cross. The plain is known as the Charnel Wilds and for good reason. What life does exist there is so lethally dangerous that no living witnesses have reported anything concrete beyond garbled and contradictory rumours of threats like invisible stabbing insects and gargantuan many-limbed worms with teeth-filled orifices everywhere.

In the centre of this plain lies Dunkel Schloss, the dark castle.

From its depths marched rank after rank of sinister armoured warriors, flanked by packs of ravening hounds warped and twisted by chaos and thundering cavalry bearing towering knights, mouldering steam issuing from their visors. To the south lay the lands of the Undead Nation and the citadel of Barak Varr, controlled by the deathly Tomb Kings. The black eyes of the Warriors of Dunkel Schloss gazed on this realm with bitter jealousy and destructive rage. Their hatred of all things was paralleled only in the blackest of hearts and their axes desired nothing but devastation and motionless death.

Waiting for them on the parched fields of the Charnel Wilds stood hundreds of expressionless skeleton warriors, each gripping an ancient bejewelled blade or reaching spear, and beside the ranks of the skeletons were chariots, skeletal steeds waiting in front of them to drag them into battle.

The warriors came on and the Tomb Kings moved to engage them but the great power of Ovidium and Virgillium, the dark sorcerers, blocked almost every attempt of the Liche Priests to spur the soldiers faster into battle. Holding, the dark Lord of the warriors smiled grimly, preparing to give the charge order, then the sun grew dark and he looked up.

A boulder that was formed from mystically fused skulls fell from the heavens and crushed him, horse and all, hurled from a Tomb King catapult.

Enraged, the knights charged forward, shattering the fragile chariots rattling towards them as the Chaos infantry ran alongside them, battering the skeletons that stalked forward to meet them. The Warriors of Chaos were unlike anything seen within the Border Princes before. The strength and endurance was unbeatable. With each swipe of their axes they chewed through the skeleton units, devastating them as their unnatural instability dragged them down.

Slavering hounds bounded round the flank toward the sluggish Liche Priests as fireballs flew toward them from the hands of the sorcerers. Forced to abandon their support of the rest of the army to save themselves, the Liche Priests bombarded the Chaos Hounds with magic missiles, but they couldn’t prevent them bursting through and first one, then the other fell under dripping jaws and disease-riddled claws.

Ordinarily, this would have signalled the end of the army as the magic holding it up vanished and the army crumbled, but not this time. Even as the Liche Priests were brought down the last of the skeleton infantry were bashed and cleaved to powdered bone until they were no more.

Suddenly the battle was over.

The Charnel Wilds were silent.

The Warriors of Dunkel Schloss looked at one another then fixed their eyes on the distant lands of the undead and resumed their march south.

On the Painting Table: Spider Catapult and Yet More Spiders!

So I was building my Arachnarok Spider (haven’t quite finished painting it yet) and I went through a bit of a soul search about which build to use. None of the upgrades struck me as being that brilliant but I decided to definitely not use the catapult.

At least on the spider itself…

But who would want to waste a perfectly good catapult! And I didn’t already have a Rock Lobba in my army, so…

I am a huge fan of setting war machines on these dreadnought bases. It always makes them look like a mini-diorama and because you have to cram the miniatures on a little it always looks like a really bustly scene.

Using tooth picks as spikes and to support the catapult (the spider has a very similar structure really), I added the stand with the little forest goblin loader on. Then I stuck on a spare Night Goblin and two very old miniatures I had kicking around, courtesy of my friend Neil.

One of them is an Orc and the other, I guess, an old Night Goblin. I’m really like the way I positioned the goblins so they’re looking up at the loader – though it’s tricky to see on these pictures.

And now my spider army is all but complete. I’m a day or two away from completing my Arachnarok and here below are pictures of my last two mini spider units.

I went for a different angle here (filling out the units by the way with spare spiders from the Arachnarok kit).

I could have gone for another horde of forty but I decided to experiment with more manoeuvrable smaller units. Two units of ten will be able to distract my opponent hopefully and while they waste time killing them, my larger units can be doing what they do best!

I used the large spider from the Arachnarok kit here as a unit champion. Those are bits of shale he’s standing on.

Massacre in Slaughter Pass

Tempestrians (Gill) vs Ogres (Tim)

The Northern Pass was a heavily wooded valley thick with foliage to the east of Blackfire Pass, the main route north into the Empire from the Border Princes. And it was soon to be resigmared.

It was here that the Tempestrians had met and slaughtered the Ogres time after time already, the proud knights skewering rough Ogre bodies on the ends of their lances. But the Ogres had not had enough and now they were back for more.

From the wooded lowland hills, the Ogres charged down, accelerating as they approached the garrisoned knights. The knights moved into position, faces stern and ready. For the first time, as soon as the battle opened, the Ogres leapt into the potentially victorious position, a Hunter, skewering three knights with a single shot from his harpoon launcher and another unit devastated by fire from Leadbelchers’ cannons. The Tyrant called triumphantly for the rest of his troops to move in, leading the charge.

And then their fortunes changed.

The fast moving knights crashed into battle, wiping out or routing unit after unit of Ogres, stampeding them into the ground or away. Archers positioned in the centre of the Tempestrian battle line let fly with hundreds of arrows, whittling down their opposition before they could close at all.

Rachel d’Astatic let fly devastatingly powerful spells from her growing repertoire of magic booned to her by the Chaos Vein, incinerating the towering creatures. All along the battle line, the Ogres were being slaughtered again.

The Tyrant ran forward alongside his Battle Standard Bearer but when he looked to his left and to his right he saw that the remains of his army was in shambles, almost all of them destroyed. The bowmen’s arrows couldn’t penetrate his hide and he could take on anything the Tempestrians could throw at him, but he could not win without an army.

Once again the Ogres were defeated!

Once again they fled for the mountains.

And now the Northern Pass would have a new name.

From this day until the earth was no longer stained with stinking Ogre blood, it would be known as Slaughter Pass.

Tactica: Challenges Mk II

For more Tactics articles, click here.

This is a rewrite and update of my previous Challenges Tactica that is hopefully a bit clearer and also takes into account lessons I've since learned.

Let’s think about the different situations:

Characters in Units

• Your character is better than my character and you challenge

• I accept with my champion (or challenge myself using him).
• You kick his ass and potentially get +5 overkill but rather than real wounds on the unit, those are virtual wounds that only affect the combat resolution. I’ve limited the amount of combat resolution he can do to 5 plus my wounds and my guys are still alive.
• CONCLUSION: Accept challenge with champion

• The characters are evenlyish matched
• 1) I accept the challenge (or make my own).
• It’s a cool fight that improves the narrative.
• Excess wounds aren’t wasted because if you’d not challenged and just allocated your attacks against the character then they wouldn’t be used for Overkill.

• 2) I accept the challenge/challenge myself with a unit champion
• You kick his ass while my character does more wounds against the unit.
• You get good overkill while I get good real wounds.
• I lose one guy, you lose several guys.
• We both do the same amount of wounds (all things being equal) but you’ve lost more men. I can still allocate an attack or two against the champion if I want.
• CONCLUSION: Challenge/accept challenge with champion
• My character is better than your character
• 1) I challenge and1 you take the challenge with your champion, putting me in a bad position as shown above
• 2) I challenge and you accept with a character
• I kick his ass and get overkill but could I have killed more unit guys?
• 3) I challenge and you don’t have a champion and have to retire a character to avoid the challenge
• a) This is a combat character: You lose his ability and Leadership in the combat
• This is a Wizard: He is saved from having attacks allocated against him
• CONCLUSION: Don’t bother challenging unless you want to challenge with a champion to tie up their combat character and limit him to Overkill wounds

Characters Not in Units

• I challenge you with an uber character on a monster or a lone character on foot
• 1) You accept the challenge with a champion or character.
• I kick his ass and get overkill. Your unit can’t fight back. I win.
• 2) You don’t accept. I choose the character to be withdrawn. I kick unit’s ass and you do minimal damage back. Your character is wasted.
• CONCLUSION: Always challenge with monster characters or lone characters on foot
• You attack me with an uber monster character or lone character on foot.
• 1) I accept the challenge with combat character and maybe do a few wounds before dying. But probably die first.
• You get good combat result. My unit can’t attack.
• 2) I accept with my champion.
• You kick his ass worse. My unit and good character can’t attack.
• 2) I refuse the challenge.  
• You choose to retire my character
• My unit can still fight as normal but I don’t have my character’s attacks or Leadership
• All these are bad.
• CONCLUSION: This is a tricky one and I don’t know the perfect answer. I’m going to say accept the challenge with your combat character if you have one. If you don’t have one, refuse with the unit champion.

• The top tip here is to kill the monster as a priority. However good their character is, removing their transportation will limit the damage they can do to the rest of the army. And monsters tend to have less armour. If you have enough attacks wounding on sixes if nothing else you may whittle it down eventually.

OVERALL CONCLUSION:

ü  If their character in a unit challenges, accept with your champion

ü  Don’t bother challenging yourself unless you don’t have a unit to back you up.

ü  Always challenge if you have a lone character or a character on a monster

ü  Bite the bullet and accept the challenge with a combat character if an uber character on a monster attacks

ü  Always take a unit champion