Just wondering; how often does a hero survive in your battles?

Last night we had a go with 2 cores.

Ardus died to a 2x2 block of spearmen. (mangling them heavily and rendering them useless after though)

At the other end of the battlefield Kari engaged 2x2 reanimates and she died in two turns too.

Note that I don't mind this.

Anything beats herohammer IMO but I was wondering if this was a fluke or if this is something you encounter (a lot?) too.

Of the 8 or 9 games I've had(mostly losses) I've lost Ardus about 70% of the time. Kari tends to survive because my opponent keeps her back as an artillery piece. I like that most of the heroes are strong but not too hard to kill.

Characters have the advantage of putting a certain amount of damage in a very small part of terrain, but they do it good in combined attacks, not fighting alone. The problem is that ardus is terribly conditioned to be placed next to units that can help him with special skills. Waiqar are more difficult to play than Daqan, as we need to trigger our powerful synergies. Any other way, we generally loose.

Ardus is very well designed to be placed in a flank next to the carrion lancers and supported by archers. In flanks he'll meet tough units such as Kari, cavalry and sometimes golems and he excels at killing them if blighted by applying a lot of mortal strikes .

But if you place him isolated and expect to massacre big spearmen units with an average of 2-3 (x2) damage per turn, you might find him not so prolificient.

I think you had bad luck. 2x2 spearmen is a very weak unit and you should kill them after 3 or 4 turns even with ardus alone.

So my suggestion:

Design a deffensive strategy on the centre and one counter offensive flank.

Add it a powerful flank: ardus + 2x1 or 2x2 carrion lancers + archers with combat ingenuity and make sure that archers blight the right units so that you can apply mortal strikes.

Try and kill with the powerful flank before it's too late and after victory attack the units in the centre engaged to reanimates and any surviving unit from the weak flank.

Heroes can do a lot of spot damage, but the Threat Value of units can overwhelm their armor easy enough to drag them down.

Ardus lives around 50% of the time for me. It seems like I either engage smart and he takes a gross amount of damage to die as a bunch of shots bounce off armor... or I play stupid and he gets splattered for little effort.

Im completely fine with that.

My last match was Undead Mirror match. A 1x1 carrion and 1 Ardus from both sides fought on one flank. A archer unit nearby allow blight to land on his Ardus and my carrion lancer one-shot the hero. My Ardus rolled away with one wound. It emphasized how much heroes rely on not being near supplies of mortal wounds.

6 games against 3 different opponents playing as Waiqar at 100 points. Ardus has died once, and Kari 3 times.

I don't think I have a real secret to keeping him alive... I just try to force my opponent into hard choices and he's proven to be super durable. I also don't run him off by himself unless he's chasing something down and there's no other threats around. I'll be pretty cautious about making him vulnerable to a charge early in the game too.

I've been playing mostly skirmish and in those games heroes don't die. Its almost a rule. I just played a full 200 point game with a 9 tray unit of spearmen and a front line rune golem and 1 shotted Ardus only becasue my threat was 5. Meanwhile I kept Kari so far out of the fight she only attacked twice, but lived. So I guess it depends on the trade you make, get your hero involved and lose them or keep them on the outskirts and make them ineffective.

1 hour ago, Elliphino said:

6 games against 3 different opponents playing as Waiqar at 100 points. Ardus has died once, and Kari 3 times.

I don't think I have a real secret to keeping him alive... I just try to force my opponent into hard choices and he's proven to be super durable. I also don't run him off by himself unless he's chasing something down and there's no other threats around. I'll be pretty cautious about making him vulnerable to a charge early in the game too.

To be honest, on 100 points units are small and not so threatening. Up to 150 characters have to face more dangerous units.

In my demo game Ardus killed a rune golem and then got stomped by oathsworn. Second match he got shot to death before reaching anything by kari (bad deployment and bad charge from me). Third game he was a unit upgrade to a 3x2 reanimate unit and got killed by a morale card before I got to roll the white die a single time.

So far Kari have survived most game and kicked *** but Ardus have died every time.

5 hours ago, druchii7 said:

To be honest, on 100 points units are small and not so threatening. Up to 150 characters have to face more dangerous units.

That's kind of what I figured. They say as much in the Skirmish scenario that characters have a bigger impact in smaller games. Although, we only have 1 character per side at the moment. I wonder how a 200 point game will look with 2 characters? Maro and Ardus together would be 40% of a 200 point army, even without upgrades.

I feel that at 200pts you'll likely have a main character out and about, and the other one as a possible unit upgrades. There's pros and cons to both, but as you said, two Heros is a lot of points.

I have played 5-6 200 pt games as Daqan and I have learned to prioritized keeping Kari alive rather than trying to have her charge in to use her ability. So in almost all my games I have managed to keep her alive. I have only charged into combat with her in maybe 2 of my games, and I only charged after round 5, into weakened units.

I feel like keeping ranged heroes like Kari and Ankaur Maru alive is key because of their ability to influence the game in the later turns, if they die early your probably going to lose the game.

I have not played Ardus, but I think melee heroes like him and hawthorne should get into combat with the rest of your forces. The focus for them should be dealing enough damage before they are inevitably killed off. They seem like their maximum effectiveness is in the early to mid game. I think they should be placed near the end of deployment to allow them to go against units they can inflict maximum damage on.

5 hours ago, Elliphino said:

That's kind of what I figured. They say as much in the Skirmish scenario that characters have a bigger impact in smaller games. Although, we only have 1 character per side at the moment. I wonder how a 200 point game will look with 2 characters? Maro and Ardus together would be 40% of a 200 point army, even without upgrades.

I'm really glad you pointed this out. I was all excited about a second core, but if I instead bought one of everything Waiqar in the next release, I can easily make a 200 point army and get access to all the cool upgrades. Depending on when they become available, it might make the escalation league tough/impossible. I may need another core before then so I can participate. Decisions, decisions.

@Parakitor:

I'm very happy with my decision to buy two cores.

Fully painted now. Gives me a solid backbone to add numbers to anything I intend to build in the future.

(not meant as showing off. It is tabletop painted. But it is painted!)

11 hours ago, Eli Vanto said:

I have not played Ardus, but I think melee heroes like him and hawthorne should get into combat with the rest of your forces. The focus for them should be dealing enough damage before they are inevitably killed off. They seem like their maximum effectiveness is in the early to mid game. I think they should be placed near the end of deployment to allow them to go against units they can inflict maximum damage on.

In my opinion because of Sweeping Strikes option there is really high chance that Lord Hawthorn will survive in a lot of his games. All you have to do is use him as flanking force, carefully closing in but never going into full hand to hand combat with enemy troops. This way you can slaughter enemy units without risking retaliation.

On 5/24/2017 at 5:07 AM, Elkerlyc said:

@Parakitor:

I'm very happy with my decision to buy two cores.

Fully painted now. Gives me a solid backbone to add numbers to anything I intend to build in the future.

(not meant as showing off. It is tabletop painted. But it is painted!)

Great work, I love the rich colors you chose

3 hours ago, Taki said:

Great work, I love the rich colors you chose

Thanks.

These two I liked painting the most. And it shows.

Still not claiming much over table top painted though.

Don't sell yourself short, they look great.