I used to get scams like this quite often a couple of years ago but then I made a Gmail account for my blizz account alone and I have not had one since :)
From what I been reading on MAL forums the novels had alot more story to the first part of the series (1-14ep) and some of it was in the wrong order. ;)
NS depends alot on the players knowing the maps and being able to follow the commander's suggestions/orders (if you have a good commander ;) ) and player stacking is not new to the game.
You need to remember that this is was a HL1 mod before becoming a standalone game, plus balance and new...