I beat Norsca on normal. It was decent. The highlight was when I defeated Chaos (i.e., chose to challenge Archaon). I held a Tribal city (max defense structure) near a choke point where Chaos pours out of when it begins its onslaught. I killed/dispersed 2 initial doom stacks that ran ahead, and then the remaining 4 armies advanced, with Archaon at the front. I road out to snipe Archaon with a lightning strike (this ability borders on too strong). Once I killed Archaon, I fell back to the town to defend against the remaining 3. This resulted in a big open field battle, but it was easier than I thought it would be (the local garrison had a lot of disposable marauders). Afterwards, I just had to chase Sigvald through the map. Ultimately, it was worth it for the 75% upkeep reduction. The amount of armies I was able to field was insane and made the clean up of Bretonnia and Empire easy.
In terms of gameplay, Norsca feels like a middle point between Beastmen and Chaos. You have settlements, but they produce so little income that you need to raid and sack to progress. With that said, gold no longer became a problem once I started to raid Nordland and Middleheim. I banked 200,000+ gold before I even ran into Archaon. The Chaos marks were interesting, and I focused on Nurgle (20% recovery was huge) and then Slanesh (10% upkeep reduction goes without saying). Nurgle's plague was okay (minimal damage), and so if I were to go through with it again, I would favor Slanesh or Tzeech for the special hero/caster.
In terms of units, War Mammoths and armored Werewolfs took center stage. The War Mammoths always had 120+ kills in any fight. The armored Werewolves came in second, with protecting flanks and attack enemies from behind. Also, I had 2 Werekin heroes (both specced into defense and attack traits), and they took practically zero damage. Outside of those units, I just kept a solid amount of shielded champions to maintain a frontline.
One disappointment, however, was that my monster hunter quest glitched. For the ice dragon, no matter how many times I raided the target province for the quest, nothing triggered. Once I locked into the ice dragon question, I could not change to another quest. As a result, my Wulfrik missed out on a lot of neat items. Still, the items were not exactly required on normal difficulty.
Tldr; armored Werewolves and War Mammoths.