Gloriously, we designers won (I played Odin and Paul was Loki I think -- Dave & Don were Odin and Thor, not necessarily ion that order). The reason I bothered to post this was because one of the major reasons behind my victory was that (I think) Don has not been playing the Norse much lately, so that he was unfamiliar with them. This slowed him considerably and also made it harder to build an appropriate anti-Sandy army. Thus, I was able to cut through him considerably faster than normal, and even Dave’s timely assistance to Don didn’t save the day. Don did run away and rebuild, but again, his unfamiliarity with the Norse hurt him again. So he wasn’t really able to rebuild properly
I found this pretty heartening, because it indicated that, unlike AoK, the strategies for the various cultures are already so different that it takes a bit of time to adapt. Which indicates, to me, that the final game will have a far wider variety of options than AoK; i.e., if you are playing Odin vs. Ra, your strategic options are different than if you are playing Odin vs. Zeus.