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Hey everyone,
A quick and VERY silly question here:

I've seen the term "hero-hammer" thrown around on this site and others in reference to armies that run a lot of heroic characters or single units. I've heard that a few of these can actually be rather successful too!

As far as that goes, what do YOU think are the best "hero-hammer" factions in the game right now, and why are they the best?

Knight armies are capable of the ultimate hero-hammer.

Chaos Marines, historically, have had a stronger reliance on their champions and heroes.

Tyranids can be built hero-hammer style. Lots of big bugs.

Orks *can* be hero-hammery but they are somewhat forced into horde mode.

Other armies can be built that way, SM would probably be the next easiest to do. I’d say these are the top contenders... in order.

The term came from 5e WHFB, where playing an army of all characters was just better than equivalent points of anything else. As to which army does the best herohammer game these days it's probably still either a Chaos soup list; you need beatsticks on the level of Marine Captains/Daemon Princes to deliver, which most armies don't have, and you need to be able to stack buffs to make an unkillable deathstar to cover them on the way in, which Chaos is loaded with.

I did not know that about the terms origins!

Obviously I should have clarified about the knights as, yeah, that's pretty much just the hero-hammer faction really.

I was unaware of how chaos heroes stacked up against everyone else though!

I'm also wondering specifically if one of the Space Marine flavors could do a small "Hero-Hammer" army in the 1k-1.5k range and stand a decent chance of victory.

My thoughts would initially turn towards Grey-Knights or Space-Wolves, although I hear that Blood-Angel "smash-captains" are also a thing...

Space Wolves aren't a bad choice for hero hammer simply because as a faction they lend themselves well to that flavor. if you wanted to run an army with a lot of heros, I'd focus on one where that's part of their feel, especially now with a new edition inbound