Re: Thugging Out Vampire Counts? (LA Ulm)
 

Almost all players can afford 1 PD on every province. And that's all you need.
You might snatch a province or two this way against a new player, but you'll only get one shot at it.
And if he's got no PD, you can take it with scouts.

Re: Thugging Out Vampire Counts? (LA Ulm)
 

For a Soul Vortex you could always give the count a death gem or two, surely?

The mention of communion slaves gave me an idea. It may be sub-optimal, but Vampire Counts should make pretty good slaves. They can regenerate some of the damage due to extreme fatigue, and when they burst due to overcasting they just reappear at your capital.

Re: Thugging Out Vampire Counts? (LA Ulm)
 

or you could make them communion slaves to get buffs on them quicker, have one master who can use some cool self buffs and all the buffs he casts are transfered to the rest of the communion (you're counts) without exhausting lots of fatigue and gems for aoe/battlefield wide spells.

Re: Thugging Out Vampire Counts? (LA Ulm)
 

It could be arguable that Ulm doesn't have the same need for D gems since they don't have such a need for thugs/SCs that you usually use D gems for.

Re: Thugging Out Vampire Counts? (LA Ulm)
 

The key thing to remember about vampires is that their only really good trait is their Immortality.

Sure, they have decent stats, regen, and an AP lifedrain attack, but they fail in the armor and defenses area and the "kill masses of dudes" area.

This means that you actually have an incentive to Empower them. Empower one vampire with Nature 1 for 50 gems and every army will have an immortal who casts Mass Protection or Wooden Warriors (though a dot of Earth is even better for Marble Warriors and Army of Lead). Give a vampire some Astral and just Magic Duel him all the time. He may lose, but he won't die.

Throw down Sabbaths with the freedom of knowing you don't care if the fatigue will kill the Slaves. Hell Power up knowing that Horrors coming to call is not necessarily a bad thing.

Heck, with a single dot of Empowerment and a Sabbath/Communion you can just spread self-buffs through the Communion and let the vampires go to town. A single dot of a path and the effect of a Communion and you could get things like Invulnerability, Soul Vortex, Astral Shield, Fire Shield, Quicken Self, Mistform, or Personal Regeneration.

Re: Thugging Out Vampire Counts? (LA Ulm)
 

Even without empowering, you can use Ulm's other mages to get some of those buffs.
1/4 Black Priests have SE for reinvig through Summon Earthpower and Invulnerability
Any of your astral mages can do Personal Luck & Astral Shield.
You might get lucky and get Fire Shield out of a Second Tier. Phoenix Pyre?
1/4 Fortune Tellers have Nature for Personal Regen & Barkskin.
And of course a Sabbath Master Count can do Soul Vortex.

It's a hassle, since you have to retreat the masters once you're done buffing and then try to gather them again for the next battle.

Re: Thugging Out Vampire Counts? (LA Ulm)
 

They're immortal, so you want to avoid losing gear, especially expensive gear like a skull hat. I'd probably go with giving them death gems (1 apiece if you can get a scout in the same province to resupply).

Unless of course you thug them out sufficiently that they don't get killed at all.

-Max

Re: Thugging Out Vampire Counts? (LA Ulm)
 

thugging them out is rather trivial at const4 and with the standard LAUlm paths (SFEAD), with hammers and forge bonus its also pretty cheap to toss them luck pendants or various shields.

Of course you will be much more effective if you know what you're fighting before you start just throwing them around. Counts with full kit (especially horror helm, luck, some chaff control shield...) can wipe out pretty much any PD, and most smaller armies, so you can use them offensively with little drawback, unless you blunder into a real army with them.

Useing them in support of one of your real armies is also quite workable, and then you don't even care as much if they die (in or out of dominion) as long as you figure to win, their gear will get picked up by your other commanders (well assuming you have enough slots on your other commanders...).

Putting all kinds of killer buffs on them just seems a tad wasteful when you could otherwise use your communion to acutally go about killing the enemy with all the possible path combinations LAulm can get with their diverse s? mages (though they are all low level magic, but some boosters and a big communion since blood and astral are on almost all your mages isn't hard to pull off).

Iron Blizard is just too cheap to spam the crap out of in a reverse communion, and throwing 30+ ap magic darts around the battlefield is going to do a number on just about any kind of army you are facing.

If you are facing SCs/thugs then you communion and spam paralyze, ...

The counts can handle the chaff control pretty well, and wouldn't be that useful against SCs/thugs other than to engage them and keep them still for your communion to tear down.

By the way, LAUlm really needs to set up a blood stone forger ASAP, you will not be disappointed with the results :)

Re: Thugging Out Vampire Counts? (LA Ulm)
 

I always forget that you can use gems to boost paths like that. I agree that that is a much better method.

Re: Thugging Out Vampire Counts? (LA Ulm)
 

Or give them a cheap bow (xbows work best, isn't Piercer one shot every 3 rounds?).