EA Vanhiem advice
 

Lookin for some thoughts/suggestions for EA Van Pretender design/general tactics. With their pretender selection you can't really get a fire/water uber bless without sacrificing scales/dominion strength and I'd rather not throw my late game down the crapper.

Right now I'm thinking Imprisoned Arch mage with F9E4 Dom stength 8, order 3, sloth 2, misfortune 1, magic 1.


The Vanhere have encumberance 6 and are dual wielding so I figure that the rejuv from the low earth bless will help them out and fire is a no brainer with these guys. This should make me an early game force despite the lack of dual bless while the decent scales leave me late game viable.

Comments/suggestions?

Re: EA Vanhiem advice
 

I would advice not to take sloth 2. The Vanhere are capital only and cost a considerable amount of resouces. You risk not being able to make very many Vanhere, with sloth. You don't need production, but I would not take sloth.

I advice a water bless with these guys. They already do so much damage that the extra fire attack is unneeded. With water they get 4 attacks a round instead of 2. Extra attacks bring down the opponents defense so the attack bonus of the fire isn't needed as much either. They kill things very fast with water.

I like your idea of include e4 in the bless.

Re: EA Vanhiem advice
 

As I understand it, the quickness you get from a high water bless gives you a multiplier of 1.5 attacks...so I think my Vanhere would just get 3 attacks a turn instead of 4 (I could be mistaken there) If I went with the water bless. With their relatively high encumberance I'm worried about my vanhere's dropping due to fatigue from a high water bless as well as hitting things less often. Yes each attack reduces defense, but they won't be attacking at an overly high value. Now with the fire bless they have their 2 attacks at a very high attack value and with the attacks getting that 8ap bonus fire damage, I figure they will probably do as much or more damage as the water bless...better ability to cut through high protection and high defense.


Now if you're correct that they get 4 attacks though...I'd probably change my mind because that combined with the fact that glamor + high defense has clear benefit.


I could probably be convinced to go up to sloth 1 and maybe misfortune 2....just on the chance that I only end up with 3 neiboring provinces to my capital and no forest/mountain.

Re: EA Vanhiem advice
 

I think how it works is they get 4 attacks the first round, and then their normal 2 the second round, and then back to 4 the next, etc. Thats what the 1.5 means. It only takes effect every second round. Thats at least how I believe it works.

With a water bless they tend to cut through one battles square or more per round. Its their beserk that makes them a real killer.

I just saw that the vanhere have a smaller resource cost then I thought. Sloth 1 should be fine then.

Re: EA Vanhiem advice
 

F9E4 Dom1 Arch Mage = 400 design points
F9E4 Dom1 Red Dragon = 426 design points
W9E4 Dom1 Blue Dragon = 426 design points
W9E4 Dom3 Father of Winters = 421 design points
W9E4A1 Dom1 Frost Father = 425 design points

Edit: Base dominion used for comparison purposes, not as a suggestion.

Re: EA Vanhiem advice
 

F9W9 seems to be the standard bless for EA Vanheim. Water is not just for the extra attack, but the incredibly high defense and AP.

Re: EA Vanhiem advice
 

Except Vanheres don't have an incredibly high defense, even with W9, since their base defense is fairly low, and when they go berserk it drops even more. Seems to me there's little synergy there.

I did well with a F9E9 Cyclops. The protection stacks nicely with their armor and the bless armor bonus.
The biggest weakness is arrows. They are fairly slow and unshielded, until you can start using Storm or Arrow Fend. W9 would help with that by letting them close faster.

Re: EA Vanhiem advice
 

Most people are probably thinking of the sacred cavalry nations like Helheim and MA Vanheim get, with their very high defence and AP.

Re: EA Vanhiem advice
 

Dunno about the pretender, but magic-wise try Van sabbath. Van jarls as slaves, vanadrotts as masters. Cast storm and air power, then van jarls proceed with thunder strikes while drotts take turns casting rejuvenation between thunder strikes. It resets fatique for all slaves - result can be really scary. Lots of high precision mages spamming thunder strike and not getting any fatique until turn 5.

One big problem is that sometimes storm is the last spell being cast... thus air power fails, whole combo is screwed. Dont know why it happened for me, really, I thought globals are always first in the stack. So a much safer idea would be a staff of storms or just storm on turn 1, while your sabbath is busy gutting blood slaves.

When I had that untimely storm, my Hangadrotts (I tried Van sabbath with Helheim) decided that spamming raise skeletons is a very good idea and killed Jarl slaves with fatique http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif At least the huge tide of skeletons won that battle for me.

Re: EA Vanhiem advice
 

Commanders are taking action in the same order than they are displayed on the strategic map (left of the screen) or in the army setup screen.