Ilovpompom
Joined: Nov 25, 2007
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 Posted:
Jul 12, 2008 - 00:21 |
 
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Vamps are very good in defense.
With or without a cage, the opponent can hardly prevent your blitz on the ballcarrier if you have enough gazes. You break the cage, you break the defensive line and you go through it to get the ball. Only choice remaining is to keep the ballcarrier very far from your vamps. Won't be so easy then to get the ball after the blitz as your players are fairly slow and you don't have so much ag4, but it should still win you a few games.
Offense is not so hard with them, a few ag4, some gaze and st4 for backup, the rest is just pitch management.
Buy some vamps from the start, but very few. Rerolls are not enough to make a good team, there are others team that can afford so many rr and they start with far more skills. 1 gaze here and there is really a big difference even if you'll be hunting cash for vamps and rerolls after that.
That team is really fragile and frustrating, when you fail 4ofab in a row, you're just screwed, and that happen statistically once in a while. When you get 4 players ko in 3 turns, you're in a bad shape too. So enjoy the stat line and the gaze during the games you can win, and just try to forget the ugly matches. |
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halivaraith
Joined: Jan 09, 2007
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Jul 12, 2008 - 03:44 |
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Best advice I can give you in regards to playing vampires is to learn how to play short handed and out strengthed, it'll happen a lot. Split up your opponents team if you can, strike where he's vulnerable, gaze a hole, whatever it takes to make your blitz count and get field posistion. Dauntless/stripball thralls are great, you should always try to have one or two at all times on defence, give em tackle and block when you can but always use him to blitz when you need it to happen. Vampires are alright blitzers with thier str access and str 4 but your thralls are the ones that are gonna blitz everytime instead of running off to feast wasting your turn. Lots of guard is a big help but that's gonna come down to lucky skill ups, I prefer guard over dodge on thralls as I'd rather knock people away than try to dodge out. Take any stat you can, on any player and then try and keep em alive, best advice I can give there is try not to overcommit them to the middle of a scrum, keep em to the outside and never never bite them. As far as your vampires go you want to get them one at a time and skill them up to 31 asap, block and dodge are essential and then dependant on if you rolled a stat pick a roll for em. Support your thralls with guard, sidestep or standfirm, go for some damage with frenzy, multi-block and mighty blow, score or break cages with leap. Take your pick but I find a wider selection of skills tends to work out better than several multi-purpose vamps. One of the fun things about having normal access to everything but passing is that skill combos that very few people can do without rolling a bunch of doubles are easier. Leaping guards, standfirm diving tacklers, jump-up multiblockers, try them out and see what you like. Just make sure you have a couple players who can score, a couple to blitz, several to block/assist, a kicker and one or two foulers(even if they don't have DP) |
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Aargh
Joined: Apr 07, 2008
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Jul 12, 2008 - 11:02 |
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So, general consensus seems to be that I have too many Vamps and not enough Rerolls and Thralls... Should I retire my current team and make a new one, or just tough it out with what I have and slowly make up for what I lack? After all, at least I have some SPP and cash on this team already. |
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vanGorn
Joined: Feb 24, 2004
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Jul 12, 2008 - 13:30 |
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I started my first Vampire team the Crimson Juicers with 3 vampires and 10 thralls.
I won the first match, but the next win was 20 games later. 
I still play them, if they find a match in divU.  |
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Robin89
Joined: Jul 07, 2005
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Jul 12, 2008 - 14:20 |
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| Aargh wrote: | | But if you use mostly Thralls for everything... aren't you just playing a severely gimped Human team? |
Yeh its called a vampire team.... |
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heinz
Joined: Mar 24, 2004
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Jul 12, 2008 - 14:22 |
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1 Vamp is plenty for a ranked team tr 100. Only consider more for shorter tournaments.
The frustrations will never end with a Vampire team, nor the fun, so keep trying, and stop worrying about the win %.
Have bloody fun!
/heinz |
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SillySod
Joined: Oct 10, 2006
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Jul 14, 2008 - 02:57 |
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Right...
Firstly you need to understand that any vampire team is going to struggle to win its first games, there isnt enough cash and none of the players have skills like block and dodge. Hence your first games should be about getting to about 130TR in the right shape, wins are great but dont expect them. Once you get some skills and manage to get a couple of vampires and 5-6 re-rolls then your team will suddenly begin to work. It will still be a challenge but your team will actually have a decent chance of winning an even game.
Every time there is discussion about vampire strategies this line always comes up: "the team is about the thralls". Its dead wrong.
Take a look at a vampire: with St4, AG4 it has a uniquely excellent statline as well as marvelous skill access and hypnogaze (more on that later). Now throw in two skills: with block and dodge a vampire is truly formidable, they can block as well as anyone else, they can dodge like elves, and they are very tough to knock down (and have the ball handling skills to go with that). All that means is that a vampire is perfect for both blitzing and for ballhandling. Vampires are about power to a point... alot of power in just a few players and thats a key thing that gives you alot of your strengths and your weaknesses as a team.
However... do be careful not to underestimate or ignore thralls. You need a full supporting cast of thralls to make sure your vampires can compete, if you get outnumbered on the pitch too much then you wont be able to find space for your vampires to play in and you'll find them facing several assists so their strength wont be overpowering. Thralls are also pretty ok at everything in the game: they can block a bit, move a bit (including dodging), and even provide a scoring threat. Focus your tactics on the vampires but dont be afraid to use the thralls if they are in a better position.
| Quote: | Hypnotic Gaze is hugely powerful. No other team has it so only expert Vampire coaches really appreciate its potential. For certain purposes, it's like an extra Blitz action (for some purposes, it's even better). And not just one extra Blitz: potentially, you could have seven! Hypnotic Gaze can destroy conventional tactics that are solid against every other team. Some of the things it can do: open up cages; remove the TZ of a marker (even one with annoying things like Blodge Side Step); cancel the assist of a key Guard enabling you to make a whole series of two dice blocks.
The only thing about Hypnotic Gaze is that it's not very reliable: a 3+ for an AG 4 Vamp in only the target's TZ. This means that a Hypnotic Gaze move can be a good thing to do early in a turn. If it works: great, that opens up lots of opportunities that you can then exploit with your remaining actions. If it doesn't, you haven't overcommitted to anything yet, so you can play a more cautious turn and wait for a later opportunity. |
This is excellent advice about hypnotic gaze. Hypnotic gaze is something that other people wont anticipate but equally you need a bit of practice with to remind you to factor it into your plans. Try to remember it in a game, I find its worth doing a hypnogaze if I move a vampire next to an opponent even if it achieves nothing because it helps remind me that hypnogaze is there.
So how should you build and develope your squad?
Remember that your aim is not to have a short term successful team but one which can compete after several games. Initially you're aiming for:
12 thralls
2 vampires
5/6 re-rolls
high FF
What you really dont want to do is to be buying many re-rolls, they are necessary but very pricey at 140k each. For this reason I would recomend starting with 0-2 vampires, any roster you pick should have FF9 although that goes without saying.
When you are playing I firmly believe in skilling up the vampires, the difference between being a rookie and having blodge is just too huge to ignore, score on thralls if its sensible but you shouldnt feel bad about scoring only with your vampires. Equally I like to pickup the ball with vampires rather than getting a surehands thrall, that way your vampires pick up numerous extra SPP from throwing (this a good way to break in a rookie on an experienced team).
Skill development:
- Take any available stats, doubles are more important than +Mv for thralls but the +Mv is more important than a double for vampires
- All vampires start by getting block or dodge, I prefer block for their role as blitzers
- All but two thralls should take block as their first skill,
- If you start with less than 6 re-rolls then take leader on your first doubles on thralls
- All other thrall doubles go with guard, it is a solid skill which gives you nice offensive options and couples nicely with hypnogaze
- Vampire doubles are a tough choice... standfirm is helpful, frenzy is useful but will need alot of care, ignoring the double is also good simply because they have great skill access anyway
Hope some of that helps 
Edit: I forgot to add to pacs uses of hypnogaze the very cool but seldom seen hypnosurf, use hypnogaze and frenzy to surf players that are normally untouchable on kickoff. |
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Putting the "eh?" back into Sexeh.
"There are those to whom knowledge is a shield. There are those to whom it is a weapon. Neither view is balanced." |
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pac
Joined: Oct 03, 2005
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| Posted:
Jul 14, 2008 - 09:32 |
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| SillySod wrote: | | Edit: I forgot to add to pacs uses of hypnogaze the very cool but seldom seen hypnosurf, use hypnogaze and frenzy to surf players that are normally untouchable on kickoff. |
Sweet.  |
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Purplegoo
Joined: Mar 23, 2006
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Jul 14, 2008 - 09:37 |
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| SillySod wrote: | | Every time there is discussion about vampire strategies this line always comes up: "the team is about the thralls". Its dead wrong. |
Lies.
A good opponent will bleed you dry by focussing on removing Thralls, they are the heartbeat of your team. Vampires may do the pretty stuff, but if you haven't got the foot-soldiers, you aren't winning games.
The reason it comes up often is because it's a fact! |
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Thomcat
Joined: Jul 20, 2004
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Jul 14, 2008 - 10:18 |
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Vampires are all about the thralls and the rerolls.
I would start with option 7 every time
* 1 vampire
* 10 thralls
* 5 RR
* 9 ff
* Apothecary
And then actually buy 1-2 thralls asap. Yes they are a bit worse than other linoes but with 5 rerolls - it makes up for it. |
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SillySod
Joined: Oct 10, 2006
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Jul 15, 2008 - 03:27 |
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| Purplegoo wrote: | | SillySod wrote: | | Every time there is discussion about vampire strategies this line always comes up: "the team is about the thralls". Its dead wrong. |
Lies.
A good opponent will bleed you dry by focussing on removing Thralls, they are the heartbeat of your team. Vampires may do the pretty stuff, but if you haven't got the foot-soldiers, you aren't winning games.
The reason it comes up often is because it's a fact! |
I agree that thralls are important for a win but thats completely different to saying that thralls should be your focus. Personally I find that one of the real strengths of my vampires (in their prime) is that they have a full 15-16 players which means that I can actually put up with (and dish out) alot of attrition during a game if I need to whereas if I start to lose key vampires I find alot of options start to dwindle.
Look at a skaven team for example. A skaven team with a solid bunch of linemen and blitzers is going to be reasonable but really it needs gutter runners. The gutter runners will score your touchdowns and (usually) play most of your defence too.... if they have little or no support then they wont win but it is very clearly the gutter runners that win the game with the support of the rest of the team rather than the other way round. The same rings true (but more so) for vampires.
Then theres the reliability issue. Sure a thrall can perform a blitz without ever killing a teamate but equally the thrall blitz is probably pretty restricted in choice of target.... even with hypnogaze your options can be limited by a clever opponent (and note that hypnogaze is another "winning element"). In the same turn one of your vampires is probably able to dodge out, dodge again round a player, move in on the ball carrier, and then splat him with very little assistance. A thrall might be more reliable but a vampire has options a thrall would never dream of, they are the options that wwin you games.
Putting the focus on thralls is an important lesson but I'm pretty sure that successful vampire coaches (including yourself) actually win using their vampires. |
_________________
Putting the "eh?" back into Sexeh.
"There are those to whom knowledge is a shield. There are those to whom it is a weapon. Neither view is balanced." |
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Ilovpompom
Joined: Nov 25, 2007
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Jul 15, 2008 - 20:03 |
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| Thomcat wrote: | Vampires are all about the thralls and the rerolls.
I would start with option 7 every time
* 1 vampire
* 10 thralls
* 5 RR
* 9 ff
* Apothecary
And then actually buy 1-2 thralls asap. Yes they are a bit worse than other linoes but with 5 rerolls - it makes up for it. |
How do you beat this team with that?
* 4 Blitzers
* 7 Linewomen
* 5 RRs
* 9 FF
Same team without the vamp, 15 more skills....
I'd say you never beat it, or you're playing against a bad coach or with nuffle on your side.
This team is about vamps, 1 for the gaze, 1 for the blitz and you have your cagebreaking opportunity with 2D. 1 single ball you steal and that's a possible win, even with a weaker team.
Yes vamps will sometimes bh/si/kill a thrall instead of doing THE blitz, but that's no big deal, you play with 10 and you still blitz and get the ball back next turn. |
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pac
Joined: Oct 03, 2005
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| Posted:
Jul 15, 2008 - 20:06 |
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| Ilovpompom wrote: | How do you beat this team with that?
* 4 Blitzers
* 7 Linewomen
* 5 RRs
* 9 FF
Same team without the vamp, 15 more skills.... |
Amazons are a silly team at low TR. This is not news. And it says more about the Amazon roster than it does about the Vampire roster. |
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pac
Joined: Oct 03, 2005
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| Posted:
Jul 15, 2008 - 20:31 |
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| SillySod wrote: | | Putting the focus on thralls is an important lesson but I'm pretty sure that successful vampire coaches (including yourself) actually win using their vampires. |
Here, I think you touch on what people are really getting at when they say, 'the team is [all] about the Thralls'.
A coach who is completely new to Vampires has probably been attracted to the list by the Vampires. Telling that coach that Vampires are awesome, do amazing stuff and are the heartbeat of the team doesn't help them to learn how the team actually works. The lesson they are going to have to learn is that, without Thralls, Vampires are nothing.
Somewhere down the line, they'll get to your point (that, however good the Thralls are, if your Vamp team is going to do well it's going to have to use that ST 4 AG 4), but that's not something that needs to be stressed to someone starting out. |
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SillySod
Joined: Oct 10, 2006
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| Posted:
Jul 15, 2008 - 20:40 |
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Vampires develope very well but are completely crippled right at the start. Considering how borked the zon roster is I dont think its suprising that on paper the vampires have only a slim chance.
Edit: true, I'd still advise a new coach to skill their vampires up though, even if they are focusing on better thrall play. |
_________________
Putting the "eh?" back into Sexeh.
"There are those to whom knowledge is a shield. There are those to whom it is a weapon. Neither view is balanced." |
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