History is written by the victor! And so most AARs detail the author's road to victory. But maybe there is as much, if not more, to learn from reading the annals of those who lost. What fatal decisions led to their eventual demise? What could have been done differently?

I hope to give an honest account of a game that I failed. As people come to lavish every detail of my failure I will incorporate any useful feedback I receive into this AAR. Happy reading.

I had wanted to try out Vanarus for a while. I hadn't played a lot of human nations previously and the combination of a light touch of elves, chud berserkers and human mages seemed interesting to me.

Vanarus belongs to the northern group of nations. All units except the elven Vanabog have cold resistance (5) and most units have snow move. The regular troops have prot values around 11-13 and javelins to chug at people. A cheap shortbow archer can also be recruited. The nation features no recruitable cavalry whatsoever so mobility is an issue.

In line with the northern theme the nation features two hardhitting dual-wielding berserker units: The 15g Vanarusian Berserker and the 35g Chud Hirdman. The Chud Hirdman is a significant upgrade with +5 hp, +4 Prot, +2 attack… but it is it worth more than twice the cost? They also have the glasscannon shapeshiting Chud Skinshifter.

Finally they have Oath-Bound, a 16 Prot elven shieldbearer with decent stats, glamour, stealth and sacred, all for the price of 35g.

The mundane commander lineup features a scout, 60 leadership herse, 80 leadership jarl, a 10 leadership priest and the 80 leadership H1 Chud Jarl. Notably neither priest nor Jarl are stealthy so cannot lead stealthy parties of Oath-Bound.

The mage lineup is wide but shallow. The anyfort Vanarusian Sage has lots of randoms. There is a potential to random 3 but most of the time you end up with 1 or 2 and some other 1-level paths. A fair few sages will have 1 for some blood hunting and blood communions. Other mages have the 11 crosspath for Fire Skulls, and some have 11 for Corpse Constructs.

The nation also features two forest-recruit mages: The Vyedma and the Vyedun, named similarly to keep the player ever confused. The difference between them is miniscule but significant: Vyedmas are natural Mossbody casters with 1/4 being Foul Vapors capable. Vyeduns trade the W path for chance of 2 and (more importantly) 2 for Sulphur Haze and Summon Fire Elemental.

Finally the cap-only Vanabog adds thug potential, magic phase capability and guaranteed 2 with a chance for 3. The 2212 can cast Wailing Winds later on with a Skull Staff which is huge. They are also stealthy priests so they can potentially lead stealthy groups of Oath-Bound. Potentially.

Of note is that all of your non-cap mages are very good researchers - and none of them are sacred. All of the mages have a lot of randoms, so you need to recruit a lot to get the magic diversity you want. Thus, you get a lot of mages out the gate with little infrastructure but you pay for that with high upkeep and lots of randoms that you might not have a good use for.

Finally, and most importantly, Vanarus non-cap mages peak at 2, 3, 1, 1 !, 2, 1 and 1 with many mages being stuck with no 2-path. The nation screams magic boosters, many of which it can create natively… at Construction 6. Thus for a majority of the early to mid game your magic is limited to the paths available. Also not having access to a single 2 natively means that you pay a premium for using E magic. Every gem counts.

The end effect is that Vanarus can eat gems like no other nation. Your wide but shallow magic diversity comes with a cost later on as you need gems and boosters to use all the magic your research unlocks.

When I joined the game I had a few goals in mind:

• I wanted to practice being more aggressive in the early game. My goal was to be in a war around turn 14, using my Vyedma to pointbuff with Alteration 3 magic.
• I did not want to do a lot of diplomacy, favoring loose understandings above NAPs. I would try to go for 1v1s preferably.
• I wanted a decent bless and not only rely on scales troops.

Going into the game I wanted to use the Oath-Bound to carry my early game. I thought (and still think) that it's a very solid unit. 35g for a 14 hp, 16 Prot sacred with good stats and glamour is a bargain in my opinion. I also wanted to practice being more aggressive early. So I decided early that I wanted to build a bless around the Oath-bound. After extensive debate with some of the mentors in my mentee channel on Immersion I settled on this god:

God picture

In hindsight I should have realized what the Oath-Bound are - really high-value blockers - and built around that. I should have picked up Fire Resistance, Magic Weapons and maybe even more Defense. Johnny's excellent guide features a sample pretender for Vanarus that, given my choice of first war target, would have been much better for this game.

Picture of Johnny's god

This was my starting position: Picture of starting position

Expansion went really smoothly using mainly Oath-Bound and Chud Jarls with Chud Hirdman, Vanarusian Berserkers and Chud Skinshifters recruited occasionally to bolster the line. From expansion testing I found that around 10-12 dudes in a line prevented most commander snipes.

Despite some rivers that just would not freeze and a bit of backtracking because of low-connection provinces in the south by turn 12 I had 21 provinces.

Despite the delays in getting up forts, I still felt very satisfied about my early game. Getting 21 provinces by turn 12 in a multiplayer game is above expectations, and I had secured three forests to act as mage recruitment centers.

As my scouts gave me more information of the world I began to get a picture of who my neighbors were. My coastal position meant that I was faced with three choices:

My scouting suggested that Pythium had had a rough expansion phase and was significantly smaller than me. Asphodel had not done spectacularly either, but on the other hand the prospect of taking control of his population-depleted lands was not an attractive prospect. In the end I decided to attack Na'Ba. My reasoning was three-fold:

• Na'Ba just gets more and more cancerous with time. With excellent high-path mages, good magic diversity, decent summons and the potential for Shaytans in the late game I felt it would be better to deal with Na'Ba early.
• I had fought the player before and knew I would be in for a challenge. It just seemed more fun.
• The Thrones placement in the game meant that any contender would have to go to the belt of land north of Na'Ba where Ashdod resides. I could approach that land either from the north through Pythium or west through Na'Ba.

With that in mind I reached out to Asphodel and Pythium and declared my intention of not attacking them at this stage. When Na'Ba reached out to settle borders and asked for a NAP I answered ambiguously. The stage was set for a war with Na'Ba……. What a mistake!

So let's have a look at my opponent nation. Na'Ba is one of the more powerful nations in MA with some amazing tricks up its sleeve once it gets its research online. I have played it two times before using a build similar to Baalz' Na'Ba guide but adapted to vanilla with the help of Txoumin. Let us have a quick look at what I think are Na'Ba's strengths and weaknesses: