Back in November, the legendary Jay Clare posted a list of his top-10 combat heroes for the forces of good. If you somehow haven't read it yet, I highly recommend you do so--it's well worth the read.
The list prompted a fair bit of discussion in all corners of the MESBG community (as lists tend to do), including our TMAT community (in the form of a lengthy e-mail chain). The timing was fortuitous, because we've been thinking about this topic a lot lately.
Initial Impressions
Who are these little orcs? Voo-rahooom!
I had several impressions after reading Jay's list. The first is that, overall, I think it contains most of the usual suspects one would expect. King Aragorn, Gil-Galad, and Elendil are probably in anyone's top-10 of LOTR-era heroes, while Dain and Champion Dwalin have sterling resumes from the Hobbit-era. Having played recently with Helm Hammerhand (and having a ball, even though he was unhorsed round 1), I can see his appeal as well.Those six heroes share a lot of common features. All have either beefy combat stats (F6+, 3 attacks) or the ability to strike infinitely, and they also have the option to get a +1 to-wound (and sometimes better) and take a mount. Extra attacks on the charge, with a knock-down, and to-wound boosts will kill a lot of things.
The most surprising inclusions (for me) were Eomer and Durin. Both are incredibly tanky combat heroes (3/3/3 with 3 attacks/wounds for Eomer, and of course Defense 9 with a free 6+ save on all wounds for Durin), but their killing power suffers compared to the others (Eomer because he has no +1-to-wound option, while Durin lacks the high-end damage that comes from having a mount).
Less surprising inclusions for me were Thranduil and Boromir (of the Minas Tirith variety--the Fellowship profile for Boromir would have been surprising). But they also have some questions. While both can take mounts and have spectacular Fight Value (7 base, plus Strike), neither has a way to get a to-wound bonus beyond spending Might (as neither has a hand-and-a-half sword, much less a rule like Weapon Master or Burly). And yes, I know Boromir can technically take a lance, but if he does he can't take the Banner of Minas Tirith--and let's face it... if you're running Minas Tirith Boromir, aren't you 99% of the time taking the Banner of Minas Tirith?
There were also some surprising omissions. Eomer is great, but when it comes to kill-power, his cousin Theodred might be a better. Eomer undoubtedly has the edge when it comes to toughness (3 wounds/3 fate is way better than 2 wounds/1 fate, after all), but while neither has a +1 to-wound option, Theodred at least gets to reroll all failed to-wound rolls (which makes his damage much more reliable, especially against high-defense targets like monsters or other big heroes). Treebeard is another surprising omission. Like Durin, he doesn't get any charge bonuses, but with Fight 8, Strike, Strength 8, access to Rend, some nasty brutal power attacks (Bludgeon, anyone?), and Strength 10 stones, he looks like a top-10 combat hero. And when it comes to crazy stat profiles, there's nothing crazier than the Champions of Erebor on Chariot.
Very dangerous over short AND not-so-short distances! Part of the reason rankings like these are so hard is that while there are some stat characteristics that play an important role in being able to kill other models (fight value, strength, and attacks), there are a lot of other factors that impact how effective a profile is at actually being able to kill other models.
Staying power is just one example (it's hard to kill something, especially a big something, if you can be easily one-shotted). Mobility is another--apart from the charge benefits that come from being mounted, moving an extra 4-6" per turn gives you more targets to choose from.
The type of models that you're trying to kill also impacts what stats you need. The higher your fight value, the better your chances of killing monsters or other big heroes. But all you need to effectively kill 90% of most troops is Fight 6 (and Fight 7 is just as good against non-monster troops as Fight 9 or 10). A lot of big heroes, monsters, and even troops cause Terror, so if a combat hero has low courage their effectiveness may decrease dramatically. And, of course, there's the number one blunter of combat heroes of all time: enemy magic (Transfixed heroes can't make strikes, after all).
As we mentioned towards the end of our last TMAT Talks podcast, the final categories in our "top-100" series are focused on "slayer" models, so we've been mulling these ideas over a lot lately. We've already recorded some of our rankings, which includes several subset categories (like "sub-100 point slayers") as well as top-50 slayers for both the forces of good and forces of evil... but we're not quite done yet.
In the meantime, I thought I'd tease things a little bit by taking Jay's list of ten good heroes and re-ranking them based on how they slotted into my own top-50 list. It'll also give you a sneak-peek at the approach we'll be using in our massive slayer pods, which will start to drop over the next couple months.
As with any "rankings," these are to some degree subjective, and you'll almost certainly disagree with some of these (Centaur and Tiberius certainly do). So be sure to let me know what you think in the comments!
