Part 4: Nation Overview: Fennoscandia

Fennoscandia



At first glance Fennoscandia looks like a cool troll nation but actually you don't get many trolls. Instead you get about 30 types of human with slightly different coloured shields.
The trolls are great - first you have the Tussar who is cap only and also limited to 3 per month but is an absolute house. I love these guys as they hit so hard, are very tough, and have built-in regeneration. If they were sacred they'd be incredible but sadly as is they're an expansion boost and don't seem that relevant otherwise. They hold buffs pretty nicely later on though.


The other troll troops that you can get are 3 per month from any forest. Only medium armour but they don't need a fort and if you can get a clutch of forests you can build pretty nice mid-game forces with these guys.


The other troops are all instantly forgettable humans. Even their sacreds are cap only and totally uninteresting. These guys just don't cut it in a mods game.


All the non sacreds are just nearly 10 gold for size 2 and roughly 10 in every stat. Some have sailing, some have bows, and some even have berserk 2 - those guys do at least hit pretty hard. They're like vanilla Chud Warriors but without the coolest part.


Now mages are where things start to get interesting! Trollfolk Shaman are a nice start and don't require a fort, just a forest. D1N1 with E/D/N as well as built-in regen 10 on 26 hit points make them decently able to make nuisances out of themselves. The D2 ones can skelespam of course, and the others can thug reasonably well with personal regen, the earth buffs, skeletal body etc. The N2 ones are potential howl casters. At 150 gold for 11 research they're decent value too.


Like about 50% of mod nations they get disease healers which is normally a very rare trait in vanilla. The Tietäjät are very nice cheap mages with N1W1 and E/N/W. These will be your main casters of foul vapours even if they are disappointingly human otherwise. Hitting enemy thugs with surprise frozen heart spam works the first time every time since nobody bothers to put cold resistance on their thugs. No spoilers, but I know I won't!


There's also a D1 magepriest for 80 gold and 7 RP which would be forgettable except that it can cast some of the national spells, has spellsinger, and is the best gold to research cost mage we have.


Getting into the pricier (but still not cap only) categories you have the Naejttie with W2D1 and 1.1xAWDN. These guys seem great to me since they're sacred spellsingers meaning the D2 ones can skelespam like nobody's business. The air ones seem like great thugs and the nature ones can also stink the place up with vapours. Since they're old and expensive I probably wouldn't recruit infinity of these but it's certainly nice to have a few around at all times. The previously mentioned disease healers also make old age much easier to deal with.


Your cap-only slow-to-recruit mages are suitably powerful with D2N2 and 2.1xAWDN. They're also sacred spellsingers but not even old so once I could afford it I would be recruiting them every turn I could. They're not even that pricey as mages go, you're going to see a lot of several hundred gold mages from other mods.

They can do all of the tricks previously mentioned but since they're holy 2 mages they also get access to Fenno's national holy spell Bless Ancestors which, like Divine Blessing, applies your bless to all your sacred units on the battlefield at once. It costs zero fatigue and is supposed to only affect undead units but, uh, actually just affects all sacreds and so is a strict upgrade to regular divine blessing.


Now you might ask, why would Fenno want to bless undead units when we haven't seen any? Well they get access to the vanilla spell Call Ancestor which summons shitty little ghosts. The trick to them is that they're sacred and you can actually summon quite a lot of them in battle. Later on they also get Wrath of the Ancestors where each D1 mage can summon twenty shitty ghosts for 100 (50 while singing) fatigue. This is at conjuration 7 but might be worth beelining for especially if your bless is something funny like death explosion or thunder weapons.


Another cool national spell is Summon Stallo at conjuration 4 which summons a Stallo, who is a bigger troll. Not actually that remarkable but it costs only 3 nature gems and requires a level 2 nature mage. You can easily crank out a lot of these guys who get a swallow attack and a 40 damage club. They seem pretty scary with some amount of human (or ghost) chaff to prevent them from taking too many hits.


Finally at conjuration 6 Fenno also get a rather nasty remote attack spell for only 5 death gems and a level 4 death caster you can send ethereal, chill aura, life drainers to attack an enemy commander that turn. They don't stick around but could be quite nasty if you weren't a clown with magic weapons and a big ol' boot.


Fennoscandia don't get any national items at all which is always the sign of a subpar mod nation. In short they have powerful mages with powerful path combinations but never get enough trolls. They can probably do pretty well with an all-mage strategy with a bless of poison resistance and reinvigoration using human troops only as needed. They're probably quite good in a vanilla context but compared to some of the other modded nations don't really hold up in my opinion. This early in the game my ultra-blessed giant clowns will be able to walk all over Fennoscandia so I'm not at all worried about applying pressure to them early.