[Jazzepi]

I took a closer look at this nation today and came to this conclusion:

Dual bless vanheres are an awful trap. Because of your weak magic diversity, and the availability of other nations with cheaper / better blesses than yours, there's no reason to try to bless out this nation.

If you ignore the idea of going double bless, then there's a couple of possibilities left.

1. Single bless relying on Vanhere's as a good starting point.
2. Rainbow pretender w/ good scales
3. Awake pretender

I really think that it's easy enough to expand with the Hirdman troops. They're /excellent/. When's the last time you've seen heavy infantry with 17 defense, 12 morale, and 12 attack skill? Oh, and they have glamor which is like getting twist fate for free!

Since we're going to go with an awake/sleeping rainbow pretender and you already have access to great earth and air I would probably focus on what you /don't/ have great access to when picking magic paths.

Fire - I really hate fire on pretenders like this unless you're doing one of two things with it. Forging rune smashers / summoning the fire kings. You shouldn't be doing either with Vanheim. So no fire.

Air - No need. You'll easily have air 4, even 5. Throw in air 1 if you've got points left over.

Water - You've really got no way to use this besides diversifying into water off of mage sites. You can summon up Naiads and clam horde which is a good enough reason for me to recommend water 3.

Earth - I'd probably put 1 on a rainbow mage. Give the mage earth boots, then have them forge crystal coins if you need extra astral boosting.

Astral - I always throw this on my rainbow mages. Astral pearls are easy to convert into other types since they're each worth .5 of any other gem. It also helps forging great boosters for when you inevitably find an astral 1 mage site. Being able to forge starshine skullcaps, and crystal coins, makes leveraging them a lot easier. You also want access to rings of wizardy and sorcery, a ladder that you can climb easily with S3.

Death - Death 3 is a must here. It's a great late game investment that gives you access to tartarians late in the game. It's not an easy ladder to climb, but mound fiends + skull staffs + +1 death masks + rings can get you there. Just being able to summon mound fiends at least allows you to get an undead factory going.

Nature - Nature 3 is definitely a great pick for a pretender. It gives you easy access to mother oak through nature +1 stick + moonvine bracelet. You can also spend the gems to summon other nature mages early on that can turn your gems into an army of vine ogres, or simply cast mass protection for your troops.

I would probably pick an awake enchantress with these paths.
F0
A1
W3
E1
S3
D3
N3

Scales
Dom 6
O3
S1
C2
G2
Misfortune 2
Magic 1

You can easily go with a dormant enchantress and pickup 151 points which translates into better scales, but I think the awake research + extra gems is worth more.

Jazzepi