Or you can do Longdeads
Or if you have Conjuration high enough and a high enough Death caster, Ghosts. Ghosts mixed in with giants is just mean.
As for Winter Wolves vs clockworks: I prefer Winter Wolves because it's fairly easy to get them with Jotunheim and it can be extremely difficult to get enough earth to pump out earth summons. 3W is simple to get - your pretender has it (in the walkthrough, anyway) and Skrattis start with 2W and 1?, so you can either forge a Water Bracelet or get lucky. Also at 3W in the conjuration school is Sea King's Court, which is a very good summon; you get a Sea King, who is a 3W mage who generates his own water gems for battle casting, and 15 Sea Trolls. One Sea King's Court is enough to take over most independant water provinces, and don't forget the Sea King can cast Contact Sea Troll for another troll for 1 water gem (or contact another Court for another 45 gems) to refill his stock.
Other good summons... Pale Riders is nice, 20 Longdead Horse for 30 gems... Summon Ghosts is very nice, 1 ghost per point in death for less than 10 gems... any of the reanimation spells cast by Jotunheim will return about 1/4 or 1/5 Longdead/Souless Jotuns, which are pretty potent. If you can get a 3N Gygja you can forge a Treelord's Staff (well, have to forge a Thistle Mace first) and cast Summon Ivy King, then give the staff to him and get 5 Moss Ogres per turn for 1 nature gem. If you get Angerboda the Great Hag as a hero, forge her a Starshine Skullcap and she can make Rings of Sorcery and Rings of Wizardry, plus summon the powerful Astral summons.
Another good way to kill hordes of weak units as a nation with decent Death magic is to create a few Behemoths - they're mindless undead elephants, size 6 tramplers that WON'T rout (which is a rarity for tramplers... usually they take a couple hits then rout and trample your own troops). If you can get 5 or so Behemoths to your front line, they'll quite happily crush your opponent's satyrs and minotaurs to goo. They even have somewhat decent magic resist and good hp, so they're hard to Banish.