Dominions 6 - MA Nidavangr Strategy at a Glance

A new series where I do my best to give my first impressions on how I would recommend playing some of the nations of Dominion 6. A lot has changed and I hope my perspective as a Dominions 5 veteran helps you get started!
Do note I have not actually played a full multiplayer game as many of these as the game has only come out recently. I may redo some of these videos with more practical experience and information in the future.
If you have other ideas or suggestions on playing the nation, please write them in the comments below for others to see and discuss!
Shoutout to Sturm for creating the viewable summons at pretender screen mod
00:00 Summary
00:27 Units
01:30 Commanders
03:10 Summons
03:47 Spell Recommendations
05:42 Pretender Design (Bless)
06:54 EarlyGame
08:31 MidGame
08:51 LateGame
09:40 Outro
Here are my written notes if that helps too
Nidavangr
Summary: A nation of frosted shapeshifting barbarians. Boasting deadly animalistic warriors, effective mages, and wildly powerful sacreds.
Somehow the most straight forward, and also the most complicated nation to play yet.
Unit Summary
No space is wasted on the roster, everything has a purpose.
Siege strength cubs
Archers for cowards
Wolf Clan reavers for stealth raids
Bear clan lineholders
Nidylva blenders
Nidbathed to be a broken sacred
-- Worth noting their soul scar ability is candles in province/2 rounded up. So 7 == 4 scars
Commander Summary
Shapeshifting mages
Straight forward Bear and Wolf Clan mages
Inexpensive apprentice researcher
Wildly powerful and useful, but very old, crow clan mage
-- you'll need disease resistance, twiceborn or unaging here.
Everything can be recruited outside of forts except the Nidhere, Nidajarl, and the crow clan mage.
Nidhere exists for one purpose - win tournaments.
Mages are weak priests/leaders, need out of fort commanders. Morale is so high it doesn't matter.
Summons Summary
Draugr add fear aura to your army and are worth using, if you have gems left after twiceborning your crow clan mages.
15 Bears for 6 gems is okay.
Spell Recommendations
Barkskin+
Mossbody
Quickness+
Gift of Formlessness+
Mistform+
Arrowfend+
Twiceborn
Strength of Gaia
Strength of Giants
Wind of Death
Shadow Blast
Pretender Design
Scales or Sacred
Earth 2 is nice to have
Scales build revolves around using the Nidylva and the Bear Clan warriors, supporting Nidbaths.
-- Also using the Wolf Clan to raid.
Sacred focus can come online at any time and buffs the Nidbaths to the nines.
-- I highly recommend not expanding with Nidbaths on either build, and thus dont necessarily recommend awake blesses for them.
-- They can take imprisoned blesses and be fine. The longer the game goes, the better they get.
Righteous Wrath triggers on each scar loss. Combine with blood surge for a lot of power in 8 bless points.
Gameplay
(Early)
Prophetize your SCOUT and use him to preach in the capital to get to 7 dominion candles ASAP. Try not to recruit nidbathed before that.
Expand with the Nidylva if you can afford the scales. Otherwise either wolf or bear clan do okay.
Rush alteration 5, no questions. Mossbody+barkskin+gift of formlessness is absurdly powerful.
If mixing forts and non-forted infrastructure, plan far ahead. 2 Forts touching the same province will prevent recruitment by taking away all the resources.
Feel free to eat someone if you have many Nidylva and quickness.
Avoid recruiting Crow Clan in year 1. After you have some mage production outside of the capital, never stop recruitign crow clan.
Use a Nidhere with items at any point to win Arena everytime. I recommend a great sword of sharpness and whatever armor you have available.
(Midgame)
Two options -- either boom with researchers out of every province, or kill a neighbor.
Both involve spamming unforted temple/labs AND recruiting your armies from those provinces.
Where they split is whether you sit back and research, or you mobilize your ENTIRE mage corps to cast the holy trinity spells of the nation.
-- In multiple armies hopefully.
Raid with Nidherse + Wolf Clan Reavers.
(Late)
Crow Clan are some of the most powerful mages in the game. Leverage their high A/S/D paths to cast powerful spells.
Nidbathed provide exponential value the more buffs that are put on them, preverse them for major battles if you can.
-- Be careful of using a large stack of them. You have a higher chance of winning battles, but losign them all can be fatal.
You can try to break into blood, I recommend brute forcing it with scouts rather than using your capital only mages.

[@CantusTropus]

Fun fact, according to the manual these guys are based on the villains of one of the Illwinter devs' Pathfinder campaign 😅. Though there were seven clans in that, rather than 3.

[@basileusbasil4041]

classic Illwinter

[@ShiniesAreCool]

For real, these guys just crawled into Dominions from a black metal album.

[@chuckwood3426]

I figured they were a continuation of EA UIm conan the barbarian mixed with Helheim to explain where both of those cultures went.

[@CantusTropus]

Also, one very important asset is that, unlike in nearly every other nation, Nidavangr shape-shifters do NOT have reduced magical abilities when in animal shape.

[@ZanGames]

Heck yeah! Damn time constraints. I liked having the bear mages go frontline/tank in bear form after buffs went out. Wolf mages still hang back and heal tho, their wolf form is kinda weak. A little personal regen goes a long way after you cast temper flesh/barkskin and yourpal cast mossbody on you

[@Milorada7375]

But they don't have full slots like Bouda so they will drop boosting items like boots or thistle wand when they shift, which sucks

[@qube3634]

@@Milorada7375 I thought those items went into a personal storage space now

[@Milorada7375]

@@qube3634 you're right, that was a change in Dom 6 that I didn't know at the time I made the comment

[@desiretanaka5417]

It's important to note that luck applies for every single scar soul, increasing the number of actual lives of each nidbathed by a lot. I tried a build with the luck bless, which was very efficient, but all my guys had various afflictions, so I added recuperation and it increased even more their survivability. Given the cost of the bless, and given you want high dominion for the scar souls, you usually end up with a dormant idol of sorcery and mediocre to bad scales ... but it's super fun and efficient ;)

[@ZanGames]

Yes! Luck and Recuperation will be talked about in depth if I get around to making a video just on the Nidbathed. Luck, due to what you just mentioned and how absurd that makes them. Also that it means you want to make a warpath to the nearest glamour throne if there is one... Recuperation goes deep into the Nidbathed / Crow Clan mage. They can do silly things...like easily cast spells that afflict both parties. But if you have recuperation, what do you care? Say spells like bone grinding, solar brilliance, or skeletal legion... Those two are what made me go from "Wow this nation is so easy and straight forward to oh my god what do I even do"

[@fabienherry6690]

@@ZanGames Also Undying can be kind of crazy adding up to 50 "hp" to every sacred

[@fishbones1397]

Righteous wrath was practically designed for the nidbatheds. Also congrats on 1k!

[@ZanGames]

My first thought was on some of the more swarmy sacreds like beast bats / eagle warriors. But the fact that its on every scar? Oh buddy. also, thank you! Super hyped!

[@chrislangbein6312]

@@ZanGamesif you think that’s crazy, luck works on every scar as well. Makes them ridiculously tanky but rack up wounds.

[@Madhattersinjeans]

congrats on 1k subs, these quick run downs are great. I'd also be happy with longer form versions if that's an option in future.

[@ZanGames]

Thank you! It feels surreal. Who would've thought I'd get here, not me for sure. Once I start getting practical experience on the nations I can try and sneak into more detailed reviews. Problem is good dominions games take MONTHS. Even then, is one game really a good indicator of a successful strategy? Its a toughie. I'll never know if I won because I played better, or the opponents just played worse...

[@Seacat84]

Me sitting here with half a dozen tabs of youtube videos queued up ready to go, here comes Zan about to jump the queue.

[@ZanGames]

Heck yeah!

[@kylecruz6346]

I love this series. But the thing I hate about it is that it makes me want to watch you play a campaign of them immediately. Thanks for the video.

[@ZanGames]

I think if I slow down to two videos a week I can find some time to work on campaigns. Maybe. Been working on these last minute just to keep pace and I am actually having some fun in single player right now, something that did not happen in Dominions 5!

[@Tremain]

Hello, can you do a video on Nazca? this are so informative for a beginner, and Nazca looks very complicated at a glance, but i am Peruvian so i have to play Nazca.

[@jimanyon8143]

Nazca is one the few Nations that should come with a "beginners no touch" sign. It is VERY weak in the early game, relying on very good lategame scaling to compensate. To play it you need both knowledge, which takes a lot of time to explain, and intuition, which can not be quezed throught a single video.

[@ZanGames]

Buenos Dias from Miami! I can give Nazca a shot. I'm with @jimanyon8143 on this on in that its not beginner friendly, but I can take the challenge! I was given the same advice and still haven't touched them to this day despite loving early mesoamerican/southamerican history. Played Mictlan a bunch to compensate. I'll do Machaka/Patala first since they are low hanging fruits for me (last dom5 game played / first dom6 game played). That'll give me time to research Nazca and cook up some fun blesses for Mictlan.

[@Tremain]

@@ZanGames Awesome, thanks! no hurry of course. Yeah, as soon as i looked at Nazca i knew they weren't beginner friendly at all, hence why i need a guide lol

[@DemonsthenesDominions]

Fortitude is probably a pretty compelling incarnate bless for this nation, since it synergizes with Mossbody so well, and Gift of Formlessness is a bit hard to paint widely given the gem cost.

[@ZanGames]

I thought of your Mictlan barkskin bless when I designed the quickness bless showed here. Along the lines of "yes, your mages can cast the spell. But now they can cast other spells instead of that one." Quickness is just the one I ended up showing over fortitude, cause its flashier :P Barkskin was another option. Then you just avoid bear mages altogether until later on.

[@DemonsthenesDominions]

@@ZanGamesyeah and in fact you probably actually do still make W2N1 mages early; they just cast Mossbody for you instead; one's unlikely to have enough to paint it on everyone. Or maybe you quicken whatever other summons/troops you brought with your sacreds so the sacreds don't race in alone :).

[@malibelizec2543]

What unit to recruit for line holding infantry?

[@ZanGames]

@@malibelizec2543 line holding? None. All your units are aggressive blenders. Outside of raiding its your choice of bear warriors vs nidlyva outside of cap, nidbathed in cap.

[@FlawdaFootball]

Everyone is excited about the sacred, but I'm most interested in almost your entire mage corps being recruit in any province + cheaper temples. In my SP game I didn't build a fort for awhile. Lab + temple is 900, 100 cheaper than a fort, and can be done in 1 turn. You can pump out 3.5 mages before the other faction can finish their first mage from their new fort. I took the immobile idol that gives magic +1 and went Magic 3. I had so much research And because almost all your units are foreign recruit this lets you build forts in strategic choke points instead of just the biggest gold provinces.

[@ZanGames]

I feel like half the people I talk to about how excited I am for foreign recruitment dismiss it. Personally I love the strategy you just mentioned. Let others build forts for you, Nidavangr does not sow.

[@ProAnarky]

another great overview, each one's getting me more and more excited to play. I think I have 3 solo games going at this point and I just wanna try every faction you've covered haha

[@ZanGames]

Hopefully you'll have a lot more in the works before I run out of steam! Let me know how the games go! The practical experience will definitely help future viewers!

[@slobodanvesela4149]

It's an excellent idea this kind of video, it's short and insightfull

[@ZanGames]

Glad you liked it! Thank you. Will keep making more!

[@Akathornorth]

thank you for doing these 10 minutes videos

[@ZanGames]

Glad you like them!

[@Milorada7375]

Good video I also had some success in my test game using frost drakes with my troops because they all have cold res and you have 2W mage everywhere

[@ZanGames]

Shoot, I should have mentioned this! Drakes are super strong and overlooked. Youre right. Potentially worth using the larger area of effect cold res buff too on the units in front of the drakes. Just in case... Ice drakes especially are deadly as heck cause its armor negating damage if I remember correctly. Either youve got cold res or you just straight up die.

[@tarsis6123]

Congrats on 1k!

[@ZanGames]

Thank you so much 😀

[@Rashagar]

Damn, I'd kind of dismissed this nation when I heard about it as "just another Nordic one" but with the shapeshifting shamans it actually kind of sounds right up my alley.

[@ZanGames]

You and are alike. I really did the same thing until it came time to actually review them. Now I am super hype about them. I love that their early game is straight forward: EVERYONE gets quickness/mossbody/barkskin and go. But then anything related to the Nidbath / Crow Clan mage is like woah wait a second. I GOT OPTIONS HERE.

[@sammydavis5628]

I'm super disappointed that the cub warriors don't get promoted if they manage to kill something. The lore says they should!

[@ZanGames]

It would be something like reverse gladiators right. So instead of leaving on kill, they just promote to a bear warrior.

[@Juniperbuggg]

An exp shape would be really fitting. Once they get to x experience points they change form to one of the other troop types

[@40wink]

Thanks for this video! NIdavangr look pretty awesome despite their kinda limited chassis choice. What mod (if any) do you use to see a nations summons?

[@ZanGames]

Hi there! Thanks for watching! It should be called "National Summaries" or something similar on the steam workshop. Simple, but fantastic mod!

[@wslayerem6996]

keep it up, good videos

[@ZanGames]

Glad you like them!

[@abal11]

Please do each nation this is super helpful!!

[@ZanGames]

Its a tall order, but I will try! Going to have to pace myself to maybe 2 / week? They take some work...

[@abal11]

@@ZanGames yeah my biggest thing when starting was like oh I wonder what nations are good at what like there is so much detail it’s hard to tell what nations are good or bad at but yeah super helpful!!

[@clusterfox6143]

Should I name my test game The Mid Avengers or NidavAnger Management?

[@ZanGames]

Always choose the pun

[@Lomaster3]

How did you get the national summons tab in the nation overview (in the special sites area) Mine only shows Nidakettil

[@ZanGames]

Hey there! Its a workshop mod national summaries by Sturm. The non-national section I do myself by hand.

[@Logidrake13]

Could you plz explain me why did you choose these scales? I still can't understand why you chose cold 3 Order and growth 2. Is Turmoil that hard to handle? do we really need the growth? what purpose serve these scales? does Cold Resistant makes units imune to cold climate injuries? (not even sure this is a thing) so you cold cold 3 so ennemies in our dominion start decay? I'm so lost XD

[@Logidrake13]

Additionnally, Ibelieve you say to use Nidylvas to expand "if you have the skill to do so" WDYM?

[@ZanGames]

The reason I don't like turmoil for the nation is because the Nidbathed are 46 recruitment points each. So by going heavy turmoil you limit how many you can recruit from your capital. For example, going turmoil 3 makes it so you can make 5 Nidbathed per turn at most. Growth is usually just a really strong scale, at least coming from dominions 5. People crunched the numbers and it tended to outpace order and production on a pure gold perspective. Cold3 because the nation prefers cold2 and i wanted more design points. Being fully aware the winters suck. Thankfully this nation has cold resistance on most of their units, and winter move. So the cold doesn't affect you too much movement wise, but it will slow down invaders. Shame it wont hurt them... Onto the Nidylva question, I feel like they ended up being the best expanders. They cost a lot more recruitment points than your other options, for example the bear warrior only costing 7 recruitment points! So I could see someone say "well I don't care about few nidbathed, or nidylvas, i'd rather use mass bear warriors!" Then that person goes turmoil 3 and production 2 and is probably okay. Overall these scales are just my preference due to the above. Definitely not the only way to play the nation however, and I always want to encourage everyone to experiment with different builds and find the right one for them.

[@milomindbend]

So there's a wind of death and a cloud of death at evo 7, which did you mean? Looking at wind of death it affects the entire battlefield so seems to also kill our infantry so I'm guessing cloud of death? Thanks for the guide, it's great!

[@ZanGames]

Hey there! I mixed them up in my notes / spell charts too! I likely didn't fix it everywhere... Specifically here I do mean casting WIND OF DEATH is a national strength. It does also hit your own infantry so that is a situation to avoid. The traditional way of using the spell is by having a mage, in this case the Crow Clan Seithberender, use magic phase movement onto an enemy army. They will need a magic boosting item, either to boost astral to teleport(A1S2D3 random), or to boost death to cast the spell(A2S2D2 random). Its also highly recommended if not necessary to use a ring of returning. This is so we don't have to predict movement with the magic phase movement, and the mage "safely" returns home after. The mage will then cast wind of death at least once. This "basic" cast can be made safer with other items like armor, or even spells like mistform(reducing incoming damage to 1 minimizes chance of your mages being 1 hit killed). Adding items that increase magic penetration also increases how deadly the spell is. I hope that helps explain how to use wind of death safely. Its very strong and oppressive! Probably a good idea to make a video explaining this all... Hmmm...

[@GrayderFox]

This one's dense. Will probably have to watch again. Only thing I didn't get was why dormant bless = KILL YOUR NEIGHBOR vs. imprisoned bless = you can vibe. (This nation sounds cool, but man, it's got a lot going on, huh.)

[@ZanGames]

It really is, and I did my damned best to keep it simple. But it all breaks down the moment the capital only crap comes into play and becomes super complex. So my personal reasoning for that dormant / imprisoned split is based on what kind of bless you want to take. Ideally a dormant bless provides more immediate power than an imprisoned one (quickness vs magic weapons). So your power curve is a bit earlier and you use that to rush someone down since this nation is super strong early. Keep in mind I don't have significant pvp experience with them just yet cause blitzes are played very different and multiplayer games take months. But, if I was in the turn 15ish situation with them I would play it these two different ways. With both types of pretenders I would have a lot of out of fort infrastructure (temple+lab is 900g for 1 CP, 2CP Fort + Temple + Lab is 2500g for 2CP) With a dormant bless, the moment I research Alt4 I would be sending the wolf / bear clan mages into an army and fighting as soon as they get recruited to push my advantage. With an imprisoned bless I would be more comfortable keeping all these mages I am recruiting and researching other types of spell to cast. Potentially leveraging the Crow Clan mages earlier, or working on using gems to cast strength of gaia with bear clan and use more powerful nature spells like howl. This nation can go a ton of different ways, and this is only my personal opinions on it. The nation is very well designed, so hopefully its a springboard for others to come up with really cool ideas on how to play them. Hope that helped a bit, I feel like I got into too much detail here...

[@witekmarcinow4030]

Huh interesting take, I guess I have underestimated the sacred troops here thinking them obsolete in the face of the foreign recruit berserkers. It does seem like they might do some work in the end but I still feel uneasy anchoring a strategy on a cap only human dude with a great sword, even when he's got 4 lives.

[@ZanGames]

If that dude with 4-6 lives is alone, yeah its hot garbage and dies to indies. But think of how hard it would be to kill someone with 4-6 lives, a great sword, a strong bless, who has been hit with mossbody, mistform, barkskin, quickness and so on. That is where the value of that unit is, they start fairly low value but grow exponentially stronger with each buff they get.

[@Sassy_Witch]

great, Now Im going to have to play that nation for another 20 hours

[@ZanGames]

Let us know how it goes!

[@dp101]

Maybe this is an awful idea, but it might be amusing at least: Death explosion + fire resistance bless, to turn every nidbathed into a multi-hit bomb. You'd probably need ~3 levels of fire res, which is 6 points on its own, but would give you effectively 20 protection (after AP) vs 10 damage explosion with a further -30%, so you'd be taking effectively no damage from your own explosions. Could even drop to 2 fire res blessings and spam fire res spells. Probably gimmicky but it might be fun. As-is I've been running the luck + recoup + righteous wrath package (regretting it a little with my scales being not great, but so long as you absorb the cost with sloth rather than turmoil it seems ok, you get fewer resources but recruitment points seems like the biggest issue) and its been fun! And the Nidylvas have been a great secondary force, strength + sharpness probably makes them absurd, but only so many buffs to go around (and earth magic isn't as plentiful as you'd like).

[@ZanGames]

Definitely not an awful idea and something I tested that day. For whatever reason death explosion only triggers on the final death, not the soul scar death. You've got the right ideas on everything though! Sounds like you are going to have a fun Nidavangr game soon!

[@dp101]

@@ZanGames Shame that that doesn't work ;-;. But yeah I did have a good game! Spammed apprentices which gave me enough level 1 astral things to allow 2 fully-blessed stacks via communion, and just kinda chopped everything to pieces. The faction feels honestly a bit overtuned at the moment, do things generally get nerfed much in this game or is it more of a gloriously-imbalanced mess where the (reasonably patchable, i.e. not wild interactions or massive exploits) balance issues are left in?

[@dp101]

correction: this series rather than this game, obviously this particular one hasn't been out long enough lol.

[@nightcrow1452]

What happens if u mixed this up with luck. Do they now need to be hit like 20 times if they got low health and 4 scars. 5 deaths and chance to die which is 4. So 4*5 =20

[@ZanGames]

Unfortunately...yes. If they get luck on them it will count for each soul scar. I think the Nidbathed are still unexplored, but I am very concerned over how strong they will become as the game progresses and players have access to more buffs to paint on them.

[@lambdalandis]

Hoping Pyrene is next!

[@ZanGames]

I'll be moving to some older nations for a bit, maybe 3-4. I'll circle back to Pyrene then. I haven't taken a glance at MA Pyrene and EA Pyrene is...odd. Which one of those two would you like to see first?

[@lambdalandis]

MA is the one I’d like to see first, but EA seems like a very interesting nation to unpack

[@NemisCassander]

@@ZanGames MA Pyrene looks like an awesome Blood nation. I'd love to see your analysis of it.

[@RareCondition]

The Black Metal Album Cover nation.

[@Isvoor]

Nidhere is your cheapest priest. You have kind of the same problem as Kailasa in that it's hard to bless all your sacreds. At least until you get crow clan communioning up.

[@ZanGames]

The Kailasa problem is real. Your mage/priests also aren't good leaders so you have to rely on the foreign recruit guys for it. Its not too awful cause everything has so much morale the -1 wont matter often. I think i had this problem in my notes but cut it out to stay under 10minutes 😅

[@dp101]

Note that the 65g apprentices have a 20% chance of having astral, so if you've got a million outposts spamming them then you'll probably get enough for a communion easier than you'd think.

[@willowdelosrios4326]

Undying is honestly so efficient with these sacreds. Because the undying actually comes into effect each time it dies. So effectively, undying x5, which would normally, IIRC, give you an effective +10 hit points, combos with the scars. So if your Nidbathed each have 4 scars, each Nidbathed gets an effective +40 HP. Combine this with righteous wrath, and you quickly end up with a deceptively scary unit, one which requires a massive amount of damage to kill, and which, thanks to its scar ability, already has what is essentially a limited form of luck. Honestly, saying they have an effective +40 hit points is actually slightly misleading, because unlike other high hit points things, the damage won’t spill over. If, say, an EA Agarthan Seal Guard or Oracle takes a gift of heaven to the face, they take all that damage at once, and then die. But as far as my Single Player testing could find, when the Nidbathed takes that gift from heaven to the face, they take 100+ damage, and are killed instantly; at which point they don’t actually die, and go back to full hit points as if that gift of heaven never happened. Unlike things with lots of hit points, it’s not enough to obliterate them with a single casting of high damage spells like Gifts from Heaven, Thunder Strike, or Pillar of Fire. The amount of spells, gems, and troops it takes to kill them is wildly disproportionate to their actual cost and stats. In fact, I think the best option when dealing with massed Nidbathed is to just try to tie them up with chaff long enough to kill their commanders and mages; trying to actually win a battle of attrition with them is a fools errand, where the winning move is to not take the bait, because for the amount of gold they spent on Nidbathed, it may easily cost three or four times that much to actually kill them. Unless you are one of the hellbless nations, like Mictlan, Pangea, Ashdod, MA Ermor, or whatever, it will almost never be cost effective to try to kill them.

[@ZanGames]

I do really love undying as a bless too, I used to take it on Mictlan for the jaguar warriors all the time! And they only get 2x a boost there. Resistances are nice and all, but sometimes a fat sack of hp doesn't care about your fireball and just trucks on. Great idea!

[@puppyguard2689]

Do EA Pyrene next! They have some disgusting thug chassis available. I did an awake Fear + Stygian skin demilich once, worked wonders, though my scales were heat 2 misfortunate 2 😂

[@ZanGames]

I am really dragging my feet on EA Pyrene. They feel so...odd! I *think* the gist of the nation is using those forest recruit...yetis as thugs with Jentilak forged gear. Then they use the giant cyclopes as the frontline? Its odd, because they start underground! And they cyclopes cant see down there. Then the Sorgina exist as badasses. I'll get to it soonish. Maybe 3rd or 4th in line?

[@CantusTropus]

Also, wasn't Seith Magic supposed to be women-only? Maybe the Gygjas were just lying to preserve their own power...

[@ZanGames]

I wouldn't put it past them...

[@Benjaminy2k]

They're femboy shamans

[@willowdelosrios4326]

I can actually answer this. Dominions Seith Magic is based on ancient norse witchcraft called seiðr (often anglicized to seith, seidr, or seid). A woman who practices seiðr is called either a völva (seer, and no, it doesn’t have any relation to the English word vulva, I though the same thing when I first saw the word), or a seið-kona (‘magic-woman’ or witch). A male practitioner is called seiðmaðr. seiðr was a type of art that was most commonly practiced by women, and it was considered a feminine art. While there was no legal or metaphysical prohibition against men using it, it’s status as a feminine art meant that men who used it were considered unmanly, weak, shameful, and possibly gay (this ties into the old Norse concept of Ergi, which is an insult that basically implies that a man is weak, cowardly, effeminate, or homosexual*). As you can imagine, very few men were willing to practice an art with that kind of stigma, although they did exist. Interestingly, if you check the Dominions 5 or 6 mod inspector, you can find an unused commander called Ergi, with you can actually wish for if you wanted to waste 100 pearls. This commander has inspirational -1, Air 1, and a 100% random of earth, death, nature, and blood. Looking at the lore of the Nidvangr, you’ll notice that the Nidvangr did not learn their magic from the gygja. The crow clan learned it directly from their god. Given that the stricture against men learning seith in Jotunheim is a socio-cultural one rather than a metaphysical or legal one, it seems plausible that the reason for the Nidvangr men practicing Seith without shame is probably simply a cultural difference. *technically, Ergi doesn’t merely imply homosexuality, but specifically, that you were the bottom/one being penetrated. Because much like Ancient Rome, homosexuality (among men, at least, gay women mostly didn’t get talked about in ancient writing that much, and even then not exactly very nicely, because sexism) was only shameful if you were the one ‘acting like a woman’ by allowing yourself to be penetrated. If you were the top, as long as you had kids at some point, it was socially acceptable. We literally have a surviving letter from a Roman elite to his son, essentially saying the equivalent of “dammit son, please stop fucking male prostitutes so much, it’s fine in moderation, we all do it, but there is such a thing as too much of a good thing, and your mom is worried about you.”

[@Logidrake13]

Good video but I have a question, you talk about winds of Death as a good spell but how do you protect your own army from this?

[@ZanGames]

I wouldn't recommend using it in army versus army scenarios. But if you must, cast antimagic-like spells beforehand to bump up the magic resistance of your units. I should have explained a bit better. The most common way of using the spell is to spot the enemy army on the map, and then have your Crow Mage use teleport or cloud trapeze to move onto it. This almost always guarantees the battle. The mage then casts Winds of Death and Returning. Hopefully they have the magic paths to do that combo and not take a nap inbetween... Alternatively, they can equip a ring of returning. Then the script would be personal mistform, to cap incoming damage to 1, and Winds of Death. This way whenever your opponent hits the Crow Clan mage it will automatically send him home safely (most of the time). Sometimes they got lost in space time but thats okay probably. Worth a video on its own likely. I have some examples of this in my later Caelum dominions 5 videos where I did the tactic often versus Pangaea.

[@willowdelosrios4326]

This isn’t something you use in a battle between armies, the equivalent of say, air support or crew served weapons. Winds of Death falls into the category of spells that is basically a nuke. The goal isn’t normally to use it when your army is in the field, the use is to teleport in and drop the spell on them without them being able to stop you. A crow mage costs what, 450 gold? For 450 gold, a handful of gems, and possibly a ring of returning, you can potentially kill doomstacks worth thousands of gold, plus gems, summons, and gear. As for how you protect your own armies from it, the best way is honestly to play a nation with long lived, or just straight up ageless, units (doubly so for nations of undead, like Ermor, because Winds of Death does basically nothing to their own troops. Failing that, MR will help you resist the Winds of Death, and not bunching your armies into massive doomstacks if at all possible, and if you have any mind-blasters set to fire immediately, you can potentially paralyze a winds of death caster before they can cast it. This requires a bit of luck to pull off, and requires large numbers of mind blasters, and that the caster in question doesn’t have extremely high MR.

[@Logidrake13]

Thx for the answer !@@ZanGames

[@ronaldo0grande]

:)

[@yugonostalgia8961]

THREE CHEERS FOR CHILD SOLDIERS!!!

[@diggles27]

You nerds are distracting Zan from BannerLord cRPG! In the words of Anakin Skywalker "I HATE YOU"