I suggest you mention the Age 1 Mystic Clan Upgrade and Dwarf Chief Monster Upgrade as very strong cards for this strategy.
The Age 1 Mystic upgrade makes your Mystics very difficult to kill (they can move to an adj outer province instead of being destroyed). They also have 2 STR and cost 0 rage to invade with. Playing a Clan upgrade unfortunetely does not allow you to invade with a figure as part of the action, so you do 'lose' an action from playing the card, but you make up for it on your next turn. Furthermore, you keep the Mystic even if you play another upgrade on top of it. (Unlike monster upgrades, your Mystics can never be removed from your pool of figures)
The Dwarf Chief monster, also has 2STR, costs 0 to upgrade and 0 to invade with. Better yet, since he is a Monster Upgrade you get to invade as part of the Upgrade action; you don't even lose an action.
Both of these cards are very action and rage efficient and fit very well with this type of strategy.
I have had some great romp & stomps with a combination of free units and an expensive heavy hitter, but in the end it is about Victory Points. Even the strongest army cannot compete in every fight (esp. due to lack of space in the outer regions) and you run the risk of someone playing the "discard down to one unit" card.
If you have a lot of rage and/or free units it can be a smart move to march into and fuly occupy an unplundered province so you can be sure to have sufficient time to complete all your actions.
Quests score victory points and advance your rage/glory/horns, so they are great for any strategy.
I managed to win a game playing very aggressively for Axes in Age 1 - functionally playing a Tyr based strategy.
In a 4 player game, with all KS content added, I managed to draft the following hand: Dwarf Chieftain Frigga's Grace Frigga's Grace Tyr's Crush Jotunheim! Manheim!
I was able to successfully pillage 3 provinces during the turn, winning with Frigga's Grace on two of them, and complete both Quests. This allowed me to increase my Axes to 8, and Rage to 9 going into Age 2.
I was the leader in both points and upgrades by quite a margin, so I was targeted a bit in Age 2, and I did relatively poorly. I did draft the 2 important Tyr Cards to allow me to continue a heavy Axe strategy however: Tyr's Challenge Tyr's Prowess Wolfman Heimdall's Eye Odin's Tide Glorious Death!
Glorious Death! was a bit of an anti-draft, as both players to my left were were using Loki effects in Age 1. The hand I drafted it from had no Battle Card to take either. As the battle cards I had were very weak, I was forced to play a strategy of losing some battles to cause my opponents to discard their superior fight cards. Hopefully I would then be able to win some fights to score off my 8 Axes later in the Age. My general strategy worked. The player who had the Sea Serpent managed to draft Frigga's Protection. I was able to start fights with a single warrior in the adjacent regions and draw their cards out. My Wolfman drew a lot of attention and was eliminated with a big fight card also.
Going into Act 3, three players were all about equal leaders (Myself w/ Tyr, and the other two were both mostly Loki based), grouped around 50pts, with one player trailing (The Frigga's Protection player).
In Age 3 my opening hand contained Tyr's Wrath, so that was an easy pick. I was drafting after the player who was well behind on points, and was passed Loki's Wrath, I didn't want to allow that to reach either of the Loki players, as I wasn't sure I'd outscore it. I nabbed one of the Glorious Death!, and was able to draft two of the cards which would hurt my ability to reuse Tyr's Wrath - The Loki's Poison being quite a useful addition as it would end up saving me some Rage by grabbing a fight card to win with, rather than just re-buying my Quests. Age 3 cards: Tyr's Wrath Loki's Wrath Glorious Death! Jotunheim! Loki's Poison Heimdall's Watch
During Age 3, I was able to get in a lot of fights. I kept dropping Warriors in regions where a Loki player was, and won when they started the Pillage. I managed to steal Loki's Backstab with my Loki's Poison in an early fight where I dropped a warrior in the region with their Leader. I also managed to time my Heimdall's Watch correctly for removing the other Loki's Poison, meaning I could use Tyr's Wrath without fear of losing my Quest cards. My 8 points per fight would be better than their return, since had kept Loki's Wrath away from them. Having started the age with 12 Rage, I could afford to use Tyr's Challenge opportunistically - whenever anyone placed a model in a pillaged area (most likely to complete a quest they had), I could force them to fight me again for another 8 points. That mechanic is difficult for others to play around.
One of the Loki players had Odin's Throne, so me drafting Glorious Death! avoided giving them 22 points. In the end, I wasn't able to complete either of my quests - The only remaining Jotunheim! area was pillaged early in the turn, and had high strength monsters in it. I couldn't complete Glorious Death! efficiently - I would have have to try lose at least 2 fights to lose 4 figures, likely more. Instead I could just win those fights for 8 glory each. Once I'd burnt all my rage, the Frigga player moved to Yggdrasil and Pillaged, using their Frost Giant, this got them up to 50 Legendary points, but they were a long way behind.
Before final scoring, I was comfortably ahead. I finished on 138. The less committed Loki player 118, the Frigga player finished with 105 after their Frost Giant in Yggdrasil play. The heavy Loki player only made 94, not being able to complete enough quests to make their Odins Throne count. At the start of Age 3, it was that Loki player who I expected to be my biggest challenge.
No one in a group had attempted such an aggressive Axe strategy before, so that would have contributed towards me being able to get many of the cards I valued for it to work, but it's certainly viable. In a group like that I was playing with, where Loki is over-valued, it's likely a good option.
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