Dark magic is a destructive, corrupting force. To channel its energies, Necromancers must use corpses to shield themselves from its effects. Without this protection, a Necromancer will slowly wither away until he becomes a wraith. A Vampire can unleash the full power of Dark Magic without risk of harming itself, and so has an intrinsic control over the Undead that a human Necromancer can never achieve. Only a few Vampires go on to learn new spells; the majority use their Necromancer minions to attend to the day-to-day rituals of summoning and binding. Many of a Necromancer's duties are less glorious and arcane than they first imagined. They are mainly responsible for digging up corpses, fixing broken Zombies and skeletons with wood, metal and nails so that they can be re-animated. Some also act as keepers for captive Dire Wolves and Fell Bats.

Necromancy Spells

Invocation of Nehek, Raise Dead and Vanhel's Danse Macabre are Necromancy spells. A wizard can cast a Necromancy spell more than once in a Magic phase, and may even cast it several times upon the same unit.

All Vampire characters can instinctively manipulate the Undead and so know the Invocation of Nehek spell. Other spells are generated from the Lore of the
Vampires.

Necromancers learn specific rituals and incantations, and their spells are determined in a different manner. A Necromancer's level and the number of spells that he knows are not linked. A Necromancer knows one of the three Necromancy spells (Invocation of Nehek, Raise Dead or Vanhel's Danse Macabre), and may know additional Necromancy spells as detailed in the army list. Choose these spells when you pick your army.

Raised Models and Victory Points

Necromancy may allow a Vampire Counts player to increase the size of units, and even to create new units on the battlefield. To calculate victory points for these units, the following rules are used. Units bought from the army list are worth their original points value when calculating victory points, even if they were increased in size during the game. New units created during the battle have a value of 50 points for the purposes of calculating victory points, no matter the size of the unit at the time it was created, or any later additions. It is useful to make a note on your army list when a new unit has been created, or to keep a separate record of new units that are subsequently destroyed.