Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?

[Huzurdaddi]

NickW said:
If you need a specific scenario to get the conversation rolling, try telling me how to beat a F9/W9 Van rush with EA Ctis. That's a real scenario from a game I'm in.

Skell spam is, I think, your only hope for survival. But there are a number of problems with that strategy.

1) It needs enc-3
2) you need something to keep the vans off of you for a couple a castings or 2 ( IIRC vans have something like move 39 when W9 blessed ).
3) even when it goes right I'm not 100% sure what the ratio is of Vans to sauramancers to make it work. I would guess something like 1 sauramancer for every 4 vans or something like that but I have not tested.

Of course his counter would be to make a good number of Holy-Preists and then you are doomed. No hope.

And that is only talking about set-piece battles. Due to glamour he can raid you like crazy and there is nothing you can do about it.

The only nations which can deal with Van are:

1) abysia ( all ages ), since flame weapons do not affect their troops and Vans without flaming weapons are not that scary.
2) Niefelheim since the cold aura kills the vans.
3) as we saw in a post recently: Caelum since Caelum raiding is very hard to stop.
4) *maybe* ermor -- although this is more conjecture than fact.
5) maybe C'tis Miasma -- no one likes attacking Miasma with expensive troops.

Other than those nations you are SOL if you are near Vanheim ( have not tried Age of Vanir they seem somewhat less powerful ).

As for Van not breaking the game, they sure break it for the 1 or two empires that start next to them