[DrPraetorious]

Oh, no, someone could win!

There are plenty of workable strategies that do quite well against vanheim - I suggest trying a really archer-heavy position; or Abyssia or Jotunheim, both of which have sacred units that beat vanheimers like red-headed nordic stepchildren, glamour or no glamour (with an earth blessing and nature blessing, the vanheim units kill themselves faster than they kill Burning Ones with stabbing.)

You can put void eyes on thugs and send them in to dispel the illusions. You can cast big area of effect spells, against which the illusions provide no defense. Once you've done that, vanheim has mediocre magic (the dwarves are nice), and it has dudes, with axes! This is me, trembling in terror.

Now, occasionally you are going to get rushed and eliminated. You can reduce the viability of rush strategies by playing on larger maps. If you want to play a game without rush strategies - forbid the rush positions. I don't want to play in such games - sometimes you just lose. Them's the breaks. But in any case, if you're going to nerf Vanheim so it isn't viable as a rush position (and by viable, I mean you have a significant chance of taking your first opponent and eliminating him,) it might as well not even be in the game.