Long time veteran of the game. I feel like each MoM game is a unique story and each hero writes a passage in the story. As such, I love playing with heroes. If you do as well, I have the build for you.

Warlord - Famous - Alchemy - Channeller - Artificer - 3 Life Books

These picks have two primary goals in mind. First getting heroes to offer their services so you can hire them, then casting heroism on them to make them ferocious. Below I will go through each pick individually, ranking their importance and discussing their benefit.

Warlord (must have!) - Immediate plus one to all units level, including heroes! This effect is cumulative with heroism, giving enchanted heroes (and units) 4 bonus levels, immediately!
Famous (must have!) - 10 instant fame encourages heroes to offer services more often and also qualifies you for some higher strength heroes! Combine this pick with an early Just Cause spell and some great heroes will come your way!
Alchemy (strong choice) - The 1 to 1 trade of gold and mana supports early-game casting of spells (read: heroism!). It also reduces the need for any actual mana generation. allowing all wizard focus to be shifted to research and skill. Also gives units magical weapons, increasing their chance to hit!
Channeller (optional) - The half upkeep on spell maintenance will greatly help with heroisms!
Artificer (optional) - This pick reduces the time to create items for your heroes (half price = half skill required!)
3 Life Spellbooks - Grants two common life spells: Heroism (must have!) and I would suggest Healing for the other.

Noteable alternatives: If either of the two optional picks aren't to your liking, grab one extra life spellbook to ensure you get Just Cause.

Race isn't of supreme concern with this build; any can be powerful with heroism. My favorites are Halfings (slingers, so strong!), Gnolls (quick wolf riders!) or Klackon (stag beetle so deadly...). Whatever race you choose, make sure you cast heroism on your units so they become level 4!

In the early game, research Just Cause if it is an option. Once researched, try to cast it ASAP so more / better heroes come your way! Don't feel obligated to hire the first hero that offers their service, choose a hero you like. I tend to favor caster heroes; here are some of my favorites:
-Zaldron (with heroism he gives spell research equal to 13 libraries!)
-Malleus (Up for a flamestrike barbeque?)
-Yamraeg (Doom bolts for everyone!)
-Jaer (Wind Walking... zoom zoom!)

Once you have enough gold income, start casting heroisms! On your hero, on your starting units, on anything under the sun! Ultra Elite units have drastically increased chance to hit as well as double hit points! This should allow you to defeat lots of the monsters on the map.

For the harder monsters... those require full armies and strong heroes. Use high tech military units enchanted with heroism combined with your heroes to bring them down. If they put your heroes at risk, use the Healing spell liberally!

For the hardest monsters, create items for your heroes with Create Artifact. This spell can be QUITE mana intensive; remember to shift gold into mana using Alchemy! If you have the time and money, make the strongest items (+6 axes with flaming attack and +3 to hit, rar!). If not, try making items with several +2 bonuses; for instance, an amulet of +2 atk / +2 def / +2 res / +2 movement, or a sword with +2 atk / +2 def.

Late in the game, use Raise Dead during combat or Ressurection out-of-combat to revive fallen heroes!

Have fun!

Hey great post and great ideas here.

I would usually not go with Famous just because that is one of the easier things to gain in game and I think it takes 2 picks though not sure on that off hand.

One of my Favorite heroes to get is Malleous of course and he only takes 5 fame for some stupid reason.

Yramrag another great hero take 20 fame though so would be good to get him early.

Of course 2 of the best spell casters, Warrax and Aerie, both need 40 fame as well so getting them a lot sooner may be worth it.

Check out http://masterofmagic.org/ for all your MoM hero questions it's a very good site.

Regarding Artificer and Weapon Creation.

I have recently realized the value of 2 Heroes I never thought much of before as I really prefer Magic Heroes over Might.
Gunthar and Bahgtru are 2 Heroes who's true potential is not fully realized at first glance. THROWN attacks work kind of like First Strike attacks in that they hit BEFORE the enemy retaliates. Not only that but then they get todo Normal melee damage as well.

* WARNING - Thrown attacks, like First Strike, only deal their damage first when YOU initiate the Attack. Thus it is really ideal to give the Hero Flying (via Flight, Chaos and perhaps Wind Walking).

However to fully realize the potential damage of the Thrown attack your Hero must have an AXE weapon. This is because AXE weapons add their attack bonus's to the Thrown attack along with the normal attack.

With Artificer +6 Attack on a Axe only costs 400 mana. +2 to Hit also costs 400 and the Flaming special only costs 150 (only available if you have 2 CHAOS spell books though.). This means a +6 Flaming Axe with +2 Hit bonus only costs 1000 mana to make and it increases your THROWN AND normal attacks by +9 as well as adding a 20% to hit bonus.

This makes these Heroes ideal to take out those pesky pesky Pikemen which Negate the first strikes of Paladin's hahaha (evil laugh).

Now SamK says he really likes Heroes and I agree with him especially as he listed my all time favorite Malleus. While yes there are other heroes better than Malleus, his great abilities and very very low fame, gold requirement make him in my book the best deal for the money since you can get him so much earlier than most of the others.

Now one of the things that is so very much needed if you are going to rely on Heroes sadly is decent Artifacts for them. You cannot really depend on finding all the ones you need either so therefore it's best to make your own.

Now I previously made mention of the Artificer Retort and this is a MUST if you plan to use Heroes really. However I did not at the time have any experience with the Runemaster ability and did not realize just how good it is in combination.
That same +6 Flaming Axe I mentioned above would normally cost 2000 to cast/make which is reduced to only 1000 if you have the Artificer ability. If you add the Runemaster ability on top of that it's down to only 500 mana to cast/make!!! Can you imagine how easily you could crank out super gear for your Heroes? They will be unstoppable.

THE CATCH: Yes I am sorry to say there is a bit of a catch to the super cheap artifacts and sadly it's the fact that Runemaster requires you to have 2 picks each in 3 different schools. For example 2 Life/Chaos/Nature. Thus while Runemaster itself only takes 1 pick you need to use at least 6 others for spell books, which is really not all that bad though. It probably means though that you would not get that Famous/Charismatic start he apparently likes though with really only 1 point left (after Artificer & Warlord on top of Runemaster).


Also to correct 1 small point for you SamK. IF you have Warlord ability and you cast Heroism on a fresh unit it actually goes straight to ULTRA-ELITE not just Elite as the Warlord ability is added on at the end. Ultra Elite is basically Level 5, also known as "Champion" level for Heroes.

This is important because Ultra Elite gives +10% chance to hit, +1 Def and +1 Resistance more than standard Elite troops. It's not as noticeable a bump for Heroes sadly but it's still something.

Ooo, thanks for the clarifications!

I'm going to have to fiddle with runemaster. that sounds interesting.

There is one other thing I would like to bring up regarding Heroes and it's on the usefulness of "Super" skills which I think is highly overrated.

For those who don't know some Heroes get Random picks in their abilities which can mean they don't have the same abilities every game. A few Heroes never very but the majority of them have at least 1 random pick which can sometimes even improve an ability they already have.

Might (Attack), Agility (Defense), Constitution (Health Points) and Arcane Power (Magical Ranged Attack) are the skills I am primarily concerned with. You see each of these skills raises by +1 per level. This will give these stats a total bonus of +9 at max level. The sad thing is if you get the "Super" version of these skills it will only increase them by 50% rounded down so at max level instead of +9 you would get +13 for a total benefit of only +4 over normal.

For myself I would rather a Hero get any 2 of these then one of them "Super" as it's really not that great an improvement in my mind.

Also I think the Lucky Ability is highly undervalued. The fact that it does not overtly improve with levels gives a false impression of it's benefits. Lucky first of all increases your chance to hit by 10%, which may not seem as impressive straight off but will the more Attack you have. Lucky gives +1 Resistance which is not really that useful truthfully. Both of these abilities so far are not great since the hit bonus is better given with Blade Master however the last ability Lucky gives you is an extra +10% chance to block for every armor point you have. Normally each Defense point has a 30% chance to block a damage but with Lucky it's now 40%. There are only 2 other ways, I think, that you can increase your chance to block and it is through Prayer and High Prayer.

Wow. That is a lot of retorts. I've never played with more than two. With just warlord and life books (and always humans...), I usually just march out the paladins, full tax rate plus stream of life, and random heroism buffs.

Still, will give it a try next time I have an affair with MoM.

Had to share this game with you all...

Impossible, 4 enemies, Large, Weak, Halflings. Went slingers and got Vallana early on. I captured my island on earth and started in on Myrran. Managed to kill a Great Drake Chaos node and got 2 chaos books. Got lucky; flame blade research available! At really high level, Valana's Leadership adds +1 to ranged attack.

Ultra Elite Slingers with Lionheart, Flame Blade and Leadership: ranged attack of 10! Talk about overpowered... they were 1 shotting Sky Drakes, no joke. Trooollololololol!

---------
Another hilarious unit to use with this build is Hammerhands. Drop Artificer and Channeler for Myrran, go dwarf. Find some Adamantite and spend gold to erect a city quickly there.

Hammerhands with Adamantite and Lionheart are strength 15 with 8 hits each... loolololl. Sky drakes kill themselves on these guys!

Tried this strategy in insecticide impossible today. Alch - Warlord - Channeler - Myrran - 3 Life Books.

Picked dwarves; freaking Tlaloc spawned Myrran and near me... ugh. Early troops from a warlord wizard is brutal. I barely survived his torrent of attacks while fast expanding to a spot with gold - gold - adamantium veins. Got the alchemy and fighter's guilds up. Finally the hammerhands were able to push him back.

Worked well, but dayum that early game is hard to survive. Didn't even get my shrine or library up before I was making nothing but halberdiers with heroism just to survive. Picked up Thiera early, then Valana and found Shala in a ruins.

Had to quit as I began capturing his cities.

Continued the game today; the momentum I had with carried over into a full clear of Myrror, including one 8x Chaos Drake node and one 8x Sky Drake node. Ultra Elite, Adamantite, Lionheart, High Prayer, +3 Leadership Hammerhands with Charm of Life... pretty good unit.

20 atk, 8 def, 10 hits PER UNIT in the squad... one stack is like a group of 6 heroes lol

Looks like I'll win easily from here, my Arcanus opponents have been warring with eachother and are pretty pathetic. Jafar cast Time Stop 3 times, I had never seen that before. Pretty annoying!

edit: indeed, won easily.