Overview
This is a comprehensive guide to the Undead warband which will include their general information and a couple of my own unit builds to help those who are new to the glory of Sylvania. If you want to know how to do the monster mash, the graveyard smash, then this guide is for you. I mainly made this because I couldn’t find any other guides for the undead.
Table of Contents
Lore
Reason for being in Mordheim
Overview
Tactics
Early Game
Units and Builds
Fun Warband Compositions and Ideas
Links to unit builds for Mordheim character planner
Vampire Counts Lore
The Vampire Counts of the Warhammer universe have a lot of information on their history so I won’t go into too much detail on them but all you need to know as a Mordheim player is that they’re scary, kindof evil and overall ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. They come from a province in the Empire known as Sylvania, which since the Warhammer world is identical to the geography of our own world would place them round about the same place as Romania in Europe. Sylvania is the ass end of the Empire, it’s essentially in a little corner of the east side of the entire Empire, bordered by Ostland to its north, Averland to its south, Stirland on its west and ♥♥♥♥ tons of mountains to its east. To outsiders its locals are weird as ♥♥♥♥, at night time there are more things that go bump in the night than usual (even for the Warhammer world) and the entire province is governed by ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Vampires.
Why we are bringing the Monster Mash to Mordheim?
“Count Vlad von Carstein and his wife Isabella have ruled the province of Sylvania for as long as anyone can remember – peasants whisper of some dark secret, Witch Hunters revile them, and the Priests of Sigmar shun their court. Indeed, Sylvania has the most dire reputation of all the provinces of the Empire. Few men sent to spy on the rulers of Sylvania have ever returned from those dark Sylvanian forests, and then rarely with their sanity intact.
In the dimly-lit chamber of the Drakenhof castle, on a throne of black obsidian, sits Vlad von Carstein, the ruler of Sylvania. He waits in shadows, having set himself apart from the politics and bickering of the Empire. For he holds a terrible secret: he, and all the ruling aristocracy of his province are Vampires, undying monsters from beyond the grave. Here he patiently waits, drinking the blood of maidens from gold goblets.
For many long years Vlad has gathered his strength and mustered his Undead legions in secrecy. One day soon he will march from the forests of Sylvania at the head of an army of restless dead. The pieces of magic stone that lie scattered among the ruins of Mordheim can give the Count the power to challenge the nobles of the Empire and enslave the men of the
Old World. Wyrdstone holds enough captured magical energy to unleash a great spell of doom to rival that of Nagash the Black. If the Count is successful, he will raise all the dead between the Worlds Edge Mountains and the borders of Stirland, and go to war against the divided rulers of the Empire. His plans laid out, Vlad sends his thralls, the immortal Vampires, to do his bidding.
During dark, moonless nights, black coaches arrive at the gates of Mordheim carrying coffins. Ghouls scuttle from their hiding places to greet them, and corpses are stirred by a command which the living cannot hear. Following the commands of the Vampire, they hunt for shards of wyrdstone.
The night belongs to the Undead, and in Mordheim it is always night.”
That was an excerpt from the table top rule book of Mordheim. Essentially Warp stone is the bees knees for all things magical and Vlad wants ♥♥♥♥ tons of it from Mordheim in order for him to raise copious amounts of Undead. Hes planning a massive invasion on the empire you see and warpstone is what is going to allow him to do it.
This is Vlad ==========>
He’s your boss.
Warband Overview
The Undead are actually a really interesting warband, they don’t really fall into any specific classification or overall warband specification. For example, the mercenaries are all about reliable ranged and melee builds, the skaven are all about dodgy high initiative swarmy builds and sisters are all about high armour heavy hitting builds but the Vamps kinda can do everything. Each unit can be highly specialized making them a very flavourful warband with the overall theme being that most of their units are immune to psychology and they have lots of fear and terror causing units. If the dice are on your side you could have a warband that is very hard to hit and therefore very hard to kill if your enemies fail their terror and fear tests.
The Undead are the only warband that have 2 terror causing units that they can field at the same time. This means that every time they engage or are engaged by an enemy unit that unit must take a terror test, unless of course the unit is immune to psychology. The effect of failing a terror test is the loss of 3 startegy points and 3 offence points, so the enemy essentially loses 1 attack on you. This is pretty damn useful in the early game but it slowly becomes almost useless in the late game when everyone has high leadership. 
The Thrall causes fear as well which is cool because you could potentially have 4 hero units on the field which all cause fear if you love having tons of Thralls. If a unit fails their fear test they pretty much just get a debuff to their hit chance, making them more likely to miss.
The Undead can do some very tanky builds with their vampire special characters and their ghouls and zombie henchman can make great infantry focused around swarming. You also have a damn good mage in the form of the Necromancer. He excels at buffing the henchmen and their swarmy nature synergizes quite well with his spells. The Dreg is a bit of…. well a drag. He doesn’t really do melee that well (atleast for a hero character, if you could call him a “hero”) so I use him as the only range character in my warband, and in this role I find him to be the most useful, but more on that later.
The Undead’s unique warband skills include:
Death Stench (active skill)
Consumes 3 strategy points
Effect: Reduces Melee Resistance, Parry and Dodge chances by 5%. Resistable Poison effect. Undead warriors are immune. Not Stackable.
Mastery: Melee Resistance, Dodge and Parry penalties increase to 10%
Cost: Duration: 2 turns Target: Everyone within a 5m radius around the user Range: 0 meters
Death Trap (active skill)
Consumes 3 offense points
Effect: Place a trapped skull at target location that explodes when an enemy approaches within 2.5m. Deals 12-24 damage to everyone within 5m and applies a debuff that reduces Melee and Ranged Hit chance by 5%. Usable once per turn. Not Stackable
Mastery: Damage increases to 24-48 and Hit chance penalty to 10%.
Cost: Duration: 1 turn Target: Special Range: 0 meters
Eye See You (active skill)
Consumes 3 offense points
Effect: Place a trapped skull at target location that explodes when an enemy approaches within 2.5m. Applies a debuff to enemies within 10m that reduces Initiative by 10, All Alone, Fear, and Terror by 5% and renders their location visible. Usable once per turn. Not Stackable
Mastery: Initiative penalty increases to 20 and All Alone, Fear, and Terror penalty to 10%
Cost: Duration: 1 turn Target: Special Range: 0 meters
Body Reconstruction (passive skill)
Effect: Increases the resistance to Critical hit by 10%.
Mastery: Critical hit Resistance increases to 20%.
Embedded Wyrdstones (passive skill)
Effect: Increases Wyrdstone Resistance by 15% and grants immunity to a quarter of all detrimental Wyrdstone effects.
Mastery: Wyrdstone Resistance increases to 30% and grants immunity to half of all detrimental Wyrdstone effects.
Find The Breach (passive skill)
Effect: When another ally is engaged with the same target, increases Armour Absorption bypass by 5%. Not Stackable
Mastery: Armour Absorption bypass increases to 10%.
Tactics
Meatshields and Vampires and Necromancers oh my!
Note about the Gas Rat:
Tbh the Gas Rat is one of the, if not the most useful hero character in the game. He can be built to be the best healer, best aoe and a very adept ranged warp lock pistol shooter. The reason he works so well with the undead is that his main aoe attack the “poison globe” does not affect most of the units in the undead warband. Zombies and Vampires are not affected by poison so when it comes to the melee the gas rat can happily throw globe after globe into your enemies while they’re locked in combat with your zombies and Vampires and deal tons of damage over the entire course of the melee fight while your units take no damage what so ever. He is extremely useful, so if you have the Poison Wind Globadier dlc, I would recommend using one in this warband.
The Undead Mob Formation:
I find that the Undead are pretty staright forward when it comes to their use of henchmen. The zombies make for some fantastic meatshields and can bog down the enemy quite nicely while the crypt ghouls make great use of their “Disease carrier” trait which gives the enemy a random debuff when they take damage from the ghoul. This is damn good when you swarm an enemy with ghouls, stack on the debuffs and then use your necrommancer to cast rotten touch which is a cheap spell that does more damage depending on how many times an enemy unit has been hit by the ghouls. As you can see, the henchmen kindof have a bit of a pack of dogs/ mob feel to them, and the Necromancer holds the leash. Give them all “Find the Breach” and they will excel at this. Thats basically it, you want to get all your henchman into a nice big death ball, move them around the map in a pack and have them supported by 1 or 2 Necromancers. You will immediately notice 
Imagine the horror of hordes of zombies running around at speeds of 10 metres per strategy point…that’s 60 metres per turn on a fully levelled Zombie. Couple that with the potential for each and every one of them to have 95% armour absorption. Thats just terrifying. Now imagine maxing out your henchmen capacity with 5 of these bad boys. Sounds OP? Sounds overkill? I know, and here is how you do it.
For this you will need 2 necromancers on the field, both trained with the spells ” Call of Vanhel” and “Corpse Flesh”. Train one to master Call of Vanhel and the other to have basic Call of vanhel, both can master Corpse Flesh. The reason for this is to cast both tiers of the Call of Vanhel spell on a single zombie, they will stack, but it will not stack if you cast 2 of the same spells of the same tier. Additionally you will only need to cast Corpse flesh once per zombie. Remember you can only reach a maximum of 95% armour absorption so there is no point using the same trick with Corpse flesh. Here is the break down for the Zombie:
Helm and Armor 20%, base movement 4m
mark of iron on the shield 10%
Call of Vanhel (basic and mastery ) 45% +6m movement
Corpse Flesh 10%
Total: 85% armour absorption
If you want that final 10 percent then I suggest learning the active skill “Ignore Pain” for your zombie. It will grant you 10% armour absorption at the cost of 20 health. I don’t really bother with it though because it only lasts 1 turn which I find usless as a personal preference. I would prefer to use those skill points on a more useful skill. A Zombie at 85% armour absorption is already meme worthy for me.
You can do some tricks with the Necromancers too. After collecting wyrdstone you can drop them and pick them back up again for the same buffs to your spell casting. This means any location where you can place objects you can use to drop wyrdstone and pick them back up again for infinite and free benefits. Chests, carts, even loot bags from dead enemies or friends will serve as a location to do this exploit at. Also when using buff spells on other members of the party if you cast a spell and buff another character you can extend the duration of the spell by an additional turn by changing the initiative ladder of your warband. Simply cast a spell on a character that is lower on the initiative ladder than your necromancer and then have him swap weapons to ensure that he has lower initiative than the other character on the next turn and that character will be buffed for an extra turn. This is beacuse the buff only expires when it comes to the Necromancer’s turn, not on the buffed character’s turn. Make sure when you cast the spell initially that your Necromancer starts at a higher initiative than the character you want to buff.
Vampires and Dregs, make them self sufficient:
While your Undead mob is running around the map it becomes a very attractive option to use your vampires and dregs in a more lone wolf ish fashion. This is kindof made more feesible by the fact that your vampires are very durable (they get high toughness for special characters), they’re really fast and when they do get into fights their fear and terror makes their fights easy. More than often enough I found I was using my vampire characters to go to the far reaches of the map to get warp stones or they were usually always the first ones to make it into combat while everyone else was catching up. Therefore I usually either build them as scouts or armour proficient tanks. Either way, they can get a lot of ♥♥♥♥ done, and not need much support to do it. Of course they excel at being in the thick of the fighting, but youll probably need them to be by themselves a lot of the time.
The dreg on the other hand I usually use as a range character. Since I dont really like using my other characters for range and since the dreg isnt that good in melee anyway he’s the one who usually gets to do all the sniping. This means hes usually alone and behind the lines. Which is fine, because with the right build he makes a damn fine archer, but more on that later. Other than that if I go the melee route with my Dreg I usually include him in the Undead mob as more of a Necromancer bodygaurd.
Early Game
I decided to do a subsection of this guide dedicated entirely around the beginning of an Undead warband because I know how difficult and painful it is to start off in Mordheim. It is quite frankly the most difficult part of the game where all your people can’t do ♥♥♥♥ and everyone hardly has any health and can get killed in a single turn of combat. So to ease this pain of starting an Undead warband I’ll give you some tips and advice to help you survive the very deadly and hostile first days in Mordheim.
Fear and Terror, your bread and butter:
I mentioned earlier in the tactics part of the guide that making your enemies take fear and terror tests should never really be a core part of your strategy. I meant that for the late-mid game, in the early game it is everything! Remember that everyone’s chances to hit are small and no one has very many offence points. The debuffs taken from fear and terror tests are EXTREMELY GOOD. For example if your vampire leader engages a henchman and they fail their terror test then they won’t do a damn thing for the turn. In the early game henchmen only have 3 offence points, which means only one attack. Terror takes away 3 offence points, which means henchmen will be utterly useless. Hero and leaders will only get 1 attack off if they are affected by terror. So as you can see Terror is extremely powerful in the early game, preventing the enemy from attacking you and winning you entire engagements with only a little bit of luck. Fear from the Vampire Thrall is also very powerful, enacting a 30% debuff to the enemy’s hit chance if they fail it, which in the early game means enemies will almost have no chance of hitting you. The Thrall and the Vampire leader are very powerful in the early game because of these traits, so make the most of it.
Warband Composition and Loadouts:
When starting off you’ll have to buy your first few characters, you can only get 2 heroes and 3 henchmen. Your warband composition is extremely important, we want the best units for the early game so that survival or a less rocky start will be easier. For your first few days in Mordheim I would recommend your warband comprising of:
1 Vampire Leader, light armour, Dual wielding (Maces preferably)
2 Vampire Thralls, light armour (Halberds) can’t get 2? then grab a necro or a gas rat
2 Zombies, clothing (Dual wielding anything, axes or maces preferably)
1 Ghoul, clothing (also dual wielding)
The reason we are focused on dual wielding with one handed weapons is simply so that our characters put out the most damage possible with the limited offence points available to them at the start of their progression. Remember, everyone has low health points in the early game, so stances like web of steel or sidestep and damage mitigation are not relevant at this time, it is imperative to kill your enemies as quickly and efficiently as possible, so doing high damage is paramount! Dual wielding weapons will give you higher damage as opposed to just using a one handed weapon. Another advantage of dual wielding is the unique traits of weapons which stack when using two of them, for example, a 1 handed mace gives a buff to your warrior’s hit chance, dual wielding maces doubles that buff. These two reason are why dual wielding weapons in the early game is sometimes more beneficial when stances and proper late game loadouts are not yet relevant. Another tip is to grab as much stuff as humanly possible from your dead opponents, weapons, shields, anything. Warp stone is not even that important right now, you will always have time to fulfill our wyrdstone quotas, simply equipping your warband with all they need to ensure they are all dual wielding weapons is what takes the highest priority, items you don’t need can just be sold. Once your warband starts levelling up I’d then branch into other characters, I’d say getting a Gas Rat or Necromancer is probably what you’d want toget next since these guys are extremely important for your warband later on and the sooner they get levelled up, the better.
Levelling Henchmen:
Once your zombies are high enough to have 4 offence points I’d give them a shield and start giving them attributes which help out parry. Same with the ghoul but he can’t use a shield so having only 1 weapon and nothing in his off hand will increase his dodge. 4 offence points equals two attacks, 2 attacks are always better than one dual wield attack so as soon as they level up to have 4 offence points, switch them over to a 1 handed weapon. Ghouls will go back to dual handed at higher levels of course, once they get 5 offence points, but zombies we’ll keep the same since they use a shield. When giving attributes I would prioritize perks that help out with their stances, so parry skills for zombies like shield specialist, flash parry and web of steel and then dodge stuff for your ghouls like avoid or sidestep, these are the first things I’d train them in.
Levelling Heroes and Leaders:
Similar concept with special characters, once they level up and get 6 offence points its time to switch to 1 handed so they can get 3 attacks instead of 2. Special characters are far more diverse so I won’t go into too much detail on their individual paths, that all depends on how you want to build them. I will say for the necromancer though that Call of Vanhel is probably the first spell you’ll want to learn and master since it is so important. For the gas rat also, throwing stars are a good thing to give him in between using the warp lock pistols so that your always making efficient use of his offence points at all times throughout his progression. Throwing stars only cost 2 offence points while the warp lock pistols cost 3 to fire, so sometimes using the throwing stars will give him better dps depending on where he is in his development. Warp lock pistols will of course be the weapons he always uses once hes fully levelled. The Vampire leader, if your building him towards a tank role, should probably get armour proficiency first so he can equip heavy armour as soon as possible.
Units and Builds
Now the meat of the guide. The real reason you all came I’m sure. Mordheim is a particularly confusing and difficult rpg game when it comes to building characters because everything is permenant and there are so many options and ways to build a character. I hope my advice can shed some light for the Undead warband.* Also please note for all individual unit builds I will leave a link to the character planner at the end of the guide so you guys can mix and play around with my builds as the foundation, or so you guys can just see the builds in better detail.
Just a disclaimer: my builds and ideas are not the end all be all, I encourage all players to go out and play the game and develop their warband in their own way, the mistakes and errors you make while trying to put together the perfect warband is part of the experience. I also won’t go into enchantments very much. That being said here is my personal advice and ideas about how to go about building the most dead producing Undead warband:
Vampire Leader:
First off the vamp leader, his base attribute as previously discussed is that he causes terror. Hes also immune to Fear, Terror and Leadership tests. He’s actually one of the only leaders in the game where you don’t want to sink tons of points into his leadership. Unless of course you want higher moral for your overal warband. He weighs in at 114 points by himself and is an excellent melee fighter. I would argue the best way to build him is making him into a tank, which means heavy armour and armour proficiency. I like to stack upon the strengths of my soldiers, which means making the Vampire have insanely high melee resistence and parry is going to make him a literal nightmare to kill if his opponents are also failing their terror tests and not getting their full number of attacks. In fact he is pretty much un killable in late game, the only thing that can really kill him is an impressive, or swarms of extremely lucky henchmen. Either way the Tankpire will probably never lose a melee engagment for you.
As I said before there are ways of making the Vampire’s terror test more viable in the late game. I’m talking about enchantments for your weapons and helmet which make the enemy less likely to pass their terror and fear tests, namely the rune and mark of dismay. Its stackable too so each time you hit a enemy thats potentially a 12% decrease to their chance to pass a test everytime you hit them. thats pretty insane, especially on the Vampire who can hit like five times in a turn. Grab an axe of perforation if you dont care about the terror tests, if you do then grab an axe of dismay. This gets even better if you have Intimidate as an active skill. Intimidate will cause the enemy to run away if they fail a leadership test, which means you get an extra attack. Pretty good if you sink 5 attacks into a guy, reduce his leadership to nothing with the dismay enchantments and then use Intimidate to get an almost gauranteed 6th attack on him to finish him off.
Heres the Tankpire build:
Give him an axe, heavy armour and a shield
Attributes:
===========
Strength: 18
Toughness: 12
Agility: 6
Leadership: 9
Intelligence: 14
Alertness: 11
Weapon Skill: 15
Ballistic Skill: 4
Accuracy: 9
Skills:
=======
Terror Basic, Strong Blow Basic, Shield Specialist Mastery, Quick Incision Mastery, Armour Proficient Mastery, Flash Parry Basic, Web of Steel Mastery, Intimidate Basic
Books:
==========
Physical Grimore (put it towards strength for extra dmg)
Crypt Horror:
Heres the big boy, he puts the monster in the mash, the gaveyard in the smash. He’s a beast and I like to build him into a dodgy damage dealer. Also a cool thing to note about the Crypt Horror is that unlike many other Impressives he can fit through doorways and go into buildings, which is helpful. His base attribute is that he causes terror. I built him into a charger/armour piercing/anti-impressive kind of build. He dual wields axes, uses strong blow to make the most of his offence points if hes not charging and is very dodge focused. Full armour plated enemies have no chance against this guy and he is bult to go the distance against other impressives. Also he’s an impressive, so he is immune to psychology.
Here’s the build:
Attributes:
===========
Strength: 23
Toughness: 12
Agility: 20
Leadership: 10
Intelligence: 12
Alertness: 18
Weapon Skill: 20
Ballistic Skill: 3
Accuracy: 10
Skills:
=======
Terror Basic, Mighty Charge Mastery, Sidestep Mastery, Find the Breach Mastery, Strider Mastery, Bull Charge Basic, Assault Mastery, Prowl Basic, Death Stench Basic, Strong Blow Basic
Books:
==========
Physical Grimore(put towards strength), Book of Training: Strength
Equipment:
==========
Amulet (masterwork), Clothing (masterwork), Axe (masterwork), Axe (masterwork)
Thrall:
Next up we have the thrall. She causes fear and I usually build her into a scout or a frontline tank. The thrall, like the vampire leader, is also immune to psychology. Tank builds are pretty straight forward so I’ll include the tank build in the unit links but here I’ll give you my scouty dodge/crit hybrid build. She uses a sword for extra crit chance and I find that dealing damage with her is hard if your not criting regularly. She’s also pretty squish and in my opinion some what inferior to a tank build. But tank builds are boring lets face it, with the crit build you will get a lot of satisfying critical hits and everyone loves when that happens.
Heres the build:
Attributes:
===========
Strength: 11
Toughness: 5
Agility: 15
Leadership: 12
Intelligence: 12
Alertness: 6
Weapon Skill: 12
Ballistic Skill: 3
Accuracy: 12
Skills:
=======
Fear Basic, Avoid Mastery, Sidestep Mastery, Fatality Mastery, Vital Strike Mastery, Deep Wounds Basic, Wall Runner Basic, Prowl Basic, Insult Basic
Books:
==========
Physical Grimore(put towards strength), Tome of Abilities, Book of Training: Accuracy
Equipment:
==========
Helmet (masterwork), Clothing (masterwork), Sword (masterwork), Empty Hand (normal)
Necromancer:
The Necromancer is a pretty interesting mage character. His special ability is called Warp Attunement and it basically means if you pick up a warp stone your next spell will cost 1 offense point less than usual and your curse chance for casting will be reduced, so long as a spell is the next action. So if there’s a bundle of warp stones right behind the melee lines your necromancer is going to have a fun time. Also casting Call of Vanhel is almost necessary for your zombies, and if you have tons of characters you need to cast it on, then having the spell reduced by an offence point is extremely helpful. My Mancer is a buffing/offensive spell caster. You can also build him into a Bowmancer, but i’ll update this guide once I play around with that build. He is a human though afterall, and unlike the rest of his undead entourage he is affected by psychology.
Here’s the build:
Attributes:
===========
Strength: 9
Toughness: 15
Agility: 3
Leadership: 5
Intelligence: 20
Alertness: 8
Weapon Skill: 15
Ballistic Skill: 5
Accuracy: 8
Skills:
=======
Warp Attunement Basic, Death Stench Mastery, Embedded Wyrdstones Mastery, Expert Casting Mastery, Improved Casting Mastery, Web of Steel Basic, Channeling Mastery
Spells:
=======
Rotten Touch Basic, Call of Vanhel Mastery, Heart Failure Mastery, Lifestealer Mastery
Books:
==========
Tome of Abilities, Tome of Magic, Book of Training: Weapon Skill, Martial Grimore
Equipment:
==========
Amulet (masterwork), Light Armour (masterwork), Staff (masterwork)
Units and Builds cont
Dreg
I stand by my opinion that the dreg is best built as a ranged character. His melee stats are okay, but almost everyone in this warband goes into the melee and virtually no one does range. So, the dreg gets the bow, and he can be an amazing archer too with the right abilities. Give this man a long bow of havoc and light armour of ballistic skill and he will put in work for you. I built him to be a crit bow build. I give him light armour because I found cloth while good for boosting his dodge makes him vulnerable to ranged fire, which since he should never be close to the melee means that range enemies would be his greatest danger and he shouldn’t have to be dodging attacks anyway. I also like him a bit meaty with health points incase my Vampires need to heal from sucking his blood. He’s a puny human, so he is affected by psychology. My Dreg is extremely specialized towards range, which means he is vulnerable if he gets attacked. Hes still beefy so hes kinda okay in melee for a long while and I can always get help to him in time, but if you prefer a more well rounded build, sink some points into avoid or sidestep to help out with his dodge.
The build:
Attributes:
===========
Strength: 6
Toughness: 12
Agility: 12
Leadership: 1
Intelligence: 9
Alertness: 12
Weapon Skill: 6
Ballistic Skill: 15
Accuracy: 15
Skills:
=======
Humble Servant Basic, Eagle Eyes Mastery, Trick Shooter Mastery, Sharpshooter Mastery, Knowledge: Mordheim Basic, Quick Reload Mastery, Vital Shot Mastery
Books:
==========
Martial Grimore (put towards accuracy), Tome of Abilities
Equipment:
==========
Helmet (masterwork), Light Armour (masterwork), Longbow (masterwork)
The Gas Rat:
The man, the mith, the legend. Or rat sorry. This guy is so damn useful, Zombies and Vampires are immune to poison effects so he can throw globes into melee fights and you wont have to worry about damaging your own men. Unless their ghouls or humans of course. Giving him warplock pistols will allow him to have even higher damage per turn than just using globes and will add another much needed ranged character to your warband. So logically we’re going to build him around his globes and shooting. He’s going to be ♥♥♥♥ in melee so I give him weeping blades to make up for the lack of damage, you may want to give him something that will help him hit the enemy (like dual maces) but hopefully he never has to be in fights in the first place. He is also affected by psychology.
Here’s the build:
Attributes:
===========
Strength: 2
Toughness: 10
Agility: 15
Leadership: 3
Intelligence: 15
Alertness: 10
Weapon Skill: 4
Ballistic Skill: 16
Accuracy: 13
Skills:
=======
Poison Globe Basic, Infused Globe Mastery, Warp Globe Basic, Quick Reload Mastery, Eagle Eyes Mastery, Potent Globes Mastery, Poison Expert Mastery
Books:
==========
Tome of Abilities, Physical Grimore(put towards agility), Book of Training: Agility
Equipment:
==========
Helmet (masterwork), Clothing (masterwork), Warplock Pistols (masterwork)
The Zombie
Ahh everyone loves themselves some good ol fashioned zombies, this is especially the case with the vamps. To be honest, I think its safe to say that a zombie by itself is the worst henchman in the game. He’s slow, can only use cloth armour, doesn’t get as much experience as any of the other henchmen and is some what unreliable in melee even in the late game. He has some pros though, unlike most other henchman he is immune to psychology, if he dies it doesn’t effect the warband’s moral, he is immune to poison effects and he can be quite tough if you invest into giving him lots of health. He is a perfect meatshield and he becomes very good once buffed by the Necromancer. Therefore we will build him into a meaty swarm character meant to tie down enemies but not really kill them unless hes got backup.
Here’s the Build
Attributes:
===========
Strength: 11
Toughness: 19
Agility: 1
Leadership: 3
Intelligence: 2
Alertness: 15
Weapon Skill: 16
Ballistic Skill: 3
Accuracy: 8
Skills:
=======
Puppet Basic, Rotten Corpse Basic, Strong Blow Basic, Web of Steel Basic, Shield Specialist Basic, Find the Breach Basic, Flash Parry Basic
Books:
==========
Physical Grimore (put towards toughness), Book of Training: Toughness
Equipment:
==========
Helmet (masterwork), Clothing (masterwork), Axe (masterwork), Shield (masterwork)
The Ghoul:
Last but certainly not least we have the ghoul, a nasty little bugger and an absolute fiend. He is immune to psychology and is feral, so he can’t use consumables in battle. His special ability is “Disease Carrier” and what this does is give the enemy a random debuff if the ghoul hits them in melee. The debuff is stackable, so you can give an enemy 2 debuffs from one ghoul in a round if you hit them twice, and it also means “Rotten Touch” will do more damage to that character. The debuff can be anything of the following: -5 Initiative, OR -3% Critical Resistance, OR -3% Dodge and Parry chance. The debuffs last 3 turns, so if you suround an enemy in crypt ghouls, lay on the debuffs and get the Necrommancer to cast a couple Rotten touches, it’s bad news for your enemy. The crypt ghouls have a swarmy feel to them, so we’ll build them into armour piercing swarm characters. They are pretty squishy though, so make sure you set them up so they can get off their dodges, ambushing will be important in this build.
Here’s the build:
Attributes:
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Strength: 13
Toughness: 8
Agility: 15
Leadership: 3
Intelligence: 7
Alertness: 12
Weapon Skill: 14
Ballistic Skill: 3
Accuracy: 3
Skills:
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Disease Carrier Basic, Sidestep Basic, Find the Breach Basic, Avoid Basic, Prowl Basic, Blitz Basic, Hardy Basic, Wall Runner Basic
Books:
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Physical Grimore (put towards strength)
Equipment:
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Amulet (masterwork), Clothing (masterwork), Axe (masterwork), Axe (masterwork)
Warband Compositions
Here are a couple warband composition ideas that you can do with the Undead and their all really fun and viable to use:
My Warband:
1 Vampire Leader (Tankpire), 3 Zombies, 1 Ghoul (scout), 1 Mancer, 1 ranged Gas Rat, 1 Crypt Horror
I find this warband comp to be extremely useful, its mid size so you dont have to pay much upkeep, its great in the melee and the zombies have a lot of inventory so even though the warband is small they’ll still be able to snag tons of warp stone. The Mancer and the gas rat stay behind the lines in this warband, peppering the melee with gas, magic attacks, healing and buffs while the Tankpire and Crypt ghoul decisively cuts everyone to shreads and the zombies get to take all the punishment. The gas rat can take infused globes too so if the fight goes south everyone can easily be healed. Crypt ghoul is just there to run around the map and grab isolated warp stones. Probably should switch him out eventually with Warp Guards once they become available as they fulfill this role far better.
Zombie Gas Fiesta:
1 Vampire Leader (Tankpire), 3 Zombies, 1 Mancer, 1 ranged Gas Rat
Elite Seal Team Vampire Sqaud, quick in and out:
1 Vampire Leader (Scoutpire), 2 Thralls (Scout), 1 Bowmancer, 1 ranged Gas Rat
This warband is all about speed and dodge and eliteness and they will have high initiative. They put the black in black ops (black as in evil, darkness spooky undead black not the race). Bowmancer is there to buff the Vamps when they enter melee with call of vanhel and shoot from behind the lines (the vamps are fast so he’ll be behind the vamps anyway) Gas rat is there to be equally fast and do some aoe attacks into the melee while also healing the squishy scout vampires if they fail their dodges and get hit.
Rise of the Ghouls
1 Vampire Leader (Tankpire), 4 Crypt Ghouls (swarm), 1 Crypt Ghoul (scout), 1 Crypt horror
Be careful with this one, the crypt ghouls are fierce but you never want them to be the first ones into melee, especially against a melee focused leader or Impressive. You want the Vampire or Crypt horror to be doing that they are much more durable and won’t die nearly as easily as the squishy ghouls. Overall this is a fun warband, your enemies must prepare for the ghoul pocalypse. Tons of overwhelming melee power and debuffs. Its great.
Dawn of the Dead:
1 Vampire Leader (Tankpire), 5 Zombies, 2 Necromancers, 2 Gas Rats
Using the spells, builds and exploits I have mentioned elsewhere in this guide this warband could possibly be one the most deadly warband compositions the Vamps have to offer. 85% armour absorption Zombies running around at 10 metres per strategy point anchored by the Tankpire with the Globadiers blasting and gasing away anything else stupid enough to get in your way. Its a necromaner’s and gas rat’s wet dream. Swarm the enemy in a huge melee ruck, gas everything, everywhere. Tie the enemy down with zombies, make them take multiple turns of stacked gas cloud damage and seal the deal in the melee fight with your Tankpire. Be ruthless, be pitiless, you are the undead after all.
Unit Build Links
Gas Rat:
[link]Zombie:
Wrecking Thrall (charge/tank thrall)
[link]Scout Thrall:
Necromancer:
Swarm Ghoul:
Bow Dreg:
Tankpire:
Wrecking ball Crypt Horror:
[link]Closing
Thanks for taking a look at my guide, I hope you enjoyed it and found it helpful! Please leave some feedback or a comment about your thoughts and ideas about the Undead Warband, I’d love to hear more advice or character builds that you guys have come up with.
Now go out there and make Mordheim moar spooky! Good luck and have fun, and remember to always do the monster mash!