Vampire Vampires - WTF?

[Gallows Bait]

Tried my first game with this team and it was soul destroying.

Facing a fresh Human team, I had the worst ever Blood Bowl experience I have ever known.

Starting line up of 3 Vamps and 8 Thralls ended with 3 Thralls and 1 Vamp. 1 Vamp and Thrall MNG, Thrall Dead and 3 more Thralls Badly Hurt plus numerous KOs.

They failed at everything throughout the game and once a couple of thralls went out I was beaten at everything on numbers.

Ended in a humiliating 0-5 loss with only 10k winnings and the only (mvp) SPP going to the MNG Thrall.

I don't think I played them particularly badly, I never got the chance, they were hopeless at everything, couldn't dodge, couldn't throw, couldn't pick up, couldn't block and just ended up bleeding all over the floor.

Is it just me, how do they not end up rated like Ogres and Halflings? Are they worth sticking with through this abject humiliation?

 

[Stryke]

Just finished a season today coming third (so, so close to second...) with the Vamps so yeah they can definitely perform in the long run. Does help if you're a bit of a masochist though as more than any other team when things go wrong they REALLY go wrong

But yeah I've got to the point where all but two of my five vamps are blodgers, one of those being my star Block, Frenzy, Diving Tackle, MB, Pro, Tackle player who has won me some games pretty much single handedly. Two of the other Vamps have Agi5 which is ridiculously fun to play with.

You've just got to accept that there will be the odd game where the Vamps decide to concede the game on your behalf and no amount of cunning play is going to save you.

In my opinion they're about the same as Humans and Khemri, below everyone else but certainly not a joke team.

 

[Murkglow]

I don't think I played them particularly badly, I never got the chance, they were hopeless at everything, couldn't dodge, couldn't throw, couldn't pick up, couldn't block and just ended up bleeding all over the floor.

Thralls are no worse then normal humans at most of that (except of course the part where they do bleed on the floor more then a normal human thanks to their vamp allies and lower AV). Vampires then try and "make up for" the lost positionals (in which case they have their good points *Hypnotic Gaze/4 Str/4 Agi/Regen* and they have their bad points *Bloodlust/Average AV/Average MV*). Overall while I agree they are a "below average" team I don't think they are they much worse then a lot of other teams.

So I'd have to chalk that game up to bad luck and wish you better luck in the future.

 

[Gallows Bait]

Well, I'll be glad if this is an unlucky one, I've not tried them before but the attrition was worse than for my Elves and I was left wondering if the hassle of the bulk of my team being 6337 with no skills was going to be worth it or not.

Unfortunately for me my regenerate never worked, my hypnotic gazes all failed and I failed Blood Lust 5 times.

I'll give them another go, but I suspect in an open league environment its going to be rough. Really need to settle down my hours and see if I can get back into a proper league for CCV or something.

 

[Creamster]

I tried vamps a few times and like yourself failed everytime (normally go for teh 4 vamp 4 RR build). I could never get the team going and each game was soo stressful. The real kicker is thralls only have AV7, combined with bloodlust means they don't live very long and I was always over-run. The actual vamps while having goodish stats, lacked skills that made even basic plays very difficult (let alone not failing bloodlust).

People like to say that vamps get good when they get skills but getting the SPP is very difficult. Now I agree they would be good after 5-6 games but playing these initial games really puts me off picking them up agian.

 

[Rav3n73]

I played against Vamps last week, with my Orc team.

I have three Blitzers with MB and so elected to kick to the Vamps, with the Thrall's only having AV7 it wasn't long before I started to remove them. This then snow balled when the Vapms couldn't reach any Thrall's for blood lust and thus the oppostion started to loose Vamps as well.

It was easy to stall the Vamps through the first half, in the second half they started with nine men, (5 Vamps & 4 Thralls). By half way through the match I pretty much had the run of the field and easily stalled until turn 8 to score.

The score only ended up being 1-0 but it was an easy win compared to most of my games.

I guess if an opponent can remove enough of your thralls you really are screwed.

My Orc team now has 4 MB players and it won't be long until my BO's have MB & Block. I dread to think what will happen to any thralls when we next play.

Lee

 

[John McGuirk]

Now that Vampires can't cripple their own players when they Bloodlust I really can't see any reason not to knock the Thrall armour up to 8 and price them at 50k. It would remove a lot of the frustration that comes with playing the team without, I think, making them too overpowered.

As they are I've never tried them, and - for reasons not unrelated to the kind of match report Gallows Bait regales us with above - can hardly imagine I would ever be tempted to do so

 

[Mico Selva]

I have a knack for tier 3 teams. I love playing as Ogres, Goblins and even Halflings (do Khemri also count here?).
Not Vampires, though.
The whole point of choosing them as my team would be to use those awesome 6448 GAS players - and I can't! Every single one of them has to be babysitted by a 6337 weakling. What's worse, the babysitters can be eaten and removed from the pitch permanently (as in for the match duration)! What's the point, then? Vampires are good players and each one of them can be developed to a real powerhouse, but the team's weak point will always be Thralls. Take care of them and Vampires start causing turnovers like crazy. And with a full roster of 6 Vampires and 5 Thralls You don't even need the opponents' help to get rid of the Thralls - Vampires will do that on their own.
The solution is to play with less Vampires, yes. But if a team's winning tactic is not using their best players, something's clearly wrong.

 

[Snotty]

playing them in CC2, they were definate steep learning curve and a love-hate relationship. I find the first couple of matches, you discover in no uncertain terms about everything that will go wrong. Once you accept that, you can taylor your moves to prepare for this. Such as moving a thrall first, so to be near where you need the vampires.

Vamps are all about the hypno gaze, when they behave themselves they can tear a cage apart. and with a few hypnos of marking oponents, you can thrall swamp ball carriers.

I wrote a thread about the squishy gimps a while back, but probably what is better is coach's article on hypno gaze.

But my favourite thing about vamps, is that when it all does wrong, you have to resort to comical hero moves to sort it out, and with ag and st 4, they can often work.

 

[Stryke]

The solution is to play with less Vampires, yes. But if a team's winning tactic is not using their best players, something's clearly wrong.

Sure it's anecdotal rather than actual evidence but I swear my team got significantly more effective when I went from 4 Vamps on the pitch to 5.

With more Vamps on the pitch and careful Thrall positioning it's certainly easier to keep the Thralls safer. It's also a nice safety net on the pitch if one of your Vamps takes a bad hit. You can also keep a Thrall off the starting Line of Scrimage on kicking off which I've found helps prevent being down 3 Thralls even before the drive had started which used to give me nightmares when it happened occasionally.

One of the things I've also found help a lot and it's something I've seen some other new coaches to the Vamps really struggle with is that you don't have to activate all of them every turn. They can be like big guys in that respect where a Str 4 piece in place can be more useful than a Str 4 piece in a different place but down one of your Thralls for a minimum of a turn. It's a judgement call you need to make every time they take an action and sometime the answer really is just to leave them where they are.

I don't think six would ever be a good idea though, maybe when your league opponents are all 2,000TV+ and all your Vamps are Blodge and Pro'd up at an absolute minimum.

 

[Coach]

Now that Vampires can't cripple their own players when they Bloodlust I really can't see any reason not to knock the Thrall armour up to 8 and price them at 50k.

I think they are fine as they are, they are meant to be a challenging team to play and they've already been made easier than they initially were!

Sure there can be games where nothing goes right but that can happen with any team it just gets amplified with Vampires sometimes.

Another thing that makes them hard to play is that none of the other teams play in a similar way. It takes time to realise how to best utilise them. Also as not many coaches play them you don't often get to face them either. The more you play against an opposing race the more you can learn about them, just as much as you can by playing them yourself.

 

[John McGuirk]

Fair enough. I do think they have potential to be a genuine contender team once most of the Thralls have a skill or two and the Vamps have two or three each. It's just the thought of getting them there that makes me cringe!

edit: I think my first ever game in the hallowed arena of the Crunch Cup with my Amazons was against a Vampire team. I know you can't draw conclusions from a single game, but it didn't end well for him at all - not through, I should emphasise, any especial skill of my own!