This is a nation of dragons living in cold lands. Blue Dragons, atuned to the frost and unlike their cousins, with a deadly freezing breath.

The nation in itself is easy to grasp as it has really a small number of commanders and troops.

Starting with the troops, there are the Dragenheim Hunters, the Archers and the Warriors, as well as some human serfs.

What makes them strong is that these Size 3 units all have 2 attacks with rather decent damage (an attack from 17 to 19 dmg, and a bite attack for 18 or 19 dmg). They all have a decent armor (14 body armor, and 9 to 20 head armor) and some good HP (22 to 24). Their map move is correct (14) and they all have mountain survival (proved useful several times) and what makes them really better than normal troops are the native elemental resistances (FR 6, CR 10, PR 6).

When it comes to combat stats (att/def), the warriors are clearly better (12 att, 13 def) whereas the hunters and archers are below average (11 and 9). But what really makes the difference is that the warriors have a shield and a long weapon, and in all the tests I made that increased their survivability by a lot compared to the hunters.

Also, the hunters/archers are 30 gold each when the warriors are only 35 gold. So, when I built armies, I focused almost only on the warriors.

They also have cap only sacreds that are monsters. And as such are super expensive (180 gold each) … They are size 4 units with 42 HP and 20 prot, but, sadly, they don’t have the elemental resistances of their smaller brothers (apart from a CR 15). However, when it comes to firepower, they outclass anyone : 3 high damage melee attacks + 1 armor negating breath attack !

Just look : first attack is a magic spear that deals 24 dmg, second a bite for 22 dmg and third a tail sweep for only 15, but affecting the whole square ! The breath attack deals 7 AN cold damage, range 6, lingering 1 turn, and as much as 5 ammo. Enough to deal severe damage to anyone without cold resistance.

And that’s it for the troops (well, there are the human serfs, some human naked archers not worth of any more details).

About the commanders, their scout is also a sacred assassin with a net and a spear. 105 gold apiece is a bit expensive, but may be it could be good if you want to play assassin.

The Seithmathr is the cheap researcher : W1 + 1 random (S/D/N/B), meaning 9 RP for only 85 gold. Their random astral can also make them communion slaves, and their random blood can also be used with that in mind, or as blood hunters.

The Chieftain is a bad researcher and is good mostly for commanding troops (60 leardership, there’s nothing better in the dragenheim army). However, he has a random F path, the only way to access F for Dragenheim.

Then comes the Shaman, a sacred mage A1/W1 with 11 RP and a random (A/D/N/B), allowing a potential A2.

Finally, before the cap only ones, the Sea raider. A1/W1 with a random (A/W/S/D), opening a potential A2 or W2. However he has sailing 50 for size 3 troops. A small bonus that proved quite useful in some cases.

Now, the cap only mages, that are the core of the nation : the Broodmaster and the Bluewing.

Both of them are already very good thug/SC chassis. Sacred, 52 HP, 3 attacks + 1 breath attack, fear 5, flying, 13 natural protection … and native W3 mages and H2 priests. For the broodmaster there’s also a native B1+N1, when the bluewing has A1 + a S/D/N/B random. They also have a nice humanoid chassis that leave space for every kind of magical items.

However, here comes the very interesting feature of dragenheim. At Ench 5, there’s a ritual “Awaken Dragon Blood”. W5 and only 16W gems. Only a Bluewing or a Broodmaster can cast it … but when he does it, he transforms himself into a Blue Dragon. A big one, like the pretender chassis.

And there you enter in dreamland … 125 HP, 18 natural prot, 18 MR, W4 mage, and all the things the humanoid form could do, but better : 3 melee attacks and 1 breath attack that has a longer range and affects more squares and does even more AN damage. And of course they are sacreds. Also they can shapeshift into a human form where they get back their initial magic path but with +1W. Can be useful to do some site searching or do some tricks and shennanigans. Last but not least, they fly for 30 map move.

Also, compared to the pretender chassis there are a few differences : they have the Defense Organizer (2) trait, meaning they increase the PD by 2 each turn they spend in a province ! Very good for raids as every raided province will have a free 2 PD. They also have the Tax collector trait, meaning a raid deep in ennemy lines will still collect the spoils.

Finally, both a bonus and potential problem : they have Heretic 5. This means that every turn they spend in a province they kill 1 full candle of dominion, either yours or enemy. So if you put them in defense of your territory they’ll kill your own dominion … but if they attack in enemy dominion, this is a nice ability to reduce it.

So that’s it about Dragenheim … they also have other national spells, death ones that allow to summon some other kind of big dragons. However, those are not sacreds and the spell require a high D level with some crosspath that are difficult to reach (D4F2 or D4N2 or D4W2). In believe that the only reliable way to have them is with a pretender, or to summon a Kokythiad with a random D bluewing (I never tried it in this game).