Kingdom Rush Frontiers (Steam) Impossible Hero Challenge - Port Tortuga Iron

There's only one word I can think of to describe this map, and that is messy.  I'm not a fan of maps like this because there's just too much RNG involved, so you can never feel like you have a foolproof strategy in place.  With Rain of Fire and upgrading the towers near the water you can take down some of the gunships before they fire much, but you can't do it with all of them, so you're going to endure a lot of their barrages one way or another, and that's where the RNG comes in.  In this strategy I use lots of level 1 barracks scattered across the map to try to draw their fire out to harmless places.  Still, if they decide to focus-fire the Boatswains and your hero at the chokepoint, or if they take out all your blockers on the southern exit just as some Greenfins are heading there it can be a loss despite your best efforts and even despite using an otherwise great hero.

Impressions

I'm going to take a rare step like I did some time ago (I can't remember which map off the top of my head) and give each hero a 'B' by default, even if their video makes it look like they had no troubles doing the map, because that just means they got good RNG with the gunships.  I'm only handing out 'A's to heroes who have some special quality that I feel allows them to overcome the RNG and provide reliable wins.

To that end, the only 'A's for this map are Sha'tra, Ashbite, and Bonehart.  Sha'tra's Abduction ability allows him to take out the Blacksurges quickly, and doing so allows your towers to continue to focus on the other mobs unimpeded, so that even if the gunships take out critical blockers your towers can generally DPS the mobs down anyway.  As for Ashbite and Bonehart, their ability to destroy the hordes of mobs en masse means it almost doesn't matter if your blockers are there or not.  In addition, Ashbite has an insta-kill chance on his Feast ability.  At 40% it might take a couple of tries, but chances are you can take out the first Blacksurge before they become too much of an issue.

Final Grades

• Alric - B
• Mirage - B
• Captain Blackthorne - B
• Cronan - B
• Bruxa - B
• Nivus - B
• Dierdre - B
• Grawl - B
• Sha'tra - A
• Ashbite - A
• Karkinos - B
• Kutsao - B
• Dante - B
• Bonehart - A
• Kahz - B
• Saitam - B

Kingdom Rush Frontiers Impossible Hero Challenge - Port Tortuga Iron