[thejeff]

Well, I bow to your awesomeness. Though you'll note that I did mention skinshifters.
I'll concede that the javelin troops have some use. I've done roughly the same, though I used some mages and thugs as well. But neither of us are new to the game.

Where I'm going with it, is that recruiting most of Niefelheim's troops is a losing strategy, and it's not obvious to a new player that it's a losing strategy. Other than Neifel Giants and Skinshifters, expensive high-resource giant troops will die to the hordes of chaff the AI likes to throw around. And it's not obvious why, since they look tough.

The advice given was "Try Niefelheim, they've got good armies and mages. You'll win easy." Not, "Use mostly Skinshifters, or Niefels if you took an E9Nx bless." Of course, the most detailed advice also talked about using Skratti to kill SCs, which isn't really useful to a newbie playing SP.

Hardcore MP training as in "here's a good way to force a new player to use MP style tactics", not as in a final test to prove you're ready, which I agree Kailasa or BL would be great for. Maybe hardcore was the wrong word.
It was the idea that the lousy PD was an advantage, that sparked that idea, but the whole nation points in that direction. Small groups of elite troops, recruitable thugs/SCs, basic troops become useless quickly, etc.