On my vacation, I managed to read one of the books I bought on the subject of vikings: Jonathan Clements’ A Brief History of the Vikings, which also presented a question on the cover: “The last pagans or the first modern Europeans?”. It didn’t actually answer the question, which leads me to believe it was just something added by the marketing to exploit the success of some other book with a similarly emotive taglines.
It didn’t really change how I view Vikings, but it did include a lot of interesting information. It did enforce my belief that I’m going in the right direction.
Earlier, I talked about how the colors would be represented in the set
White is the color of organization and community. So, our white vikings are the ones who went out and conquered nations. Historically, the vikings who went out and conquered large tracks of the Britain would have been white.
The leader of this group of vikings has already been mentioned earlier as well, when I talked about the subtheme of messing with the damage assignment order. Here she is, in her current version.
Signy Ulverdottir
Legendary Creature – Human Warrior 3/2, 1WW
First Strike
If there is no other card named Signy Ulverdottir on the battlefield, you always announce all damage assignment orders for all blocks.
Grandeur—-Discard another card named Signy Ulverdottir: Creatures you control get +1/+1 and gain vigilance until end of turn.
Yes, I’m bringing back Grandeur for a whole new cycle of legendary creatures. I’m not sure this is the power I want for this particular leader, but it should work for now. Its a bit problematic in the sense that you have to use it as a sorcery to get the full benefit, which leads to loss of value.
Another good Grandeur ability might be bringing in tokens. This queen of the vikings would definitely inspire loyalty and would be able to recruit, say 2/1 first striking white warrior tokens. On the other hand, on a good enough draw, the player would be able to have a free army on his fourth turn, which might be too much.
So, who is this person?
Signy is a hereditary leader of a yet unnamed land of vikings. Its the most organized of the lands and has in the past ruled over the other lands in the culture. Inheriting the lands wasn’t actually easy. She had plenty of competition and only a series of ruthless maneuvers and her tactical genius brought down her brothers and other usurpers. Since than, she has conquered lands previously thought of as impossible to invade by her people.
She’s pretty ruthless, but her father instilled in her the idea that she needs to rule the people, because she is a good leader and will bring prosperity and peace, as long as other submit to her. If building this nation takes slaughtering of innocent civilians, then so be it.
She’s also a fearsome opponent on the battlefield. She has accumulated plenty of kills over the years, but she chooses her fights meticulously, not risking herself or her army unnecessarily or for little award.
She’s getting on in years, but hasn’t thusfar been open to suitors (at least openly), nor would she want one, because she wants to be proactive in the matter. She doesn’t have an heir, which does bother her, because her nation might crumple without someone to take over after her.
Her people are loyal, her warriors are well-trained and experienced. There might be problems on the fringes of her domains, but she is ready and willing to take down any attempts at rebellion.
That should be a pretty good basis for one color.
Just a quick opinion: I for one mixed her for Saffi Eriksdotter. The names are not the same but resemble each other closely enough to be mixed. Would this cause a problem?
Well, this wouldn’t be a Viking set without at least one -dottir… Although, the names are pretty much working titles until I can get together something to produce names resembling Norse ones, but even then, I’ll use the -dottir and -son postfixes, because that’s just so easily identifiable as Norse.
It should be Ulversdottir with an s. :p
Well, yes, if it was a real language, but its only trying to approximate one.