Are Grave Guard (All Variants) Any Good in Patch 5.3? - Vampire Counts Unit Focus
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- Опубликовано: 25 дек 2024
- Halberds, my Lord! We have halberds now! We had Great Weapons and sword and shield variants before and against infantry they're actually pretty good, though I'm acutely aware of the scorn poured on the Grave Guard until now. So how do the halberds change things up? Well, I wanted to cover all three at this point so here you go. Happy Thanksgiving!
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The Off to Battle unit focus format uses combat demonstrations from Skirmish vs. AI, background music and voice commentary, including:
Intro
Stat breakdown including hidden stats
Common lord/ tech tree buffs applicable factionwide
Tips, tricks, advice, maybe a secret or two!
Bonus footage, playing out the battle once the voiceover is done so you can enjoy the sights and the music
Today's BGM: Skeleton Dance by Myuu (RUclips Audio Library)
Total War Warhammer 3 Immortal Empires, Thrones of Decay DLC Patch 5.2!
Update: Grave Guard w/ Halberds were changed from Expert Charge Defence -> Charge Defence vs. Large. CA says it was unintended to be the former. That's fine, it's still a great unit, if that wasn't intended then so be it.
As a og vampire counts main this patch brings me joy 🥲
Glad to hear it!
I love playing Vampire Counts and seeing that one of my favorite units can now take on cavalry and monsters makes me very happy, I would love to see how they perform against monsters.
Probably pretty well, though I picked human cavalry this time. Can leave the really low armored ones to skeleton spearmen even...
They really needed a better anti-large unit, so I'm glad to see them with Halberds.
Basic skellyspears will lose against most things at mid to end game, even if they have their bonus proccing.
Love the video. Always appreciate the undead coverage on the channel.
This has given me a real excuse to get deep into the Counts finally, and I think I'll take it, though I'm not going to forget to wrap up Tomb Kings as my schedule allows. There's still a few things i want to poke at... plus a little update video on Chariot of the Gods.
Alright, so even as you say the biggest drawback from everyone is the grave guards' price. Well, get yourself some blood dragon lords. With the right skill investments, you can give them a 57% upkeep reduction. Now you've got a very solid core of infantry that you can keep healed up extremely well, and buff their stats to reach the 50s in both melee defense and attack.
As someone still new to a lot of the faction's deeper mechanics, I appreciate your mentioning this and will pin it for others! Happy Halloween!
That's all nice and good, but once again, this trick has to be compared to all other campaign tricks you can do that would yield much better results. There's hardly any unit you can't make good in campaign with enough effort.
@@samarkand1585 It doesn't take a lot of effort. They've got 3 techs that are done in like 10 turns or so, the Blood Dragon Lord is already solid, and most of the buffs come from the Blue Line (which has Lightning Strike and you want that) and the Red Line (which buffs your chaff you can fill out with too)
Honestly, the comparison is, do you want 3 armies of chaff or 1 army that's an iron wall? Your answer obviously depends on your campaign but this gives some much needed build diversity to the VC
combine it with Mannfred's factionwide 25% graveguard upkeep reduction + the 15% reduction from research, you get a nice 40% upkeep reduction. Though like most count mains, the cost alone usually isnt worth it.
@@DaemonPrince I mean it's giving Mannfred a unique faction identity so there's that. Plus I'd rather have Graveguard to fight the Saurus and Tomb Kings than Skele spam
Good to see grave guard get some love
Glad I could dish some of my own out after all this time.
As an old veteran of warhammer fantasy 6th through 8th edition, I will give a bit of background on how the units you highlight on this channel generally performed on tabletop and how much their video game usage and rules align with what they did on tabletop.
First of all: There is no halberg option for Grave Guard. They can have shields or Two-Handed-Weapons.
Let's start with what both variants have in common:
1. Both are easily healable infantery. Most Elite units are harder to heal, be it because they are Vampire, Ethereal or on the bigger side. Grave Guard do not have that problem, making them very good at being crippled, before just getting back up again in one magic phase.
2. Both have the "Killing Blow" special rule. This makes the occasional hit immidiately deadly while ignoring all armour and Regeneration on a model the size of Cavalry or smaller. That is mostly represented with the Bonus against Infatery/Bonus against things-that-aren't-too-big. This actually also goes for characters. Even though the chance of such a hit isn't that great, especially because characters can't be attacke by too many models at once, the simple psychological effect often keeps enemies away.
For the differences: Shielded ones are better at stopping both weak missile damage (Musket basically negate that amount of extra protection) as well as moderately hard hitting close combat attacks from enemies, that aren't too big (as shields do not work against Stomping and Impact attacks that things like Chariots and Giants have). That is also the reason why you rarely see them with shields: If we need to stop someone, we have so many other options.
Two handed then actually pack quite a punch, enough so that they don't even really need their Killing Blow. Yes, they drop more quickly, but that is why you play Grave Guard in big blocks, so even if the enemy really lays into them, you always have enough left over to revive the unit from.
Both variants profit greatly from a special banner, the Banner of the Barrows. It increases their hitchance by 16%, which is a lot. It is so good, that Grave Guard or Black Knights always have it (it can only be in the army once). Having that banner on a large unit of Great Weapon Grave Guard makes them unappealing to literally any enemy outside of things like Greater Deamons or Deamon lords.
In higher level play they become a rarer sight, as Vampire need mobility to get to the enemy, since we lack the ranged attacks to force the enemy to come to us. Though there is an army concept in which they thrive: Triple-Nehek-Infantery-Swamp.
This concept fills your army with huge Zombie units, that no enemy will ever have the attack number to take out, while having three high-level-Casters with Nehek's too keep everyone topped up. These huge Zombie units then simply fill the field so much, that your enemy can't avoid engaging you. And once they are stuck in you sent in the Grave Guard units to dish out the damage.
Interesting that they're actually better damage dealers in the tabletop... and that the halberds are a CA invention they got GW-senpai to approve.
playing a manfred campaign right now and Grave Guard (standard) go very hard in the early game. I had to deal with a waaghing bloody hands army filled with savage orcs and had to raise an emergency army to defend. The two grave guard units I raised in the army single handedly saved that battle, they got 150 kills each and took nearly no damage (and that's on large unit scale)
Interesting. Though they have to fight through physical resistance, Savage Orcs have to fight through armor, no wonder it was that lopsided.
The biggest hurdle for the Graveguard is going to be ~once again~ cost; their starting price is more then double that of a skeleton and the counts aren't exactly a big Econ force in general so fielding these guys isn't really something you can easily do early on.
THAT HAVING BEEN SAID...
The flip side here is that unlike Kiselv, the Counts are a melee infantry heavy army. Oh sure, you have some cavalry and chariots, and a good assortment of flyers... but the list is pretty well devoid of any ranged options and thus how well your infantry can trade becomes really important especially once you have to start dealing with heavy infantry/cavalry; no matter what your plan is you are going to find yourself fighting some combination of Dwarves, Brettonia or chaos and as such you're going to find yourself having to figure out how to beat them in a grinding offensive and sometimes you *just don't have the MP for curse of years to eat the enemy for you*
Curse of Years is even better now isn't it?
@@OffToBattle
It has two use cases now instead of just one, you can use it to debuff big threats or you can use it for the silence. there's a third niche case if you're playing vlad and using the ranged units you get to give them more time to shoot something, but mostly I find the speed debuff the least impactful.
Tomb Kings use shields to protect their units and heroes from ranged damage. Vampire Counts use zombies and skeletons as shields to protect their heroes from ranged damage.
And Greenskins use gobbos to catch arrows - with 'der 'eads, I believe it goes?
@@OffToBattleUnless your name is Grom, in which case you use goblins to do literally everything.
Ive always found Grave Guard useful. I liked to use the regular ones with shields as shock troops to hit pinned enemies in their flanks or rear when possible or to throw at weak portions of an enemy formation. The Great Weapons though....in previous games if you played counts, you started next to Dwarfs. Dwarfs with a lot of armor. Early war with them meant relying on Great Weapons to do any kind of damage to their infantry.
Early war with Dwarfs is a pain for most everyone. (Gods forbid, even playing as other Dwarfs...) In TWW3, as opposed to 2 "maybe", the enemy army compositions seem to rarely be all Primeval Army types with nothing but monsters so it's easier to find a situation where Great Weapons "can" be useful, just need to deliver the payload to the target like it's an Overwatch match. And if we do have 16-18 monster armies, now we have halberds to at least fight back a bit.
In campaign their slow speed can actually be useful as it minimizes how much they'll outpace a necromancer on corpse cart. The necromancer will give them master necromancer+unholy lodestone+Vigor Mortis and spellcasting support. That maximizes their already impressive 90 armoured near-10000 health for a near unbreakable anvil (between magic, cav, wraiths, heroes and terrorgheists; Vampire counts aren't exactly short on hammers).
I've been learning the use of Balefire carts for the first time (I mean well, helping me rather than aggrieving me). I have to think those erase some of the other shortcomings too.
@@OffToBattle With balefire carts now giving magical attacks that is a viable option when facing demons and anyone spamming wraiths. I'd still put it on a necromancer (because it gives you more flexibility than actually fielding carts).
Grave Guard are really underappreciated, everyone talks about basic skeletons and zombies but one burning head deletes those from the game outright. Grave guard can at least withstand some magical punishment
Yep, Bright Wizards exist. And certain bombardment spells really hate it when the target's armored.
The base GG is very good, always has been in my opinion.
The new Hallberd variant was something desperately needed by the Vampire Counts, which makes it good on this fact alone
And the Great Weapon variant is hot garbage, a total waste of money ^^"
@@RoulicisThe I found that the great weapon version was useful against specific enemies- the extra AP is nice against dwarfs, WoC, and the like.
But I generally prefer basic GG's. They are more versatile in what they can fight- then I'll back them up with mages and Vargheist or Cav or Horrors depending on who the lord is, who I'm fighting, and so on.
I find that Vargheist are also often under appreciated. Yes, they are a bit on the fragile side- though they can regen, can easily flank, and do a great deal of damage against all but the heaviest armor. Plus, you can charge them at wall mounted enemies and watch them launch said enemies off the wall- killing models instantly.
They're fun to use to anchor long lines/tight blocks of infantry. they're great to chew into Chaff Infantry. They're a good place to drop buffs when you've got nothing else to use them on.
And you never ever have to or want to recruit them. When they're in a raise dead pool, and you can afford them, pick em up.
Having played Coast rather than Counts in my time flirting with undeath, I have to ask. They're a common part of Raise Dead pools? And... hm. It's actually going to be a very legit question whether the halberds version will be in that pool, or how rare it is...
@OffToBattle to my experience, yes. You won't need more than one or two good battles to get GG into the Raise Dead Pool. It won't be a LOT, but in the early game, you won't be able to afford a whole stack of them, so when you find 2-3 in the pool of a province, you can either recruit them right away or count on them being available when you want them.
I think main problem with great weapons variants of any infantry is their very situational usefulness. They are great against another armored infantry, but bad against missiles. Some twohanders are so good at their job, so I would consider them even against factions with missiles (hammerers, black orks, chosen, swordmasters, tsar guard to some extend and greatswords of empire since other infantry is even worse), but option to change weapons for a price like warriors of chaos can do bumps usefulness of great weapons variants immensly (since you can use them only when you need them and switch to shields when you are not needing them), shame it's not universal mechanic
I fully agree it's a shame it's not a universal mechanic, that's the original material clashing with the Total War system, in essence. Oh well, we work with it.
I'm a campaign main, so rules of thumb developed for multiplayer or for developing a literal one size fits all army isn't how I roll, but that does make things "more complicated", I'm cool with that, not everyone is. I'm happy to present things as they are and see what people think... and offer curveball options.
The tombs finally heard my pleas... The brettonians will pay dearly. I'll place a few hapberds between zombie stacks as caltrops to their cav spam... It was annoying to face cavs without specialist units... Now I'll suffer less against those spiffy brets
Yes, suffering less is the theme here, and Vampire Counts have some very nice cavalry themselves...
@OffToBattle Yup, but against grail knights, it's not happening lol
I'd rather have some halberds slowing them enough for me to envelop them with a sea of undead. BTW, 5.3 affected chariots heavily, Black Couch got buffed up!
People that say Grave Guard are bad clearly don't use them enough. Invocation of Nehek makes there insane tankiness even stronger. They will hold the line so your monsters and cavalry can get their work done and even then their high weapon strength really has toll on your enemies. I've started a Vlad Von Carstein campaign since the new patch came out and he starts out with 2 sword an board grave guard and one with halberds. Even the halberds can cut through hoards of Skeletons and Zombies because you just cast Van Hel's Danse Macabre on them.
I had a similar experience with the free Halberds (I used Isabella to lead the dance). I AM ALSO SEEING HALBERDS IN HIGH LEVEL GARRISONS. This is excellent! But yes, I have used the Danse Macabre tactic with Halberds to make an infantry brawl break in their favor. The regular Grave Guard didn't need the help as much as the Halberds and I had Halberds on the other guy's Grave Guard.
Greetings praise algorithm gods!
In my book they are good unit amd people just get used to free zombies and did not try them. + they look cool!
You can make good elite armies with them. Problem is lord spam is realy good tactic for vampires.
It's good to have the option of lord spam too of course, but there's a place for Rule of Cool in my vampire armies!
Wait... people thought GGs were bad? I always liked them and they never really underperformed for me. They get stuck in, refuse to die and usually rip apart whatever infantry I've crashed them into.
Can zombies do that? Kinda, but they take so long to take a unit out, if they ever do. GGs just end the battle so much faster. Honestly using Zombies as the center and GGs as the wings worked out well and I see the Halberds being the best for that now.
Ending the battle much faster is exactly what I hope to see from them and from this kind of unit generally.
I do have a gripe against the GW variant... But it's mainly due to the GW and not the unit itself.
Yes, when they hit they hit hard... But losing the shield and 10 MD for an extra 5 anti-inf bonus and AP isn't worth it, especially considering the extra cost.
And besides, a MA of 39 (with anti-inf bonus) is still very bad for a unit meant to focus on raw damage dealt >
@@RoulicisThe Ya, i've never been pleased with the GW version, they just seem like one of the types that is just a downgrade.
Doesn't help that the Sword and Board ones didn't seem to have too much issue fighting actual armored dudes. Or I had Cairn Wraiths.
@@hawkticus_history_corner Yep, GG weapon strength is so high (same as the GW variant, just not AP) that they can punch straight through armor anyway xD
Were people really that down on Grave Guard? I'm from the "A Tank is a Tank is a Tank" school of wargaming, I guess, as I'm of the mind that the best heavy infantry is the one you have available to recruit.
From what I heard, yes, but hey, I like them and it's my channel so there ^_^
A lot of folks in the community are very anti-elite-infantry, especially with horde factions like VC. "Why spend gold on one unit of grave guard when you can just buy more zombies and skeletons" is the usual mindset. "Because I like having units that DON'T get immediately run over by everything" is my answer.
@@MandalorianRaider To be fair, I thnk this mindset may have come about from Warhammer 1 and 2 where Zombies were literally free and on higher difficulties melee infantry were actively making your army worse.
@@hawkticus_history_corner old habits die hard, I suppose
@@MandalorianRaider They do, especially habits that are forced onto your by counter intuitive playstyles.
As a Grave Guard enjoyer, I load up with them using Mannfred or Blood Knight lords cuz upkeep reduction.
Sounds good. I guess Mannfred's good for something!?
I think the reason why people don't really use graveguard is because they can really quickly just be replaced with the cavalry or Monsters unit that the vampires have access to. It's a good late game unit to support those but.Their spotlight is easily stolen from all the other units the vampires can have.
Maybe, but hopefully these Halberds make supporting monsters a lot easier.
Grave Guard are also tier 2 infantry, their strongest in the early/midgame of the campaign before the enemy has elite infantry or anti infantry specialists. The Vampire Counts really suffer from not having an option for elite infantry.
@@13g0man
The Vampire Counts suffer from not getting any DLC for nearly a decade.
the only reason i dump on grave guard is because they considered "high threat" to a skink army rank 9 or not and cuz they tend to be the first unit i choose to obliterate in a vampire siege other than the cav, monsters and lords on a mount. other than that, they get a pretty decent amount of kills regardless of their price.
Yeah, they take care of business on their own decently enough. I imagine they can do even better with a little tender loving care.
Tzar Guard are tier 4, aren't they? Or did that get reduced?
Yes, noticed that Expert Charge Defence sneaking in there too. It's rather interesting. I think I'd be okay if they kept it, but one way or another they need to change something (either the text or the ability).
I don't play a lot of Vampire Counts, I admit, but when I did I enjoyed Grave Guard quite a bit. Now that they have answers to all the different unit types, well, it's going to be interesting.
It's nice to have options for your ice cream flavors, so too for Grave Guard. And yes. Yes. Expert Charge Defence is using Stalk and getting into places we didn't expect it...
I like to mitigate the price(campaign) by not fielding every army with them, but having a few armies with a lot of them as a sledgehammer tool. Use cheaper units like zombies to fill out supporting armies, grave guard for the ones on the heaviest front lines.
I think that staggering them just like you propose is a good and valid choice... since I've seen that once vampires get set up their economy is just fine.
@@OffToBattle I can't recommend enough that people exploit the hilarious low cost of things like zombies. You can readily field twice as many armies if every other is composed of chaff. Ten zombies with ghouls, horrors, black and blood knights to flank will clean up plenty. Few dire wolves for archers and you're set. If you run into a hyper elite army, you can bust out the full grave guard suite backed up by blood knights and vargeists.
I am currently doing a skeletons only manfred von carstein campaign.rules are I can only use skeletons,black knights,and grave gaurd for my armies,I can only use wight kings for my heros.I'D be happy to take any suggestions for what the goal of my campaign should be,
(I've already taken down settra,volkmar,and tictaktoe)
I am personally really unskilled in the vampire campaign but let me warmly invite other commenters to pitch in ^^ having said that I've campaigned in that region a lot. Is Repanse still active? She can be a pain. Is Kroq-Gar going to be a problem?
@OffToBattle I haven't reached repanse yet and the last defenders on next on my list.in all honesty my current biggest concern is killing the dwarves and skarbrand quickly.iron brow's expedition is getting close to recruiting thunderbarges, and skarbrands main army keeps wandering into my territory,taking attrition and then leaving.
The halberd version is actually a pretty big deal.
Before, vampire counts' only recourse to single entities was Spirit Leech, and if there was more than one, cry.
The Lizardmen/Vampire Count matchup in multiplayer is one of the worst, and while it's not like Halberd Guard change this matchup, they are at least AN answer
The dev blog actually did a great job describing the yawning gap between Skeleton Spearmen and top tier cav/ anti-large monsters, and that this unit now fills that gap, BUT the low stat line for general work makes it unsuited to being an anti-everything unit. So we know what they're going for, and I embrace it. CA recognizes the anti-large damage is pretty high, but they did intend to have that balance to make the unit useful but not OP.
You can't compare Tzar guards and GW grave guards.
Yes, they do share the same weapon strength, and thus are capable of dealing the same damage... In THEORY ONLY.
When you take into account the GG abysmal MA, there is nothing left to compare with. Even taking their anti-inf bonus into account, 39 MA is very bad for a unit meant to be an Infantry killer. In comparison : the GW Tzar Guard has 40 MA WITHOUT their anti-Inf bonus (54 with it). They're leagues apart when it comes to damage output.
Plus, with a MD of 26, they get beat-up very easily, even by units they're supposed to counter.
I tried to account for exactly this kind of criticism in the videos, but somehow, somewhere, being a 120 entity unit vs. an 80 entity unit must count for something. As long as Grave Guard aren't disintegrating, they're still in the fight to some degree, and undead units are balanced for being in a faction with so much healing potential. There's no question Tzar Guard GW are better, I praised the hell out of that unit. I'm going to stay open to the Grave Guard, though. I want to see what they do for me going forward.
I want anti infantry sarus unit
They're called Saurus Warriors ^^;;; And if that's not good enough, Blessed Saurus Warriors.
I get what you're saying but they hit very hard as it is. The complaints are all on the melee attack side I think.
@@OffToBattle oh they strong already i just want to mulch skaven more
GG remain relevant forever, while skele/zomb hordes are ash-n-trash to magic and autoresolve, so while they are still useful GG are just a better version of them- used in the same way. These are line holder anvils meant to pair with mortis engines/corpse carts and a necro/vamp hero to summon flank-n-spank zombs/skellies. Very good for setting up death magic tarpits and pinning an army down for blood/black knight cav to hammer down. They play nice with a varghulf or crypt horror to smash the front line standing among them. I like these a lot. Late campaign you can field these in large armies. Skeleton spam is overrated and was best in WH2.
I fully agree with you. Nothing against people who make it work - and some lords, you absolutely should be abusing it - but it doesn't need to be a straitjacket on our gameplay either. The more I get into the roster, the more I see all the options Vampire Counts have. It's a crying shame not to use them.
Single player, sure, you can make pretty much any unit work. Multiplayer, 2 units max. Probably should just bring more skellies and spend the money to mix in crypt horrors.
Well I don't like using single player as an excuse... if there are more than two Grave Guard, I want it to be for a definable purpose. I was using three regular and starting Halberds with my wandering Isabella army in campaign, but I'm a NEW campaign player with Counts, so I don't pretend I'm using Isabella "optimally". Skeleton Spearmen made me able to close off flanks more effectively as needed.
@@OffToBattle played VC on the tabletop and through all 3 games. Extreme tl;dr is don't bother with expensive units unless they have a purpose. Bloodknights are actually nerfed in total war from what they should be (kinda sorta your vampire heroes too). Magic and zombies are your bread and butter, monsters your meat, and cav/fliers/skirmishers your potatoes and veg.
More complicated explanation for the game is still kinda simple. You don't care about losing zombies/skeles, but you care about GG. GG are more expensive, you get less from raise the dead, and they generally aren't good infantry for their cost (because you pay for unbreakable on them+healing being baked in to the faction). While you can just build a super economy and spam them in campaign, that's just kinda true for every unit and build. You CAN use it. But they're better as force multipliers (especially since crypt ghouls and horrors aren't as good as, say, Ogres or Troll variants) with a few sprinkled in to your formation.
Zombie spam+WoD isn't AS great as it used to be, but it's still probably the "right" way to play VC. As is, the vampire count rosters suffers from having a lot of units that just aren't worth their cost. For example, vargheists are not good enough on their own to really take them over bats if the choice is between those units (as bats will tie down ranged units for a lower cost) and it could let you, say, put out another terrorgheist or put your lord on a zombie dragon by taking the cheaper units a few times.
IMO, crypt ghouls and skele units punch above their weight (relatively speaking) if you use the ghouls to hand out poison and keep the skeles buffed or healed, either with a cart or spells. But that's trying to white room a faction that plays completely differently based on the build and enemy.