Slitherine

Playing the afrika corps campaign for the first time, and I had a unit receive the deadliest hero I've ever seen. The u it was an Italian mobile artillery that I didn't even purchase, just acquired it one scenario. This dinky little Italian artillery unit that I thought was next to worthless and expendable, was awarded a hero and given a +5 attack! I've played panzer and allied both on iPad and never seen greater than a +3, which is extremely rare in itself. Is this +5 unique to afrika? Has anyone seen +4 or +5 any other campaign? Thrilled as I was, I can't get over that it was an Italian unit instead of one my Germans.

Yes it's a special hero pre-awarded to the Itallian unit by the designers of the scenario. It's probably there to close the gap between the usually worse Italian units and to encourage players to use at least some of them.

When you start playing the Grand Campaign you will see some real powerful heroes. They are named after real WW2 distinguished soldiers and some offer really insane bonuses like for example the Oleh Dir Gebrigsjäger with +3 movement and +3 initiative or the second incarnation of Rudel with +9 attack and two other stats.

There's three good units in that scenario as long as you capture El whatsit soon enough.
The +5 A is very handy, though I've never had the pleasure of getting two extra +3 A heroes, which would make it totally awesome instead of very good.

I'm always puzzled that the +5 hero unit seems to acquire experience slower than the +1 move hero unit. Maybe being there can make a unit more effective than hitting hard.

The Tac bomber with +3 attack hero is also good, especially if upgraded - it has 2 spotting, decent attack values and pretty good Naval attack and tons of fuel. I think that the ammo is only 5 ammo, which is a bit of a shame when the fuel is so high.

A lot of my enjoyment playing panzer is building up the core forces, so in that vein I have another update to relate. My afrika corps units now include a German artillery that earned +1 range heros on consecutive scenarios. This is my first ever artillery with a range of 5, which is unbelievably awesome, except now I'm agonizing over upgrading him to a different unit type. Afraid if I do I'm gonna kick myself for giving up an artillery with that insane range. I'm curious, do units just stop accruing heros after three? Can a new hero be earned and "substituted" for a previous one? Thanks for the responses, I was unaware of the other "standard" hero awards mentioned, good to know.

I've had a 5 range Italian 149mm gun in AK once - it was very useful.
The other great unit was a 7.2" gun with 3 move, which meant it could keep up with infantry and (near enough) with the churchills. The lack of hard-hitting mobile artillery in AC made this even more valuable.

Playing DLC 42 East I have a Panzer IVG with spotting 5 (it came with +2 spot hero and got another +1). It doesn't quite do everything a recon unit can but I now only deploy a recon unit when I have a lot of minor hexes to capture or want a fast moving raiding party.

In my WWI mod, all artillery have range of 6 or more (though the new GC '14 will add the Light Artillery unit with 5) - those guns are epic!

- BNC