Vampire Counts Rise Again
January 9, 2012 by dracs
Games Workshop are now accepting advanced orders for their new (or should that be resurrected?) Vampire Counts. It is once again time to rise from your grave!
Looks like the Vampire Counts will be getting lots more undead goodies to unleash on your enemies. Here are a few of what you can expect to see.
"The monarchs of the night are often borne to war on gilded palanquins known as Coven Thrones. These bone-framed constructs are held aloft by the departed spirits of those slain by the Vampire and doomed to bear them into battle for eternity."
"Vargheists are the darkness in a Vampire's soul made manifest... Though the Vargheists were once noble Vampires, they have since devolved into ravening predatorsdesperate for the taste of blood."
"The malformed monstrosities known as Crypt Horrors are, thankfully, a rare sight, though in times of open war their shambling forms can often be seen marching alongside the armies of the Ghoul Kings."
"Hexwraiths are born in the very depths of the Underworld, their only goal to hunt down those who have cheated death."
From ethereal cavalry to monstrous infantry, everything a budding undead general needs to bring some serious destruction.
What do you think of these? Are these a welcome addition? Do any of you already play Vampire Counts? What are you hoping to see in the new book?
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Great models I have to say, apart from the Hexwraiths which don’t seem to fit into it really. But yeah, can’t wait to see the rules. Should be getting to see them a little earlier next week thanks to a friend in the local GW store lol.
Love the rest of the things they are bringing back too, like Kemmler and of course Krell…awesome, awesome Krell.
Coven throne looks like it will be a challenge to paint but will look great if done right.
I’m not too sure about some of the stuff they’ve converted to finecast but the plastics look good (apart from whatever the hexwraiths are, I agree). The wight king in particular I am digging, although his old standard bearer still looks like he has some kind of comedy beer hat on.
Oh man, DRUNK undead. Don’t let me down GW, they could be zombie orcs or something.
well if you dont like hexwraiths you can build them as black nights instead 🙂
Don’t want to ruin the thunder, but plastic Black Knights will be out for this set as well. They look pretty nice. Amazing, but from what I can tell, GW finally made some reasonable looking female vampires. Some of this set is quite original and interesting. Happy to see that.
Also,
really, WHERE ARE THE WOODY ELVES!!!!??????!!!!!!!
They finecasted quite a few models that were perfectly good … and cheaper… in metal (the necromancers for example) whilst I notice quite a few other undead models – monsters etc – could really do with the finecast treatment. *sigh*.
Finecasted Black Coach instead of a new plastic kit. How do people feel about that?
The force tells me to expect the new Wood Elves with Warhammer 9th edition :p
Mortis Engine looks pretty boss.
I don’t know whether to be impressed or disappointed for a number of reasons: Good – the Coven Throne is very dynamic for a big war engine and seems to take full advantage of being made in plastic, plus the vamps up top are well sculpted. Bad – it looks like the spirits bearing the Throne/Engine are just the Skeleton Warriors/Grave Guard/Black Knights scanned into CAD (if they weren’t already designed that way) with some random ‘soulfoam’ binding them together. Good – finally GW have skeletal cavalry that don’t look cheesy or cartoony and compare very well with the Mantic… Read more »
‘It’s not defective, it’s *ethereal*…’
Thank God for Mantic Games! Otherwise I’d have absolutely no interest in new VC rules. This way I get the best of both worlds, broken rules that will dominate (until the next army book), and affordable models.
Cheers Mantic, keep up the awesome work!
looking at the latest WD, the points given for the coven throne is pretty high. Meaning that as it’s basically a mount for the vamp lord, by the time you buy the vamp, plus powers, plus magic, plus the throne – it’s a set up you’ll only be able to use in big games – 3000pt plus…
I don’t often play those sized games and don’t want to spend 30 quid on a cabinet filler. But lucky the mortis engine looks very dangerous, if a bit of a cannon ball magnet.
Very curious to see if this army is uber Cheese. I recall several Vampire Count codex’s of the past making them insanely powerful. (Well the HQ anyway.)
The models do look awesome. The Coven’s Throne really is a jaw dropper.
@manpug – on the exposed knickers – this seems to be the next trend for female sculpts, seems like instead of bikini armor, we are going to get armor everywhere except for the hips and groin, which will be either thongs or lacy (GW) or, in some cases ocasionally nothing at all (DA)..
The last three armies books have been heavily balanced from what I can tell (as balanced as they ever will be, anyway). The Vampire Counts took a massive hit in 8th, and their points costs were rendered irrational by various changed rules. In theory at least this Armies book should follow what appears to be a consistent trend. Fingers crossed.
Yeah.. Gw has figured out the art of Japanese Cheese cake armor.. .. … Yeah.. no.. no..
At lest the faces are better then the last female they inflicted on us. I still cant bring my self to buy her. Even with the idea of a good head swap.
Then again i got a box load of Female Vampires.. pulled form other places.
Really looking forward to this release – the Throne/Engine looks spectacular and should be a doddle to paint, it has heaps of detail that washes will bring out in seconds. The cavalry are very nice models with heaps of character. I think GW outdid themselves for once.
Not quite as much He-man as I would have expected, though the Vargheist are quite muscular. Thankfully they did not recieve the Belgian Blue treatment that the Minotaurs got. I absolutley despise the look of the hexwraiths. All those completely random and missplaced green flames spoil the models. The coven throne/mortis engine would also have been better off if they didnt have all those damnable ghosts surrunding them, or at very least not as much of it. Moderation is the key here, something that GW has disregarded without a second thought.
I’m surprised so many people like the mortis engine/cover throne. I think it’s too much but, it looks like GW did something a lot of people want, if so then fair enough.
The hexwraiths look … off.. to me, but who knows. Apparently they are very expensive points-wise and Rare. Would the Hexwraiths look better if they were painted with normal fire? I.e GHOOOOOSTRIDER style.
Gw wants every army to have a signature “BIg” center pieace uints. Its a new trend that they have done for this edition, thought some might point to the Gaint as the start of the trend. I think the Engine/Throne is pretty ingenuous for the use of space, with very little in what makes it “BiG” The thing is airy, it has holes in both forms. I want to bet if you stuck it out in a good stiff wind, it would act as a wind chime. They have found a way to make a big model, using very little… Read more »
Someone accidently let John Blanche into the art studio again?
John Blanche is the creative father of GW. Nobody lets him into the art studio ‘accidently’.
He runs the studio, and he has the utmost respect from many, many serious artists worldwide.
horrific front cover
Why shouldn’t the VC book cover induce horror?
Why? That’s not his art.
whose?
Without John Blanche, Warhammer would simply not be warhammer.
His lacking knowledge of composition and anatomy stings my eyes anyway, and im pretty sure im not alone in my thinking. Its ok as long as hes doing concepts to inspire the real talent, but letting him do a full book cover simply isnt a good idea.
he has little talent for quality art, it hurts seeing his awful pictures, (some are good mind) but he is very creative and his imagination is amazing.
spot on on his inability to understand basic artistic concepts. But with some of his pictures his sheer creativity and attention to detail seem to bypass this and look amazing.
Oh nice an art critic who doesn’t understand art. Many many of the great artists were fantastic at drawing but chose to paint with their own style. That doesn’t mean that they felt like drawing badly it means they made marks on the page for a purpose. In Mr Blanche’s case, he obviously doesn’t want to draw sugar sweet Americanised Anime art that so many people think is ‘good’. The point of the art is to unsettle and disturb you. For example Picasso was a child prodigy who could draw incredibly well but he chose to look at why children… Read more »
Good point, Blanche has a lot in common with Walt Disney cartoons.
That makes no sense.
@bloodwin
Pay no attention poosh’s ignorance. Kids these days can’t appreciate and respect art.
Hear hear. I’d love to see the armchair critics pick up a brush or ink and be even 10% as prolific, creative and inspiring in the fantasy art world as Mr.Blanche.
Let’s face it though, when you are as successful in your field as he is, you’re bound to get haters – with no appreciation of the craft involved.
Not sure about that Bloodwin tbh
The only unsettling thing about GW is the pricing
£62 for 5 cavalry? That freaks me out
*shiver*
The five positive thumbs up that have been added to @hatamoto s comment are proof positive that popularity is no bulwark against ignorance.
Given that all you have to do to educate yourself, to some small extent, on Blanche’s educational background, training, and style, is to simply Google his name, this comment is not only ignorant but extremely lazy.
For the Internet search engine challenged:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Blanche
Blanche is God and Harry the Hammer will crush you in your pee soaked bed for your sacrilegious innane babble 😉
I dont seem to understand why some people dont like the cover art. Looks pretty classic to me. Definitely in that traditional Warhammer style. The artwork behind the game is one of the major points that drew me into the game in the first place. Puts me in mind of 80s fantasy art. May not be the best piece ever, but its definitely not as bad as a lot of people seem to think. I think its pretty good.
I really like the new models. I’m pleased that through making the monstrous ghouls they are embracing the look of the regular ghouls and this makes and interesting choice for people who would rather use alternate figures for ghouls. I am also curious about the latest issue of White Dwarf which shows hardly any zombies and those it does show are often obscured. Perhaps the zombies will get a re-sculpt for a second wave? I’m saddened by the amount of finecast figures as I still don’t trust their quality. I went looking for the Vlad figure in my local GW… Read more »
Its up to me how I “understand” art, but yeah .. nice attempt at lecturing
That wasn’t my point and (this is going to sound inflammatory but please stick with it) it’s not up to you how you understand art. Understanding, knowing what you like and having an opinion on art are three different things. Understanding art is knowing what the artist was trying to do and knowing why they did it that way. Knowing what you like is simple fact, you like artist x and dislike artist y. (This is a good thing). Opinion on art is troubled by two concepts; understanding why they created the image in the way they did and the… Read more »
Alex Boyd’s 6th ed VC cover – masterpiece
Geoff Taylor’s 5th ed VC cover – masterpiece
Karl Kopinski’s cover arts of many regiment boxes (which are now discontinued and all we can see now are plain minis sorounded by some ‘cool’ cgi)
Yeah the 7th and 8th books were both done by Dave Gallagher and I think they are a bit lacking. I don’t get what’s happening with the skeleton he is standing on, it almost looks like it’s a sabretooth with it’s fangs going through the soil. I don’t unterstand the cloak either. It’s like it’s nearly there but not quite. I can’t help but get the impression that they are going for a set style of covers for WHFB with a single hero figure and little else. It’s certainly not a classic.
2 Metal Fell Bats – 17.25$ — 3 Resin Fell Bats – 49.50$
2 Metal Bat Swarms – 15$ — 2 Resin Bat Swarms – 24.75$
Metal Black Coach – 41.25$ — Resin Black Coach – 53.75$
Can someone please tell me (enlight me) why so drastic price rise? I’m still hoping it’s just a mistake or sth. Does GW add gold/silver/platin to its resin? Oh, and metal Carn Wraiths and Banshees are gone. Strange, they will probably be replaced by resin minis.
sorry mate.,,, wraiths and banshees are now plastic, single-pose kits kicking in at £8.00/$13.25 each. enjoy!
Unless they change the rules, you’ll need 5 wraiths… alll looking exactly the same, other than their heads, which will set you back $66.25! WHICH COSTS MORE THAN A BLACK COACH :p
On the plus side, the new plastic black knights are kinda reasonable.
Mantic make nice res/plas wraiths: 10 for slightly more than one of the GW ones. You also get three or 4 different poses. Guess which ones I got.
Hah, I bought the metals before the resin! And they were cheap then, they’re even cheaper now. Good call.
Yeah, I Have no idea on the mark Up on the Fell bats and Bat Swarms.. Also The Grave Guard have had another price hike.. I can’t see a Mark up of Pal-reisn being that much more.. three dollars more, Okay, five dollars.. all right.. but in fine cast, each bat is 16.40, in metal the fell bats where 8.61 each. That double the price for one bat, and now you got to but three at a time? GW like to improve on units, make them better in game.. then Make the monetary cost equal the improvement. So for the… Read more »
I also wondered if this might be an indicator of the price hike for 2012: have it take effect now rather than introduce new stuff and raise the price of it in a few months. The existing plastic and finecast models haven’t gone up yet, but that makes… sense? I think my brain is going to suffer, like Poosh said. I do like the idea of crazy elite bats, that would be pretty funny. One of the sample 2000pt armies in today’s GW blog includes six stands of bat swarms, which is around £46/$75 of swarm by my reckoning. They’d… Read more »
I’m not a fan of finecast but there are 3 banshees in the Throne kit.
Honestly though, competitive Lits will have some combination of Crypt horrors, Hexwraiths, and terrorgheists…the engines probably wont make it to tournies (no one wants mortis engine to make you miscast)….
Imo, you can probably skip all the extras…and find something to proxy for a black coach
Banchee’s are the “command” unit for Wraiths I thought. It’s Wraiths you need a lot of. There is probably a way you can use the hex-wraiths from the Black Knights box to make some Wraiths. Could be good. But… as t9nv3 said, just buy Mantic. As for the “mark up” LOL. Why is this a surprise? Did you actually believe that BS that Finecast was not priced more it just “happened” to come with the annual price-hike. That was garbage then, and its even worse now. I have no idea how some people actually believed that Finecast was not priced… Read more »
I don’t get this either. It’s like they are going against all the rules of mass market sales – lower profit margin to increase profit by sales volume. Admittedly this is niche market stuff, but your primary market is kids (or kids parents) then at some point even a parent that has lots of cash is going to balk at the value for currency that you are getting. Perhaps they are simply giving up on independent storefront retailing. Everyone who is a serious collector, unless they are flush with money to burn, buys their GW stuff for discount on the… Read more »
I concluded recently that their entire business plan is ad hoc and made up as they go along. None of it makes much sense which is why everyone’s brain explodes when they try and work it out. Finecast clearly are marked up in price, and this is not related to the annual prike-hike, which was an incredibly dishonest claim made by GW.
Which begs the question, why would a profitable company, which is experiencing overall diminished volume of sales (certainly 2010, not sure yet about 2011 as the numbers are not in yet) engage in such a self destructive pricing model.
Given that competition is only getting more fierce, you would think they would work harder to make the game more accessible. They are so enamored with their own IP that they continue to make very short sighted business decisions.
After scouering through the January white dwarf, i dident see any cairn wrait units in any of the example armys or any of the big pictures, so it is posible that wraits and banshees have turned into heroes, caus those there were plenty of. If thats the case we loose a silly good rare choice but we gain eternal cavalry instead, that from the lookis of things can do something similar to screamers of tzeench. The can move through enemy troops doing str 5 hits, and they are fast cav. The only thing is that they look like they belong… Read more »
I “think” you’ll be able to play wraiths and banshees both ways. Vanilla wraiths are rare and Carin Wraiths as heroes. Either way, lots of fun options for different builds now.
Really hoping for a Vampire Counts Week, just like necron got. Thats my big wish. Pleas Beasts of War 🙂
i dont know how you guys feel about it but i’m getting tired of HUGE models … if it’s 1 per race and really expensive then why not, but it seems to me they want us to feild 3 or 4 centerpeices even in a 2000 point army…
i’m not convinced …
I have to agree.
Really that Battle Engine… eh, I mean Mortis Engine. It doesn’t fit in with the rest of the army. Its really more of a terrain piece.
And I really don’t like that GW just HAVE to make kits which you can assemble two different units from.
First, it makes them look really, really bland.
And second. When it comes to the ogre’ish things, both are new units. Which just means chances that these two units are playtested enough to be balanced, just got a whole lot smaller.
One thing to balance out the big models, GW have not made many [if any] of them a 1+. The rules for them don’t make them a must have. Most are fragile to big magic or shooting/warengine armies.
There is some nice sculpts among those. Expesially Coven Throne and Vargheist sculpts are very nice.
Hey anyone noticed this??
“Hexwraiths are born in the very depths of the Underworld, their only goal to hunt down those who have cheated death.”
You mean like the vampires over there who have cheated death?? I can imagine the face of a priest of morr, oi you, your meant to be on our side!!
fully agree with ogretyrant … the descriptions are lame and not well thought out, even for kids as for the sculpts I think the Vargheists look almost as bad as minotaurs: apparently “once noble Vampires, they have since devolved into ravening predators desperate for the taste of blood” and developed strange muscles AND a hairy crotch ????? the Throne sculpt seems fine, but it doesnt do anything to me. good points: the black knigths look really efficient, dark, decayed, fast and scary (I LIKE), the Hexwraiths weapons look too crowded, a good all simple scythe without the dangly bits would… Read more »
hexwieghts make no sence, if they hunt down those who cheat death, why dont they kill vampires and undead
xD that’d make my day! a group of hex wraiths scything through their own army!
Because the undead did not cheat death, they were denied death. And the Vampires did not cheat death either if my memory serves, they were cursed by a long elaborate story stemming from Nagash or something, that goes on and on and on and on, and involves Skaven at some point.
Cheating death is probably something along the lines of “ward saves? don’t think so! Look out sir role? Naaaaaaaaaaaah…”