My Heroes allways complain about being a magic or ranged hero, they hate it and says they are sow weak, I let them chose Heros and they allways chose the Tanks. Are the magic and ranged heros really sow weak?

Even if they were, it would still be to the heroes' advantage to have a mix of heroes, so that they can use whatever treasure they happen to draw. And if you have no expansions, they should actually be erring on the side of magic, because there are twice as many magic weapons in the treasure decks as either melee or ranged (this imbalance was fixed in WoD).

Melee does generally do the most raw damage, has more of the high-conquest-value heroes, and is probably easier to play. I could see someone making an argument that they were the best overall, but the advantages of having a mixed party really outweigh any advantages of individual types.

My players have found that magic is the most inherantly powerful attack form, but the decent magic characters are all fragile. Conversely, Melee they find the weakest, but the melee characters are harder to kill. They find ranged somewhere in the middle.

They tend to favour speciallists though, rather trhan all-rounders, and like a mixed party to cover all their bases.

Melee characters tend towards a higher basic damage output than the other two, although the blasters and shooters can pick up skills for their relative specialty that allow them to launch an ungodly number of attacks (Quick Casting and Rapid Fire, respectively)

The blasters have access to status effects and area effect attacks via their spells. The shooters are usually pretty quick and so can get the loot whilst everybody else is plodding about.

The big thing is about equipment allocation. The starting deck, and the treasure decks for the most part, is pretty much rigged for two of anything. If you have more than two of any given type, you will have some significant problems when it comes to doling out hardware

If you play with Tomb of Ice creatures, those tanks will have a fun time with the Frost Shades and their Ghost ability. The heroes might change their tune after that.

My Heroes argument is that the tanks are good from the beginning but with magic and ranged you have to get the rigth weapon or less they are just to weak.

It's true that the Axe remains viable further into the game than other shop weapons, and that being the "raw damage specialist" really pays off if you happen to be in a situation where you get less damage than you expected from other sources.

But Immolation and Crossbow don't fall significantly behind the Axe in effectiveness until monsters get around 4+ armor, which is ogres and master razorwings. Even then, you can boost them by spending fatigue, which you'll have more of, by virtue of not having to spend it to move right up next to the monsters. You're very likely to have upgraded weapons by the time you really need them, and you're more likely to have them if your party is diverse.

Additionally, you're going to be fighting low-level monsters (beastmen, skeletons, etc.) all the way to the end of the game, because they're common, and they're the ones that the Overlord can spawn. So someone has to kill them, and that hero is better off having some extra range rather than the absolute best possible damage, because they'll be dying in approximately one hit anyway, and saving a few movement points is often as good as saving an attack. Having more than one hero that can kill ogres in one hit is actually usually a waste before the very end of the dungeon.

(Note that all of this is based on my experience in the base game, stuff may change in RtL.)

Well, if they continue to whinge on about it, you can always let them take 4 bricks into the game, then harass them with skeletons and sorcerors backed up by master beastmen and standing juuuuuust out of their advance range. I'm sure that might put a little ranged lovin' in their hearts

I agree with Coldstone, if they insist on all using tanks, awesome, easy prey...keep taking pot shots at them from a distance and ignore all the nasty armour with traps, trap it up baby....assuming you don't only draw aim or charge cards from the Overlord deck that is...

The best way to convince someone that he is wrong is to show him.

Don't waste time arguing, just get down to it!

@ColdStone: "and standing juuuuuust out of their advance range."

You have heard of fatigue, right?

Really if they think that having a party of just tanks is good, oh dear....

(Pet Hate Rant Warning)

No offense is intended

People that think that one particular strategy is the best don't usually have enough experience or thought in the other ways of doing it.

One must always adapt to a new situation, I rarely have a favourite hero or monster (ok... i do like kobolds, but thats thematic), and playing in a completely different way widens your horizons to a higher strategic level.

A long while back i used to use groups of heroes (2 players) that where tanks. This had obvious disadvantages:

1. Having to be adjacent to deal damage

2. Generally Slow heroes

3. They couldn't keep up late game with massed forces, (not enough kills per turn).

As is common in many things, there is always a trade off.

Tell your player this, and see if they change their playing style.

If not, make them change by the continuall pain of death

1. Ranged monster swamp

2. Web with above (evil laugh)

3. Things with pierce (e.g. beastmen/hellhounds with master beatsmen command)

4. Traps, that ignore armour

Hope this helps

Rules say get heroes at random. Tell them to go by the rules, once one of them comes to the point he uses a blast 3 to murder your hole room, his never gonna want to play a tank again.

My players started out playing Tank, Tank, Caster. After my friend who always plays the big fighter type realised how good ranged characters are, he never swaped them out again, he even has a fav hero and prefers them over tanks.

Antistone said:

I have, and I am well aware it is a limited resource, especially among tanks. They'll be able to toss out a couple of attacks, but eventually they will run out. Unless you're packing a bunch of fatigue potions, that means a rest action, which is interrupted by damage.

My suggestion stands. They will certainly be able to beat up a fair number of baddies, but numbers and distance will frag them up in the long run. Like when they run out of fatigue and are trying to chase the baddies into a corner, getting peppered all the while. Frustration is a wonderful motivator.

And if you play RtL, the first critter in an outdoor encouter with Soar will *really* mess their preconceptions up

Antistone said:

2 Melee Characters is a great choice, more than 2 your limiting your options in equipment, special abilities, range/attacks and Feats.

It really is best to have 1 of each type of character, though it could be fun trying an all one type party but not because its best.

The one and only said:

Maybe, but if they have 4 tanks, then fighting armor piercing units (liek skeletons) and super fast units (like razorwings) will become problems.

And they will have to share the melee weapons, making some 40-50% of all treasure decks useless and ~30% of the rest (all the melee weapons) will become extremely coveted weapons. This makes them very reliant on markets and chests (and luck) to be able to properly equip themselves.

Armor is another problem entirely.

What will likely happen is that the heroes will be using shop and copper level melee weapons/armor much much longer than usual because they cant find suitable current level ones. When they do find some, things will be great, but that can take a while. Even then, one or two heroes will be stuck using weaker weapons or be much easier to kill than other heroes. In effect, because everyone is a tank, one or two will be super tanks, and the other two are on permanent 'cleanup and please dont die' mode.

Throw in some silver and gold level monsters and those two mediocre tanks will be dying. A lot. And all the while the OL gains conquest, and the other half of the party has to kill EVERYTHING. Combine this with monsters and tactics that specifically target tanks/melee guys (like aura, pierce, etc) will make life impossible towards the end.

Good Luck fighting the Demon Prince avatar. (HIGH AURA)

Its a much much stronger strategy to diversify. However it sounds like this will have to be a lesson for your group to learn the hard way...

lol at the people who claim that fatigue is not as strong as advertised.

Note to you guys: My players never run out of fatigue, and if you get to the blind point where I'm too far to attack but ur just close enough to strike, either by using fatigue or just moving, you will never have to worry about fatigue.

It's all about how the players manage it, and mine do it well, since its my only known weakness...and as a point to your team playing with tanks, that guy I talked about earlier has a hero with 7 movement and 7 fatigue...and lots of vitality pots...He makes my days horrible. If I stack monters to block him, the mages do quick work of me, If I spread them, he will just run the hole coridor and activate the next glyph, collect the treasure or both...

A lot has been said already, but I'll give my 2 cents anyway. Tanks are best only in the sense of high armor/wounds, making them die less often. But, this comes also at a cost of higher conquest values; every death has a higher impact.

In addition, the treasures and town items are spread evenly (after expansions) among the 3 attack types. So in order to use the best items, a party needs to diversify.

Finally, every hero type has their weaknesses. For mages they are low armor and wounds, but for tanks they are low speed, no range, and low number of attacks.

Lets not forget Master Spiders and web, an unmoving tank is a sitting duck. Use your threat effectively and useless cards for more threat. Force them to advance and not battle your beastmen so they can't multi-attack. Best of all is Dark Charm, catch them when they gotta bunch up, and charm the biggest, meanest, tank in the bunch. Finally of course as mentioned above due to lack of resources, they have to fight over limited equipment. Someone is going to be weak, razorwing them.

In the core game, they are a bit better than magic, and aside from a Laurel with Lucky far superior to ranged. With expansions, ranged takes a step up to be about even, and magic stays about the same except for Landric + shop Blast rune ( + skill for 2 extra surges for even more fun).

I haven't seen anyone mention how traps are far more effective on tanks than on ranged because of ignoring armor. Trapmaster is huge against a melee-heavy group, and when playing with Treachery and Kobolds you get en even bigger bump to this strategy.