hey Jonathan,
Heroes are those dramatic individuals who can have an outsized impact upon a battle through their inspiration and abilities. Note that “Hero” in this rule does not imply good or evil, and applies to magic users of various types -- and to priests, shamans, and the like.
In the game a hero is a locus for transferrable abilities that may alter the battle. Those abilities are purchased as Battle Cards. Heroes may move from one location to another, and from being attached to one combat unit, to being attached to another, on different turns.
Heroes can be attached to a friendly unit (touching it, in the game -- meaning that the hero is embedded in that unit) or wandering around loose. Wandering around loose they are easy to defeat -- just take a thousand orcs and move across the spot and you kill him, wound him, drive him into another dimension -- regardless, he won't be helping in the rest of the battle.
When opposing heroes face each other they fight. There are three ways this can happen:
- The Duel. If unattached meets unattached they fight a duel.
- The Challenge. If two stands in frontal close combat both have attached heroes, they can (if both sides agree) fight a Duel instead of rolling that combat this turn. The two stands just sit and watch the fight and end up in contact at the end of the turn.
- Mass Combat. If two stands fighting normal close combat both have attached heroes there is the potential for one or both of them to be defeated (whether that means killed or wounded or banished from this plane of existence or imprisoned or turned into a pillar of salt or doused with water and melted). If a stand rolls a “1” for combat in a situation where there is an enemy Hero in a stand fighting it (whether it is attached to a stand on the front, flank, or rear of the fighting stand, but not if only providing an overlap) then one of the Heroes attached to that stand dies. If both sides roll a “1” in combat, both stands lose a Hero.
Duels work like this: both heroes roll a die and add the number of points paid for that hero (abilities and stuff). Lower total dies. Tie and both die. And in addition to that result, independently, anyone who rolled a "1" before modifications dies. (This is the Eowyn rule).
