Vanheim - help wanted.

[Borg]

Ironhawk said: go up to B5 on your pretender and shoot immediately for Soul Contracts (Const) only later devling into Blood research. Soul Contracts effectively allow you to parallelize the summoning of Devils given only a single blood mage since you can hand them out to Scouts and whatnot. And of course dont forget the Dwarven Hammers if you are playing the theme that gets those 3E mages.

Thàt needs a little explanation , I'm afraid (coming from someone who hasn't played Blood before

The way I read it, a mage can make 1 (ONE) contract to get a devil every "season". Does that mean "every turn" ?
Can that same mage sign more than 1 contract ?
What does this sentence mean : "Soul Contracts effectively allow you to parallelize the summoning of Devils given only a single blood mage since you can hand them out to Scouts and whatnot." It sounds like you can make somebody else (a scout in this case) sign the contract that your Mage sacrificed the blood slaves for.

Thanks for all the help so far

[magnate]

That's right. The Soul Contract is an item, so when you put it on a scout, that's when "you can make somebody else (a scout in this case) sign the contract that your Mage sacrificed the blood slaves for". You need dwarven hammers to make soul contracts pay for themselves faster. Or just shoot for B5 and Horde From Hell.

CC

[shovah]

soul contract gives you 1 devil per turn and you should only have 1 per mage/commander. and yes a mage can sign more than one as when he makes it you can put it on anyone you like

[Alneyan]

Note that a game season lasts for three turns (Early Summer, Summer, Late Summer), but all instances of "every season" actually mean "every turn".

[Nerfix]

Did somebody allready say that the Contracts should be given to cheap stealthy commanders?


Or at least that seems to be a popular strategy.

[shovah]

thing is if said sneaky commander enters enemy teritory and cant command devils one devil will attack that province very turn

[Endoperez]

The sneakiness is not for the sneak itself, but for the protection it gives. Contracts Horror Mark the wielder, but e.g. Scouts that just Hide cannot be targeted by Horrors. This removes an important balancing factor from the equation.

[Ironhawk]

Borg said:

Thàt needs a little explanation , I'm afraid (coming from someone who hasn't played Blood before

Hehhehe, no problem. I think everythings been pretty much explained so I'll just recap. Soul Contract is just an item like any other and is not automatically assigned to the creating mage (as the description may imply) so it will just appear in your magic item list. Once you put that Contract into the hands of an (un)willing commander, 1 devil will be automatically summoned every turn. In this way a single strong blood mage (your pretender in this case) can supply a legion of cheap bloodless commanders with Contracts resulting in an ever-increasing rate of Devil summoning.

And as was previously stated: Scouts are the preferred holder of Contracts because they are so hard for your enemies to find/kill while Hiding. Horror attacks will definitely still occur on them but in my experience not nearly fast enough to make up for the benefit of having a horde of devil summoners.

[Borg]

I've played (started up) about four games now with Vanheim (up to turn 15 or so) and I must say their Blood Magic ability has got me confused.

I really don't see the "synergy" with their Air Magic ability.
After reading through all the Blood Spells in the manual, I noticed very little usefull Battlefield Spells.
On top of that, almost ALL Blood spells have incredible fatigue-numbers.
Lvl-1 blood spells nearly all give 100 fatigue and are very limited in what they can do (single figure or 1 area at best)
Since your mages are only B1 (B2 at best but very expensive) I don't see how Blood Magic can be very effective for them.
Should I just ignore Blood Magic at the start of the game and start using it no sooner than mid to late game.
It seems very unproductive to put research points in it in the early game.

It seems to me that giving the E3? Dwarf more spell casting options is a much better early game strategy. Simply send a priest along to help Bless the sacred troops, get some air shield and then shoot some lightning bolts at the enemy.

Really looking for some helpful suggestions here, more specifically on your research strategy (which paths, up to which level, to get which spells ... etc)

[Turin]

yeah don´t bother with blood until later.

good early game research levels are evocation 4 for bladewind/lightning bolt/thunder strike, and conjuration 3 for call of the winds/summon earth power.
That´s enough to easily win early game skirmishes and call of the winds lets you siege castles for a very cheap gem investment.

Later go for wrathful skies and cloudtrapeze.