We Suck... vampires taking on play offs

[The Golden Arrow]

Hi everyone, I've read these forums for a while and I think they're great. Now it's time to post something as well

In our local league I'm playing a vampire team and I've had ok results so far which has secured a place for me in the play offs. Most probably I will face off against a lizardmen team in the semifinals (the team that won last years league defeating my dark elves in the final). I lost to him in the season as well and I really struggle to play him with my vamps. He is both faster and hits harder than my team and my vamps do have a tendensy to feast on my own guys and don't care about the opposition. We have almost identical team values so no inducements I'm afraid.

My team roster looks like this:
Vamp, block, pass, sure hands
Vamp, block, mighty blow, pro
Vamp, wrestle, agility 5, dodge
Vamp, block, guard
Vamp, block
Vamp no skills
Thrall, kick, wrestle
Thrall, wrestle, jump up
Thrall, guard
Thrall, fend
Thrall, tackle
5 meals, ehm rookie thralls

5 Rerolls, Apoth
Some money left to buy a couple of cheerleaders or something.

His team looks something like this:
Krox, guard, stand firm, grab
Saurus, St5, block, frenzy
5 Sauruses with block, one leader and maybe something else
2 Skinks, block, side step
1 Skink, +1 MV, side step
1 Skink, diving tackle (maybe side step, not sure)
2 Rookie skinks on the bench

4 rerolls + leader, apoth, some cheerleaders/assistants

His usual tactics are to get into a scrum with his sauruses and building loose cages round his ball carrier while he advances slowly.

So how should I play this game? Something more than, "hit the skinks" would be helpful Do you think I should kick shallow or deep against such a team and should I try to gangfoul a couple of sauruses to get some advantage or how would you play?

Any tips on how I should build up my offense, this has been my biggest problem so far with the vamps, I have little problems with defense as long as I have not lost to many players, but I struggle to score with my relatively slow team (comparing to the darkies at least).

[dwbailey]

1st Good Luck in your final!!

As Far as tactics go, aside from hit the skinks, I didn't see any break tackle on the Saurus or Krox so I would use food and/or wrestling thralls to tie up his saurus, both on offense and defense. Hey, you can still feed on them while they are down if you need to and hopefully most of his hitting power will not be where he wants it. Some careful placement when engaging a saurus can not only tie him up, but draw him away from the play if he follows up.The tackle thrall may end up being one of your best players this game. Make sure he ends every turn either next to a skink, in a skinks way, or having just put a skink down. He is a two die block with no blood lust, especially against sidestepping blodgers. As far as kicking goes, if you are up and in control I would kick, deep. No reason to help out his offense. Otherwise, I would always kick short. I did not see an AG4 skink on his team, so if he mishandles the ball or you get the blitz you should really be able to mess up his plans, especially with an AG5 blodging vamp to grab the ball even if in tackle zones. This goes doubly if he overloads one side of the pitch leaving himself exposed on the other side. And since we know skinks can't pass, making him run some squares before getting the ball limits his handoff options. Personally I would not try to outbash him. AV9, even with a gang foul, is tough to break. Though I would step on that STR5 frenzy guy every chance I got if I could surround him without disrupting the rest of my game plan. You have more reliable ball handling than him and should be able to get two dice blocks on just about every critical hit. I would only run 4 vamps at a time to reduce eating my own team at a high rate. If his cage is that loose a well placed gaze or two could open the path to the ball carrier. And here having a wrestle or tackle thrall actually doing your ball carrier blitz can save you from the bloodlust and leave a vamp able to make a play for the ball after it is loose. And depending on the actual team values, a wild thought might be to fire your rookie vamp to hire a wizard for the game. Again, I don't play with more than 4 vamps on the field at a time and a well timed wizard can really change a game.

As far as offense, I would probably run a loose cage myself, but keep a thrall and a vamp down field away from the cage. This makes him split his strength and gives you a passing option if you want it. I ran a very pass heavy offense but that was because I had a passing strong arm vamp who only played on offense to accompany my own AG5 blodger. Your thralls can't really make a good cage, and you really don't want your vamps to just serve as static cage corners, so the tight slow cage isn't very effective. Your team is no slower than the sauruses, so with some careful tying up you should be able to limit some of his response until you get in a favorable field position, and even your thralls should be able to bash any troublesome skinks, especially the tackle guy. Just beware of all of that sidestep and how it can get in your way if you don't knock them down. (I am sure a dark elf player is familiar with this) And as always have food waiting for where you want your vamp to end up so they an feed once they get there.

Just my two cents, but it looks like this could be a really fun game.

Would love to know how it goes!!

[SillySod]

Ok, before considring your opponent I had a quick look at your team. The first thing I noticed was that you have very little dodge spread across your vampires... thats going to cost you in re-rolls. You also have six vampires when you would be fine with five and an extra thrall. I'd advise you to ditch the rookie vampire and get babes, a bribe, or a re-roll (or a thrall + babe if you can afford a thrall). I also noticed the AG5 vampire - if you know how to use him then he is absolutely fantastic.

I'm going to assume that you already know how to play vampires... or at least how you play vampires. I'm guessing that your question is mainly focused on dealing with the lizardmen.

A little while ago I wrote a piece on how humans should deal with lizardmen. I'm pretty happy with it and I think that the human perspective gives you a really clear view of lizardmen limitations and weaknesses. Here it is:

1) Dont get intimidated. Lizardmen look scary but they're not. If you get fixated on "OMG all that St4" then you are probably going to forget just how rubbish those St4 players are. Abusing their weaknesses will require some relatively aggressive play, worrying about your players safety will probably get in the way of that.

2) Dont base your strategy around "splat a skink". Skinks are definately a weak point of the team and splatting them is both easy and satisfying. By all means splat them if you have nothing better to do. However, you shouldnt be relying on them dying because you have no real garuantee that they will die. Play a positional game where you attempt to turn over the ball or force a score. You should get a decent number of hits on the skinks anyway so you'll still reap the free win benefits of skink splatter.

3) Saurus have the same weakness as every other St4 player. Without block they wont score a huge number of knockdowns but will suffer a significant number of turnovers and re-roll burns. Their low agility also means that they have no real way of repositioning. As soon as a saurus is pulled out of place you can mark it and be happy that you probably wont see it again (and it may well burn more re-rolls while it trys to escape). These two things combined mean that blocking isnt really a favourable action for saurus... they are likely to to lose position/re-rolls and have to be very careful about following up. Having av8 get hit isnt a high price to pay for forcing your opponent into such a disadvantagous position.

When the saurus block up you have to be a bit more careful about marking them but you should still do it frequently - you are usually giving them a free hit in return for imobilising the player for at least a turn.

4) Pressure pressure pressure! Lizardmen teams tend to crumble under pressure because it brings out all of their biggest weaknesses. A fully engaged lizardman team has to worry about
- keeping his saurus together (not letting them get isolated)
- stopping his skinks from being hit for free (tricky because they cant block themselves free)
- keeping the ball safe
A pressured lizardman team is going to have to make alot of 1/9 rolls in a single turn to stop their offence being shredded. This alone is quite effective - its quite likely they'll turnover and you'll be in a fantastic position. The real killer is that they have to make all those 1/9 rolls AND maintain some sort of sensible formation that protects the ball. If they put their saurus in a big block at the front then the rear of their formation will crumble faster than the front can advance. If they split the saurus then it becomes much easier to isolate them.

Even if the lizzies are able to sneak the ball out of the cage and into a scoring position you still come out ahead. Remember that an early score for them means a 2-1 win for you.

Although your thralls are only av7 you still want to put them in harms way relatively often. Once you commit to an attack it will take at least a turn or two before you can pick the ball up and whisk it away to safety. You dont want the saurus to spoil the party. Keep them marked up until the ball is secure.

Often its helpful to play one or two turns defensively. You should spread out your players and attempt to disrupt the lizardman formation. Bundle in when you feel that the time is right and you can engage the lizards fully from the front, sides, and rear. Dont hold back for too long though, vampires should be hypnogazing and hitting his ballcarrier as soon as its remotely feasible.

I havent covered offence at all... you should know how to play that. Keep your team spread out and the ball safe from blitzes. If you can remain disengaged from the saurus then you are on to a winner. It will probably help if you keep the ball central but shift from side to side a bit to pressure any saurus that get cocky andmake themselves vulnerable to being pushed back. Pretend that you are making a break down the side. However, try not to do anything so crass as to commit yourself to it unless its late in the half or you are under alot of pressure.

[The Golden Arrow]

Thanks for the help guys. I have a little higher TV then him I think so ditching the vamp will probably only give me a babe (or merc thrall). Do you still think it's worth it?

I thought of using some vamps to mark his sauruses too, with S4 he needs to move a player there to get a two die block and if I run more than 4 vamps I have the players to spare (and it's not like I care if they die). The problem is obviously that they might run off the pitch if they try to get up, but as they are more resistant to blocks.

In offence would you put a screen in the middle then (somewhere behind the los) and then do some kind of left/right motion and wait for an opening? The problem I see is that my team is not likely to be on the pitch that long...


If i win the semi finals i will probably face a highly developed high elf team in the finals (or a dark elf team, but the high elves are clear favorites). I will get some inducements there, what do you think would be the best to buy for around 200k?

[The Golden Arrow]

OK the match is played and it was a really close game, but in the end I lost.

I kicked in the first half and the ball bounced off even with kick. He gave the ball to a saurus and moved up knocking out a vampire and a thrall in the process. In my turn I knocked out his S5 saurus though so I wasn't to worried.

He moved up some in turn 2 and with some gazing I got a two dice blitz on his ball carrier. I roller double push, reroll double push though and couldn't get him down. In his turned he swarmed me and put out more vamps and thralls. I got a one die block on his ball carrier next turn as well, but it didn't help and with his player advantage I couldn't stop him from scoring.

I managed to score in return tieing up most of his saurses and running up the side.

Second half we still had everything to play for. It started out with a blitz for him. He couldn't quite get the ball but tied up most of my guys (who were on the line for the most part). It worked out pretty well for me however since I managed to move up the ball with my ag 5 vamp down the right side and tie up almost all of his sauruses and his krox with some dodgind. I also knocked out his leader saurus with a blitz.

He managed to get one saurus loose, but he couldn't reach my ball carrier, he did get a one die block with skinks though and knocked me down (I had to use wrestle since he had block). I swarmed the ball with more players and made sure that no saurus could interfere. I did not even try to pick up the ball. He moved round some with his skink and tried a one die block that ended up as a skull knocking a skink out. I blitzed a non side step skink onto the ball. It bounced out (after bouncing round at least five times on mine and his guys) and flew away landing in his end zone. I ran two vamps up there. Skinks are faster though and one of them managed to pick up the ball. It attempted to thow it but being a stunty he fumbled. Sadly it went out of bounds again though and flew into the other side of his half.

I ran two vamps and a thrall round the ball and felt pretty secure with scoring since no saurus and only 1-2 skinks could reach me. then he used his special play card that turned all players on the pitch to rookie gobbos allowing his saurses to dodge out and get to the ball. He failed his dodge with the krox though so only got two sauruses and two skinks there. I blitzed a skink to push him on the ball and get it away. I rolled snake eyes on my go for it to blitz though and went down. In his turn a skink managed to pick up the ball in two tackle zones and ran like hell. I tried to gaze his krox to let a wrestle thrall run though and blitz him, but failed my blood lust roll and thus needed to dodge to get to a thrall. I failed even with reroll and his skink ran away deep into my zone to far for any of my players to reach it letting him score in the last turn of the game.

Still i had fun and I must say I am still pleased with my vamps. Your tips with pressure and tying up vamps really worked out great and so very nearly got me the win. My biggest problem with the vamps is that I can't play like normal teams rising players and repositioning without having to worry of getting a turnover. You just have to roll such a large volume of dice that you are bound to fail eventually. Next league it's time to play a fast team again, that doesn't eat it's own players, I'm thinking of starting a slann team...