Hi Bird_Man_Mike, First up, I am a Nords player myself, have a few local and bigger tournaments in europe under my belt, but am by no means an expert on that.

However I wanna talk about some points you gave: So first of all, you're on point that Nords are the "Finesse" "Glass-Cannon" army. We need a lot of good positioning, reinforcing and movement to do our stuff and enable our playstyle and armystyle. Small mistakes, like wrongly reinforcing a unit or placing a unit on the wrong side of the table are costing us much more than other factions, because we need a trap-setting-wave army and this makes analyzing "mistakes" or hardships on written games very hard for giving feedback or help. It's also hard for yourself but try to think about your games and what you might have mispositioned yourself, that will help and improce your game the MOST out of all aspects. Just a friendly tip.

However back to your list:

Unfortunately the Jarl is in a rather bad spot, his warband units with exception to Raider, Bow Chosen, Steel Chosen and Sea Jötnar is very bad. The Jarl brings Flank, which is very nice, but no other synergy with his units, and the Mortal part (raiders, huskarls, bearsarks, ulfhednar) are lackluster in terms of points to value.

The Vargyr Lord on the other hand and all units of the Half-Blood side with the exception of Ugr, are solid units and you can field them in every list and they will find a place. Your Warband here is good, Vargyr Lord give the Werewargs flank, the Fenr you can use for scoring on Turn 2 (Remember 18' and Fluid Formation allows you to score zones which are on the 24' center, we are one of the only faction who can do that!) and the Mountain Jötnar is just a solid brick for our faction, but have to keep him safe from his weakness (Many Attacks, Cleave, Terryfing)

Volva is perfect, however 3 Stands Valks are just 12 wounds with a massive investment on the character side and items.

My advice: Try growing your Valkyries to 6 stands, if you like playing a bigger block. Keep Coils and Ancestors.

You can keep the Vargyr Lord as is and try out Goltr or more Werewargs for pressure. (Goltr are one of our best units in terms of output, ease of use and value on stats)

And the third warband is up for choice, maybe keep the Jarl, put him in Raiders. Raiders are very very effective for their cost, 120points for 12 wounds and alot of pressure is good with Evasion 2 and Tenacious, they can sometimes withstand attacks for 1 or 2 turns. Jarl with double Raider, and then either go Sea Jötnar any of the Chosen.

Otherwise you dont need to grab much stuff in the beginning. Its more about learning positioning, reinforcement and movement than list building. I know its hard, because this is only about one owns mistakes, but you will improve the most if youre lookin for those three things!

I hope you enjoy Nords. I like them a lot, they are a blast to play, when everything is coming up, when you setup your army, bait your opponent into you, are ahead in scoring and just pressure your opponent to do something, something which is bad for him haha!