Thormun’s Thunder is here! Thormun himself has finally entered the fray alongside his fearsome and unfathomable Kraken. Several other bonding melee squads and their heroes have also arrived on the battlefields of Valhalla. Will this shake things up for Store Championships, Valkyrie Trials, and the World Championship at Gen Con? Let’s find out!

One of the staple cores of tournament armies over the years is melee bonding. Melee units typically have better stat lines than ranged units (point for point) since ranged units have an easier time getting their attacks in. We’ve discussed the number of activations in the past (i.e. the more figures you can activate a turn, the better) and “bonding” powers allow you to take a turn with a hero, before or after the squad activates. Recent bonding units we have discussed include Queen Maladrix and the Chain Gruts. Using Maladrix and the Festering Honor Guard as an example, the ability to take two “turns” in one Order Marker opens up several options, such as using the Festering Honor Guard to eliminate a unit on a glyph or height, and then jumping on that spot with Maladrix, or eliminating units engaged to Maladrix to free her from having to spend her attacks on those units or take leaving engagement attacks. 

We have three melee bonding units and their heroes to discuss and if you know me at all, you know this is MY kind of Heroscape!

The Revenants of Revna are an incredibly fast squad with a move of 6 and Stealth Flying. Stealth Flying allows the Revenants to move and attack whatever and wherever they choose, as they never have to take leaving engagement attacks. This makes it nearly impossible for an opponent to screen off their support figures. Two attack, for a melee squad, is on the low side, but this is where Blood For Blood comes into play.  Blood for Blood allows you to put a wound on a Warrior, Witch, or Scourge hero in your army, which then gives that hero and your Revenants +1 attack for that turn.  Wounding your own figures is generally not a great tactic for success in Heroscape, except for maybe with Krug, however, if we look at the three units the Revenants bond with: Misaerx, Kilkorax, and the Nuckelavee things start to make sense. 

Misaerx has Life Drain, so when she kills something, she removes a wound; thus her receiving a wound to boost her attack, plus the three Revenants’ attack, is likely a cost she is willing to pay. Six move flying also gives her strong mobility and a higher chance to have height, so she’ll generally be attacking with 4 or 5 attack dice. If she targets lower defense figures with one life, she can keep healing herself and keep the attack boosts flowing. We’ve all had games where our dice decide to go on vacation, but when Misaerx finally falls, she can give Life Drain Spirit to Kilkorax. 

Kilkorax, now sporting a fancy new Life Drain ability, has a higher base attack and life than Misaerx. Witchcraft Telekinesis gives Kilkorax the opportunity to manipulate the battlefield in a few interesting ways by pulling support figures forward into harm's way, moving units off glyphs or high ground, or setting enemies up for attacks by the Revenants. Giving Kilkorax Life Drain also makes her a much more willing participant in Blood for Blood. Since wounding your heroes is such an important part of the Revenant's power level, taking Kilkorax without Misaerx in the Army is not typically wise. Also, sequencing the threats of Misaerx and then Kilkorax will take some finesse. 

The Nuckelavee gives another bonding option for the Revenants, sporting high movement and a breath style attack, with Withering Breath Special Attack hitting up to three targets. Subsume Soul is a variation of Life Drain that works with both the special and normal attack, but only allows for one heal a turn. If the Nuckelavee is teetering on the edge of death, its special attack will have 4 dice, giving you a decent chance of a kill against low defense figures. Seven move, as a double-spaced figure, isn’t quite as good as a single-spaced, 6 move flyer, but it is close. 

The Revenants will struggle into high defense / high life figures, as they really need to continuously get kills, and therefore the self-heals, with their heroes to keep the attack train moving. They do boast more mobility than any other melee bonding currently in the Contemporary meta, which gives them more chances to target what is most beneficial.  

The Skordyre faction has burst onto the battlefield with their ranks of the Skordyre Infantry alongside several common heroes: Bursting Hive Soldier, Spitting Hive Soldier, and Lurking Hive Soldier. While this is the Skordyre's first jump into the world of commons, we have already seen their kin: the Oathbound Legionnaires and Phalanx  and Queen Maladrix in many tournament formats. In fact, the Queen (perhaps unsurprisingly) won the 2025 GenCon World Championship last year. 

The Skordyre are inexpensive commons that want to swarm into battle en masse. Melee enthusiasts have long used the slow roll to move the army together as one giant mass and finally engage and overwhelm your opponent. Many players struggle to continue the slow roll though once they start losing their figures to ranged attacks and end up engaging too quickly, but the Skordyre are uniquely equipped to help push figures forward with their Teeming ability. The ability to passively reinforce the front line, with either the common heroes or more Infantry, whenever you take a loss is fantastic, and allows you to spend less time developing and more time attacking.

Insectoid Swarm alongside Corrosive Bile from the Spitting Hive Soldier gives the Skordyre the bite they need to take out high life / high defense units. When using Pheromone Coordination, you often want to attack first with a Spitter, then use the Lurker as your assassin to hit like a truck with its high move and disengage, while Concealment helps to ensure a random ranged attack doesn’t get a lucky hit on its way into the fight. If you are worried about a unit running away, the Bursting Hive Soldier is at your service; between Coward’s Reward (yes, from the Knights of Weston!) and Acid Sacs 9 your opponent has to make some tough decisions: do they run away and risk two Leaving Engagement Strikes, or stay and attack the Burster with a 60% chance of taking a wound anyway? 

Pheromone Coordination not only lets you take a turn with two different common heroes: you can take a turn with the Queen, Oathbound Phalanx, or even the Thyraxis Dragoon or Sujoah from All-Time, instead. Even Duke offers his Lead By Example to the infantry and can activate the common heroes with Yo, Joe!. There are many different army building choices to be made when fielding the Infantry, but they will struggle in lower figure formats as they really need to swarm the board to be most effective.

The Necrotech Reavers are Vydar’s first “real” bonding squad. There’s been a few iterations of movement bonding (Glad/Blasts, Gorillinators/Nakitas, and Skahen), but this is the first melee full bonding squad. They are also accompanied by several common heroes: Necrotech Geistfire, Necrotech Ghastblade, and the Necrotech Ghoulgrip. The base 4 defense stat line gives the Reavers high survivability compared to most other bonding common squads, allowing them to weather more attacks than a typical 3 defense squad would. They also have no shortage of bonding heroes with Necrotic Network and Scavorith, Hellforge, and the Iron Lich  all have shown they can hang with the best in competitive tournaments. Adding the Reavers as a common bonding option may be just what they need to bring the Eiseneks to the top of the class. 

There is one big detriment to bonding with the unique Eisenek heroes though, as you then only get to activate one Reaver. The Reavers will want to either focus on either all common heroes or some common and one Unique hero (*cough* Hellforge). Scavenged Parts gives the Reavers a bit of “Jack of All Trades” vibes, as assuming you have a variety of common heroes in your army, you have the flexibility to pick and choose what to “upgrade” your Reaver to. Do you have a forward Reaver and a dead Ghastblade and are sitting on the Dagmar Glyph? Your opponent is not going to like what happens next. Do you need a bit more time to set up against the oncoming melee force, and there’s a great choke point? Ghoulgrip is at your service. But maybe your opponent will just ignore your common heroes to try to make the flexibility more challenging, or they will just tie down the common heroes with engagements. The common heroes all have two life, allowing them to not worry as much about Leaving Engagement Attacks. Your opponent will definitely want to eliminate the Ghastblade after a few Wild Spin Special Attacks, though. 

The balance becomes how many of each common hero do you need. I also think this is where the Hellforge gets a chance to shine. Eisenek Advance provides passive movement to keep up with the rest of the team and gives you a fail-safe if your opponent focuses down all your common heroes early. Blast Furnace has the capability of just chewing through common squads, while Feed The Forge 15 offers extra survivability to the Hellforge. 

Long-time Heroscape veteran Necroblade won a Store Championship with Hellforge Mandukor, Necrotech Reavers x4, a Ghastblade, and a Geistfire, and he advised the Hellforge was instrumental in at least two of the games. Generally, he led with the common heroes and used Hellforge’s free movement to keep him lurking just behind, as a threat. Hellforge would then jump into a COBRA Trooper pod and light it all on fire. The Troopers were then forced to regroup and either attack the threat of the Hellforge, or the Ghastblade just waiting in the wings.

We also have our first Valkyrie General to become officially playable in Heroscape: Thormun has arrived along with the dread of the deep, the Kraken. Thormun has the flexibility with Pirate King to either bond with the Scions of Icaria or benefit from any or all of the pirate synergies we have amassed to this point, while Swashbuckler makes a return as well to give Thormun the opportunity to get multiple attacks per turn. 

Where Thormun really has a chance to have fun is with his Ragtag Armada. Using different heroes from different generals and affiliations gives him so much interesting flexibility in both army building and while commanding the battlefield. You will likely want a mix of screening heroes, such as the Ghoulgrip or Bursting Hive Soldier and heroes with multiple attacks, such as Syvarris or Roadblock, to dish out the damage.  Thormun himself boasts 8 life so he will be able to jump into the fray, and won’t go down without a fight. Thormun will generally shine in Highlander or lower figure style formats. 

The Kraken has to be summoned onto the battlefield by taking turns with Unique or Unfathomable heroes, so you will want to field it in an army where heroes get most, if not all, of the Order Markers. The Kraken is a natural fit in Thormun and Dryan builds, especially alongside Haluchott. Command The Kraken gives you the opportunity to get up to 5 attacks where you normally may have only had one (after you have done the work of completely summoning it, which is no small feat in itself). Imagine a Kraken with Haluchott, Onshu and Chana: the Kraken usurps Chana’s turn and, assuming it’s fully summoned, has 5 attacks, then Onshu makes 2 attacks, and finally Haluchott takes her 2 attacks. That's an incredible 9 potential attacks with one Order Marker. Even bonding melee can’t do that. The potential output the Kraken offers is hard to pass up but its main detriment being its low move of 4, but Warp Space helps to alleviate that. 

There’s so much to explore in this wave. The Contemporary Meta is wide open. How will it all shake out? Will the Revenants prefer 3 Nuckelavees or Kilkorax and Misaerx? Will the Queen still prefer her Honor Guard, or will she find a new ally with the Skorydyre Infantry? Will Duke and the Joes make quick friends with the Skordyre soldiers? Will point totals and figure limits hinder the Skordyre? Will the Reavers give the Helforge a chance for the furnace to finally be fed? Will Thormun take his Ragtag Armada over being a Pirate-King? Will anyone actually manage to hit 9 attacks on one Order Marker with the Kraken? (If this happens in a tournament, definitely let us know!) 

Until next time, Happy Scaping!

 

Photos by Vecna