Jotunheim fractured into two nations in the transition to the Late Age. The Jotun Skratti along with most of the Jotuns joined with human witches and troops to form Utgard. The Jotun Gygjas broke from the Skratti, allied with the Vaettir (goblins), and formed the splinter nation of Vaettiheim.

Vattiheim has:

• A variety of size-1 Vaetti troops, who enable special tactics because of their size
• Size-2 wolf cavalry who expand well and can serve as flankers and raiders
• A very inexpensive cap-only sacred: the Rimvaetti, who like it cold – with cold power, ice protection, and a cold aura
• Extremely cheap (40g) foreignrec lab rats: Vaetti Hags are recruitable from any forest, where they can build half-price labs
• Cap-only access to some Jotuns, including non-slow-to-recruit Jotun Gygjas and two kinds of Jotun troops
• A wide variety of randoms on mages: 1100% (Vaetti Hag), 11111100% (Vaetti Gygja), and cap-only access to 11112100%
  100% (Jotun Gygja).
  • This gives them access to a lot of magic in communions, but no consistent high-path access, making their battlemagic scattered
  • They will eventually get 2, 2, 3, 3, and 3 access from Jotun Gygja randoms
• Middling access to blood, with 20% of out-of-cap mages having 1, and cap mages having a good chance at 2 and a 4% chance of 3
• Access to Illwinter, which unlocks the ability to summon Niefel Jarls using Winter's Call
  • Niefel Jarls provide minor air access, strong water access, and access to a thug chassis on a nation that otherwise lacks anything beefy

As the name implies, Vaettiheim's units are mostly Vaettir. These small goblins are size 1 and have forest survival, stealth, cold resistance, above-average MR, and inexpensive cost, but below-average strength and HP. They have a number of different options. Hirdvaetti have solid all-around stats, approaching human norms, and come with good armor and a shield. The Vaetti Berserker trades defense for offense and can crack most heavy armor found in Late Age.

Their cheap Vaetti Crossbowman is a capable ranged combatant.

Wolf Riders and particularly Wolf Brothers are great at expanding, but may have difficulty penetrating armor of player armies.

In the capital, they can recruit giants: Jotun Axeman and Jotun Hurler.

Their cap-only sacreds are the Rimvaettir, who are very cheap for strong sacreds. These are miniature Niefel Giants; they have cold auras and are markedly stronger in the cold. They behave quite differently to Niefel Giants because of their size; since auras stack, their stacked cold auras will quickly freeze anything not resistant to them. In ??scales>C3??, their enhanced stats and protection from Cold Power and Ice Protection make them able to go toe-to-toe with nearly anything.

Vaettiheim has the most extensive lineup of size 1 troops in the game, and much of their gameplay centers around the fact that they fit six to a square.

This gives higher attack density and overall force density than humans. They will likely stack sizeable harass penalties on their targets.

Because they are small, more units are affected per cast of AoE spells. Combined with Vaettiheim's ready access to AoE-1 buff spells like Mossbody, Quickness, Protection, Luck, and Body Ethereal, this makes Vaettiheim able to pointbuff large numbers of troops which can become quite powerful. A number of Vaettiheim tactics involve stacking pointbuffs on troops, using Guard Commander orders to keep them in place, then throwing them into combat.

However, their high density is a disadvantage when facing enemy area-of-effect attacks, such as Thunder Strike, Leech, and even the attacks from Fire Elementals.

The commanders you recruit with gold are mostly Vaetti mages and leaders, with a cap-only Jotun mage.

Vaettiheim notably lacks a gold-recruit commander with 80 leadership or more, which enables line formation. Because of this you will often make use of multiple smaller box formations to maximize frontage.

Sprite	Unit Name	Special Attributes	Comments
	Vaetti Jarl 50 11 1	Stealthy(40) Forest Survival resist cold(5) pillager(2)	These have 60 leadership and are a good default commander if you need to move slow goblins around.
	Vaetti Herse 50 8 1 + Forest Rec	Stealthy(40) Forest Survival snow-move resist cold(5) pillager(2) Mounted	These have only 40 leadership but move faster. Useful to move faster troops around.
	Vaetti Hag 40 2 2 Forest Rec only	1100% 5 Stealthy(40) Forest Survival resist cold(5) Old Age(106/100) female	Vaetti Hags are surprisingly useful, mostly due to the fact that they can be recruited in any forest with a (cheap) lab for only 40 gold. They are exceptionally efficient researchers, and all flavors are useful in battle. Nature ones cast Swarm, Web, and (if you don't have any N2's around) Protection; Water ones cast Frozen Heart; Astral ones can join communions; Blood ones can join sabbaths, blood hunt (with a Sanguine Dowsing Rod), and cast Leech; Death randoms are less useful but can put in good work casting Dust to Dust against enemy undead.
	Vaetti Gode 110 5 2 + Forest Rec	11 7 sacred Stealthy(40) Forest Survival resist cold(5) snow-move pillager(2) supply bonus(10) beastmaster(2) Mounted female Summon Allies (Wolfx2)	Herses and Jarls are more efficient leaders and Vaetti Gygjas are better mages, but these are fast, can bless small groups of Rimvaettir, and can cast Swarm if need be. They can summon two Wolf per turn, but generally, they have better things to do. (This is 1/5 of a gem worth of Wolves; this is not really worth it. Often you will want some for patrolling; just cast Pack of Wolves.)
	Vaetti Gygja 190 2 2	11111100% 13 sacred Stealthy(40) Forest Survival resist cold(5) supply bonus(10) Old Age(152/150) female	These are physically weak but are your most common battlemage. All the randoms are potentially useful. Blood and Astral randoms can join communions/sabbaths; Nature randoms can cast Wooden Warriors on a very large number of Vaettir at once; Water randoms can cast Quickness or wear a Water Bracelet and cast Falling Frost or Summon Water Elemental; Death randoms can cast Horde of Skeletons or Shadow Blast. All can also cast Mossbody. They only cost 5 to be Twiceborned into better chassis.
	Dimvaetti 100 6 1 Capital Only	Stealthy(80) Forest Survival resist cold(5) Assassin(2)	These are useful early game to expand, but are generally too fragile to make effective assassins against player armies. You will have some leftover after expansion that you can use, but generally, they aren't as useful since they compete with Jotun Gygjas for cap turns.
	Jotun Gygja 290 3 2 Capital Only	11112100% 100% 10% 15 sacred snow-move resist cold(15) shock vulnerability(5) supply bonus(10) Fortune Teller(10%) Old Age(330/300) death-curse forest survival female	Your best combat mage and ritual caster. These have a wide variety of randoms; they join communions and sabbaths (useful as slaves because of their HP pool), blood hunt, cast various rituals, site search, forge, and anything else you need. You will likely produce one per turn starting around turn 5 and never stop. They are not slow to recruit, so you will have more of these than many nations' cap-only mages.

Despite having below-average strength and HP, making 6 attacks per square makes up for it.

Sprite	Unit Name	Special Attributes	Comments
	Vaetti Archer 6 3 8 Forest Rec +	Stealthy(40) Forest Survival resist cold(5)	Very massable archers you can spit out of any forest. If you happen to encounter things without armor they will shoot it efficiently, but there's not much of that in the Late Age. They find a different niche as siege and patrol chaff since they are so cheap. Vaettiheim lacks the normal paths to buff shooting (fire, earth, air).
	Light Vaetti Infantry 7 4 9 Forest Rec +	Stealthy(40) Forest Survival resist cold(5)	Very lightly armored chaff available in any forest. They work well as cheap lance catchers. Spears are more defensive, able to Repel and ignore most repels, while Hatchets can inflict more damage.
	Light Vaetti Infantry 7 4 9 Forest Rec +
	Vaetti Spearman 7 8 9	Stealthy(40) Forest Survival resist cold(5)	Decent cheap lineholders. A decent mix of survivability (for a Size 1 unit) and cheap cost.
	Vaetti Crossbowman 7 8 9	Stealthy(40) Forest Survival resist cold(5)	Very cheap crossbows. You may lack good native buffing magic for them but this is made up for by how many you can make per turn. As with all your troops, they are stealthy.
	Hirdvaetti 10 11 17	Stealthy(40) Forest Survival resist cold(5) bodyguard(1)	Their Bodyguard ability is usually not that notable, but they have good armor, good morale, and good skills. They don't hit as hard as Berserkers but survive longer, particularly against arrow fire.
	Vaetti Berserker 12 8 23	Stealthy(40) Forest Survival resist cold(5) berserker(2)	These are incredibly killy troops, capable of dishing out six high-damage high-skill axe hits per square. They are rec point intensive, so you will likely want to take Order 3. They are somewhat fragile to arrows and very vulnerable to magic but will mince most things in melee. Even more than most of your troops, they take point buffs very well.
	Wolf Rider 15 4 18 Forest Rec +	Stealthy(40) Forest Survival snow-move resist cold(5) pillager(1) Mounted dying Shape(Wolf)	These can be recruited from any forest and make good supplements to early expansion parties and light raiders. Their expense and low protection, combined with low damage, meaning they are not very good against player armies.
	Wolf Brother 20 8 32	Stealthy(40) Forest Survival snow-move resist cold(5) pillager(1) Mounted dying Shape(Wolf)	Better stats and prot than Wolf Riders. They are remarkably effective expanders and can be flankers in battle, but are held back by their low damage against the heavy armor in the Late Age.
	Moose Riders 25 6 29	Stealthy(40) Forest Survival snow-move resist cold(5) dying Shape(Vaetti Crossbowman)	Their bow attacks are weak (no strength bonus), their MR is awful, and they are expensive. Yes, the crossbowman survives the death of the moose (and gets a better bow), but they're still awful. The best use case is hiding them in a corner as an HP sink to prevent an army HP rout. Pass.
	Jotun Axeman 30 39 17 Capital Only	snow-move resist cold(15) shock vulnerability(5)	Giant heavy infantry, with high prot and HP. If you need something that won't die to evocations, this is an option, and they can share tiles with Vaetti Berserkers. Makes early expansion more reliable if Production was taken.
	Jotun Hurler 30 11 17 Capital Only	snow-move resist cold(15) shock vulnerability(5) siege bonus(5)	Huge siege bonus makes these efficient at knocking down castle walls. Boulders are also effective at splattering high-defense or high-prot elites.
	Rimvaetti 24 13 36 Capital Only	Stealthy(40) Forest Survival resist cold(25) Chill Aura(3) Ice Protection(2) Cold Power(1)	One of the most efficient sacreds in the game for the gold cost, these guys are amazing in cold scales. Their overlapping cold auras will very rapidly freeze anything without cold resistance – and will slowly freeze things with CR5, including most of your other goblins. They have excellent stats in cold scales and trade well into almost anything but die quickly to AoE. For that reason, resistance blesses are good on them.

Vaettiheim's magic is somewhat awkward because their mages have a large path spread but little depth. Of particular note is the fact that their troops come six to the square. This makes them uniquely vulnerable to evocations – and uniquely placed to benefit from point buffs like Luck, Body Ethereal, Quickness, and Mossbody.

Vaetti Hags come in five flavors. From least to most useful:

• D1's are the least useful, but against enemies with undead they can cast Dust to Dust. Otherwise they are stuck with things like Animate Skeleton and Ghost Grip.
• W1's research and cast Frozen Heart, which will do quite a bit of damage to elites with no cold resistance.
• N1's cast Swarm, Web, and Protection
• S1's join communions and cast Luck and Body Ethereal on troops, and can be Magic Duelists if needed.
• B1's cast Leech and Summon Imps, and join sabbaths.

Your Vaetti Gygjas can do a number of things scattered across their paths, and it is often difficult to figure out the best use for them. They can make effective skellispam communions; ironically, the Jotun Gygjas make better communion slaves because of their greater endurance and regeneration and higher paths. All of them can cast Mossbody, which can be quite effective – but beware the poison hitting your own troops.

Jotun Gygjas are similar. All of them have blood and can thus join sabbaths; they have more randoms and have a chance to roll 3 in a path.

You will never have enough focused astral for big Soul Slay communions (compared to LA Ulm or Midgard), never have enough death for massive skellispam, and lack access to the more obvious troop buffing and blaster paths. Your mages will thus be pressed into duty doing random things as their randoms allow, and it can be a challenge to make your mage corps contribute in a coherent way. However, you have access to powerful communions capable of casting battlefield spells, skellispam communions, point buffs on your dense troops, Foul Vapors, astral offensive magic, Frozen Heart spam, and the like. You won't have an overwhelming amount of any of these things, so you will have to put together a hodgepodge of mages doing different things to support your troops.

Vaettiheim's national mages (without 10% randoms) cap out at 2 2 3 3 3 natively. With boosters up to Construction 6 and Conjuration 6, you can get to 5 3 6 4 6. This gives you only limited access to powerful tools – in particular, powerful army buffs in air and earth like Fog Warriors and Strength of Giants – but gives you surprisingly deep access in Nature through Armor of Twisting Thorns and Moonvine Bracelet from crosspath forging.

You have enough magic (barely) to cast Illwinter, although you will need Construction 6 for boosters. From there you can summon Niefel Jarls and Ice Devils. One in three Niefel Jarls get you A1 access; these can hold a Skull Staff and cast Wailing Winds and Wind of Death.

You have a few routes into other paths and higher Death access. (Base Death 4 is very useful since it lets you get to D5 and beyond for Wraith Lords, etc.)

• Transformation (useful with Twiceborn) can sometimes give you extra paths, but is not reliable.
• Spectral Mages can break you (barely) into Earth.
• If you are playing with Worthy Heroes, there is an 22 hero who can break you into these paths somewhat.
• At Blood 8 you can cast Bind Heliophagus; one of them comes with 4 and another comes with 4.
• If you make it all the way to Blood 9 you can Summon Demon Lords, who come with a variety of high paths.
• Nature lets you cast Faerie Court to make a Faery Queen, with 3 access.
• A pretender with air, fire, or earth is very helpful; they can forge Staff of Elemental Mastery, empower in blood and cast Bind Arch Devil (fire access), and – at high Conjuration – summon elemental royalty or the Dwarves of Four Directions.

Vaettiheim has very effective size1 troops. However, they are vulnerable to evocations; Falling Fires or even Falling Frost will make a mess of your troops. Thugs and SC's can add needed bulk to your forces – and give you big casters.

If you are doing Twiceborn / Transformation shenanigans, you may get some decent undead chassis that way. These can thug in a pinch with Soul Vortex and Invulnerability, but this is somewhat janky.

Thankfully, you have access to Niefel Jarls. The W4's are big water casters; the W3D3's make great SC's with Soul Vortex and Invulnerability; the W3D2A1's can Cloud Trapeze with an air hat (forged by your pretender) or can cast things like Wailing Winds. They are also your only Leadership 80 commanders who give you line formation.

You will need to cast Illwinter to summon these, which can piss off folks; as a stopgap, you can summon Ice Devils, who are somewhat similar but don't have as much magic.

Higher-end Blood summons also contribute. Heliophagi and (if you pretender has fire access) Arch Devils give you big flying casters in death, blood, and fire – casters that can also thug in a pinch.

If you have elemental access on your pretender, Conjuration 8 is a decent target, since it gets you Elemental Royalty, giving you massive access to the elemental paths you previously lacked.

Summon Glosos Conj 3 13 2 ( Glosox9). Trampling sacred poisonous stealthy boars with a heat aura. Trampling circumvents the high prot values on nations like Ulm, plus their heat aura helps expand into hot nations that believed they could counter with scales.

Sloth of Bears: Conj 3 8 2 ( Great Bearx10+). Large balls of HP; not that useful.

Brood of Garm: Conj 4 10 2 ( Jotun Wolfx5). These hit hard, but are fragile. They are stealthy, so can be worth mixing into raiding squads if you have a big bless. However, you may have better uses for nature gems.

Summon Dwarf of the Four Directions: Conj 8 62 43. Shared between the Jotun and Vanir nations. Summons one of the four dwarf smiths. You will need a pretender to cast this, but you get a strong 432200% caster (breaking you into two and maybe three paths you don't otherwise have) and forger for your troubles at the cost (or benefit) of some hurricanes ravaging the world. You're unlikely to summon all four, but having them all missing benefits only the Vanir line the most.

Seith Curse: Thaum 5 3 11. Inflict a Curse on a target and the caster. Situational but is way to better remotely deal with a thug by increasing its chances to pile up affliction especially while it's dealing with another player.

Illwinter: Blood 6 120 53. Cheap for a blood global. Cools the world down slowly but surely until everything is cold3. This also unlocks Winter's Call and is thus worth it. You may have to justify it to other players, since it does generate random raiding and unrest, and the cold scales may annoy folks. (LA Atlantis will love you, though.)

Winter's Call: Blood 6 86 32. ( Niefel Jarl). If Illwinter is up, you can recruit these supercombatants (321100%, stronger in the cold.) Niefel Jarls are an excellent complement to your little goblins. These cost upkeep, but not as much as EA Niefelheim's recruitable ones.

As a size 1 nation, casting Twiceborn on a Vaetti Gygja, since it only cost 5 to cast, how easy they die, and the Wight Hag chassis has decent survivability and thuggablity.

You are a nation that can summon Ice Devils and Vampire Lords

Awaken Sleeper is a great leader for a straightforward, non-stealthy army. The Sleeper is inspirational with 120Ld, Magic 80Ld, 40 Undead Ld, Gives out +3 morale, and line formations.

Without Skrattii, and how little HP Vaetti has, Soul Vortexing Lamia Queens with a Lamia Retinue makes great replacement Turbo communion batteries.

Water, Blood, Astral, Nature, and Death are the Ideal paths for making thug items, and blood, nature, and death produces late-game immortal thug chassis. (ex: Vine Shield, Frost Brand, Ring of Regeneration, Boots of Quickness, Blood Thorn).

There are some items so your Jotun Gygja can Raid. Robe of Shadows Grants limited stealth ane makes you Ethereal while Ring of Returning Brings you back to the cap when you take damage after unleashing your harassment spells.

This is probably the most difficult section to get consensus for. Describe how strong the nation is during expansion, the early, mid and late game, and what makes it strong/weak at each of those points. This should give readers an idea of where the weaknesses of a nation lie (if they have not been shown already) and when to take advantage of a nation's strengths.

Vaetti fights in large numbers of quality troops for their price, but you will suffer slightly more casualties. Like most nations, Vaettiheim lacks safe counters against heavy calve and suffers more from aoe attacks like Evocations and Tramplers. During your Firest wars, summoning the larger Jotun Wolfs and Glosos are useful to beat back player rushes.

Vaettiheim is an Elfing nation, Sneaking into enemy land before the war starts and then raiding land so your opponent won't have enough resources to stop you.

By Mid Game, Vaetti armies may start to lose effectiveness as board wipes start to be available at this point.

Your communions and Skelli-spam starts to be more important. Also, should you look for ways to add Flaming Arrows and Earth magic to your arsenal and other protection buffs to keep your troops relevant.

The late game is when big spells and immortal thugs come out. You do have the paths to summon and thug Demons and Vampires. This is also the best time to bring up Illwinter(save it when you try to end the game because it makes enemies) as it raids PD for you and allows you to summon your Neifel Jarl Super combatants.

List some example expansion strategies here. If a strong bless or pretender is required then leave the specifics for the pretender section.

Vaetti armies come from overwhelming indies with large numbers of decent troops. It can expand with units like Rimevaetti and recruit wolf riders from forests. You run into a problem providence. You can sneak through it and have Dimevaetti deal with it until you have a stronger force to take it.

if Production was taken instead of dumped, Jotun Axeman parties mixed with support Vaetti makes expansion more reliable.

List some example pretender builds. Try to use the following format to keep authorship and pretender design rationale clear.

LA Vaettiheim - Overview and Basic Strategy by Attica (2020)

National Overview LA Vaettiheim by RCK79 (2021)

LA Vaettiheim - National Overview by LucidTactics (2022)

Nations
Early Ages	Arcoscephale • Ermor • Ulm • Marverni • Sauromatia • T'ien Ch'i • Machaka • Mictlan • Abysia • Caelum • C'tis • Pangaea • Agartha • Tir na n'Og • Fomoria • Vanheim • Helheim • Niefelheim • Rus • Kailasa • Lanka • Yomi • Hinnom • Ur • Berytos • Xibalba • Mekone • Ubar • Atlantis • R'lyeh • Pelagia • Oceania • Therodos
Middle Ages	Arcoscephale • Ermor • Sceleria • Pythium • Man • Eriu • Ulm • Marignon • Mictlan • T'ien Ch'i • Machaka • Agartha • Abysia • Caelum • C'tis • Pangaea • Asphodel • Vanheim • Jotunheim • Vanarus • Bandar Log • Shinuyama • Ashdod • Uruk • Nazca • Xibalba • Phlegra • Phaeacia • Ind • Na'ba • Atlantis • R'lyeh • Pelagia • Oceania • Ys
Late Ages	Arcoscephale • Pythium • Lemuria • Man • Ulm • Marignon • Mictlan • T'ien Ch'i • Jomon • Agartha • Abysia • Caelum • C'tis • Pangaea • Midgård • Utgård • Bogarus • Patala • Gath • Ragha • Xibalba • Phlegra • Vaettiheim • Atlantis • R'lyeh • Erytheia