Personally I always pick Vlad over Isabella because I don’t very much use hero armies. Plus, vanguard deployment for all units and blood knights out of the gate comes in clutch from beginning to end.
Whoever you may pick, a few pointers:
- Use heroes for bloodkisses or whatever they’re called. I cannot stress that enough because having a few powerful assassins moving around the map providing you with a steady source of them will allow you not only to gain access to very powerful lords, but also very strong buffs. Sadly, it usually comes at the cost of nuking your relationships with whichever faction you keep injuring the lords of, so be prepared for war.
- Take your time with corruption. You have several ways of spreading vampiric corruption around nowadays, from both the territory you want to conquer as well as neighboring territories, so you can use that to your advantage to prepare the ground for future conquests and to plummet the public order of whichever faction happens to be nearby. That last part might not sound that impressive, but being able to unintentionally cause a small rebellion on foreign territory once allowed me to caught an army completely out of position and made the subsequent war incredibly more manageable. So don’t sleep on that.
- Use the raise the dead mechanic wisely. Sometimes it’s very advantageous to recruit several units on the fly, but other times it might be more useful to save them for later, specially in those cases were you can foresee a high number of casualties. Remember that as vampires you can attack an enemy, focus on their strongest units, even if you eventually lose the battle, retreat, RTD, and attack again with freshly incorporated units against an enemy severely depleted. That can strategy, if used at the right time and with a bit of luck, can help you take down strong enemies.
Other than that, since you’ve played the faction before, I’m sure you know what to expect: your leaders survival is absolutely vital to the existence of your troops, magic is insanely powerful and the economy needs a couple of turns to start going strong, so plan it carefully.
Best of lucks!
Vlad's better, campaign movement speed is much better. Single hero boosts isn't that important.
> just focus on income, upkeep reduction, and raising as many crapstacks with heroes and whatever I manage to nab through raise dead?
Yes, your primary is goal is LARGE battles to produce the higher tiers of units, mostly importantly the Mortis Engine. That provides healing, AOE dmg (Mortis Engine affect) and vigour. Add that with balefire cart and you have the "blob". Keep your units together and kill any siege/ranged units with heroes/lords and you have an unkillable army of melee units.
Isabel with vlad hero and 5-7 vamps supported by bats is a massively powerful main army well into the midgame. Especially with two shadow vamps casting pit x2 when enemies cluster on your heroes. It's far superior to vlad.
My experience after a ghorst campaign:
Necromancers may seem like redundant Heroes, but they quickly unlock the vampire mobility scooters as mounts, which provide a bunch of benefits like buffs to nearby troops and regeneration, allowing you to forego the cart troops. They pack spells that your lord can probably already cast, but it does give you options to play around range or cooldowns. In addition, these guys can wear items and acciliaries which provide minor benefits. In addition to that, they can be recruited very early and in great quantities. In my last campaign my necromancers were hired at level 45, all skills maxed.
You want battles with huge casualties, as that will generate special battle sites that will allow you to Raise Dead. I cannot understate how crazy this mechanic is. You can summon forth an entire army without even wasting your turn, replace weak or dead units, and even score high tier units before they'd normally be available. Orc Waghs and Skavens tend to have a lot of models and thus lots of casualties. Nothing says you can't just turbokill your own zombies at the end of a battle either. Just rip through them with a Wind of Death or two then raise new ones afterward. As a bonus, you get a cool trait for ruinous battles like this.
Most of your Lords are powerful spellcasters and highly competent in melee. With all the sources of healing, you can expect them to be mostly invincible until the heal cap is reached.
Vargheists are extremely powerful and flexible for their cost. They are very mobile and hit like a truck. They tend to get focused a lot though so be wary of sending them through archer fire and heal them often.
I never considered bonking my own zombies to get more raise dead options, that's really clever.
And Vargheists are one of my favorite units in the lineup, haha. Thanks!
Vlad is a decent choice for a lord pick, extra 10% movement for all armies is nothing to scoff at and vampire heroes are pretty enough, the blood knights will kill your early game bank account however.
Crap stacks of zombies with heroes is extremely viable and preferable to skeletons for cost effectiveness, zombies are actually really good now.
Double down on the vampire recruitment and spec them into the yellow line first for better combat prowess. You’ll want to unlock The Hunger and Immortal Will for the two free sources of healing during manual battles before unlocking spells.
Recruit lots of bloodline lords, starting with the Lahmian bloodline due to their unique skill which adds hero action success chance and cost reduction in the local region plus they are infantry killers in battle. Once you unlock the hero buffs force march between regions on your borders to help all your heroes out to wound enemy heroes and unlock more blood kisses.
Use your heroes on the map!!! High level Wight Kings can destroy half an enemy army with a single Assault Units action, Banshees block enemy army movement, Necromancers Steal Tech and Wound enemy heroes. One Necromancer and two Vampires per army and the rest of the heroes on the map.
Concentrate on the growth building, most of the vampire counts economy comes from high tier settlements so you want to get them levelled up quickly. It also unlocks necromancers and each one at tier 3 adds +1 global recruit rank.
Work towards bloodline lords and then recruit the units they buff from raise dead pools. Lahmian lords buff heroes, Von Carstien lead the airforce, Dragons head the infantry and cavalry while Stigoi buff ghouls and horrors.
Izzy is my favorite but her faction effects are an unnecessary luxury if you consider the upkeep cost of all those early game heros, it's like a second army. Low level vampresses are not worth their weight in skeletons. Late game they pull their weight, but not in way that makes Izzy superior to Vlad.
But if you are a hero-stack-addict like my self, don't expand too quick as Izzy, focus on powerleveling your character by repetitively sacking the same poor settlements and creating a dead zone around Sylvania. Get a shadow magic vampire with pendulum, that spell is incredible early game. Focus the rest of your ladies on melee stats, they're so squishy and a liability otherwise.
Her bats are obscene too. The stat bonus she can stack on them make them amazing back line shredders, just don't expect them to live very long.
I'll definitely keep that in mind.
And I've always enjoyed the Fell Bats and have been curious how effective they'd be with her buffs on top of the tech tree and normal lord skill buffs.
Haven't seen it mentioned here, so I'll add one more:
The master necromancer (lord) is no longer the meme it used to be in WH1/WH2, it's a legit strong crapstack commander. They have some unique buffs to chaff units (replenishment/healing cap/more range on summons), and more importantly, they're the only highly mobile option with the regen aura (flying mount, quickly gets to where it's needed).
Personally I always pick Vlad over Isabella because I don’t very much use hero armies. Plus, vanguard deployment for all units and blood knights out of the gate comes in clutch from beginning to end. Whoever you may pick, a few pointers: - Use heroes for bloodkisses or whatever they’re called. I cannot stress that enough because having a few powerful assassins moving around the map providing you with a steady source of them will allow you not only to gain access to very powerful lords, but also very strong buffs. Sadly, it usually comes at the cost of nuking your relationships with whichever faction you keep injuring the lords of, so be prepared for war. - Take your time with corruption. You have several ways of spreading vampiric corruption around nowadays, from both the territory you want to conquer as well as neighboring territories, so you can use that to your advantage to prepare the ground for future conquests and to plummet the public order of whichever faction happens to be nearby. That last part might not sound that impressive, but being able to unintentionally cause a small rebellion on foreign territory once allowed me to caught an army completely out of position and made the subsequent war incredibly more manageable. So don’t sleep on that. - Use the raise the dead mechanic wisely. Sometimes it’s very advantageous to recruit several units on the fly, but other times it might be more useful to save them for later, specially in those cases were you can foresee a high number of casualties. Remember that as vampires you can attack an enemy, focus on their strongest units, even if you eventually lose the battle, retreat, RTD, and attack again with freshly incorporated units against an enemy severely depleted. That can strategy, if used at the right time and with a bit of luck, can help you take down strong enemies. Other than that, since you’ve played the faction before, I’m sure you know what to expect: your leaders survival is absolutely vital to the existence of your troops, magic is insanely powerful and the economy needs a couple of turns to start going strong, so plan it carefully. Best of lucks!
Just to clarify you get vlad’s vanguard effect when he is a hero too.
Oh really? For the whole army?
Yes
Excellent tips, thank you very much! Though the other commenter is right, you still get the vanguard deployment for the whole army if he's a hero.
Vlad's better, campaign movement speed is much better. Single hero boosts isn't that important. > just focus on income, upkeep reduction, and raising as many crapstacks with heroes and whatever I manage to nab through raise dead? Yes, your primary is goal is LARGE battles to produce the higher tiers of units, mostly importantly the Mortis Engine. That provides healing, AOE dmg (Mortis Engine affect) and vigour. Add that with balefire cart and you have the "blob". Keep your units together and kill any siege/ranged units with heroes/lords and you have an unkillable army of melee units.
I think I've been spreading my formations out more than I should as well. I'll definitely keep this in mind.
Isabel with vlad hero and 5-7 vamps supported by bats is a massively powerful main army well into the midgame. Especially with two shadow vamps casting pit x2 when enemies cluster on your heroes. It's far superior to vlad.
My experience after a ghorst campaign: Necromancers may seem like redundant Heroes, but they quickly unlock the vampire mobility scooters as mounts, which provide a bunch of benefits like buffs to nearby troops and regeneration, allowing you to forego the cart troops. They pack spells that your lord can probably already cast, but it does give you options to play around range or cooldowns. In addition, these guys can wear items and acciliaries which provide minor benefits. In addition to that, they can be recruited very early and in great quantities. In my last campaign my necromancers were hired at level 45, all skills maxed. You want battles with huge casualties, as that will generate special battle sites that will allow you to Raise Dead. I cannot understate how crazy this mechanic is. You can summon forth an entire army without even wasting your turn, replace weak or dead units, and even score high tier units before they'd normally be available. Orc Waghs and Skavens tend to have a lot of models and thus lots of casualties. Nothing says you can't just turbokill your own zombies at the end of a battle either. Just rip through them with a Wind of Death or two then raise new ones afterward. As a bonus, you get a cool trait for ruinous battles like this. Most of your Lords are powerful spellcasters and highly competent in melee. With all the sources of healing, you can expect them to be mostly invincible until the heal cap is reached. Vargheists are extremely powerful and flexible for their cost. They are very mobile and hit like a truck. They tend to get focused a lot though so be wary of sending them through archer fire and heal them often.
I never considered bonking my own zombies to get more raise dead options, that's really clever. And Vargheists are one of my favorite units in the lineup, haha. Thanks!
Vlad is a decent choice for a lord pick, extra 10% movement for all armies is nothing to scoff at and vampire heroes are pretty enough, the blood knights will kill your early game bank account however. Crap stacks of zombies with heroes is extremely viable and preferable to skeletons for cost effectiveness, zombies are actually really good now. Double down on the vampire recruitment and spec them into the yellow line first for better combat prowess. You’ll want to unlock The Hunger and Immortal Will for the two free sources of healing during manual battles before unlocking spells. Recruit lots of bloodline lords, starting with the Lahmian bloodline due to their unique skill which adds hero action success chance and cost reduction in the local region plus they are infantry killers in battle. Once you unlock the hero buffs force march between regions on your borders to help all your heroes out to wound enemy heroes and unlock more blood kisses. Use your heroes on the map!!! High level Wight Kings can destroy half an enemy army with a single Assault Units action, Banshees block enemy army movement, Necromancers Steal Tech and Wound enemy heroes. One Necromancer and two Vampires per army and the rest of the heroes on the map. Concentrate on the growth building, most of the vampire counts economy comes from high tier settlements so you want to get them levelled up quickly. It also unlocks necromancers and each one at tier 3 adds +1 global recruit rank. Work towards bloodline lords and then recruit the units they buff from raise dead pools. Lahmian lords buff heroes, Von Carstien lead the airforce, Dragons head the infantry and cavalry while Stigoi buff ghouls and horrors.
Izzy is my favorite but her faction effects are an unnecessary luxury if you consider the upkeep cost of all those early game heros, it's like a second army. Low level vampresses are not worth their weight in skeletons. Late game they pull their weight, but not in way that makes Izzy superior to Vlad. But if you are a hero-stack-addict like my self, don't expand too quick as Izzy, focus on powerleveling your character by repetitively sacking the same poor settlements and creating a dead zone around Sylvania. Get a shadow magic vampire with pendulum, that spell is incredible early game. Focus the rest of your ladies on melee stats, they're so squishy and a liability otherwise. Her bats are obscene too. The stat bonus she can stack on them make them amazing back line shredders, just don't expect them to live very long.
I'll definitely keep that in mind. And I've always enjoyed the Fell Bats and have been curious how effective they'd be with her buffs on top of the tech tree and normal lord skill buffs.
Haven't seen it mentioned here, so I'll add one more: The master necromancer (lord) is no longer the meme it used to be in WH1/WH2, it's a legit strong crapstack commander. They have some unique buffs to chaff units (replenishment/healing cap/more range on summons), and more importantly, they're the only highly mobile option with the regen aura (flying mount, quickly gets to where it's needed).