Heroic Heroes: Top 10 Heroes for Heroic Strength

Good morning gamers,

Two more specialized heroic actions left in this series and today we're tackling the not-as-glamorous of the two: Heroic Strength. If you've been with us for a while, you know that Rythbryt came to the defense of Heroic Strength when the new rules dropped, doing a long series on Heroic Strength and how awesome it is (check out the list of posts here). Heroic Strength doesn't appear to be that useful, but it turns out some heroes can get REALLY good use out of it.

What Does the Heroic Action Do?

Heroic Strength looks pretty simple: a hero can call Heroic Strength at the start of the Fight phase and increases his Strength by D3. In its most direct use, this can be used to increase your wounding potential by +1 (or sometimes +2), making it easier to wound a high Defense model you're fighting (or REALLY smash through a low Defense model you're fighting). However, the actual implications of increasing your Strength can have other uses too. Let's look at a few.

When Do You No-Kidding-Actually-Use-It?

Besides "just needing to kill things better," there are three key times you use Heroic Strength: the first and foremost is to increase your Strength to remove cavalry bonuses (especially against models with Monstrous Charge). If you're a S5 hero and you declare a Heroic Strength, you're guaranteed to get to S6 or above - that will remove a normal cavalry model's Knock Down bonus (though they'll still get the extra attack). Not being Knocked Prone is good - especially if your opponent has bonuses to Wound. For more on how this works, check out Rythbyrt's post.

The second time you use Heroic Strength is to make it harder for a normal-Strength, high-Defense model to be hurt by Brutal Power Attacks. Going from S4 to S5/6/7 is likely to make your Strength about the same as your Defense levels, removing the benefits of Rend. Hurl can also be a nasty surprise, but every pip of Strength reduces the effectiveness of Hurl by 1" (and that'll save some units most of the time). For some monsters (like a Strength 6 Fell Beast), it might mean that they throw your hero D3+1" away (or unable to throw you if your Strength is equal to or higher than their own) - and that's not a very effective use of Hurl, I feel. Strength boosts won't help against Barge, but it will work against what might be the nastiest Brutal Power Attack of them all: Mince 'Em Fine (read my post on the Three Trolls for how that works).

The third situation where Heroic Strength is useful is when called by a Monster model that is Engaged with units that have Fight Value ceilings that are lower than their own Fight Value. Monsters like the Watcher in the Water don't really want a match-up against units like Vault Warden Foe Shields (S6 wounds D9 on 6s), but calling a Heroic Strength allows them to wound on at least 5s and possibly 4s. Similarly, Gwaihir becomes S7 on the charge with his army bonus, but if he's fighting an Ent, he really wants to call a Heroic Strength so that his Monstrous Charge lets him knock the Ent Prone (and since he starts at F8, he's already beating the Ent on Fight Value, so he doesn't have to Strike).

How Can You Waste The Heroic Action?

Wasting this heroic action can be pretty easy. For starters, if you lose the duel and are not facing cavalry, monsters, or models that chose to use the Bash special strike, the extra Strength you get from Heroic Strength isn't going to help you at all. As Rythbryt covered in his series on Heroic Strength, there are times when calling a Heroic Defense (and possibly a Heroic Strike) will help you more than Heroic Strength. 

The second way you can waste Heroic Strength is by "just increasing your Strength" so that you can wound stuff more easily. In some cases (when you have even-Strength against odd-Defense or odd-Strength against even-Defense), you are guaranteed to increase your wounding ability by +1 or +2 (for example, if you are S4 and you are fighting a model that is D7, you begin by wounding on 6s, but will wound on 5s if you get +1 or +2 Strength and 4s if you get +3 Strength). In these situations, Heroic Strength will always benefit you (assuming you win the fight). However, there are times when your increase in Strength either might not help you OR helps you so negligibly that it's not worth spending the Might point to do it. Here are some examples:

• Good situation: as referenced above, a S4 hero is fighting a D7 model and declares a Heroic Strength: on a 1-4, they become S5/6 and wound on 5s, while on a 5+, they become S7 and wound on 4s;
• Bad situation: a S4 hero is fighting the Dark Lord Sauron (S10), originally wounding on 6/5+, and declares a Heroic Strength: on a 1-2, the hero wounds Sauron on 6/4+, while on a 3+ the hero wounds Sauron on 6s (which is pretty good, considering how hard it is to wound Sauron in the first place, but isn't really increasing your likelihood of wounding him by that much); and
• Okay situation: a S4 hero is fighting a D8 model and declares a Heroic Strength: on a 3+, they become S6/7 and wound on 5s instead of 6s, but on a 1-2, the increased Strength doesn't improve your ability to wound the opposing model (and won't take away any cavalry bonuses if the model has them). You're paying a Might point in this situation to possibly increase your ability to wound by +1 (and possibly do nothing). 

Criteria for Finalists

When evaluating heroes who have Heroic Strength in their arsenal, the question is what makes one hero better than another? Here are the factors I used to rank the heroes today:

• Get to absurd levels of wounding things by increasing their Strength a little bit;
• The hero's Might doesn't compete with other uses for Might (most often because you can count on someone else bringing a higher Fight Value to your fight); and
• The ability to get a high Strength value to counter Monstrous Charge.

Top 5 Heroes - Forces of Evil

#5: Haradrim King with horse and war spear (The Serpent Horde)

Haradrim Kings have a pretty standard combat profile: F5/S4 with 2 Attacks. Add a war spear to the equation and you've got +1 To Wound, which gives you a pretty decent ability to wound heroes that are D7/8 (the kinds of things that normally take time to chew through). With only March and Strength as your specialized heroic actions, you can use a Haradrim King to punch through a tough model in a single round (especially if you have someone else to call a Strike - or the target has been Transfixed). Consider the following:

Haradrim King: S4 with war spear (assumed to be on the charge)

The first column is the base wounding capabilities of a Haradrim King - and I should note that anyone that can wound Sauron 17% of the time is starting off pretty well! As you increase in Strength, however, you can double your effectiveness against higher Defense characters and wound mid-tier characters (D6/7) two-out-of-three times. With 3 Attacks on the charge and knock-down, you're looking at an estimated 3-4 wounds against a D6/7 model with your attack - that can kill quite a few heroes in a single round!

#4: The Keeper of the Dungeons (The Dark Powers of Dol Guldur)

The Keeper of the Dungeons isn't able to be mounted, so his sheer number of dice is far more limited. However, given that he can have a channelled Shroud of Shadows on him if taken alongside the Necromancer, he doesn't NEED to call a Heroic Strike against heroes. Since he's rewarded for killing lots of stuff, you really want him to smash through warriors first. To do that, you want to guarantee that he kills lots of guys. With warriors in mind, let's look and see how he does against most normal troop types:

Keeper of the Dungeons: S5 with Burly two-handed pick

As you can see, the Keeper of the Dungeons can wound D6/D7 troops on 3s in most cases when he calls a Heroic Strength, which greatly increases his likelihood of getting multiple kills when he only has 2 Attacks and isn't mounted. I haven't shown how good he can be with Piercing Strike - use it if you need to in order to make yourself S9 with a burly two-handed pick (or just get a step higher on your Heroic Strength). That's pretty good - and even allows you to make heroes like Sauron take wounds quickly. Once you've killed 5 models, you reroll all failed To Wound rolls, which will only increase the likelihood of dealing wounds in the future!

#3: Thrydan Wolfsbane on horse (Isengard, less so from the Army of Dunland LL)

Thrydan is one of my favorite heroes in the game: for less than 100 points, you can get a mounted hero who is F5 with Three-Might-and-Strike, S5 with either a sword or a two-handed axe, Mighty Blow to turn any unsaved Wounds he does (with sword or axe) into two Wounds, and 2 Wounds with 2 Fate (which, for being associated with Isengard, is pretty good). For his ability to wound things with S5 (and the option for Piercing Strike) and a two-handed axe, see the chart above provided for the Keeper of the Dungeons. While Thrydan normally needs to rely on Strike, when taken alongside Saruman, he can rely on the target being on the ground from Sorcerous Blast or Immobilized a good bit of the time. You'd think that Heroic Strength would be irrelevant.

But here's the deal: getting +1 Strength means you don't have to use Piercing Strike (though you can Piercing Strike to get to S7 if you want to). In case this wasn't visible above, so long as you get +2 Strength from the Heroic Strength (which is likely), you wound basically EVERYTHING in the game on a 2+ (D6 and below). Pretty crazy, huh?

While Thrydan from the Army of Dunland LL can get an additional +1 to wound for one round of the game (auto-wounding D3/4 models), I feel like the neutralizing abilities of Saruman make Thrydan less likely to need to call Heroic Strike in a round (which means he can call Heroic Strength with relative impunity). In the LL, you really need Thyrdan charging into someone with the help of Gorulf Ironskin (who is Striking from F5, just like Thrydan would) - and that's just not reliable enough to crush someone who can Strike back or who starts with a really good Fight Value.

Thrydan narrowly edged out the Keeper of the Dungeons for this slot for the following reason: not only is he more likely to be free to call Heroic Strength when run alongside Saruman, but he's also mounted with Mighty Blow instead of Burly - this means a single wound (on a 2+ or 3+) that gets past your opponent's Fate will do 2 Wounds instead of 1 Wound. Paired with his mount (giving you 3 Attacks on the charge against Infantry models - and 6 dice to Wound if you win), Thrydan is much more likely to kill things than the Keeper of the Dungeons (even if he levels up).

#2: Azog on the White Warg (Azog's Legion, less so from Azog's Hunters)

I'm going to put this out there: Azog's isn't as good at wounding as Thyrdan. There, I said it. Sure, Azog wounds heroes on a 3+, but as we just discussed, Thrydan wounds any heroes who are D5/6 on a 3+ as well without Heroic Strength. If you're facing a hero who is more defensible, you might be wounding them on a 4+ or even a 5+ if they're really tough, but on the whole you're looking at wounding enemy heroes as well or just-about-as-well with Thrydan as you do with Azog.

Azog is really good at wounding heroes, but he's NOT good at wounding high-Defense warriors. Sure, any warriors that are D4/5 are wounded on 4s, and any D6/7 warriors are wounded on 5s (which is "good" if you have the charge, but not guaranteed to get a kill). But what happens when you run into D8/9 warriors? Well, now you're wounding on 6s. In most situations, your biggest killing machine is going to be stopped dead in his tracks. So how do you get past this? Why, with Heroic Strength of course!

Azog: S5 with the ability to wound heroes on a 3+

So why does Azog take slot #2 over Thyrdan? Two reasons: first and foremost, the White Warg gives Azog access to 6 Might points (instead of Thrydan's 3 Might points). This not only means your ability to call Heroic Strength can be augmented by Might points to boost your rolls (either Dueling rolls or Wounding rolls), but since you start with F7, you might not even have to Strike. Second, thanks to Master of Battle (if you take Azog from Azog's Legion), you may be calling Heroic Strength for free (if someone is trying to crack through a Gundabad Troll that's nearby, for example).

#1: The Necromancer of Dol Guldur (The Dark Powers of Dol Guldur)

Like many monsters in the game, the Necromancer is one of those models who has a high Strength value and access to Heroic Strength (instead of Heroic Strike). With F7/S6 to back up his 1 Attack, the Necromancer certainly doesn't look as dangerous as units like a Cave Drake or the Watcher in the Water. I know what you're thinking: why would a model that already has lots of Strength want to increase his Strength more (especially if he doesn't have Monstrous Charge)?

Unlike monster models, the Necromancer doesn't have access to Brutal Power Attacks that allow him to bypass high Defense models. His single Attack also doesn't help much. However, his Drain Soul special rule helps a TON: any unsaved wounds result in absolute death for the target. So how do you get him to deal that wound? Why, you increase his Strength! Consider:

The Necromancer of Dol Guldur: S6 with Drain Soul

Most heroes (D7) will be wounded on a 4+ when the Necromancer calls Heroic Strength - and if paired with a (potentially channelled) Shroud of Shadows targeting himself in the Move phase, you can REALLY assassinate an enemy hero with this combo. Some lighter heroes will be wounded on a 3+, which makes the likelihood that your single die (maybe two dice if you've managed to get a Trap off) higher than normal. Assuming you've used Curse to take out the Fate points of the target (or shot at them with Mirkwood Spiders), you should be in pretty good shape - and every little bit helps in this case!

The Necromancer takes the first spot because of how much more important his Strength value is to him because his attacks are so limited (and deadly). Similarly, he's not as conflicted between what heroic actions to call in a Fight phase (no Strike), so he'll know before the Fight phase whether or not the scene has changed much since he started his charge.

Top 5 Heroes - Forces of Good

#5: Aragorn - Strider (lots of lists, but especially the Defenders of Helm's Deep LL)

Aha - another post where Aragorn doesn't take the win by default. As I mentioned in a previous post, I've made it my goal to cite Aragorn in different lists each time I use him, and today the question was simple: when does Heroic Strength help Aragorn the most? The answer is pretty simple: unless there's a mounted model running at him full-tilt, anytime you have Anduril, you don't really need Heroic Strength (since you'd need to be wounding on 3s to be better than Anduril). So what lists don't have Anduril?

The Breaking of the Fellowship list was covered a few weeks ago in reference to Heroic Challenge, and it would help a lot in that list to be sure. The Fellowship or Ranger versions of Aragorn can take Anduril, but don't have to (so I didn't consider them here). So that leaves us with the Defenders of Helm's Deep LL, which has Aragorn with just the armor upgrade (D6 instead of D5). This Aragorn, taken from the movies, has no Anduril and so is "just S4" when it comes to wounding. He also has no horse, so his ability to wound is greatly diminished.

Aragorn - Strider: S4 with a free Might point to call Strength every turn

The Helm's Deep LL has plenty of models who can Strike (Legolas, Haldir, Theoden, and Gimli), so while you can do that with Aragorn, you can also have him sail in with one of these other heroes and call a Heroic Strength to up his damage output. Since this heroic action is free, you just have to wound someone where it would have cost you Might points to get a wound in (really useful when you save yourself some Might expenditures to "just kill stuff").

While Aragorn does get a free Might point each turn to call this heroic action (or any other heroic action he pleases), he's really not that good at wounding things (and even if we compared an Anduril-carrying Aragorn to the rest of the competitors today, he'd not be very good). As such, he certainly makes the list, but just isn't great in this situation.

#4: Gwaihir, Lord of the Eagles (The Misty Mountains or Radagast's Alliance)

Gwaihir could have been replaced with almost any of the Ent heroes, to be honest: with a high Fight Value (F8) and high Strength (S6 normally, S7 on the charge if you keep your army bonus), Gwaihir generally doesn't need to call a Heroic Strength. However, he follows a similar wound chart to what was shown above for the Necromancer: getting to S7-9 (S10 on the charge) makes it really easy to cut through warriors and heroes alike, dramatically increasing your likelihood of wounding:

Gwaihir: S7 on the charge (with either of his army bonuses)

I've chosen Gwaihir over characters like Treebeard because he also has Monstrous Charge, which means he can knock over all kinds of things (potentially the Balrog!) if you roll high enough for Heroic Strength and should be able to clean out enemy troops. Gwaihir is a pretty good hero this way (wounding a lot of stuff on 4s - even with a bare-minimum boost from Heroic Strength), but only stands at #4 today (as good as Aragorn is going to get all the time, potentially better on three turns). You will need to pair him with someone who can Strike against models like the Balrog, but since the Misty Moutains are historical allies with both the Fellowship (lots of heroes who can Strike) and Thorin's Company (tied with Erebor Reclaimed for the most models who can Strike), I don't foresee this being a problem.

#3: Dain Ironfoot, Lord of the Iron Hills (The Iron Hills)

Dain is an enhanced melding of the Keeper of the Dungeons (S5 with a burly two-handed weapon) and Thrydan (mounted), but without Piercing Strike. Once Dain starts killing stuff, he needs to keep charging, so making sure you're not dismounted by a big nasty (or just carving through whatever is in your way) can be really useful.

Dain Ironfoot: S5 with Burly two-handed hammer

Dain's wounding chart is similar to the Thrydan chart above - and you're wounding stuff pretty easily. So why does he rank above Gwaihir? Two reasons: first and foremost, because his Heroic Strength could be free with Master of Battle (4+). Who in their right mind would call a Heroic Strength against Dain? Someone who wants to deny him a cavalry charge bonus I imagine - and that just makes Dain's charge more powerful if he can copy it! 

Second, while Gwaihir certainly wounds things really well (1-2 Strength higher than Dain normally), Dain gets the +1 To Wound without a penalty - and THIS makes him more likely to be able to deal wounds to lower Defense models (D4-6, depending on how much Strength he gets from Heroic Strength). Even against higher Defense models, they still wound the same - DESPITE the difference in actual Strength. Gwaihir is great, but Dain is just better sometimes.

#2: Young Dwalin near (or in the same fight as) Young Thorin (Army of Thror)

When you look at the heroes for the Army of Thror, you are immediately struck with the greatness that is the resilience of Thror, the smashing power of Thrain, and the balance between offense and defense in Young Thorin with the Oakenshield. With at least one Captain of Erebor/Grim Hammer Captain in your retinue of heroes as well, Young Dwalin might not look like a good option: F5/S5 with no two-handed weapon and instead the ability to do a super-Feint (lower his Fight Value by D3 to give him a reroll of all failed To Wound rolls). So why take this guy? Because when you really need to crack through stuff, he's the man you want on the job. Consider:

Young Dwalin: S5 with axes and a once-per-game +1 Strength boost from Thorin

Young Dwalin has access to Piercing Strike and if he's near Thorin, he can get +1 Strength once per game. This cumulative +2 Strength added to his base S5 and the +D3 Strength from Heroic Strength brings him to S8-S10 - which is amazing! 

But wait, it gets better. At S8 (the bare minimum you will be with your Heroic Strength AND Piercing Strike AND Thorin's boost), you wound D6 and below models on a 3+, which normally I'd say is pretty good. However, if you reduce your Fight Value by D3 to reroll all failed To Wound rolls, you actually get this number up to an 0.889, which is slightly BETTER than getting +1 To Wound (which would be 0.833). Similarly, if you're wounding someone who is D10, you go from wounding the target on a 5/3+ (0.222/die) to wounding him on a 5+ with a reroll if required (0.555/die). Everything in between will show you a similar jump in effectiveness - and that's just when you get +1 Strength from Heroic Strength!

While Dain gets the +1 To Wound, Dwalin just does it better with his reroll ability. He's a sneaky killing machine when you look at him and I think he's quite worth it. He really does benefit from being near Thorin though - especially if Thorin is in his fight and can call a Strike. Dwalin can be used to clear chaff easily OR be thrown against big enemy models - that seems like a pretty good hero to me.

#1: Gimli, Son of Gloin (in any list that has Legolas Greenleaf in the same army, but most especially the Breaking of the Fellowship LL)

Gimli is a powerhouse figure - and he gets a lot of flak for having "only" 5-inch movement and "only" 3 Might (vs. the vastly superior 6-inch move and 6 Might for Boromir of Gondor). If we ignore his defense aspects for a bit (+2 Defense and +2 Fate over Boromir for exactly the same price), Gimli is a very formidable offensive piece - especially if Legolas is around. Consider the following situation:

• Gimli is getting read to charge into combat for the first time in the game;
• Legolas has already killed 4 models;
• The opposing army is rushing towards the Breaking of the Fellowship LL and Gimli is ready to go;
• Gimli charges in with his throwing axe and tries to kill someone - let's assume he fails and needs to attack in melee instead of just killing the guy with the throwing axe;
• Gimli chooses to call a Heroic Strength in the Fight phase and uses his master-forged two-handed axe.

What happens? Well, first Gimli has to win the duel: the Breaking of the Fellowship LL grants a banner reroll to any friendly model that is near (within 3") of another friendly model. Let's assume some Hobbit (or maybe Legolas or Boromir) is nearby and assume Gimli has this reroll. Depending on how you read his Lothlorien gifts rule, he either gets to reroll all of his dice in the fight or ALL of the dice (friend and for - which I think is the rule-as-written) in the fight. Either way, Gimli knows that if things go south with his two-handed weapon, he might still save himself if he needs to with lots of rerolled dice.

Here's a look at Gimli's base Strength profile (using two hand axes):

Gimli, Son of Gloin: S4 with axes (evaluating his two-handed axe later)

Next, assuming Gimli wins, he must compare his Strength (base S4, S5 with Piercing Strike, S6-8 with Heroic Strength) to his target's Defense. When you look at S5-S8 wounding probabilities (see above), those numbers look pretty daunting. But are they really? Gimli gets +1 To Wound from his master-forged two-handed axe, as well as +1 To Wound from Legolas out-scoring him. This means that even if Gimli gets his lowest possible Strength boost from Heroic Strength (ending up at S6) that he'll wound most models pretty well - let's take a look:

Gimli, Son of Gloin: S4 with Master-forged two-handed axe and "kill count" special rule

As you see here, Gimli wounds D5/6 models on a 2+ after getting the absolute worst score on the D3 boost in Strength - but even here, he wounds D4 and below units automatically! If he gets higher marks for his Heroic Strength (up to S8), he can automatically wound D6 and below models, as well as wounding D7/8 models on a 2+ and D9/10 models on a 3+ which is AMAZING! While you can get this kind of damage in a wide variety of Legendary Legions (and the Fellowship of the Ring), I think the Breaking of the Fellowship list is the best.

All told, you can get a very reliable killing machine hero for "only" 100 points who is not only very powerful on offense, but incredibly resilient on defense as well (though he has vulnerabilities to magic and brutal power attacks - the magic vulnerability is much less dangerous in the Breaking of the Fellowhship Legendary Legion). If, however, you're looking for someone to carve through warriors or heavy heroes, Gimli can do it!

One final note on Gimli: you can take Gimli in the Kingdom of Moria list, which doesn't give you access to Legolas (unless you want an Impossible Alliance), but will get you pretty close to this level of pain (a max-roll on Heroic Strength wounds D6 and below on a 2+, wounds D7/D8 on a 3+, wounds D9/D10 on a 4+), but will also allow you to use more models with Gimli (instead of just having a handful of heroes). If you like this better, then do that instead (I like it a lot).

Heroic Strength

Heroic Strength is a mixed bag, but it can be really helpful "even if you're just wounding stuff." Some models really need that wounding roll to work out, and Heroic Strength is a risky but effective way of making sure it works more reliably. In our last post of the year (and in this series), we'll be looking at everyone's favorite Heroic Action: Heroic Strike. Part of the reason we're all drawn to this heroic action (I feel) is because we've all had a game where we lost an important fight just because our Fight Value was lower than our opponent's Fight Value. Unfortunately, Heroic Strike not only requires you to win the Fight Value game, but it also requires you to roll higher than/tie your opponent's roll (which you don't modify with Heroic Strike). So which heroes Strike better than others? I'm not sure the answers will be that surprising, but tune in next time to find out! Until then, merry Christmas and happy hobbying!