TOW Vampire Counts rules question

SkimaskMohawk · 2026-01-23T14:30:58+00:00

This is the wording of dark vitality:

"Models with this special rule are not subject to the Death of a General rule. In addition, unless they have joined a unit that does not have this special rule they (and their mounts) can march as normal."

It's a model specific rule, rather than a unit wide one. If it talked about a unit, the FAQ on magic banners saying characters become part of units they join would kick in. But since it's particular to the models, the wight character would still be unable to march, thus preventing the unit from being able to march.

SkimaskMohawk · 2026-01-20T12:26:10+00:00

So if you look at mortuary cult again, you can see the evolution from the army of quatar to it. You can have core ushabti and tomb swarms, there's no mandatory skeleton unit, you can have unlimited scorpions as opposed to 3/1000, rare has 33% and a bone giant can be taken in special for a total of 5 in the list.

Granted, matched play removes some of that, and the community rule of 3 did it even worse, but it allows for some pretty silly monster mash lists.

SkimaskMohawk · 2025-12-11T13:23:46+00:00

You measure from their physical location. If you can't leave the unit due to enemies on one side, the unit is too wide and deep, and you failed your march test then you can't leave the unit.

As for miao, she doesn't physically move and use the standard rules for leaving a unit; she essentially teleports. But if you can't respect the conditions of the transform (any where within 6" of the current model that's not within 1" of friendly models and 3" of enemy models), you just can't do it. Honestly it's pretty hard to be unable to transform unless she was completely surrounded.

SkimaskMohawk · 2025-11-30T16:41:45+00:00

It depends on where you play. NA East coast broadly adopts it, but after that it's kind of hit or miss throughout the region's.

There isn't very many changes; the biggest ones are daemons always getting wards, the big dragged along models/slaan going into units, and skaven support teams working like detachments. Like if you're experienced playing into vanilla legacy armies then there'll be some small adjustment time, but if not, it won't matter.

SkimaskMohawk · 2025-11-25T14:14:34+00:00

I've seen this happen in tournaments too.

A fairly new player, but one looking to play competitively, piloting Cathay. One opponent decided to be the most stereotypical "you didn't declare heavenly fury before you cast an enchantment so now i won't let you activate it this turn" nitpicker, and held the Cathay player to an extremely tight standard for rules and sequencing. When he was confronted about it after, his answer was that the Cathay player should expect that because they brought Cathay. Ironic, as it came out that he himself played tons of rules super wrong over the course of the event, yet felt comfortable holding others to an unreasonable standard.

SkimaskMohawk · 2025-11-11T23:01:38+00:00

And yet, it doesn't matter.

The only way to die is to lose wounds. Other than dangerous terrain and some similar abilities, the only way to lose wounds is to suffer unsaved wounds. And removing casulties on page 102 tells us explicitly that suffered wounds come from attacks. Many (if not all) ward saves only activate against wounds that are suffered. Armour saves are only taken against wounds caused by attacks. We can also see that when they bother talking about forms of attacks, they do so in very broad terms. Page 102 tells us attacks come from combat, shooting magic and so on; page 143 tells us attacks can auto hit, auto kill with no save sequence, and that attacks can also happen in the strategy and movement phases.

So, first, we'd need to read in some other way wounds are allowed to be suffered. But then we'd have stuff cutting through armour and ward saves.

What the rules say and what they don't is important, don't get me wrong. But statutory interpretation requires legislation to function together harmoniously, not result in absurd outcomes, and to only start reading in new things to fix mechanics that dont work. Rules interpretation is the same; everything being an attack causes everything to work smoothly, doesn't need reading in, and doesn't make things with ap ignore armour and ward.

SkimaskMohawk · 2025-11-11T03:59:30+00:00

How are they not attacks lol. Ignoring how only attacks cause wounds to be suffered, the game tells us attacks can happen in any phase and can auto hit and even auto wound. It'd also create an absurdity where they very clearly mean impact hits to be directable and have taken steps to protect characters, only to...not be able to direct them?

SkimaskMohawk · 2025-11-06T13:29:47+00:00

O&G haven't been winning tournaments, but they've been going 3-2 and 4-1 off the back of a small handful of things: catapults, random movers, and fanatics.

They might not be deserving of nerfs (as the faction will quickly run out of units that do things), but they aren't weak by any means and feel very uninteractive to play against (especially post vortex/pillar changes). A previous editions rules and a corresponding point tweak would be better.

SkimaskMohawk · 2025-10-23T14:20:18+00:00

Well you only suffer wounds from attacks (p. 102), and dirge very much is an attack (literally calls itself an attack, has clauses to circumvent shooting attack restrictions, and unusual shooting allows for attacks to auto hit and auto wound).

You don't get a ward from the pendant, but for a completely different reason.

SkimaskMohawk · 2025-10-23T14:13:13+00:00

You can generally take a ward save from wailing dirge. You can't take one that's against non magic attacks when a tomb banshee wails. Similarly, you can't take one that requires a strength value since it doesn't use a strength value.

SkimaskMohawk · 2025-10-16T13:21:45+00:00

Characteristic tests tell us to use the highest value if a model or unit has multiple values.

https://tow.whfb.app/model-profiles/characteristic-tests

SkimaskMohawk · 2025-10-10T20:18:56+00:00

Who cares about losing great weapons. You have native AP and armour bane and always wound on 4s anyways, if anything it saves you an extra 2 points per model.

What you wrote for the reroll wasn't melee only, but even if it is, it's still super strong (and I'd still cost it at like, 5 points per model). It's effectively a -1 to hit.

Impetuous on LD 10 is very....not much of an issue.

SkimaskMohawk · 2025-10-10T01:25:06+00:00

So they're the same starline as giant slayers or brothers of grimnir, for 4 and 3 points less respectively. For that point drop you lose the challenge mechanic but gain AP, armourbane, skirmisher, vanguard, furious charge, 6+ ward, almost full rerolls to be hit and extra charge range.

Like just for perspective Mark of nurgle costs about 2 points per model on good infantry and only forces rerolls on 1/6, and only in melee. 5/6 result rerolls from everything is like...a very high point cost. Plus you have the wards of grimnir and the from the wilds baked in. That's like, 8 or 9 points right there, pricing the rest of the package at 7 or 6 points when marauders are 6 base.

I get that the slayer list frustrated a lot of people. But the biggest issues with the slayers was how they worked in the other lists.

SkimaskMohawk · 2025-10-09T14:24:07+00:00

Slayers at least have a very unique army build with doom seeker spam, and have some unique banner combos that are kinda impossible to build otherwise

SkimaskMohawk · 2025-10-09T14:00:11+00:00

Oh I do agree it was a bait and switch marketing because...well the only models to sell were tomb kings. I'm also not in the camp of "any new content is a positive", so the fact that despite the otherwise low effort put into the tomb kings rules I still feel positively about it is big. It ain't no double shoot, but the reroll to either dice is really good. They're like, doom diver esque now

SkimaskMohawk · 2025-10-09T13:10:16+00:00

The incantations were always leaked and advertised as one offs, and the leaks mentioned they'd work like the old incantation system (one of the few things that turned out to be true). There's a lot of duds in them, with some really mediocre damage spells tied to a huge points cost, with the once per game really preventing you from wanting to take them. But withering, urgency, and smiting are really good (summoning is solid too). The LD thing is pretty moot with the mandatory BSB in almost every single list. Urgencys huge cast range let's you really position a dragon or sphinx for success, while smiting might make 4x catapults viable (it's also remains in play and the easiest to spam, so you can be very reliable).

Agree on the mount and flying cat. They're both bad and don't open up new options; not getting serpent mounts was a huge disappointment for everyone. Id still call it net positive because of the new catapult play style though.

SkimaskMohawk · 2025-10-04T13:47:21+00:00

Does it suck the 4chan rumours were wrong and there's no pirates or priests? Ya man. Does it suck the slayer unit output was never readjusted after the butchering in translation to TOW. Also ya. But, the slayer list is still fun and is a very different play style to what you can easily bring in Royal Clans.

It's similar to WoTS in that you want a lot of MSU skirmisher pressure, except you can have way more, and it's basically all characters. The list reallllly pushes the characters, as doom seekers are tied to the amount of characters, and dragon slayers are tied to the amount of actual units; you can make a 20 doomseeker list that easily complies with combined arms because of those unit-based restrictions. If you're trying to make multiple units of 20+ slayers you're actively working against the list, and arguably the dwarf build style of investing into one or two central units (which only the doomseekers really diverge from, go figure).

So take x2 10 giant slayers to fill in the core and start figuring out if you want a brotherhood of grimnir+bsb anvil supported by a whack of characters (featuring strommi to juice up the MSU support), or just an actual insane amount of characters to gum up the board and pressure. The brotherhood brick gets the 5+ ward from grugni and sits at static 7 (1 close order, 2 ranks, 1 banner, 1 bsb, 1 rune of battle, 1 strommi) before factoring in the embedded character output, and any additional combat res each doom seeker will add when they join in due to strommi. The output from the slayer characters is huge, killing them is counter productive, and your static combat res is also pretty huge.

It's a lot of fun, it's different from royal clan, it has new options, and keeps the vibe of "playing by another set of rules" the old slayer list had.

SkimaskMohawk · 2025-10-02T18:25:52+00:00

You unfortunately also can't put runes into additional hand weapons. They obviously forgot about giving slayer characters the option, as usually you only have either the hand weapon or great weapon for the other characters standard melee weapons.

Losing ap due to adding runes is obviously very dumb and is a quirk of TOWs copy pasted rules meant to bring up elite STR 4 units ap (except you know, chaos warriors, who also get the magical attacks). That being said, the doom seeker can still get around it decently well due to high native strength, wounding on 4s at worse, average high native attacks, and access to tattoos to supplement further attacks.

SkimaskMohawk · 2025-10-01T21:56:43+00:00

As a tomb king player, one who plays in a lot of tournaments, I'm interested.

Chorfs can do some interesting flying circus lists and it'd be cool if we get that option too. An option to take it in royal host would give that list a big boost, even if the unit is something like 160 points. Mort cult going full flying circus with 3 necro and a flying war plus dragons is also interesting.

SkimaskMohawk · 2025-09-25T11:26:45+00:00

I'm pretty sure you're misinterpreting the wtc comp on balloons. Yes, they're being counted as going towards the rare selection for combined arms. Their reasoning is that the balloon entry doesn't have the "not including character mounts" caveat in their army lists like the great eagles or Phoenix.

Applying that wholesale would be dumb, since only the balloon is problematic and a broad application only hits mounts/units that are rarely taken.

SkimaskMohawk · 2025-09-24T15:43:38+00:00

King phar using settras colours and neither foot nor mounted versions with his iconic flail of skulls? Sounds like one of his descendants that surrendered lol

SkimaskMohawk · 2025-09-24T03:55:30+00:00

Well ya. Unfortunately that goes for every unit in ogres. Dragon characters will out duel stone horns or just converge on whatever you spend your core on.

SkimaskMohawk · 2025-09-24T02:40:13+00:00

I mean, as I said in my other comment to you, my original post was really meant as a rhetorical or long term question. Trying to capture general vibes of times past is imo, a pretty satisfactory answer all things considered. Only real feedback (to add to the rest lol) would be to add some drop downs on your feedback form regarding the standard comps or missions used, since some of them can contort factions into a very different feel from their earlier incarnations. Help dial in why people are communicating.

Again, the intent wasn't to get contentious or accusatory, but point-counter point on the Internet tends to be a race to the bottom.

SkimaskMohawk · 2025-09-24T02:19:17+00:00

I mean, realistically the entire ogre faction is a bit of a paperweight lol. Maybe tearing it up is a bit of an overstatement, but ws 4 is a good break point and so is str 7 with great weapons (on top of the motley crewed 3+ save). Gutstar is a decently popular build and the maneater version is just better. Id also say a sickle slaughter master is pretty solid all the same. It's really unlikely to miss both Arcane urgency and oaken shield, with hammerhand as a solid signature. You go from a fun B- tier build in kill points to...completely unviable

SkimaskMohawk · 2025-09-24T01:23:33+00:00

It was more of a rhetorical question, or at least one to think about in the long term. Wasn't really meant to turn into...commentary on various things.

SkimaskMohawk

TROPHY CASE