Most of my experience with homm was always with magic-heavy factions, especially academy/tower. Sure, I dabbled in all factions, but it always felt underwhelming to me not having access to the max tier magic. And then I experienced the two factions in the title.
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Hoooolly both of those factions feel amazing.
I love that Hive is the finese army. Thanks to having almost no shooters, you are forced to think more about your options, how to solve fights with as little casualties as possible. And my god sometimes it feels like your units are balistic missles.
Reavers getting 2 or 3 kills first turn is so satisfying. Most of the Hive units have actually cool uses and offer many strategies, there are at least a few heroes I already adore (super-tactics guy is my highlight). At first I did not understand the eggs, but after some training, juggling them and the action point economy is very interesting. The ability feels much better than gating was in H5 imo.
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And then there's Schism. With 3 shooters, its a polar opposite of the Hive. The units have great flavour, and it feels great to be standing at the other end of the screen and pew-pewing. All the units look amazing, and most have interesting abilities. Like the arbitrators with the paradoxical range. The ability to summon units from dead bodies feels satisfying.
The communion is a great addition to the game, it instantly felt as iconic as necromancy to me. If the faction ever returns in any game (like HOTA), I hope they'll keep it.
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Sorry for gushing so much, but I'm actually super surprised how well I resononated with both of those. It's probably not most people's opinion, but I am so happy we got those and I feel the devs did amazing with them.