Advice on play style for starting Vampires

[Megr1m]

I have played a fair amount of Vamps. A few things:


Blodge everything. Seriously. You are going to get 'blah blah blah' advice on skill picks. Just Blodge everything.

Your secondary skills after that are going to be Guard and Sidestep. You want both, but the order in which they eventuate will be dictated by your skill and the requirements of your league.

You will also need Tackle, but you won't have space and or time for it.

Having a single Blodge/MB/Tackle Vampire is potentially good.

You will at some point consider Pro. If you can manage without it, your TV at 2000+ will thank you.

Leader on a Vampire is good.

You will consider a throwing skill on a Vampire at mid-to-late game. AG5 /w Strong Arm is decent and will give you the ability to threaten.

+AG is the best stat increase you can hope for. +MV is the second best. +ST is third.

Get to six Vampires as quickly as you can manage.

Don't bother levelling Thralls, it will bloat your TV. Instead of your Thralls supporting your Vampires, think of it the other way around, when necessary.

If Thralls go past one skill, get rid of them.

Two exceptions - it may be beneficial to have a Sure Hands + Block Thrall, and a Kick Thrall.

Or one Thrall with all three.


On general tactics:

Vampires suffer from MV6. This is seriously your biggest weakness. The team has unparalleled fluidity - the ability to flow around and through other teams - but actually creating separation is hard, even against 'slow' teams. The easiest way to deal with this is what I call the 'hourglass approach'. Briefly, this consists of creating holes and weak-points in your opponent's line with Blitzes and Hypnotic Gaze, then pouring your players through to reform into cages and screens on the other side. This works both vertically and horizontally. On defence, the application is similar, but is instead used to attack the ball-carrier and their supporting players.

Your second biggest weakness will be always playing down in men, because your Thralls will die faster than Skaven linerats. Get used to playing at a numbers disadvantage, because you will be spending almost all of your games this way. Having some bench will help, but the best way of mitigating the damage is knowing how to manage the clock, when to put your Vampires on the LOS or in the line of fire, and how to put sufficient pressure on your opponent to focus their attention to protecting the ball instead of murdering your players.


These are some quick answers. All of the above assumes that at least some of the players in your league know what they are doing.

[Smeborg]

Thanks, Megr!m, good post.

If you take Leader, isn't it better on a Thrall than on a Vamp?

All the best.

[Megr1m]

Ultimately it doesn't matter, but Vampires last longer.

[Smeborg]

A Vamp thrower is pointless.

I can only report what happened. A Vamp team with a thrower won our league.

All the best.

[MKL]

(...) Blodgestep all mens rather than MB.

I'm mulling about starting a Vampire team, so I'm interested.

In this build, what do you see as fourth skill?
And about Tackle, do you see it as second skill on Thralls (after Wrestle)?

https://fumbbl.com/FUMBBL.php?page=team ... _id=695348

This team is a good example. Deffo want a Frenzy guy, want some Tackle and MB still but Blodgestep first.
Ofc pray for stats on Vamps and get Kick on a Thrall.

Thanks.
I'm a big fan of blodgestep, but usually I'm wary of going too much time without some Tackle.

[20phoenix]

Thanks.
I'm a big fan of blodgestep, but usually I'm wary of going too much time without some Tackle.

Its the reason I take tackle on some before SS

[J_Bone]

I have drawn a Chaos Pact team with a similar but slightly lower TV to me for this weeks match. I'm mostly worried about his killer juggernaut, break tackle minotaur... His Ogre and Troll never seem to do much useful. The last time I played him with my Orcs his goblin was a bloody nightmare. It just wouldn't die!!!

[crimsonsun]

Can someone explain to me why Vampire teams actually need Guard? Fair enough a couple of Guard players are always going to be useful but largely I feel that if your setting up to maximise Guard beyond that your looking for a Fight and as far as I was aware that's not something Vampires need or want to do and if that's the sort of play style your looking to build upon then personally I would look at a different team.

Also I feel wasting a Ag5 Vampire on a Vampire Thrower is inexcusable, this guy Gazes on 2+ or can glide into multiple zones to extract a dropped ball with deathly grace turning your opponents offence into a potential scoring chance, so I ask, why hide him at the back where he cannot be a royal pain in the arse?

Finally reliance on a Loner with Wild Animal and frenzy is going to cause them some serious difficulty that should prove multiple options for exploitation during a game. Bait it, goad it but never stand next to it. If you have sidesteppers put them wide and see if the coach overlooks it then Surfs Up baby...

[J_Bone]

It turns out that the Minotaur wasn't the issue... It was a dog of a game. Ended 2-1 to the CP. I was cursed by many things, worst of which was not getting back any KO'd Thralls and my opponent getting a Blitz on every kick-off.

I could have done with Guard in that game too... My opponent used the blitzes to mob up around the majority of my Thralls and stop them from getting in a position to aid my Vampires. If I'd had some Guard I'd have been able to get some two-die blocks and get out of that situation.

And that is how I use my AG5 guy right now... He dives in to scoop up loose balls and gets them somewhere favourable. It is useful to be able to complete long passes though... I find my guys getting separated quite often so hand-off plays aren't always an option. I might develop a thrower at some point but yeah, the AG5 guy is best used up front.

[20phoenix]

How are you setting up on defence? The kick off is the only time you should have thralls in close proximity to each other. I tend to set up so that I have at least two protected thralls to allow me to do what I want in the first couple of turns - for me the two most crucial turns as the first turn especially is usually the best chance of getting at the ball. I also try to ensure thralls are placed so that when the vamps move into position for gazes afterwards the vamps screen the thrall from being hit. The rest of the time the thralls should be fairly spread so that they can provide food to a wide area of the pitch. Clumping of thralls is never going to end well, guard or no guard.

[J_Bone]

As I mentioned, my Thralls getting swamped mostly occurred because of my opponent rolling multiple blitzes but I've not been playing that long and what makes a good formation is still mostly a mystery to me. I tend to set up as shown below... How would you suggest I change it up? I have tended to try to protect my Vamps rather than my Thralls in the first few games as Thralls are easier to replace (and I roll utter dog-crap for winnings regular as clockwork) but it doesn't make for a good strategy. I am playing against Orcs (coached by a very grindy, stally coach) next so I will most likely be out-strengthed and out-blocked! I need to get a good game-plan together before that one.



I tend to use the above on defense where I will leave the Vamps as safeties and blitzers. After playing Orcs for quite some time it became clear that safeties are necessary to stop more agile teams from dodging past your line or more bashy teams from smashing a hole and flooding through. If you can suggest some better options I'd be happy to hear them though

[20phoenix]

Only three vamps? Thats a lot of naked av7 on the field. You really need more vamps on the team but I digress.

If you're playing with that much naked AG3 AV7 on the pitch you want to limit the amount of man marking an opponent can do so I would set up in the width of the pitch centre. The three thralls on the LOS would be next to each other to limit blocks, the next three thralls two rows back spaced two squares apart so one big arse black orc cant mark two thralls. Behind that you can set up the remaining five players as you wish but I would probably go three vamps with the centre vamp behind the centre thrall and the other two a square away on each side with the final two thralls another row back on either side of the centre column. That way you protect as many players as possible, you are guaranteed to have thralls available to move as well as the vamps mobility should the opponent marking them after blitzing one of the sides.

Once your vamps skill up and especially if you add more to the roster I would replace those outer thralls in the second row of the setup with blodge vamps as your vamps are more likely to survive a beating. As it is - playing with three vamps I can understand why you're choosing to protect them.

I generally play with six vamps and once they have blodgestep they are set up across the width of the pitch two squares apart so I have plenty of vamps in range of the short kicks I always make. Three thralls are then hidden the row behind behind the three centre most vamps.

[J_Bone]

Yeah... I am midway through the season and have a MNG on a Block Vampire so I will be going into this next game with:

Vampire -ST5 & Block
Vampire -AG5 & Dodge
Vampire -Dodge
Thrall -Kick
9 Thralls -Unskilled
4 RR
Apothecary

Thanks for the tips. I'll have a look at my set-ups and see how I can improve them

[J_Bone]

So, here's my modified set-up for my Vampires... I do think this seems a lot better. It allows the opposition to cage up far easier and those 3 Thralls on the line are pretty much going to be mulched but at least my Vampires and the majority of my Thralls will be upright and mobile after the first turn or two. Even an Orc Blitzer would need a GFI to blitz any of the second line (without a quick snap) and they be hard pressed to get much more than a 1 die block without Guard. Might try a few practice games using set-ups more like this on defense.



I am thinking that it's still worth loading up near the line on offense and risking the Blitz kick-off result in order to really press the opposition and blitz and / or hypno-gaze a bunch of guys into his half of the pitch though.

[J_Bone]

I take it this is what you meant from what you described? Seems like a good set-up... My only concern is that it would be too easy for a bashy team to cage up on one side of it or for fast teams to zip past it. Then again, the last one I put up essentially has 8 safeties so the opponent would be able to march right up to it uncontested.