Ireland's Most Popular

So far in 2020 the Irish Hobbit League has held 4 tournaments with a total of 61 army lists having been used. Now while writing up these lists for previous blog posts I was noticing that certain Heroes were appearing a lot more often than others and I started wondering what the most popular Heroes were among the IHL community. After a lot of studying and an Excel spreadsheet I finally found out what were the IHL's most popular Heroes. As an interesting aside I found that 105 different Hero profiles have been used so far this year.

Firstly, before we get onto the rankings, a few rules. 

1. Generic and named heroes will be ranked separately. Any hero that can be taken multiple times in the same list will be categorized as generic.
2. A Hero had to have been used by more than 1 person to qualify for the rankings. No one person taking 5 Moria Captains and sneaking a spot in the top 10.
3. Rankings will be based on total number of times used, with number of different people using them as tiebreaker

Only 6 generic heroes met these criteria. They were:

5=. Dol Amroth Captain
5=. Rohan Captain (3 appearances by 2 players)
4. Herald of the Dead (4 appearances by 2 players)
3. Orc Captain (4 appearances by 2 players)
2. Abyssal Knight (6 appearances by 2 players)
1. Barrow Wight (7 appearances by 3 players)

So, onto the named hero rankings, in reverse order:

8=. Elrond,
8=. King of theDead,
8=. Cirdan (5 appearances by 3 players)
4=.  Theoden
4=. Gamling

4=. Legolas Prince of Mirkwood
4=. Dernhelm (5 appearances by 4 players)
3. The Witchking (6 appearances by 6 players)
2. Thranduil (7 appearances by 5 players)
1. Eomer (7 appearances by 6 players)

This list really highlights the popularity of Rohan currently, with 4 of the top 10 being Rohirim. Thranduil's Halls is also a popular army at the moment with both Thranduil and Legolas, Prince of Mirkwood appearing in this list. Interestingly, if you combine Legolas' two profiles (Prince of Mirkwood and Greenleaf) then he would have finished clear at the top with 9 appearances by 7 players.

Only one Evil Hero made it into the named top 10, the Witchking, whose availability in both Angmar and Mordor helped him up the leader board. This shows some of the discrepancy between Good and Evil currently. In contrast, the top 3 generic heroes were all Evil.

I was somewhat surprised that Eomer came 1st, he's not one of the names that immediately springs to mind when considering top heroes. However, he is one of the top Heroes within Rohan thanks to him having 3 Attacks, 3 Wounds and 3 Might, so with the popularity of Rohan currently it's not terribly surprising their top hero is the IHL's most popular.

We'll come back to this topic later in the year to see if the Marshall of the Riddermark can retain the top spot or if another challenger will take it from him.