[Baalz]

I don't know that in practice they are so magically crippled as all that. Helhiem in particular has easy access to dwarven hammers, owl quils, and skull mentors and with their rapid expansion capabilities and broad path searching it's not unreasonable to expect to have several different indie mages available for recruiting to do the bulk of researching. They certainly don't lack for casting/forging power once the research is going. They may not be a research powerhouse but I certainly don't see them having no late game potential particularly as expansion->gold->mages->research so they can certainly compensate for a bit of cost ineffectiveness on their researchers.

As Velusion points out there is a difference between being rushed by vans and other rushes, it's the difference between being able to come up with a counterattack that has some chance of working (perhaps small, but possible) and feeling completely helpless because you can't think of anything that would even theoretically be realistic. To the people who keep saying vans aren't that bad, I hope I don't sound condescending, but have you actually gone up against a good player wielding vans? The people making these complaints are not newbies who roll over on a firm rush. Mammoths, Jaguar Warriors, and giants are *not* the same thing for the reasons I mention above - the strength of the vans is brutal but the really unballanced part is that the brutal strength is combined with unparalleled flexibility. They're better heavy cavalry than Ulm/Marignon/Man, better raiders than Pangea/Caelum, and better defenders than anybody else.