[HoneyBadger]

By the way, if you don't want to worry too much about magic for the first several turns of the game, create a pretender with high nature bless-it's a good idea for Niefel anyway, and then just set it on enchantment until you get Gift of Health. Casting that early in the game will help you deal with afflictions-which can be devastating to a giant army-and grant extra hit points to your already buff units. It also eases the effect of aging on my Gygjas. That's one of the reasons I use Niefel Jarls, because they make great researchers, on top of being some of the best fighting units in the game.

Currently I'm using a Cyclops with -3 in all scales (I don't have to worry about cold, and for a relatively easy time, I set money, resources, and supply to +300, which nixes out most of the disadvantages of bad scales, and grants me a little bonus to magic resistance, also important to Niefel Jarls. Curse is the bane of the Niefel Jarl, it's worse than a horror-mark, since one of my stronger Niefel Jarls, guarded by three skinshifters, took out the Devourer of Heroes quite easily.) My cyclops has 10 water, 9 earth, 9 nature, and 4 astral, with a dominion of 5.

The thing about Niefelheim is that it takes patience to win. It's easy to make a good start with them, but if you overextend yourself badly, you're doomed. Slow and steady is the way to go, building up your nation into a force which eventually become overwhelming.