Post by samt on Nov 12, 2015 22:53:10 GMT
EA Tien Chi is still in progress and I am determined to finish it but schoolwork among other things has me doubting I am up to snuff to fully describe a very broad based and versatile nation at the moment.
And people say elves can't fight!
Nation Overview
In the distant lands of Vanheim, live the Vanir. A tall magically attuned elven race, the Vanir have waged war against the giants of Jotunheim since the beginning of time. The Vanir themselves rely on glamour or illusions to trick mortals, friend and foe alike in order to give them an upper hand on the battlefield. Under the mountains of Vanheim lie the halls of dwarves who craft fantastical items and give them to those they choose. Skilled shiprights and navigators, with the awakening of their god Vanheim is no longer focused on raiding for slaves and gold but rather for conquest and blood tithes from lesser races for their god.
Why Play Vanheim?
Have you ever felt fond of the Warriors of Chaos or High Elves in Warhammer Fantasy Battle? If so Vanheim is likely up your alley as their armies are based on fast, hard hitting elite troops that are both mobile and quickly mustered. You will almost always be outnumbered but your standard troops are elites for others and your nation's affinity towards air allows your army to be incredibly mobile. To go along with this is stealth which allows many of your troops to sneak right up on the enemy and hit them with a massive force they never saw coming or end a war before it begins by conquering 75% of a large nation in one turn. All in all your a fast moving, gold hungry bunch of raiders that can destroy all opposition with proper planning.
People always gush over Ermor's legionnaires as "the perfect war machine" but they've never seen me in action ... yet.
Army Overview
Vanheim's main army has few choices but each one is valuable due to their high defensive skill with above average strength and attack skill. Most also have glamour with means and enemy will have a %50 chance of hitting the an illusion rather than the Van one time. Glamour also makes that unit invisible to scouting reports making the exact numbers of your armies before a battle consistently hard to determine. They are almost all incredibly expensive meaning that attrition and recruitment requires a careful management of your budget to consistently train up armies for your wars.
Fay Boar
Endless Bacon! You heard me right, this guy is endless bacon. Lorewise these guys are a type of magical swine that are immortal, able to heal even the most grievous of wounds. what this means for soldiers is that they can slay them each night for a feast only for them to rise full and healthy once more in the morning. I honestly love these guys just due to their mere concept. Gameplay wise they are quite useful as each can supply 50 soldiers. They are also able to return to your capital eventually if killed in your dominions. For a nation with no natural access to nature and a severe budget limit to afford many independent mages and the research it would cost to get Construction 6 in a timely manner he's pretty useful for any low supply regions. Sadly he costs 100 gold and can only be recruited from the capital making it difficult to get him where you need him in large scale wars. He also can trample any unit the size of a normal human or smaller but you'll likely want to use something else for that such as earth elemental due to the cost of fielding these boars in large numbers.
Mounted Hirdman
Fast, stealthy Van light cavalry. In the lore they are elite troops trained to ride the magnificent fay horses their Jarl owns. This pretty much describes them as they are both fast and deadly due to glamour, high movement speed, and high stats. The first enemy they charge with their light lances is likely going to die. They are however light cavalry, lacking much of the protection that would serve them well in an extended engagement. To add to their arsenal they also carry javelins allowing very precise volleys of hard hitting projectiles before they engage the enemy in close quarters. Overall Van Cavalry works best against enemies with few abilities to slow them down or in large numbers against an unwary opponent. They are almost double the cost of your other elite and miles above your standard troops in cost so you really want to avoid casualties when you can as it will be difficult to replace them in wartime.
Huskarl
The personal troops of a Herse and your standard troop choice. There are two variants: the axe and the spear both of which comes along with javelins. The spear has a longer reach weapon and higher defense skill at the cost of low protection. The axe variant has greater protection but lower defense with shorter length weapon making it more likely to get repelled in melee but more likely to get into melee mostly unscathed by archer fire. Overall both have great statlines at high gold costs along with the standard Van high stealth and glamour. Excellent overall they can win against many lightly armored foes simply with a volley of accurate javelin fire. Remember to switch which one your recruiting based on your enemies and you will likely not have trouble getting them to make back their price in gold.
Hirdmen
The personal troops of your Jarls. Your elite medium infantry compared to your light armored core. Overall they are great due to their map move being the same as your other troops meaning that your army won't be less mobile for taking them. Well armored, tough, and dependable these are likely what your will start moving towards should you fight well armored or high hitpoint enemies unafraid of your javelin volleys. They are armed with broadswords making enemies with shorter length weapons say a group of Hastati legionnaires take repel checks as well giving on of your only good troop choices for dealing with heavily armored foes. Additionally they come with glamour and stealth meaning that they can accompany raiding parties and are rather difficult to hit in melee.
Vanhere
Your capital only sacred heavy infantry unit that is almost on par with Abyssia's best. He is aa berserker with already high stats, glamour and stealthy making him a real threat to most nations even if he is somewhat uninteresting compared to other sacred wariors. In Vanheim the ability to enter a state of berserk battle rage is sacred, and those privileged with the ability or the conditioning to enter it are given heavy armor and two weapons to maximize the damage they can unleash. Considering their arch enemies are giants, this makes a lot of practical sense.
Serf Warrior
Everyone needs a unit to do the dying and shield your other troops from arrows and spells, willing or not. For Vanheim this is considered beneath noble Vans and as such it is relegated to slaves they capture during their raids. Overall they are not bad stat wise especially considering their cheap cost in comparison to every other national troop. The real reason why you will be using them as cannon fodder rather than a core troop choice is their low protection and morale. Without an abundance of this they often can not be trusted to hold the line at a crucial time. To add to this they are also not stealthy making them unable to join raiding parties making it easy to abandon them to save and important army from destruction.
Draug
A tough undead van that causes fear and has a cold aura. They traditionally guard burial mounds and the treasure in them but with death magic they can be coerced into service. Overall a solid unit that can be useful in armies provided you have a enough Vanjarls to lead them in groups of 5. Fear and cold aura work well with your cold resistant army, making them useful enough to accumulate in a fortress.
Valkyrie
A female Van blessed by a dead god with the gift of flight to aid in their role as messengers of death. Not super useful despite glamour, stealth, good stats, and being sacred due to them being a battle summon very few of your mages can cast. Still they can be useful if you work a strategy around summoning and blessing them each turn. Overall it will be up to you on whether they are useful or not.
We march ashore! To pillage, plunder, and raze!
Commanders
Vanheim's commanders are expensive and somewhat over costed for research purposes. This hurts since Vanheim relies of magic to do the heavy lifting in later battles. They also suffer from a sever start up cost for forts to begin producing any of their commanders besides scouts. To recruit their mage/generals you need a temple, fortress, and a lab making them among the most expensive core mages of any nation. This interferes with their expensive troop choices making recruitment for both a delicate balancing act especially when you need to build temples, fortresses, and labs as well.
Vanherse
The local thunderpriest chief of the Vans. He's not a bad unit overall. The preferred errand boy of your nation as he can lead troops, bless, build labs and temples, blood sacrifice, and when properly equipped, can raid by himself or with others due to stealth, glamour, one path in air, and solid stats. They also can sail across ocean tiles and attack enemies on the other side as long as all their troops are no larger than a cavalry unit (i.e. no giants or elephants).
Vanjarl
The leaders of the Vans both in secular and religious authority that tend to sacrificial groves and still remember the good ol' days when humans were sacrificed by the boatload for their gods. Your workhorse mage and expensive beyond belief. Seriously these guys will force you to get Vanherse due to their almost prohibitive cost. All that said they can blood hunt, effectively becoming the cornerstone of your blood economy. They get two in air meaning they can cast cloud trapeze, one of the most useful air spells. They can also cast summon stormpower giving them an air magic boost that allows them to use Thunderstrike, an incredibly useful battle spell that stuns enemies and creates swathes of corpses. They can also cast false horror which is also incredibly useful. With a booster they can summon storm demons, incredibly effective if hard to mas flying demons. They have two holy so they can cast sermon of courage to bolster morale of your troops. Beyond that they are similar to Vanherse and can be used to raid and lead troops with sailing as well.
Dwarf Smith
A dwarf from the Halls of Andvare convinced to aid the Vans and welcome for it due to their ability to craft items that the Vans can not and their greater knowledge of earth and minor knowledge in a few other paths. These are overall your most efficient researchers, troop buffers, site searchers and forgers. On the forger part they can craft items that require one more point in a magic path they already know due to their master smith attribute. My only real complaint is that they are slow to recruit making them few in number. The abilities in major earth with a possible minor ability in fire, air, or death. These guys are useful from start to finish as air randoms can cast rain of stones and forge air items like owl quills, fire randoms can cast magma eruption as well as firebrands, girdles of might, and shields of gleaming gold for your Vanherses and Vanjarls, death randoms can forge a skull staff and summon banes and draugs as well as cast blight to damage an enemy's economy. A sidenote: they can gain a path in earth if you make him your prophet.
Vanadrott
These are old Vanjarls that are given the honorary title of king after they proved to be too awesome to be even thought of in the same categories of Vanjarls. They are not kings in the traditional sense but their renown and wisdom in matters magical and military encourages many to obey faithfully. Gameplay wise they are exactly as the description says, more powerful Vanjarls. Their biggest ability is having a minimum of 3 air magic making it easy for them cast storm if you give them an extra air gem to boost their magic power for a battle. With that your Vanjarls can unleash a flurry of thunderstrikes on your unfortunate foes. Should they get air 4 they can forge winged helmets to give them access to air 5 global enchantments and Elemental Queens for SC's as well as allowing you to boost up any Vanjarl in air to allow him to cast storm. This also opens up many powerful air spells such as fog warriors, mass flight, arrow fend, wrathful skies, etc. They are capital only and slow to recruit which not that bad but they cost more than a temple making them an option only with a strong economy as well as a good reason to recruit them. As a sidenote with 2 blood random they are also good candidates to boost in blood in order to forge bloodthorns for your Vanjarls in their storm demon endeavors.
Van Scout
They're Vans that scout. Better than the average scout due to mountain and forest survival as well improved scouting that lets it avoid detection for the most part except from large armies.
Come on, all of you at once! I'll send the lot of you to Valhalla!
Vanheim Strategy (in stages)
A key thing to remember even if you do not follow my advice when playing Vanheim is to keep in mind the endgame with the exception of the smallest games. The reason being that Vanheim's late game is very weak without careful groundwork. You have some death magic from your dwarfs and blood from you vanjarls but they take time to build and the transition to armies that rely on them is rather slow for Vanheim.
Stage 1: Uniting the clans
You have to expand. Focus on producing troops and grabbing as much territory as you can but remember to train researchers as well. Dwarfs smiths are particularly useful due to their cost to research ratio and their access to earth magic which is much more useful. They have two downsides to address though in their lack of ability to create temples or lead your troops. So they can not build labs and temples at forts for mage recruitment or lead your raised troops in your capital. The way to get around this is to produce a pair of Vanjarls or Vanherses depending on your budget. One can lead troops and the other can build labs and temples. You will want to get your first fort construction started at least some time during year one. While expanding, look for areas with 5000-7000 population as those will be good areas to consider for blood hunting for your future Vanjarls. As for research goals Alteration 2 for earth meld and false fetters and Constuction 2 for Owl Quills and imp familiars are ones I personally recommend. Earth meld and false fetters are excellent abilities to immobilize enemy forces that are powerful against your infantry such as tramplers elite troops from the capital. Owl Quills and imp familiars are useful for research which your nation lacks due to the high cost of your mages.
Stage 2: Weapons of War
At this point enemies are going to get testy as they are within reach of you and each other. You are Vanheim and early power is one of your strengths. Move stealthy troops around and harass who you feel is a threat or who you feel is weak enough to conquer. War against you enemies with cunning and strike at their weaknesses hard. You should be focused on producing more Vanherses and Vanjarls from your growing number of fortresses. Continually adjust the amount of troops you recruit and the mages you recruit each turn to meet demands as you will continually be short on gold. Start blood hunting your previously picked provinces and search for magic sites with your dwarfs and vanjarls. Areas of research should be in Conjuration 3-4 depending if you want draugar but 3 is useful for Dark knowledge to get good death gem site searching and summon earth power; Construction 4 for Sanguine Dowsing rods that make your blood hunting more efficient, firebrands and girdles of might for your Vanjarls and Vanherses, earth boots for your dwarven smiths, and Legions of steel for your troops; Alteration 3 for mistform, and Enchantment 4 for cloud trapeze. Optional areas include Alterations 4 for Curse of Stone, Evocation 3 for mist, and Thaumaturgy 4 for Auspex and Gnome lore. These should be taken depending on the situation.
Stage 3: The Big drop
Whether you like it or not when a major war starts as opposed to early skirmishes you have to get battle magic even if you would rather complete research on your thug raiders. If you have a stockpile of firebrands and girdles of might, access to mistform, and cloud trapeze you can use a Big Drop on your enemies. This is by far the most feared early game tactic used by Vanheim. It involves having multiple Vanjarls cast cloud trapeze to drop on multiple enemy territories equipped with at least a Girdle of might and a firebrand allowing them to kill lesser province defense. Though many will die similar to paratroopers as they drop straight into an enemy assault or onto a particularly powerful provincial militia, many more will survive and secure their target in the enemy's rear lines. This also results in many stealthy raiders wandering in the enemies rear lines. cutting off income, diverting troops and generally being a nuisance. No matter how successful the operation is though you still need to at the very least destroy the enemy's armies. to do this efficiently you will require evocations magic particularly evocation 5 and conjuration 3 for storm, summon stormpower, and thunderstrike. That combination will let your armies have artillery to back up your troops. It should also be noted that you will require at least air 3 for this tactic so recruit a Vanadrott or if you have air 4, forge a winged helmet. You can also add curse of stone to further increase this tactics effectiveness. Another tactic is Alteration 4, Conjuration 3, and Evocation 4 for your dwarves to use summon earthpower, destruction, and bladewind. This is also extremely effective. Adding in legions of steel from Construction 3 will help your units survive friendly fire when using this tactic. Remember to get access to blood 4 forging by empowering a unit to blood 4 or by empowering a dwarven smith to blood 3.
Stage 4: Mass kill and Daemonic Assistance.
At this point you are close to your endgame as you are starting to reach the limits of your nation's magic abilities. You have a few tricks still up your sleeve though. You have the ability to cast Blood Rain (blood 7) with a Vanjarl assuming you have a blood booster. This will lower enemies morale letting you use Storm and False horror (Alteration 7) to rout armies rather easilly. Air random dwarves can cast rain of stones (Evocation 7) to mass murder armies, just make sure you don't have any unit you value unprotected with something solid like stoneskin or ironskin.
Storm with Wrathful skies (Evocation 7) and Thunder ward (Enchantment 5), Lightning Resistance (Alteration 5) or Thunder fend (Enchantment 8) are effective at killing armies that are not resistant to lightning. Mass Flight (Enchantment 7) and Earthquake (Evocation 5) are fantastic for dealing with armies that are not floating nor flying at little risk to your own army. Fog Warriors is also a good spell giving your entire army mistform at Alteration 7. With blood thorns from a Blood 4 forger (Blood 3 dwarf included) can boost up Vanjarls to summon Storm demons. These are useful flying raiders if you can equip the leader with a staff of storms to boost their stats. To get a leader for them you can have a Death random Dwarf forge a skull staff and summon a bane. Give that bane a pair of flying shoes and a staff of storms and you have a good leader for your storm demons. Dwarves empowered to 1 in Blood can take a blood thorn and summon Demon Knights as well as forge blood stones. Demon knights are heavy cavalry that cause fear and are great for adding an extra punch to your army. Blood stones boosts a mage in earth and gives them a temporary earth gem for battles. You likely won't be able to use all these options but keep each in mind and pick the ones best suited to dealing with your foes quickly as they will likely bring their own devastating set of spells soon after if not before.
Conclusion
If you want to play a nation of powerful air/earth mages with stealthy raiders, jaw dropping plays, and mass kill spell synergies, Vanheim might just be for you.
And people say elves can't fight!
Nation Overview
In the distant lands of Vanheim, live the Vanir. A tall magically attuned elven race, the Vanir have waged war against the giants of Jotunheim since the beginning of time. The Vanir themselves rely on glamour or illusions to trick mortals, friend and foe alike in order to give them an upper hand on the battlefield. Under the mountains of Vanheim lie the halls of dwarves who craft fantastical items and give them to those they choose. Skilled shiprights and navigators, with the awakening of their god Vanheim is no longer focused on raiding for slaves and gold but rather for conquest and blood tithes from lesser races for their god.
Why Play Vanheim?
Have you ever felt fond of the Warriors of Chaos or High Elves in Warhammer Fantasy Battle? If so Vanheim is likely up your alley as their armies are based on fast, hard hitting elite troops that are both mobile and quickly mustered. You will almost always be outnumbered but your standard troops are elites for others and your nation's affinity towards air allows your army to be incredibly mobile. To go along with this is stealth which allows many of your troops to sneak right up on the enemy and hit them with a massive force they never saw coming or end a war before it begins by conquering 75% of a large nation in one turn. All in all your a fast moving, gold hungry bunch of raiders that can destroy all opposition with proper planning.
People always gush over Ermor's legionnaires as "the perfect war machine" but they've never seen me in action ... yet.
Army Overview
Vanheim's main army has few choices but each one is valuable due to their high defensive skill with above average strength and attack skill. Most also have glamour with means and enemy will have a %50 chance of hitting the an illusion rather than the Van one time. Glamour also makes that unit invisible to scouting reports making the exact numbers of your armies before a battle consistently hard to determine. They are almost all incredibly expensive meaning that attrition and recruitment requires a careful management of your budget to consistently train up armies for your wars.
Fay Boar
Endless Bacon! You heard me right, this guy is endless bacon. Lorewise these guys are a type of magical swine that are immortal, able to heal even the most grievous of wounds. what this means for soldiers is that they can slay them each night for a feast only for them to rise full and healthy once more in the morning. I honestly love these guys just due to their mere concept. Gameplay wise they are quite useful as each can supply 50 soldiers. They are also able to return to your capital eventually if killed in your dominions. For a nation with no natural access to nature and a severe budget limit to afford many independent mages and the research it would cost to get Construction 6 in a timely manner he's pretty useful for any low supply regions. Sadly he costs 100 gold and can only be recruited from the capital making it difficult to get him where you need him in large scale wars. He also can trample any unit the size of a normal human or smaller but you'll likely want to use something else for that such as earth elemental due to the cost of fielding these boars in large numbers.
Mounted Hirdman
Fast, stealthy Van light cavalry. In the lore they are elite troops trained to ride the magnificent fay horses their Jarl owns. This pretty much describes them as they are both fast and deadly due to glamour, high movement speed, and high stats. The first enemy they charge with their light lances is likely going to die. They are however light cavalry, lacking much of the protection that would serve them well in an extended engagement. To add to their arsenal they also carry javelins allowing very precise volleys of hard hitting projectiles before they engage the enemy in close quarters. Overall Van Cavalry works best against enemies with few abilities to slow them down or in large numbers against an unwary opponent. They are almost double the cost of your other elite and miles above your standard troops in cost so you really want to avoid casualties when you can as it will be difficult to replace them in wartime.
Huskarl
The personal troops of a Herse and your standard troop choice. There are two variants: the axe and the spear both of which comes along with javelins. The spear has a longer reach weapon and higher defense skill at the cost of low protection. The axe variant has greater protection but lower defense with shorter length weapon making it more likely to get repelled in melee but more likely to get into melee mostly unscathed by archer fire. Overall both have great statlines at high gold costs along with the standard Van high stealth and glamour. Excellent overall they can win against many lightly armored foes simply with a volley of accurate javelin fire. Remember to switch which one your recruiting based on your enemies and you will likely not have trouble getting them to make back their price in gold.
Hirdmen
The personal troops of your Jarls. Your elite medium infantry compared to your light armored core. Overall they are great due to their map move being the same as your other troops meaning that your army won't be less mobile for taking them. Well armored, tough, and dependable these are likely what your will start moving towards should you fight well armored or high hitpoint enemies unafraid of your javelin volleys. They are armed with broadswords making enemies with shorter length weapons say a group of Hastati legionnaires take repel checks as well giving on of your only good troop choices for dealing with heavily armored foes. Additionally they come with glamour and stealth meaning that they can accompany raiding parties and are rather difficult to hit in melee.
Vanhere
Your capital only sacred heavy infantry unit that is almost on par with Abyssia's best. He is aa berserker with already high stats, glamour and stealthy making him a real threat to most nations even if he is somewhat uninteresting compared to other sacred wariors. In Vanheim the ability to enter a state of berserk battle rage is sacred, and those privileged with the ability or the conditioning to enter it are given heavy armor and two weapons to maximize the damage they can unleash. Considering their arch enemies are giants, this makes a lot of practical sense.
Serf Warrior
Everyone needs a unit to do the dying and shield your other troops from arrows and spells, willing or not. For Vanheim this is considered beneath noble Vans and as such it is relegated to slaves they capture during their raids. Overall they are not bad stat wise especially considering their cheap cost in comparison to every other national troop. The real reason why you will be using them as cannon fodder rather than a core troop choice is their low protection and morale. Without an abundance of this they often can not be trusted to hold the line at a crucial time. To add to this they are also not stealthy making them unable to join raiding parties making it easy to abandon them to save and important army from destruction.
Draug
A tough undead van that causes fear and has a cold aura. They traditionally guard burial mounds and the treasure in them but with death magic they can be coerced into service. Overall a solid unit that can be useful in armies provided you have a enough Vanjarls to lead them in groups of 5. Fear and cold aura work well with your cold resistant army, making them useful enough to accumulate in a fortress.
Valkyrie
A female Van blessed by a dead god with the gift of flight to aid in their role as messengers of death. Not super useful despite glamour, stealth, good stats, and being sacred due to them being a battle summon very few of your mages can cast. Still they can be useful if you work a strategy around summoning and blessing them each turn. Overall it will be up to you on whether they are useful or not.
We march ashore! To pillage, plunder, and raze!
Commanders
Vanheim's commanders are expensive and somewhat over costed for research purposes. This hurts since Vanheim relies of magic to do the heavy lifting in later battles. They also suffer from a sever start up cost for forts to begin producing any of their commanders besides scouts. To recruit their mage/generals you need a temple, fortress, and a lab making them among the most expensive core mages of any nation. This interferes with their expensive troop choices making recruitment for both a delicate balancing act especially when you need to build temples, fortresses, and labs as well.
Vanherse
The local thunderpriest chief of the Vans. He's not a bad unit overall. The preferred errand boy of your nation as he can lead troops, bless, build labs and temples, blood sacrifice, and when properly equipped, can raid by himself or with others due to stealth, glamour, one path in air, and solid stats. They also can sail across ocean tiles and attack enemies on the other side as long as all their troops are no larger than a cavalry unit (i.e. no giants or elephants).
Vanjarl
The leaders of the Vans both in secular and religious authority that tend to sacrificial groves and still remember the good ol' days when humans were sacrificed by the boatload for their gods. Your workhorse mage and expensive beyond belief. Seriously these guys will force you to get Vanherse due to their almost prohibitive cost. All that said they can blood hunt, effectively becoming the cornerstone of your blood economy. They get two in air meaning they can cast cloud trapeze, one of the most useful air spells. They can also cast summon stormpower giving them an air magic boost that allows them to use Thunderstrike, an incredibly useful battle spell that stuns enemies and creates swathes of corpses. They can also cast false horror which is also incredibly useful. With a booster they can summon storm demons, incredibly effective if hard to mas flying demons. They have two holy so they can cast sermon of courage to bolster morale of your troops. Beyond that they are similar to Vanherse and can be used to raid and lead troops with sailing as well.
Dwarf Smith
A dwarf from the Halls of Andvare convinced to aid the Vans and welcome for it due to their ability to craft items that the Vans can not and their greater knowledge of earth and minor knowledge in a few other paths. These are overall your most efficient researchers, troop buffers, site searchers and forgers. On the forger part they can craft items that require one more point in a magic path they already know due to their master smith attribute. My only real complaint is that they are slow to recruit making them few in number. The abilities in major earth with a possible minor ability in fire, air, or death. These guys are useful from start to finish as air randoms can cast rain of stones and forge air items like owl quills, fire randoms can cast magma eruption as well as firebrands, girdles of might, and shields of gleaming gold for your Vanherses and Vanjarls, death randoms can forge a skull staff and summon banes and draugs as well as cast blight to damage an enemy's economy. A sidenote: they can gain a path in earth if you make him your prophet.
Vanadrott
These are old Vanjarls that are given the honorary title of king after they proved to be too awesome to be even thought of in the same categories of Vanjarls. They are not kings in the traditional sense but their renown and wisdom in matters magical and military encourages many to obey faithfully. Gameplay wise they are exactly as the description says, more powerful Vanjarls. Their biggest ability is having a minimum of 3 air magic making it easy for them cast storm if you give them an extra air gem to boost their magic power for a battle. With that your Vanjarls can unleash a flurry of thunderstrikes on your unfortunate foes. Should they get air 4 they can forge winged helmets to give them access to air 5 global enchantments and Elemental Queens for SC's as well as allowing you to boost up any Vanjarl in air to allow him to cast storm. This also opens up many powerful air spells such as fog warriors, mass flight, arrow fend, wrathful skies, etc. They are capital only and slow to recruit which not that bad but they cost more than a temple making them an option only with a strong economy as well as a good reason to recruit them. As a sidenote with 2 blood random they are also good candidates to boost in blood in order to forge bloodthorns for your Vanjarls in their storm demon endeavors.
Van Scout
They're Vans that scout. Better than the average scout due to mountain and forest survival as well improved scouting that lets it avoid detection for the most part except from large armies.
Come on, all of you at once! I'll send the lot of you to Valhalla!
Vanheim Strategy (in stages)
A key thing to remember even if you do not follow my advice when playing Vanheim is to keep in mind the endgame with the exception of the smallest games. The reason being that Vanheim's late game is very weak without careful groundwork. You have some death magic from your dwarfs and blood from you vanjarls but they take time to build and the transition to armies that rely on them is rather slow for Vanheim.
Stage 1: Uniting the clans
You have to expand. Focus on producing troops and grabbing as much territory as you can but remember to train researchers as well. Dwarfs smiths are particularly useful due to their cost to research ratio and their access to earth magic which is much more useful. They have two downsides to address though in their lack of ability to create temples or lead your troops. So they can not build labs and temples at forts for mage recruitment or lead your raised troops in your capital. The way to get around this is to produce a pair of Vanjarls or Vanherses depending on your budget. One can lead troops and the other can build labs and temples. You will want to get your first fort construction started at least some time during year one. While expanding, look for areas with 5000-7000 population as those will be good areas to consider for blood hunting for your future Vanjarls. As for research goals Alteration 2 for earth meld and false fetters and Constuction 2 for Owl Quills and imp familiars are ones I personally recommend. Earth meld and false fetters are excellent abilities to immobilize enemy forces that are powerful against your infantry such as tramplers elite troops from the capital. Owl Quills and imp familiars are useful for research which your nation lacks due to the high cost of your mages.
Stage 2: Weapons of War
At this point enemies are going to get testy as they are within reach of you and each other. You are Vanheim and early power is one of your strengths. Move stealthy troops around and harass who you feel is a threat or who you feel is weak enough to conquer. War against you enemies with cunning and strike at their weaknesses hard. You should be focused on producing more Vanherses and Vanjarls from your growing number of fortresses. Continually adjust the amount of troops you recruit and the mages you recruit each turn to meet demands as you will continually be short on gold. Start blood hunting your previously picked provinces and search for magic sites with your dwarfs and vanjarls. Areas of research should be in Conjuration 3-4 depending if you want draugar but 3 is useful for Dark knowledge to get good death gem site searching and summon earth power; Construction 4 for Sanguine Dowsing rods that make your blood hunting more efficient, firebrands and girdles of might for your Vanjarls and Vanherses, earth boots for your dwarven smiths, and Legions of steel for your troops; Alteration 3 for mistform, and Enchantment 4 for cloud trapeze. Optional areas include Alterations 4 for Curse of Stone, Evocation 3 for mist, and Thaumaturgy 4 for Auspex and Gnome lore. These should be taken depending on the situation.
Stage 3: The Big drop
Whether you like it or not when a major war starts as opposed to early skirmishes you have to get battle magic even if you would rather complete research on your thug raiders. If you have a stockpile of firebrands and girdles of might, access to mistform, and cloud trapeze you can use a Big Drop on your enemies. This is by far the most feared early game tactic used by Vanheim. It involves having multiple Vanjarls cast cloud trapeze to drop on multiple enemy territories equipped with at least a Girdle of might and a firebrand allowing them to kill lesser province defense. Though many will die similar to paratroopers as they drop straight into an enemy assault or onto a particularly powerful provincial militia, many more will survive and secure their target in the enemy's rear lines. This also results in many stealthy raiders wandering in the enemies rear lines. cutting off income, diverting troops and generally being a nuisance. No matter how successful the operation is though you still need to at the very least destroy the enemy's armies. to do this efficiently you will require evocations magic particularly evocation 5 and conjuration 3 for storm, summon stormpower, and thunderstrike. That combination will let your armies have artillery to back up your troops. It should also be noted that you will require at least air 3 for this tactic so recruit a Vanadrott or if you have air 4, forge a winged helmet. You can also add curse of stone to further increase this tactics effectiveness. Another tactic is Alteration 4, Conjuration 3, and Evocation 4 for your dwarves to use summon earthpower, destruction, and bladewind. This is also extremely effective. Adding in legions of steel from Construction 3 will help your units survive friendly fire when using this tactic. Remember to get access to blood 4 forging by empowering a unit to blood 4 or by empowering a dwarven smith to blood 3.
Stage 4: Mass kill and Daemonic Assistance.
At this point you are close to your endgame as you are starting to reach the limits of your nation's magic abilities. You have a few tricks still up your sleeve though. You have the ability to cast Blood Rain (blood 7) with a Vanjarl assuming you have a blood booster. This will lower enemies morale letting you use Storm and False horror (Alteration 7) to rout armies rather easilly. Air random dwarves can cast rain of stones (Evocation 7) to mass murder armies, just make sure you don't have any unit you value unprotected with something solid like stoneskin or ironskin.
Storm with Wrathful skies (Evocation 7) and Thunder ward (Enchantment 5), Lightning Resistance (Alteration 5) or Thunder fend (Enchantment 8) are effective at killing armies that are not resistant to lightning. Mass Flight (Enchantment 7) and Earthquake (Evocation 5) are fantastic for dealing with armies that are not floating nor flying at little risk to your own army. Fog Warriors is also a good spell giving your entire army mistform at Alteration 7. With blood thorns from a Blood 4 forger (Blood 3 dwarf included) can boost up Vanjarls to summon Storm demons. These are useful flying raiders if you can equip the leader with a staff of storms to boost their stats. To get a leader for them you can have a Death random Dwarf forge a skull staff and summon a bane. Give that bane a pair of flying shoes and a staff of storms and you have a good leader for your storm demons. Dwarves empowered to 1 in Blood can take a blood thorn and summon Demon Knights as well as forge blood stones. Demon knights are heavy cavalry that cause fear and are great for adding an extra punch to your army. Blood stones boosts a mage in earth and gives them a temporary earth gem for battles. You likely won't be able to use all these options but keep each in mind and pick the ones best suited to dealing with your foes quickly as they will likely bring their own devastating set of spells soon after if not before.
Conclusion
If you want to play a nation of powerful air/earth mages with stealthy raiders, jaw dropping plays, and mass kill spell synergies, Vanheim might just be for you.