Vampires - you should be afraid of the night

[Baalz]

Originally Posted by alhorro

Vampire lord is also a best prophet possible — after prophetizing he turns from just a thug/support mage into a great SC.

There are easy ways to counter vampires though. Evo and anti-undead mages surrounded by chaff have great chances to destroy the entire pack in one turn even in darkness, not to mention that getting a dv mage is not harder, than getting a VL. VL has low MR and could be easily mindhunted, and without gear he can't survive a single earth attack — so sending a "queen" without decent backup means a certain decapitation of your pack. As for SCs — any SC with the vine shield and enough hp/def/prot/luck to survive the first round of swarm attack, easily sends them all to torpor.

Vampires are handy of course, but the best application of them — defensive anti-sc VLs with flambergs/demon banes/etc and immortal chaff to protect your mages from flyers.

That's just not true unless your opponent is just outmaneuvering you all over the place. If you're using them defensively then you should have a good idea what you're dealing with, and even if not you're only out a little time to redeploy much more effectively for round two. If you know what your opponent has and you still let a little old vine shield stop you I don't have a whole lot of sympathy. Lets see...

Life for a life - anything which is not lifeless or having ridiculous hitpoints will be splattered before you know it.

Drain life - oh, there are lots of people with vine shields? That's ok, you take your time chewing through the swarm I'll keep-a-sniping until you're all gone.

Disintegrate - Oh, you are lifeless? Well, lets just see how many MR rolls this takes.

And to answer your next objection...Oh, I'm sorry, you brought a fire brand with the idea that you're going to chew through my swarm quickly....did I forget to mention that I threw some lifelong protections on my vampire lords (a great addition to the swarm). How many times do I get to cast disintegrate/drain life now? I do believe the answer is "until you are dead".

Earth attack - after the very first time you kill my vampire lord (as in use a powerful earth mage and some gems to send my guy back home for a turn) I'll start attack, then sneak, attack, then sneak meaning you're unable to target me with the earth attacks. As to the mind hunts, the vampire lord's MR is 17 (under the dreadfully bad assumption that I don't throw a armor of souls and amulet of MR on him) so how many pearls are you spending exactly to check the (several) vampire lords I have running around without ever actually killing any of them?

[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.

[Endoperez]

Originally Posted by Radio_Star

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.

Sanguine Dousing Rods won't have any effect in non-Blood mages. You need at least Blood 1 to benefit from it. But you're right, it isn't that hard to start a blood economy.