Marcu Esenwein costs too much!

"Taelord costs too much."

We've all read it before. We've all said it before. It's a truism that is pretty much as old as Heroscape websites.

Anyone who read my article in codex 10 will probably start to see the issue here. The game isn't just about points, but about what you are doing with your turns. That's the basis of all of my order marker essays, and the first step on the real route to solid play.

I threw around the term turn productivity in my first order marker article, without ever taking the time to define it. Productivity in economic terms is the amount of output you get from a unit of input. Turn productivity (or perhaps more accurately order marker productivity) in Heroscape terms is simply what you get out of a given turn. How many figures are activated and how many dice can they potentially roll on their attacks in the space of one order marker? That's turn productivity.

So why does Marcu Esenwein, the 20-point figure with solid stats and self-healing cost too much? In most armies, the opportunity cost of putting an order marker on him is enormous. Because of Eternal Hatred, he has an 80% chance of taking a turn which will give him at most 1 attack. With a glyph or height, he can get 5 or 6 attack dice, but even then that will only be a useful turn if he is close enough to an expensive hero. He has 20% chance of turning against you, which is clearly not a very productive turn. (Granted, Ornak makes Marcu a better play, by using only half a turn and negating the effect of Eternal Hatred).

On the other hand, if the point total is high enough to allow you to play Taelord, one move with him can potentially increase the productivity of your future turns by a lot, which is something that very few figures can do.