Guide: LA Ulm: Goths Gone Wild! or, Flying Immortal Vampire Harbingers of Dooooooooooooooom!

[chrispedersen]

Originally Posted by KissBlade

How are /equipped/ counts any better as raiders than say spectres, bane lords, black servants, harbingers, succubi's, etc ad infinitum? Immortality rarely comes into play on offense in actual games, counts have poor stats and poor buffing paths. Their only real winning clauses are that they fly and stealth, one of which is replaceable by items. The excellent raider clause is a complete exaggeration. They make /ok/ raiders but that is definitely not their strength. Heck with a decent bless, even Black Lords (or Horgkluwera as they're called now) make better thugs out of the box.

I also find it odd, that you constantly assert Order 3 has to play a different style than luck 3. I'm not even sure I understand your argument on "plan for income events" but it seems to say just build less infantry. Well, as I've already repeated multiple times, you can get just as many counts by taking Order 3, I find it hard to believe that less infantry > the ability to get more castles, more mages, and more troops.

I will give you one example of how a count, not even equipped, is better than all of those others.

Stealth a vampire into a territory.
Next turn, hit it with sufficient horrors to wipe out the indy.
The vampire's free spawn occurs *after* magical combat - and wins the territory for you.

Stealth him into the next territory.

Since the vampire is stealthy, he is never attacked by the horrors, or even seen. Since he *stays* stealthy, he is not at risk for strategic spells.

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In one sense I agree with you; that vampires counts are unimpressive stat wise. I generally only summon 2-3.

VC counts are useful in a few ways:
1. They lead ghouls.
2. With two easy boosters, they cast sanguine heritage, relieving the need of your pretender to do same.
3. They fly - which most of the other things on your list do not. And hence are the perfect thing to lead vampires.

As long as you fly and raid *in dominion* you don't care whether you win or lose the fight. Merely inflicting casualties is sufficient.

4. Vampires counts are significantly cheaper than harbingers or succubi.

[KissBlade]

Originally Posted by chrispedersen

I will give you one example of how a count, not even equipped, is better than all of those others.

Stealth a vampire into a territory.
Next turn, hit it with sufficient horrors to wipe out the indy.
The vampire's free spawn occurs *after* magical combat - and wins the territory for you.

Stealth him into the next territory.

Since the vampire is stealthy, he is never attacked by the horrors, or even seen. Since he *stays* stealthy, he is not at risk for strategic spells.

4. Vampires counts are significantly cheaper than harbingers or succubi.

So you think a stealthy raider that leaves a trail of thralls to point out his location is better than the other options I've listed because it can attack indies with the help of horrors? Seems awfully inefficient to me ... Especially since the premier remote spell is Mind Hunt. If you're talking about using send horrors to bomb an opponent's pd and raid, that's already a tactic you can apply to anything. If you rely on just thralls, not only is it inefficient versus scouts (you lose the blood hunting turns of the count) but your opponent can just counter it by moving around a few recruited indie commanders on "hold, hold, retreat". Since your thralls would auto rout versus them with no commanders.

Second, Harbingers are only 20 death gems versus 44 slaves. if you value slaves lower than 1/2 a gem, then 66 slaves for a succubi versus 44 for a vamp count isn't significantly cheaper since we're talking about using them on the field rather than blood hunting. Furthermore, the poster mentioned gearing them up with gems. Once you factor that in, it swings far more in favor of other chassis with more durability.


I'll state once again, raiding with vampire counts is entirely overrated. They're good for other reasons but martially, there are more effective tools once you get going.

Lastly, I'll point out again, there is nothing that says you can't use counts if you take Order 3. If anything, order 3 is better since you quell more unrest with order (small doses) than turmoil and is far less likely to suffer brigands/barbarians.

[Dedas]

As I find no reason to repeat myself I just point to KissBlade.

[Micah]

Chris - Did you just argue that a count has some sort of special utility because it can do the exact same job a 20g indy scout can? (Taking a prov over after a horror attack) Seriously?

[chrispedersen]

No, thats not what I'm arguing at all.

A scout you would have to attack the province.
The vampire *doesn't have to*. With the vampire, you take one province a turn. With a scout or other .. its one every other.

[JimMorrison]

But technically dor the price of one Count, you could have a Scout in every single territory of your enemy, just waiting.

[licker]

You are less likely to suffer brigands/barbarians if you take luck than anything Order may give you.

You also seem to completely underrate flying. Flying (and stealth on top of it) is absolutely huge when you are raiding someone. Ulm cannot get boots of flying without their pretender, or willing trading partners (which cuts both ways for any strategy) and adds an additional 10 air gems (9 or 6 with boni) to the cost of equipping your thugs.

Counts require zero research as well, any other thug summon requires some (no matter how little in some cases).

But this is all tangential to the crux of this disagreement, which is over taking O3 and how necessary that is, vs having either better scales elsewhere, or a more rounded pretender.

My contention is that Ulm is better off with an awake pretender to get some counts out year one, than they are paying for O3 with a sleeping pretender and delaying count production into year 2.

Of course you can get pretty far using infantry and rangers, but I don't think you get much farther maximizing them at the expense of the rest of your strengths.

[JimMorrison]

Originally Posted by licker

Ulm cannot get boots of flying without their pretender, or willing trading partners (which cuts both ways for any strategy) and adds an additional 10 air gems (9 or 6 with boni) to the cost of equipping your thugs.

I will agree that using Winged Shoes does increase costs of thugs.

But I have to absolutely disagree 100% that LA Ulm can't get the Shoes without their pretender. You have national mages that at least get 1 Air. If you can't get one of the Mercenary Air mages, then you at least have someone that can manually search some mountains until you are getting a few a turn. (and there is -always- significant chance of a crosspath site, Singing Stones, anyone?) From there it's a short matter of time before you can empower someone to A2, and you should be able to find your way from there.

Diversifying rarely has to be as hard as "use your pretender". If you can get even a random pick in a path, it's not that hard to gear into it. LA Ulm will never be an Air power, but they have no excuse at all to go without.

[atul]

The one thing I don't get is so bent on order = costly equality. Order3/Misf2 is only 40 points more expensive than Turmoil3/Luck3. And when it comes to bad events, that's why the nation has those fortune tellers and stuff.

[licker]

forutune tellers are only useful where you put them. No way are you going to have them in more than a handful of places, so you will still suffer from the barbs type of event hitting your provinces. Your PD is pretty mediocre until you go over 20.

Ulm also has some interesting heros you'd probably like to get. Mot3rd is really really nice to help you diversify into fire and often get another high astral mage.

Of course you can go O3M2 and do fine, alot of nations take this as some kind of default anyway. However, it really doesn't provide some of the support Ulm can use in expanding your off path gem pool specifically. Of course luck can be fickle, you may not get much, or you may get a ring of wizardry in the 1st year.

How do you plan on defending your empire from barbs and knights and bloodslave losses due to events? Or do you just accept them and divert a portion of your army to retaking what you may lose? Counts can do this as easilly as anything of course.