Re: Bless Effects
 

lately my favorite vanheim bless strategy has been a W9E9 cyclops building nothing but van commanders as opposed to troops. With evocation 2 for shockwave and lightning bolt, and alteration 2 for resist lightning and phantom warrior you can have quickened, reinvigorated van commanders casting a constant barrage of spells as the enemy approaches, easily surviving the first round of combat with 22 defense, 17 prot, and glamour (defense varies slightly depending on which commander it is) and then shockwaving the unholy feck out of the enemy when they get close. The air 9 blessing would be a bit superfluous because they can all cast air shield on themselves straight out of the box anyway. It takes some time to get enough commanders for real arse beating, but once it gets going its ridiculously easy to take out indeps with 0 losses. I have 2 mp games going with this strategy and both are still in the early stages but its been fairly successful.

Re: Bless Effects
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">The Mausoleum has a better layout, too, when the enemy comes to storm it (walled, with opening, might be wider than a castle's, though).

Re: Bless Effects
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">The Mausoleum has a better layout, too, when the enemy comes to storm it (walled, with opening, might be wider than a castle's, though). </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Except that the Mausoleum doesn't have any towers, so doesn't fire any missiles. And the walls often serve to keep the defending troops inside when you'd rather have them charge the enemy. Far better for Carrion Woods, undead Ermor, anyone else with hordes to take the battle to the invaders, rather than sit bunched up for arrows and spells to decimate.

Re: Bless Effects
 

I've been playing Vanheinm a lot recently, experimenting with different strategies. When it comes to the single lvl 9 bless for vanheim, Water 9 beats anything else, hands down. It benefits both Vanheims' caster and regualr troops, not to mention any scared mages that you'll find.


You can try different pretenders to get this blessing. Personally I like Odin with A2/3 D2/3 W9.

Sure it is expensive, but he really rocks with such setup, so I think it worth it. Most imortent is that you can still get pretty decent scales with it, as well as 2 magic schools not avaliable to Vanheim's national mages for forging/casting.

For significantly ceaper but less powerfull pretender you can get something like Water Dragon W9, if you want to have more points to spend on the scales.


Important thing though, I strongly recomend trying to get good magic scale for Vanheim. And by no means don't take drain, unless you are feeling masohistic. Your reseach suck as it is, 1 capital only dwarw who is decent reseacher, and 2 types of not-capital Vans who cost leg and half to buy.

Finding indep mages is crytical to vanheim, both for reseach as well as to accsess to crytical items for your commanders, wich you can forge cheaply with dwarven hammers made by your capital dwarfs. Vanheim magic is powerful but extremely unflexible, which is the main weakness of standart Vanheim theme. You should try your best to cover it with your pretenders and agressivley pursuit of indep mages.

Good luck with Vanheim, it is fun antion and can be quite powerful if played correctly.

Re: Bless Effects
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">So stick some banefire archers inside.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Patrol, then.