I’m surprised at the Hero rules and how ineffective Heroes are: They only provide +1 combat strength, and that’s if all cards in the battle line are the same faction, otherwise they provide no combat advantage at all. An opponent can attack and conquer your city from right underneath your Hero as if (s)he doesn’t exist! That makes no sense to me. If a Hero’s city is attacked they should have to be the first in line to be fought, and the city can only be conquered if they’re defeated. Opponents’ Heroes can move through map tiles that your Hero is on with no opportunity for you to “challenge” them and block their movement. This means that Heroes are used simply as markers to show which city you’re going to attack next, they barely interact and cannot be used defensively to protect cities, apart from the weak “+1 in combat” ability. I would suggest: Heroes should have their own combat strength of a fixed amount, say 3, when engaged in combat. Or they could inherit the same strength as any city they’re defending. If an opponent attacks a city with a Hero on it, (s)he must defeat the Hero first before being able to try to conquer the city. A player should be able to “challenge” any Hero that moves into a tile occupied by his own Hero if he wishes (he may decide to “hide” if he has a weak combat hand that round). Maybe he should have to present a Weapon card to do so. The opponent shouldn’t be able to just move past and ignore a Hero if one is encountered during movement. These changes would make the end game more tactical; at the moment it just feels like players seek out the next city to attack and move their Heroes to it, ignoring enemy Heroes (who are powerless to stop it) completely. Have I understood the rules correctly? I know there are some extra abilities for Heroes in the KS expansion (blockading and +1/+3 combat strength for Emberians) but still they don’t address these basic issues.