[MaxWilson]

One other comment about Helheim: if you don't want to burn death gems on skull mentors, there's really nothing stopping you from taking Magic and researching with indy mages. Generally indy mage research is pretty contemptible, but you can produce 4 or 5 sacred indy shamans per turn without much trouble, which IIRC is +240 RP per year in Magic-3 for very little cost (22 gold per RP initially, 0.733333333 gold per RP ongoing).

Vanir infantry are also a lot more fun once they've been buffed with Strength of Giants/Legions of Steel/Weapons of Sharpness. It's more of a pain now to get Svartalfs in the right places to cast these, but you can still do it.

Don't forget that Hangadrottir thugs benefit disproportionately from Bracers of Defense (w/ E9 blessing they thicken to Prot 6, w/ Legions of Steel they thicken to Prot 9, cumulative with other sources of Prot), although some people view that as a bug.

-Max

-Max