Vampires - you should be afraid of the night

[Radio_Star]

I'd actually batted around the idea of vamp hordes from MA Marignon for awhile based largely on what's in this thread.

It seems like an odd choice, but you've actually got a few key things going for you. First and maybe foremost, you've got some of the best dominion control around. Stealthy preachers and inquisitors, stone idols forged for your high stealth spies while they cause their own havoc are a few of the cool tricks available. This gives you a good chance to push your dominion on offense and anything you take with non-vamp troops can be flipped almost immediately by the ensuing inquisition. Getting started in blood isn't too hard for you since you can take a fountain of blood to pop out SDRs for your dirt cheap friars. It'll take several of them per province, but once you get started you can free them up to go stealth preach and facilitate your offense. Astral and blood also have very nice synergy in communions and Marignon's got some of the biggest astral chops around. It's a minor side benefit, but getting into blood with Marignon means boots of youth for your old fogey casters. Marignon's mages also do well under darkness, with astral fires for 100 prec AoE and incinerate for single target obliteration. If you play around with hell power, it should also be noted that you can toss out horror marks and then incinerate any horrors left standing at the end.

Finally, you're provided with wonderful counters to the biggest things plaguing vampires: astral lets you whip out antimagic for undead mastery and any undead/demon horde wanting to play under the cover of darkness with you? Well, you're freaking Marignon. Those demons can, quite literally, take their ball and go the hell home.