Guide: Jotunheim MA Guide

[thejeff]

Iron Woods may be the weakest age of the giants, but they're still my favorite.

Neifelhiem is too focused on the Neifels. They are so good, that they demand to be used and demand a strong bless. Every thing else seems to get short shrift in EA.

And Utgard is Ok, but less focused on the giants. The human troops are better in general as are the human mages.

And as I've said before, I really like the Vaetti hags. Cheap efficient researchers, blood hunters, site searchers, communion slaves. They're all useful. Did I mention they're stealthy?

The Jotun army does lack punch though. The EA skinshifters would be a great addition and go a long way to covering that weakness. They tend to get overshadowed by the Neifels, but would really shine in Iron Woods.

[sector24]

I'll try out the Mound Fiend in the game I'm playing and let you know. Also, I was only partially correct about the undead. The soulless have 45 HP, a Jotun Axe with no shield, high strength, fairly low protection and defense, 6 MR. The longdead have 25 HP, but a longspear and shield, 13 protection, 9 defense, 10 MR. Still not great, but quite a bit more durable against regular troops.

EDIT: The Mound Fiends can animate longdead giants, but for every giant you get 5 or 6 normal longdead. So it's not really something you can mass easily. (About as easy as massing Vine Ogres) At 28 death gems per Mound Fiend it's not really worth it. However, if you were going to summon Mound Fiends anyway (like to counter C'tis' Miasma) then why not take advantage of it.

[VedalkenBear]

As an alternative, the manual states (and my experience at least has confirmed) that any Undead Priest can Reanimate Undead. That being the case, you can summon up a Shade or a Mound King simply to prophetize them to reanimate undead.

This would get the 'factory' started much earlier than waiting for a Mound Fiend.

[KissBlade]

That's actually a great idea =) Kudos on a very original strat!

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Not that its valid for Niefelheim, but that same trick also works on demons. I had some experiments with Yomi a while back.

As well, LA Atlantis has W3D?1 priest-mages available at the capital. Cast twiceborn, get them killed off - in your dominion- and then you've got upkeep-free reanimation machines.. Lose the special abilities like sailing, thoguh.

[Sombre]

I don't think reanimating is a big enough deal to warrant anything special to get it. For Niefel it might be though. I know with the cbm version of the Reanimation spell (which doesn't cost 10 gems, it's 2 or something) that it's actually worth using for them.

[Huzurdaddi]

thejeff said:
Neifelhiem is too focused on the Neifels. They are so good, that they demand to be used and demand a strong bless. Every thing else seems to get short shrift in EA.

I totally agree with this. The icebergs are so powerful (almost solely due to the frost aura) that they take up all of the gold for EA.

thejeff said:
And Utgard is Ok, but less focused on the giants. The human troops are better in general as are the human mages.

I don't know about that. The giants are still pretty tough. Especially the leaders if you take a bless.

thejeff said:
And as I've said before, I really like the Vaetti hags. Cheap efficient researchers, blood hunters, site searchers, communion slaves. They're all useful. Did I mention they're stealthy?

I don't know. The hags with astral and blood are very useful. However the nature and death ones are marginal, they are researchers. And they are old which is moderatly nasty especially for a unit with just one path.

thejeff said:
The Jotun army does lack punch though. The EA skinshifters would be a great addition and go a long way to covering that weakness. They tend to get overshadowed by the Neifels, but would really shine in Iron Woods.

Wow. If MA got skinshifters that would be a great change (or if both MA and LA got them). Such a great unit would finally get its day in the sun.

[thejeff]

Both the nature and death hags can do site searching and a lot of the grunt forging/casting work. They just need a Gygja to make one skull staff or thistle mace first. Then they can make more as needed.

I'll agree that the Jotun leaders make good thugs even in Utgard, but the regular troop giants are underpowered.

[sector24]

I rather like the idea of turning a Mound King into your prophet. In general I don't have any prophet specific strategies and even if the # of undead giants you get is low, you still have all these Vaetti Hags that can command 30 undead.

10 giants, 30 undead, and a Hag that spams Frighten makes for a pretty nice low upkeep/low supply army and if you get wiped out the Vaetti can just sneak away and leave the undead behind.

Anyway, I've updated the guide one last time with all the posts since 11-15. Thanks again for all the help and the good comments!

[VedalkenBear]

Sector: Just verified that yes, my idea works. Of course, you have the trade-off of having a Black Servant being your prophet (and thus being stealthy but unable to lead troops) vs. a Mound King. Just FYI.