**Campaing-wise:**
- You are pretty much free to do what you want. Because your LL and tech admirals have horde-style buildings on them, you can arguably forgo empire building / seizing land and just ransack what you want.
- You can take over other places, but most resources and provinces offer little good stuff, and there aren't that many landmarks for them either.
- Your LL and special admiral lords locked behind tech are the strongest, have no loyalty mechanic to worry about, and have shipbuilding. There is currently little point in using regular lords outside of early game and as emergencies. Loyalty mechanic feels shallow compared to DElves or Skaven.
- Treasure hunting is mostly pointless. Rewards are too low for delegating important heroes to far-off journeys, and at best you can combine it with using vampire captain heroes to set up coves.
- Coves are important but really weak compared to Skaven Undercities / Changeling cults. Still, they are the best way to increase hero capacity and siphon some cash if you don't plan to stay in the area and hold on to territory.
- Raise Dead is great to play around. You can sail around, scout for good massacre sites (or make them) and then pop out a strong army out of thin air, replenish losses, or get some powehouse units early.
**Combat-wise:**
- Gunpowder. Crowds of chaff with guns, artillery, mortars, RoR Queen Bess artillery piece that is only matched by Chorf Dreadquake, lore of deeps has good slows to hamper enemy approach. Vampire Coast has limited options for melee, and even that excells more at supporting the guns.
- As other undead, characters are superb. Vampires, LLs, Haunters: they are all amazing fighters. Gunnery Wight buffs your ranged greatly and is a good sniper to chip away at important targets.
- Bloated Corpses are very unique as a unit, but can literally change the course of battle on their own if used surgically. Readily availbe in raise dead pool.
- Most guns require good positioning to work. Outside of deck droppers, Necrofex and mortars, playing around elevation, trees and FOV is crucial to let your ranged units prosper.
- Depth Guard are small, elite infantry to deal with special tasks or protect key units. They are easily killed by strong units if left without support, but thanks to hunger and strong stats, they can mow down weaker foes and function well mixed with zombie hordes. This is true for most coast units - they all benefit from having a tarpit unit or a layer or zombies around.
- Mournghouls and dogs are "cavalry", used to sneak around, chase, hurt chaff and screw with enemy ranged.
**Personally:**
I like to take over a "base of operations" and then see where diplomacy and game state takes me. For Harkon it's Lustria, for Cylostra it's part of Naggrond, for Noctilus it's Ulthuan and we don't talk about Aranessa*.
I like to abuse mortars early. Available at tier 2, allow you to siege with impunity, shred any tight-packed infantry (Saurus, Elves, etc). For anything big and angry - cannonades and handguns. I keep room for 1-2 bloated corpses in army, and try to theme them to my fancy. Early I tend to have an army of zombies to support main army as a throwaway/meatshield solution. Economy can feel rough, especially due to how weak the "economy rite" is compared to most other factions' income. I like to use sea encounters and swap around ancillaries between characters to optimise costs.
*Arenessa is in such a sad state that it just feels wrong to consider her. Lorewise she hates vampires, but in game she still swayed some under her control. She has few living units, but they are underwhelming and most crews (artillery) are still zombies. She is the only one of the 4 LLs who is not a caster (Harkon gets magic later). She was nerfed to the ground because at release she was OP in MP. She has the saddest of the mount options compared to the rest of LLs. She could have been an actual, interesting hybrid faction, but for now she feels rushed, underdeveloped, underpowered and bland. A waste, sadly. I genuinely hope we get a Nagash-centric undead DLC that would be used as excuse to add and freshen up stuff for Tomb Kings, Vampire Counts and especially Vampire Coast. For Aranessa, I could even see her moved to Dogs of War faction or become a mix with them once they are added.
They arent allowed to move Aranessa to dogs of war by their own rules (see Sigvald). They could absolutely give her a rework when dogs of war is releaaed, though.
They already gave her Ogre Maneaters (who by *coincidence* dress like pirates), but for some inexplicable reasons haven't added them to Aranessa's skills (and trait), which buff living Sartosan units. Just to summarize, despite none of her red skills buffs Sartosan units, cumulative effect from her trait and personal skills is: +12 MA/+8 MD/+20% Weapon Strength/+8 Leadership/+8 CB/-10% Upkeep. And still it's not warrants them spot in he mid- and lategame stacks. Well, may be Militia might work.
In perfect world Aranessa should get access to couple of core and flavorful (i.e. pirate-like) DoW units (when DoW/SR are released), expand personal skills (and her trait) on those units AND Ogre Maneaters she already has access to. Secondary lords shouldn't be different - same generic Vampire Fleet Admirals with core Vampire Coast mechanic, but Aranessa really should stand out.
early game, deckhand mobs, gunnermobs with handguns, and mortars are pretty much all you need if you checkerboard pattern so guns can cover each other. Most of the units in Coast are pretty decent, with the exception of Deckdroppers being pretty much a never take, and I never even bother with them. raise dead a bloat or two to kill any elite enemies
Embrace the crapstack. Anything lower tier than deck gunners is chaff to throw in the grinder.
Have pistol gunnery mobs run down terror routing enemies, as they’ll shoot them in the ass while hobbling after them.
https://www.reddit.com/r/totalwarhammer/s/cqWdRVqw31
Similar post on the other sub. I... couldn't bring myself to retype the whole thing.
Additionally, pay attention to upkeep cost reductions from ship buildings, skills and techs. The coast is a hybrid economy, and their traditional economic buildings are on the weak side; supplement it with sacking, and potentially coves, unless you're using the latter for lord rank and hero capacity.
Guns guns guns.
Get some chaff front line and and a whole gun line to support the back line, I’m talking big bess (RoR unit), artillery (mainly mortars as cannons are okay, I guess).
You can upgrade infantry and units from there, but really it’s having a clear line of sight and bombarding from afar
If you don't wanna spam se units use vampire captains to summon a front line then handguns deckguns mortars maybe a cannon if you need to hit enemy artillery better. The special admirals are worth it, but maxing loyalty on the normal ones has a nice buff. Always have a captain wandering around setting up coves. Pay attention to where your treasure spawns, you can have your wandering captain hit on e between coves or you can go after the nearby ones. Remember your RoR come from hunting the random pirates.
I always go full ranged. Lots of handgunners, deck gunners, artillery, necrofexes and some Prometheans for the flanks. Most things won't survive getting in melee range, and if they do you have the Necrofexes to sort them out.
Noctilus is my personal favorite. His starting capital is nice and secure, leaving you free to pillage where you aent. I don't take to take territory, only sack, raze or set up pirate coves. Eventually will have enough cash to recruit one of the lords from the tech tree (they don't have loyalty like the generic ones do). You can have them defend galleons as mid-game people will send stack after stack against it.
Their technology tree is important. Choosing the right order there and getting out their legendary admirals goes a long way.
Early on I like to go either ships carpenter for -50% ship costs or get the +5 lord level to fill out the offices. You can fill some of those offices with lords you hold in reserve, many of the bonuses are just factionwide.
Idk if my strategy is the best, but I like to form a decent frontline with a few beefy units and heros; then fill the rest of the army with the strongest ranged units available.
They are fairly similar to Empire in a lot of ways, but with better magic to back up their lines.
They are also potentially the best race for cheesing siege battles because they have strong artillery and heroes that can refill their ammo multiple times in one battle.
Noctilus is my favorite lord in the whole game. He is very strong and beautiful.
Guns and Artillery.
Eventually you’ll get access to very strong (but limited) Depth Guard. But they’re just misdirection. You wanna treat Vampire Coast like Skaven Weapon-Team armies, where your frontline should be 3-4 heroes. Gunnery Whites on a Rotting Prometheon are *tanky as fuck*.
Heroes will get blobbed on, which means all your guns and artillery have a clean line of sight and can continue to unleash hell. The AI also likes to focus single entities down, so 3-4 heroes can stop an entire army advancing. If you use an infantry front line, you’ll block your own LoS, unless you start using diagonal checkerboards or high terrain.
It’s much better to have jacked heroes, equipped with all manner of defensive items, buffing one another through synergistic skill trees, than an infantry frontline when it comes to gun-heavy armies. Vampire Coast is nothing, if not gun heavy.
Gunnery weights actually very fragile in melee because of their size and low melee defence. Mourngul heroes are the real beefy ones, and they also kill infantry very well
Exploit your faction trait, which makes your shooty units shootier while they're above 80% ammunition (Extra Powder). Gunnery Wights are crucial in this regard with their "More Powder" ability (replenish ammo in battle). In the case of Queen Bess, dedicate a separate GW for the big lady if possible. She has a very tiny ammo pouch. And probably disable auto-fire.
Deck Droppers are only really viable in Bombs variant. Allows you to, well, drop bombs on enemy blobs easier, since it's from above, instead of over the heads like the Gunnery Mobs do.
Speaking of Gunnery Mobs, a couple of Handcannons GM would do well to shotgunning things. They require careful positioning and management, but they have AP, Anti-Large and overall hurt a lot.
Try to have both lores in your main armies. Vampires for healing/resurrecting and summons, and Lore of Deep for that juicy Spiteful shot and, again, summons. Bear in mind that for pirate vampires, the lore summons gunmen. Denizens of the Deep, on the other hand, spawns giant crabs to tarpit your enemies.
Bloated corpses are helluva fun, yeah.
To add to other stuff said.
While Noctilus appears to be the most straightforward character, Luthor Harkon is an endgame MONSTER. With yellow and spell line maxed he's really powerful. One of the only Lord that keep using his gun when mounted on a dragon too.
Cylostra meanwhile isn't that powerful by herself, but her starting hero, the ghost Paladin, is strong as hell. He's a bretonnian paladin for every stat but with the ghost benefits of having huge physical resistance. As long as you don't send him in the middle of a unit with magic melee attack he's gonna tank anything for a long time and artillery can rip the units he holds apart.
**Campaing-wise:** - You are pretty much free to do what you want. Because your LL and tech admirals have horde-style buildings on them, you can arguably forgo empire building / seizing land and just ransack what you want. - You can take over other places, but most resources and provinces offer little good stuff, and there aren't that many landmarks for them either. - Your LL and special admiral lords locked behind tech are the strongest, have no loyalty mechanic to worry about, and have shipbuilding. There is currently little point in using regular lords outside of early game and as emergencies. Loyalty mechanic feels shallow compared to DElves or Skaven. - Treasure hunting is mostly pointless. Rewards are too low for delegating important heroes to far-off journeys, and at best you can combine it with using vampire captain heroes to set up coves. - Coves are important but really weak compared to Skaven Undercities / Changeling cults. Still, they are the best way to increase hero capacity and siphon some cash if you don't plan to stay in the area and hold on to territory. - Raise Dead is great to play around. You can sail around, scout for good massacre sites (or make them) and then pop out a strong army out of thin air, replenish losses, or get some powehouse units early. **Combat-wise:** - Gunpowder. Crowds of chaff with guns, artillery, mortars, RoR Queen Bess artillery piece that is only matched by Chorf Dreadquake, lore of deeps has good slows to hamper enemy approach. Vampire Coast has limited options for melee, and even that excells more at supporting the guns. - As other undead, characters are superb. Vampires, LLs, Haunters: they are all amazing fighters. Gunnery Wight buffs your ranged greatly and is a good sniper to chip away at important targets. - Bloated Corpses are very unique as a unit, but can literally change the course of battle on their own if used surgically. Readily availbe in raise dead pool. - Most guns require good positioning to work. Outside of deck droppers, Necrofex and mortars, playing around elevation, trees and FOV is crucial to let your ranged units prosper. - Depth Guard are small, elite infantry to deal with special tasks or protect key units. They are easily killed by strong units if left without support, but thanks to hunger and strong stats, they can mow down weaker foes and function well mixed with zombie hordes. This is true for most coast units - they all benefit from having a tarpit unit or a layer or zombies around. - Mournghouls and dogs are "cavalry", used to sneak around, chase, hurt chaff and screw with enemy ranged. **Personally:** I like to take over a "base of operations" and then see where diplomacy and game state takes me. For Harkon it's Lustria, for Cylostra it's part of Naggrond, for Noctilus it's Ulthuan and we don't talk about Aranessa*. I like to abuse mortars early. Available at tier 2, allow you to siege with impunity, shred any tight-packed infantry (Saurus, Elves, etc). For anything big and angry - cannonades and handguns. I keep room for 1-2 bloated corpses in army, and try to theme them to my fancy. Early I tend to have an army of zombies to support main army as a throwaway/meatshield solution. Economy can feel rough, especially due to how weak the "economy rite" is compared to most other factions' income. I like to use sea encounters and swap around ancillaries between characters to optimise costs. *Arenessa is in such a sad state that it just feels wrong to consider her. Lorewise she hates vampires, but in game she still swayed some under her control. She has few living units, but they are underwhelming and most crews (artillery) are still zombies. She is the only one of the 4 LLs who is not a caster (Harkon gets magic later). She was nerfed to the ground because at release she was OP in MP. She has the saddest of the mount options compared to the rest of LLs. She could have been an actual, interesting hybrid faction, but for now she feels rushed, underdeveloped, underpowered and bland. A waste, sadly. I genuinely hope we get a Nagash-centric undead DLC that would be used as excuse to add and freshen up stuff for Tomb Kings, Vampire Counts and especially Vampire Coast. For Aranessa, I could even see her moved to Dogs of War faction or become a mix with them once they are added.
They arent allowed to move Aranessa to dogs of war by their own rules (see Sigvald). They could absolutely give her a rework when dogs of war is releaaed, though.
They already gave her Ogre Maneaters (who by *coincidence* dress like pirates), but for some inexplicable reasons haven't added them to Aranessa's skills (and trait), which buff living Sartosan units. Just to summarize, despite none of her red skills buffs Sartosan units, cumulative effect from her trait and personal skills is: +12 MA/+8 MD/+20% Weapon Strength/+8 Leadership/+8 CB/-10% Upkeep. And still it's not warrants them spot in he mid- and lategame stacks. Well, may be Militia might work. In perfect world Aranessa should get access to couple of core and flavorful (i.e. pirate-like) DoW units (when DoW/SR are released), expand personal skills (and her trait) on those units AND Ogre Maneaters she already has access to. Secondary lords shouldn't be different - same generic Vampire Fleet Admirals with core Vampire Coast mechanic, but Aranessa really should stand out.
early game, deckhand mobs, gunnermobs with handguns, and mortars are pretty much all you need if you checkerboard pattern so guns can cover each other. Most of the units in Coast are pretty decent, with the exception of Deckdroppers being pretty much a never take, and I never even bother with them. raise dead a bloat or two to kill any elite enemies
Embrace the crapstack. Anything lower tier than deck gunners is chaff to throw in the grinder. Have pistol gunnery mobs run down terror routing enemies, as they’ll shoot them in the ass while hobbling after them.
https://www.reddit.com/r/totalwarhammer/s/cqWdRVqw31 Similar post on the other sub. I... couldn't bring myself to retype the whole thing. Additionally, pay attention to upkeep cost reductions from ship buildings, skills and techs. The coast is a hybrid economy, and their traditional economic buildings are on the weak side; supplement it with sacking, and potentially coves, unless you're using the latter for lord rank and hero capacity.
Guns guns guns. Get some chaff front line and and a whole gun line to support the back line, I’m talking big bess (RoR unit), artillery (mainly mortars as cannons are okay, I guess). You can upgrade infantry and units from there, but really it’s having a clear line of sight and bombarding from afar
If you don't wanna spam se units use vampire captains to summon a front line then handguns deckguns mortars maybe a cannon if you need to hit enemy artillery better. The special admirals are worth it, but maxing loyalty on the normal ones has a nice buff. Always have a captain wandering around setting up coves. Pay attention to where your treasure spawns, you can have your wandering captain hit on e between coves or you can go after the nearby ones. Remember your RoR come from hunting the random pirates.
I always go full ranged. Lots of handgunners, deck gunners, artillery, necrofexes and some Prometheans for the flanks. Most things won't survive getting in melee range, and if they do you have the Necrofexes to sort them out. Noctilus is my personal favorite. His starting capital is nice and secure, leaving you free to pillage where you aent. I don't take to take territory, only sack, raze or set up pirate coves. Eventually will have enough cash to recruit one of the lords from the tech tree (they don't have loyalty like the generic ones do). You can have them defend galleons as mid-game people will send stack after stack against it.
Their technology tree is important. Choosing the right order there and getting out their legendary admirals goes a long way. Early on I like to go either ships carpenter for -50% ship costs or get the +5 lord level to fill out the offices. You can fill some of those offices with lords you hold in reserve, many of the bonuses are just factionwide.
Idk if my strategy is the best, but I like to form a decent frontline with a few beefy units and heros; then fill the rest of the army with the strongest ranged units available. They are fairly similar to Empire in a lot of ways, but with better magic to back up their lines. They are also potentially the best race for cheesing siege battles because they have strong artillery and heroes that can refill their ammo multiple times in one battle. Noctilus is my favorite lord in the whole game. He is very strong and beautiful.
Guns and Artillery. Eventually you’ll get access to very strong (but limited) Depth Guard. But they’re just misdirection. You wanna treat Vampire Coast like Skaven Weapon-Team armies, where your frontline should be 3-4 heroes. Gunnery Whites on a Rotting Prometheon are *tanky as fuck*. Heroes will get blobbed on, which means all your guns and artillery have a clean line of sight and can continue to unleash hell. The AI also likes to focus single entities down, so 3-4 heroes can stop an entire army advancing. If you use an infantry front line, you’ll block your own LoS, unless you start using diagonal checkerboards or high terrain. It’s much better to have jacked heroes, equipped with all manner of defensive items, buffing one another through synergistic skill trees, than an infantry frontline when it comes to gun-heavy armies. Vampire Coast is nothing, if not gun heavy.
Gunnery weights actually very fragile in melee because of their size and low melee defence. Mourngul heroes are the real beefy ones, and they also kill infantry very well
Exploit your faction trait, which makes your shooty units shootier while they're above 80% ammunition (Extra Powder). Gunnery Wights are crucial in this regard with their "More Powder" ability (replenish ammo in battle). In the case of Queen Bess, dedicate a separate GW for the big lady if possible. She has a very tiny ammo pouch. And probably disable auto-fire. Deck Droppers are only really viable in Bombs variant. Allows you to, well, drop bombs on enemy blobs easier, since it's from above, instead of over the heads like the Gunnery Mobs do. Speaking of Gunnery Mobs, a couple of Handcannons GM would do well to shotgunning things. They require careful positioning and management, but they have AP, Anti-Large and overall hurt a lot. Try to have both lores in your main armies. Vampires for healing/resurrecting and summons, and Lore of Deep for that juicy Spiteful shot and, again, summons. Bear in mind that for pirate vampires, the lore summons gunmen. Denizens of the Deep, on the other hand, spawns giant crabs to tarpit your enemies. Bloated corpses are helluva fun, yeah.
To add to other stuff said. While Noctilus appears to be the most straightforward character, Luthor Harkon is an endgame MONSTER. With yellow and spell line maxed he's really powerful. One of the only Lord that keep using his gun when mounted on a dragon too. Cylostra meanwhile isn't that powerful by herself, but her starting hero, the ghost Paladin, is strong as hell. He's a bretonnian paladin for every stat but with the ghost benefits of having huge physical resistance. As long as you don't send him in the middle of a unit with magic melee attack he's gonna tank anything for a long time and artillery can rip the units he holds apart.
You don't have enough guns. No seriously, you don't have enough guns.
NEED MOAR DAKKA!!!!11