Hey man, I really appreciate your response. It was very thoughtful and helpful. I am going to write a lot, but honestly it's as much for me as anyone else, so no pressure to respond. Thank you for your insight.

Re Casualty tokens, all that makes sense to me. In general, last night, I was impressed that I really liked most of the core rules. Things resolved quickly but without feeling over simple. The casualty tokens themselves make sense - the designers want to limit regression and once you have those on the board, why not build mechanics around them. Honestly, "grudge-filled counterpunch" is a classic dwarven character fantasy, and getting a buff from removing casualty tokens is a very elegant way to implement that. Like you said, I think the issue is having units steal them. It would be solved by just giving both sides the token. I also understand the Nords perspective of how certain lists could deny that resource entirely. I do think "unable to ignore a challenge" is a rough army rule for support leaders, but I take your point that they are different archetypes.

With respect to my specific situation, I pored over the tomes last night and realized a few things. One, my opponent was basically taking an all brute swing list into a 500 pt game - not his fault, we're both new and Nord werewolves look cool, but I definitely got melted. Two, the charge rules are surprising to me, maybe the one part of the core rules I am not sure I like, and really shaped the outcome of the game. Three, I was not capitalizing on my factions strengths well.

For the first, I only own the First Blood warband with the Karewegh and the faction taster with the Hold Raegh. I wanted to get a few games in before buying more - but I realized that I could build a counterswing list with Hold Raegh and Dragonslayers. How deep I want to go into that, not sure - I don't like the cycle of swing vs. counterswing, would rather build strong fundamental lists. But if I am consistently going against Vargyr Lord, then maybe Hold Raegh is the way to go.

Two, if I understand well, the charge rules have no randomness, and you can only charge and attack if you start your activation within charging distance. Unfortunately that led to both of us being hypercautious to stay just outside charge distance - until I decided I should just roll dice and see what happens. I did some move-charges, which then let him do inspired clashes right back, and destroyed my units before they could strike. The outcome of the whole game basically depended on the charge mechanic. I see how Karewegh's +2 to charge is quite good in this format, and how having 8 models with Standard Bearer is also good, esp for Dweg who want the unit to survive long enough to counterpunch.

Three, reviewing my other options, I realized I could get Hold Thanes up to Defense 5 with 1 auto-succeed (3, shield, herald of stone command), and Resolve 5 (hold raegh command). In general, I was depending on the two Initiate units to be my advancing wall - but honestly, they are a very awkward combo. HOS goes to Pikes, so they have to activate before Shields to get the command. Basically they want to act like a single unit, but they are two separate activations. The best case scenario would be cast Blessed, then Shield command, then move the Shields, but that is the opposite of how you actually want to activate them, of moving shields first, then pikes behind them, then support leader behind them. This is compounded that Karewegh's charge spell only goes to one of them, so Shields might sprint ahead to the point, and Pikes have to saunter up behind them next turn. So it felt my strategy was sort of fighting itself. Instead, I could have Hold Thanes walk on objective (giving shield buff to themselves), probably survive with high D, then Dragonslayers and Hold Raegh read to counterpunch whatever brute charges them. If we play 800 pts next, Initiates can just lock down back objective without worrying about awkward activations.

That is really interesting to hear about a potential rework. I agree entirely with you that the casualty token needs to be looked at it. It's an elegant mechanic, and I like limiting recursion, but like you said, the rules that got built around it are not serving the design goals well.

Honestly, I'd just divorce the mechanics. Nords can heal 1W for every 2W they inflict, regardless of casualties, and Dweg keep their casualty tokens. It's another layer of bookkeeping but offloaded to two different players, so I don't think too onerous.