Thrangir by
superfrog
Regrettably, I lack a song or quote that I can somehow tenuously link to this fine fellow. So I'll just get right to it. Will Thrangir measure up? Or is he half the custom he should be? Will he survive this punishment and make it into the Soldiers of Valhalla?
Balance
No real problems here. Thrangir's stats are nothing that impressive for his points, but both his offense and defense are boosted tremendously by his power set. He needs that boost though, as he has no synergies to speak of. Overall, he's just a solid stand-alone figure for his points.
Theme
I like the overall theme here of a tough-as-nails Champion tearing through the enemy without care for the damage he takes in turn, but there are a few problems here for me.
Can't say I'm a fan of using the species name 'Half-Orc', it's a terribly human-centric and silly name, but D&D is officially part of Heroscape, so there's nothing to be done there.
Outside of that, the six move never made much sense to me, he's clearly wearing some pretty heavy plate and neither of his parent races have any special affinity for armor that would justify it.
The biggest problem I have here is the interaction between Reckless Assault and Resilience, it just feels weird that he can ignore a wound from his own recklessness. I've tried to get a picture of how that works in my mind, and I just can't see it.
Creativity
Both Thrangir's powers definitely bring something new to the game, I like the scaling mechanic in Resilience and Reckless Assault can lead to some interesting choices. Overall, a very unique design.
Playability
I'll admit, I didn't do a great deal of testing here. I gave Thrangir a few games to see how the Reckless Assault/Resilience combo felt in practice, and long story short, it never felt natural. It always played more like a 'cheat' or something that had slipped through the cracks rather than an intentional design feature, and it was surprisingly easy to forget to roll for Resilience after taking the Reckless Assault wound. If I'm still forcing myself not to play it wrong after 5 games, that tells me it's a bit counter-intuitive.
Summary
Overall, Thrangir brings a lot of interesting things to the table, but the interaction between Resilience and Reckless Assault never felt right to me, and that was just too much to ignore.
I vote
to induct Thrangir to the SoV.