Hi all,

I'm curious to hear which heroes players tend to enjoy playing as the most. So, who do you like to play as? Furthermore, have you found any good team makeups and combos that work nicely? (Yes, I realize the base rules say that hero choice is random - though my group has house ruled this and chooses who we want to play. In any case, you still probably have a favorite hero, so spill!).

(My apologies if this thread exists somewhere - the search feature is horrible on this site and I've looked through the first handful of pages).

My personal favorites:

- Grey Ker: The door-opener of the group. Spend fatigue to open the door, reveal the area, and THEN decide if I want to battle, advance, or run through this area. No need to advance only to realize there are either two baddies right in the front of the door, or nothing except too far down the hall to reach.

- Runemaster Thorn: The teleport ability is a bit situational, but **** handy when I need to get out of harm's way and onto the glyph down the hall. I use him as a "run to the glyph, turn it on, and then get the hell back to town" sort of hero. Then, once the new glyph has been activated, I can send in:

- Lord Hawthorne: The reach ability, while available on a few later treasureed weapons, is GREAT for picking up momentum at the beginning of the game. Especially if he's given one of the abilities that grant an extra attack. It saves a ton of wasted fatigue trying to get into place, so battle actions are bit more easy to successfully execute. And all that saved fatigue, if the abilities allow for it, can go right into making even more attacks.

Who do you like? Let's hear it!

Melee- Nanok of the Blade, aka The Unkillable Hero

Ranged- Laurel of Bloodwood

Magic- Shiver or Runemaster Thorn

I only have the basic game, so I cannot choose Nanok.

I like Ronan. The extra die in everyting is cool, as he can start as a melee hero. At the end of the game he would shine as a ranged hero. On top of that, if he joins forces with Red Scorpion the combination makes both able to efficiently use almost any weapon from the chests. Silueta is also a very good option as the ranged hero, but she is more a thief than an archer.

Dead Varikas and Strong Trenlow are really the bests knights in the game. They have top wounds and defece, and their spetial skill compensates not having 3 black dice in the melee trait.

As for mages: Jaes is hard to kill, but my little brother prefers Mad Kartos. Astarra is also brilliant, as she allows other heroes to cross from the town to the monsters rear.

In my house we play choosing the heroes, because normally we play with only 2 heroes. The RtL system is also a good choice: draw 3 and choose one. I have played with (or against) every hero in the core game except for two: Sir Valadir and Vyrah.

Tanks: Tahlia. Being able to move while guarding is insanely awesome.

Ranged: Ronan of the Wild or Kirga. Both have great hero abilities

Magic: Runewitch Astarra or Landrec.

Veinman said:

Unkillable? No. Difficult, yes. I killed Nanok three times during our last RtL session (two levels). You just need the right tools. Traps, Critical Strike (treachery) and Dark Charming the mage with the Staff of the Grave work wonders on Nanok.

Yeah, Nanok might be more difficult to kill, but he's certainly not unkillable.

In fact, I almost think he's MORE likely to get killed since he's so "feared", to an extent, by the Overlord, and will be a focus of his treachery.

I was playing a game last night with Nanok as one of the heroes, and the OL kept throwing trap after trap on Nanok in order to kill him so many times that he could never get enough gold to go beyond his initial melee dice. And four armor isn't too difficult to get through.

It was sort of nice that the other heroes were more or less undefeated throughout the run because of it, but poor Nanok certainly got a beatdown.

I however personally played as Shiver last night, and let me add him to the list of my favorites. Aura 4 was freakin' awesome. I need to try him on a more melee oriented map (we did the Riddling Naga quest, #3, from base Descent - lots of nagas and sorcerers unfortunately), but the few times I had some beastmen war parties to deal with I could position Shiver such that I could protect the rest of the heroes from melee attacks as well. (He also had Command as one of his drawn abilities, and later picked up the Bottle Imp which itself had Aura. Needless to say I tried to keep my group huddled together to both dish out the damage and keep everyone relatively protected from melee attacks).

Another point on Nanok: I'm generally a min-maxer type of player (as you can probably imagine from my favorite hero choices), and it's difficult for me to pick anything other than a hero with 3 skills and 3 dice in the same trait (melee, subterfuge, magic). I like to specialize in one of the three skillsets rather than divide myself up (i.e. Red Scorpion equals teh suck).

Nanok, in particular, is not only divided, but pretty horrendously so. 2 Melee skills, 1 Subterfuge skill ... and 2 Melee Dice plus 1 Magic dice. Wha?? Needless to say, his subterfuge skill was wasted (he drew the first ... "When you make a ranged attack" ... he drew the second to switch .. "When you make a ranged attack" ... well, that's not gonna help me). And his name is Nanok of the freakin' BLADE, why does he have a magic dice? *sigh* I suppose the idea is that you can build up his magic dice since he can use runes (as he's not wearing any armor), but any self-respecting Nanok player will immediately build up his defense with Melee dice.

For mage heroes, I go for Jaes since he can wear a chain mail and still use Runes (so 4 armor) or Shiver. Shiver is great to block monsters in corridors and doorways. If you have AOD, buy the Wizard's Robe in the Shop Items and he will have +2 armor against Ranged and Magic attacks.

For fighters, I go for Nanok, Karnon or Hawthorne. Nanok we all know, Karnon starts with 5 melee power dice (fantastic with a basic Axe) and Hawthorne is a decent fighter with 4 speed and reach, which means it is almost the equivalent of 5 speed when it comes to Advance. If he's lucky enough to pick the Feat card that gives Sweep, he can clean a lot of monsters.

Rogue: Kirga is really bad for the overlord. Silhouette a good runner.

My favorites:

Melee: Nanok of the Blade (expecially in RtL)

Ranged: Laurel of Bloodwood (I hate the times when I need to attack an adjacent monster with my ranged hero and waste like 7 range)

Magic: Landrec the Wise (2 free surges is very usefull against all those monsters that use fear)