Vanheim Musings

[quantum_mechani]

Also note that unpatched dominions can't use mods.

[shovah]

as said F9W9 vans are the way to go, huge defence, high attack, 2 flaming attacks, high speed, reasonable protection and a shield (which incase you didnt know gives a 50% chance of blocking a ranged attack). the pretender that gives this bless makes great artillery and can fight nicely too with buffs likequickness, breath of winter and fireshield (which combined with lvl 9 fire completely owns).
for your castle a good choice is a watch tower, you dont need many resources to produce vans and its cheap enough to allow you to make a few (which means more vans can be made ). with a double bless you'll want high dominion but that along with the cost of 2 lvl 9 blesses means you need to take bad scales. I've just tested without cb mod on (although im not sure if patches changed cost of moloch/his magic ect) but what i got was:
F9W9 Moloch
watchtower
7 dominion
sloth 3
death 3 (it has almost no impact unpatched/modded)
cold 1
order 1
also if your using van herse's as thugs give them a blood thorn, its a life drain weapon (therefore it rocks) and single handed so you can still use a shield (try blood thorn, lucky coin and possibly horror helm/horned helm since fear/another flaming attack is always good and rime hauberk/other armour since cold radiation/other good armour is useful too. also consider cat charm (because extra defence+ vans high defence+W9 rocks) and/or ring of regen/amulet of anti magic.)

and if you guys have another game and you really want to show them why they should use CB try caelum spamming false horrors. get a bunch of seraphs/high seraphs and script them to quickness, summon false horror, summon false horror, summon false horror, summon false horror cast spells.
it only costs 10 fatigue unmodded (compared to 30 modded) and is pretty deadly.

[Vicious Love]

shovah said:
and a shield (which incase you didnt know gives a 50% chance of blocking a ranged attack).

No, they give a bonus based on their defense rating. You can probably find the formula with a forum search.

[shovah]

oops, i thought it was 50% chance to block missiles. o well.

[Spacepain]

"with a double bless you'll want high dominion but that along with the cost of 2 lvl 9 blesses means you need to take bad scales."

I'm assuming your rationale for a high dominion is I could produce more vans per turn since they're holy units. However, with how it is worded, it can be construed that there is a relationship between blesses and dominion strenght - is this true?

[Etaoin Shrdlu]

I checked the Tome (if you haven't DL'd it - highly recommended to try to cost out a concept):
Moloch is the cheapest to get F/W 9/9 ... 665 points. You'll have to take at least 4 extra negative scales (on top of the Cold 1 Vanheim favors) just to afford it at all. Add a WatchTower for your castle, and you'll at least be able to bump opening Dominion to 5. (Vans and Valks being as resource-cheap as they are, at least a couple of those bad scales likely should be in Sloth, your call on the rest.)
Unless something changed in one of the patches or mods you might be using...

[OG_Gleep]

I have played Van in my last 3 MP games. You could go with a F9/W9 blessing, but...

1) You can't totally skimp on dominion
2) 70 gold isn't something to sneeze at
3) You also have to factor in the costs of Vanir and Smiths

IMHO van is better served with 1 bless and decent scales then a double bless and crap scales. Take a dragon with F9. He can go out romping after you get Fire Shield, and can solo 90% of the indies.

F9 blessing works incredibly well and still allows you to take decent scales. You can't take drain as Van, as smiths are your only viable researchers at 180 gold a pop, and capitol only you can't mass them. 1 a turn.

Valks/Vans is an effective combo. Most people shy away from Valks, I have no clue why. Set to hold and attack, you can get in their rear and they tear through archers and commanders. And your vans take care of the infantry.

You need to supplement your national forces with summons. I am one of the people who actually like vans troops, but you will be spending the majority of your income on smiths, vanir, vans/valks, and indy mages. Build 1 smith a turn, and turn any 1b smiths out to get a blood income going. Hopefully you'll get lucky and find some amazons, if not you will have to boost 1 smith to start the blood booster chain. Storm demons are awesome, and you can easily get Arch and Ice devils if you plan right.

Earth is your friend, it will give you access to great summons, and dwarven hammers. Learn to abuse this.

You also have mages that can cast petrify with 1 earth booster, or if you get lucky and get a 4e smith, with summon earth power. This is huge, as you have national mages that can deal with SCs.

Blade wind will take out half of the armies...the half that use lightly armored troops, and you can get access to a bunch of different combat spells depending on what your randoms are. You need smiths to research, so only pull them out once you have the basic things done (alteast con4,evo4-5, Alt 3, conj3 etc.). You can win most of the early wars without them, and they really come into their own once you have researched what they need to dish out the pain. This is especially true if you haven't found sages.

Vanir at 280 (cb mod) your going to need to lead your troops. I generally don't use them as thugs (thats what they are not SCs), as they are your only general that can lead 50 troops. They are great mages, so I would use them as such.

Your greatest weakness is in site searching and research.

Send your friends here and have them ask why they should use the patch first off, and the mod second off. I have never heard of anyone that didn't patch a game...so I really can't understand that angle.

[shovah]

also try getting those b1 smiths up to summoning demon knights, ive found recently that these little guys kick ****. they have good stats, fire resistance and cause fear.

[Morkilus]

Plus demon knights are way cool. Prophetize one and call him Lord Soth or something so you can be like me

Nice write-up, OG... I like the combo of Air and Blood with Vanheim, though I've been significantly less successful in my MP endeavors.

[Spacepain]

Thanks for the thoughts!

I tried a f9 Moloch, and have to agree the van\'s are still pretty kick butt. The economic bonuses (esp. with CB mod... I\'m boycotting hosting till everyone in my group patches & mods) and gold you reap from not having to take so many negative scales become apparent very quickly as you can recruit 2-3 times as many vans with just the first few turns.

It appears that (from my casual testing) 30 f9 blessed Vans are considerably stronger than 10 of their f9w9 blessed counter parts. The w9, almost seems to be over kill, even against 7+ indies. The positive scales carry on to have much nicer effects into the mid game where vans start to peter out some.

I suppose, f9w9 vans still have their place. with 9+ players on a tiny map like Urgia or Sundering. One could take out several players within the first 20 turns....

Thanks for the advice!