Ever try slavers? It has some sweet benefits if you go for high materials. 

Thats a neat combo, lets you make your henchmen into powerful spellcasters.  Are you playing with no armor?  Just curious as your nation has three abilities and that is usually how I play that combo.  Wanderlust helps as the Athican Leather provides a bit more armor, and the quest provide gear for henchmen.  

I'm trying a Trog race with Gilden faction abilities.  Just to make Juggernauts with the Big hammer and Golem shield.  I think the hammer will give them a 84 attack and the shield will help protect them against ranged attacks which is their main weakness.  The game hasn't gone well though, I am stuck in a corner and Tarth is hammering me.  And my main strategy is a Jug with Golem gear which is super late game strategy I haven't gotten to yet.

I just click the standard factions, and when I get certainly annoyed at the standard faction's sovereigns (because most of them are rubbish), I make my own.
I change settings sometimes, currently I am running

Expert.
3 enemies on a medium map.
normal amount of monsters
dense random events/magic/resources/quests
scarce heroes, wildlands
Random map type.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

Suggestion:

- Make a sovereign with Urxen blood (or is it Umber?)

- Give him bandit lord trait (+1 p)

- Use no points for magic

- Give him the staring armor for the arm wrists (+1 p)

- Give him the most expensive bow (+1p)

- Give him the +3 attack ability (+1 p)

- Give him the + 1 accuracy and + someting else (is it spell resistance?) per level (+1 p)

For the rest of the points choose anything that can make him as good a fighter as possible, or perhaps just nobility or wealthy. A good idea can be to choose both wealthy and nobility and cruel (+1 p, +1 p and -1 p).

Then go and have fun with your flexibel fighting machine. Bandits can both be scouts and support troops, they have throwing knives and rusty swords. The bow can also be placed on the first champion u hire of course, making your sovereign the bulldozer, and the others pure support. You'll also have the money for buying some health potions at once the game starts, and too have some leftovers to buy horses as soon as possible.

Also remember the Urxen bonus with just one more unit added. 5 unit armies and you get 2+ attack.

Now you are like the barbarians, or the pure might faction from the old Heroes of Might and Magic.....

Have fun.

They did? Intresting.

But I thought the bonus was when there are 5 or more units in the army, not in the unit itself?

The Flesh Bound Tome is pretty weak right now, so Magnar may not be good on higher difficulty. I would make a custom faction with slaver and enchanters for the magic books and extra essence. Then make sure you start with Earth I and natural leader, or Adventurer in .984. 

The fun way to do it is make massive slave armies with one mage per army to cast buff spells. The scrying pool and enchanted hammers will make training slaves easier. Since they don't level very well, just choose all Conclaves and go after the largest possible army.

Resoln with their death demons is a special treat to test.

So am I.  I might have to give them another look, but they don't seem all that special to me.

There would be a million dragons...

Need to nerf that in my mod!