[Baalz]

No arguments that they are a bit trickier to play than most nations. A newbie can pick up Arco and be stomping around with elephants and doing a reasonable job pretty quickly. A slightly more experience guy can figure out to take a W/F bless and put up some impressive numbers with Vanheim. Ulm doesn't have a quick and easy strength, and it's also got some fairly obvious weaknesses which require subtlety to compensate for. I don't think I'd classify myself as a hall of fame player, but I do think most players tend to miss the more subtle strengths of nations. If you just try and march out with your strongest Ulmish troops like you would with elephants or dual blessed Vans you're gonna get horribly spanked - no argument. Same for Atlantis. Same for Eriu. Same for Marverni. Same for several more nations. Successfully playing these nations requires a different type of gameplay and it's not nearly as obvious. That would be my guess as to why these nations generally do pretty poorly though I don't personally feel like they're underpowered.