[Baalz]

Tifone makes the first of my points, the gygjas are PD squishers - body ethereal, personal luck, personal regeneration, etc. kitted with boots of the messenger, some armor, frost brand, vine shield...something like that tweaked for what you expect to encounter. Not just for cutting off enemy retreats, but they basically can be used as if they're golems to stomp all over the lightly held back lands or counter raiders while your heavier hitters take the front line. This is an immense strategic advantage which is a large leg up from how Niefelheim is usually played. S2 gygjas are drastically rarer than S1, and they greatly benefit from the crystal coins as well (will of the fates, enslave mind, gateway, etc).

The next is that there's not *that* much difference between a Jarl with an E4 S4 bless and one with an E9 N4. An E4 will give you enough reinvig to fight 90% of the fights you could with the E9/E4. If you're talking without equipment you're talking about fighting in a cold environment with no enemy mages, and nothing too extremely tough. You're not suddenly having to shelve the Jarls because they have a weaker bless, I didn't really talk about them much because I figured they were already very well known but they're a very nice compliment to the cold immune skratti & ghosts and there's not many fights 2 reinvig won't carry you through. Yes, you're giving up a little of the strength concentration in the Jarls, my thesis is this is more than made up by your other gains.

As I pointed out earlier, I think the opportunity cost of going with an imprisoned cyclops is larger than QM presented it. Likewise the opportunity cost of the sleeping druid needs to be considered next to its benefits. You lose 2 points of dominion - not huge but that's a noticeable drop if you plan on making a dominion push one of your primary strategies, and likewise the early dominion spread from being awake goes a long way towards putting your neighbors on the defensive in the dominion pushing war. You're sleeping which is obviously better than being imprisoned, but also obviously not as fast as being awake for all the things you want your pretender to do. The thing to me is, there comes a point where you can't afford to have your pretender out site searching much, you want him forging stuff, summoning stuff, and laying buffs your nationals can't. I find, very roughly, that starting awake about doubles the time my pretender can just research or site search vs being asleep. The impact this makes (specifically in this case to your astral and earth income) is significant. There is no other reasonable way to get an earth income. For astral income you can either count on being pretty lucky and landing a double astral random gygja early (and still settle for a meager S2 site search), or plan on cranking out a lot of gygjas and thus *not* cranking out a bunch of skratti's initially (opportunity cost). Not cranking out the skrattis means you're going to be light on the B3 ones, and your blood economy is going to be slower to get off the floor. Regardless your astral and earth income is going to be much lighter than if a E4/S4/D5 is site searching from turn 2. Finally, the lich is an immortal air drop army killer who doesn't need any equipment, while the druid will likely never see combat even to lay down buffs.

All this to get tougher Jarls, who are immensely tough anyway. I think it's a REAL mistake to have the mindset that the jarls are the REAL strength of Niefelheim and everything else is just a stopgap until you use nothing but jarls. Everything is always a balancing act of opportunity costs. Focusing on the jarls gains you a benefit, but focusing on the gygjas and skratti as I outline here gains you several different ones. What's the benefit of having teleporting gygja thugs and 5 castles all pumping out SCs inside of year 2 with your cold dominion pushed further and a master lich ready to drop every turn in a kamikaze attack? Is it better than 4 extra armor on your jarls and a touch of regen? I think so, but of course nobody is arguing that the "classical" way to play Niefelheim has no teeth, and I'm certainly never going to claim that there's only one good way to play a nation.