Homebrew: Vampire Counts Arcane Journel (prep work)

[Sception]

7 hours ago, JerekKruger said:

All ghosts is a very cool idea, with strong support thanks to Nighthaunt in AoS. However army wide Ethereal seems like a bad idea. Some armies have almost no access to Magic Attacks outside of characters, and they're going to have a miserable time fighting ghosts; others, like Warriors of Chaos, can have Magic Attacks across the board, in which case Ethereal is completely useless points tax. So yeah, I wouldn't say it's a good idea from a game okay point of view.

Yeah, I think we can rule this out.  It's a neat idea, and I like that it's a thing in AoS at least, but with how ethereal works in the Old World it would just be too obnoxious.

[Sception]

Does anyone happen to have first hand experience with both the dark elf incubi and blood knight models sufficient to say whether the upper torsos of blood knights could fit on the lower torsos of incubi to make for infantry blood knights?  I fear the knights would be just too big to fit.

I'm trying to figure out a decent first party conversion for infantry blood knights, a unit that would be relevant for both Vampire Pirates (depth guard) and Blood Dragons, maybe other AoIs as well.  There are readily available 3rd party alternatives, and in theory that's good enough so it's not make or break.  But just as a personal preference I'd like there to be 1st party counts-as or conversion options for any new units that don't require sculpting skills.

[Sception]

Ok, so looking at the Total Warhammer Vampirates unit selection, and ignoring the subfaction-specific stuff, there are several units that translate over from the grand army fairly directly

• vampire admiral -> vampire count
• vampire captain -> vampire thrall
• fell bats -> fell bats
• scurvy dogs -> dire wolves
• zombie deck hands -> zombies
• syreens -> banshees*
• terrorgheist -> terrorgheist

*yes syreens are a unit in Total Warhammer, while banshees are a character in Old World, but these are basically the same thing lore wise and I think it's fine to just say the AoI can take banshees and have done.  Maybe compromise with a looser restriction on them than the grand army list?

There are also some basic vampire counts units that /aren't/ included in the Total Warhammer vampirates army, but that I think maybe should be available to the army of infamy?  These include:

• bat swarms: with access to medium bats (fell bats) and big bats (terrorgheists), I don't see why vampire pirates would also have plenty of little bats roosting under the deck or amid the rigging.  one could imagine a swarm of them blotting out the sun before a vampire pirate crew raids some harbor or attacks a vulnerable vessel at sea.
• regular skeletons - do they absolutely have to be /zombie/ pirates?  some people like skeletons more, I'd rather stay open to that, though I'm open to arguments against.
• spirit hosts - vampirates aren't without ghostly options, with both syreens and mournguls.  I don't see why they wouldn't have the most basic ghostly unit.  And again, ghost pirates are also an iconic thing.

That leaves the following total warhammer units to consider as potential new units:

• Gunnery Wight: this is a light armored zombie hero with blackpowder weapons, so regular wight lords & kings don't really translate here.
• Mourngul Haunter: maybe we keep Mournguls, maybe not, but even if we do I don't think they need a hero version
• Depth Guard: infantry blood knights.  In TW they have two hand weapons or halberds, though in terms of available models and conversions we might want to allow sword & board or great weapon as well, and also might want to come up with a more generic name since we're likely to want to use the same unit again in future projects, eg blood dragon AoI.
• zombie pirate gunnery mob: too different from regular zombies to port over, we basically need at least one generic undead pirate unit able to wield muskets or something.  In game they've got a bunch of ranged weapon options, but I don't want to go overboard on shooting stuff given the base army's complete lack of it, especially since timeline wise blackpowder weapons aren't super common or advanced right now.
• deck gunners: a zombie pirate with a heavy machine gun, this is the kind of advanced blackpowder weapon that I think we can safely avoid by saying it wouldn't be around yet, at least not in heavy use.
• deck droppers: fell bats carrying around zombies with handguns or cartoon blackpowder bombs.  A neat and funny idea, but potentially awkward conversion.  I'm inclined to leave them out on the principle of not adding /too/ much shooting/blackpowder
• animated hulks: zombie ogres, a classic conversion, I'm inclined to add these.
• Mournguls: I'm not sure of the justification for attaching these to vampire pirates specifically?  But they're there in the game, and there was an official model for them, which hasn't been supported by the core vamp counts factions, so it might be nice to throw these in just so that people who have the old model have somewhere to use it.
• rotting prometheans/leviathans - giant undead crabs.  Cool, but I want there to be easy first party conversion options for all the new units, and there isn't one for this.  Unless we re-magined it as a more generic 'any sort of giant undead sea monster' sort of thing, such that people could use like the dark elf Kharibdyss?
• necrofex colossus: a giant walking shipwreck with a skeleton of torn timbers and muscles of drowned crewman corpses lashed together.  An absolutely amazing monster, iconic to the faction, and it kills me to say it but once again I don't think there's an easy enough conversion from mostly first party parts.  If we make 'rotting leviathan' a generic undead sea beast concept, maybe these could fit in there, for those willing and able to scratch build them?
• bloated corpse: exploding zombie giant/big ogre.  cool and gross, but I think monsters are kind of over-covered already, and kind of overlaps with the animated hulks
• cannonade: well, yeah, they're pirates, they should have a cannon
• mortar: I don't see the harm in mortars as an alternative to cannons?
• queen bess: a super strong giant cannon.  As much as a signature huge cannon is on brand for a pirate faction, and as cool as conversions based on the chaos helcannon or ogre ironblaster would be, I'm inclined to say no here?  on the same not wanting to add /too/ much shooting & not wanting to go overboard on blackpowder reasoning.  I am open to being argued otherwise though.

As important as what gets added are the units dropped.  Armies of Infamy are supposed to be relatively narrow themed lists, after all, far more focused in their unit selection than the grand army lists they are drawn from.  Here's the grand army stuff I'm inclined to say vampire pirates just don't get:

• wights: (apart from the 'gunnary wight' above, which is a different sort of thing).  No wight kings, No wight lords, no grave guard, no black knights.  Wights are raised from their earthen barrows, and while perhaps not magically bound to them the way vampires are to their coffins, they're still creatures of the land rarely found at sea.
• ghouls: No ghoul kings, no crypt ghouls, no crypt horrors, no varghulf, no vargheists (which the grand army associates with ghouls).  while most undead hunger for the living, ghouls alone will starve if they don't feed that hunger.  Trapped on a ship for months at sea ghouls would eat the provisions, then the crew, then each other.  Plus Ushoran's progeny are subject to terrible sea-sickness, everybody knows that.
• cavalry/chariots.  No black knights, no blood knights, no hexwraiths, no corpse carts, no black coaches.  You can take horses on boats, but they don't like it - not even the undead ones.  Any vampire worth their salt who lives and fights at sea will tell you it isn't worth the bother.  And transporting a chariot by sea is just awkward.  Maybe we make an exception for character mounts?  Or maybe not?
• Cairne Wraiths: I don't know, we like banshees here.  I can't have fun fluff reasons for everything.
• necromancers.  no master necromancer, no necromantic acolytes.  Seawater and rocking waves wreak havoc on fragile paper tomes of arcane lore and careful alchemical mixtures.

Yes, that means no level 4 spellcasters for this Army of Infamy, the strongest available spellcaster would be a lv3 vamp count.  It wouldn't be the first AoI with no lv4s - Settra's Royal Host is limited to lv2.  It also pretty much guarantees that this homebrew AoI won't be outperforming first party content - legacy or otherwise - on tables that allow it.

 

Tentative composition then looks like:

Characters (some percentage)

• 1+ Vampire (must be the general)
• 0-1 Vampire Count per 1000 points
• Any number of Vampire Thralls, Drowned Quartermaster (gunnery wight)*, and Banshees
  note: 1 vampire thrall or drowned quartermaster may be the battle standard bearer for +25 points

Core (some percentage)

• 1+ Drowned Pirate Crew (light armor with options for pistols, handguns, or paired hand weapons)*
• Any number of Skeleton Warriors, Zombies, Bat Swams, and Dire wolves

Special (some percentage)

• 0-1 unit of Spirit Hosts per banshee
• Any number of Fell Bats, Drowned Pirate Ogres*
• 0-2 units per 1000 points chosen from: Drowned Pirate Cannon*, Drowned Pirate Mortar* (basic cannon or mortar but with low BS undead crew)

Rare (some percentage)

• 0-1 Terrorgheist or Mourngul* per 1000 points,
• Any number of Blood Knight Infantry*

Allies: most Armies of Infamy don't get allies, but I feel like Vampire Pirates should

• Vampire Counts Grand Army
• Dark Elves Grand Army (or corsair-specific army of infamy, if we link up with a dark elf homebrew project working on one)

*new unit, rules to be worked out, name subject to change

For the drowned quartermaster, pirated crew, etc, I I know 'Zombie Pirates' is the most firmly established, but I kind of want to leave it open to the player whether to represent/convert them as skeletons, zombies, or ghosts.  Maybe fluff them as the drowned crews of sunken ships revived at first as zombies, but if they last long enough the flesh sloughs off without any change in their abilities, and under the light of morslieb they take on the ghostly countenance of the people they once were?  Just leaving them as open as possible for hobbying & the most options possible for 3rd party models.

That leaves out a lot of fairly cool and iconic vampire coast units - the colossus, the crabs, the deck droppers, etc.  It also already has /6/ new units, not counting any special characters, which is a lot for an Army of Infamy, arguably too much already.  IMO if we wanted to add more than this, in particular if we wanted to add things like the necrofex colossus, then what we'd be looking at at that point is an entire separate homebrew faction, not an Army of Infamy for an existing one.

But maybe trade the Mourngul for a 'rotted leviathan', which could be any big undead sea beast, maybe including the mournghul?  The problem there is base size - mournghul wants to be on a 50mm square, would be awkward on a 60x100, and positively drowning on a 100x150.  kharibdyss wants to be on a 60x100, won't fit on a 50x50, and would look weird on a 100x150, most of the necrofex colossus conversions I've seen seem like they'd want to be on a 100x60, legs splayed wide knight titan style.  most conversions & 3rd party stuff I've seen for giant crab style rotting leviathan look like they wouldn't fit on anything less than a 100 x 150.

[Sception]

maybe have a 'horrors of the deep' entry with three different sizes/profiles, like high elves have their sun, moon, & star dragons?  & then you could have three different base sizes as well, maybe even 0-1 of the small size as special, maybe add a howda option w/ crew & character mount to the biggest?

maybe that's going too far / trying too much.

EDIT:  Maybe we do that instead of the Mourngul, and shunt that off to another AoI?

Wasn't the Mourngul originally some sort of ghostly spirit of consumption spawned of people who died of starvation - the same situation that leads to cannibalism out of desperation & thus in warhammer world creates ghouls?  seems like reason enough to put the Mourngul in a ghoul court AoI, even if its never had any explit lore connection to the strigoi.  Ot certainly looks pretty ghoulish.

Edited April 12 by Sception

[Sception]

Yeah, looking back at wiki lore, Mourngul's are starvation revenants associated with frozen mountaintops and tundra wastelands.  Unless someone can think of a particular reason they belong with vampire pirates other than the TWW2 devs saying 'here's an undead unit we haven't used yet', I'm much more inclined to put them elsewhere, probably with the strigoi, as their starvation & cannibalism associations to me line up better with ghouls than anything else.

I would say that opens up room for something else on the vampire pirate side, but even without mournguls they already have several units, so maybe not.

[Skreech Verminking]

That sounds awesome, I wish you the best of luck.

I’m personally not that well read into the vampire lore.

I could tell you everything about the skaven, and in theory what they are currently doing, yet not really about the vampires.

although, if I remember correctly the take back of the undead kings castle by nagash, happened a few years before, so Nagash should be around that time, although mostly doing nothing

[Tonhel]

My friend wants to play VC, so what you cook up as Arcane journal. We will certainly play it 😄 

[Sarouan]

On 4/12/2024 at 9:13 PM, Sception said:

Allies: most Armies of Infamy don't get allies, but I feel like Vampire Pirates should

• Vampire Counts Grand Army
• Dark Elves Grand Army (or corsair-specific army of infamy, if we link up with a dark elf homebrew project working on one)

Vampire Pirates have no real ties with vampire counts, though. They do their own thing.

Remember armies of infamies do allow to take mercenaries. Dark elf corsairs are much better in that category than "allies" (is there really such a thing when you're a pirate, anyway ? ).

[Sception]

Slow progress after the initial burst of energy, as I work to get my core pdf vamp counts (& tomb kings) armies together, as well as getting my soulblight collection in ahape for aos.

That said there may be a blood bowl league starting up near me, and I picked up the vampire team, only to find what will probably be my solution to the 'first party conversion' option for blood knight infantry / depth guard.  the team box comes with 6 vampire players (2x3 but with different heads), with scale & armor aesthetic more or less matching the plastic blood knights & other more recent aos vampire stuff.

One bloodbowl box, a couple spare bloodknight swords, plus, say, one box of crimson court should make for a reasonable unit of ten.  It should also be possible to combine a bloodbowl vamp lower torso with a blood knight upper torso.

Anyway, that's one problem solved.  Probably still going to be a few weeks before I'm able to come back to make more progress on this, but def open to suggestions in the mean time.