Fated Summons round 4.
A little overview (if you only want hero pick recommendations, feel free to scroll down)
S1 heroes: Round 4 of 4, it will be interesting to see what they will be replaced with next time, my guess: First costumes (for the next 4 iterations and so on after that?), but for now they remain just empty place holders, without any value.
Hotm: Obviously they will never run out, as they produce 12 per year and only offer 10 in FS, so on average the hotm row grows 1 month older with every iteration (in comparison to the current heroes). Lot of interesting choices this time though.
CF1 heroes: This is round 2 of 5 and first time we see an interesting hero in this group, with more to come in the future: Hatter, LotL, Chameleon, (so a good green should be coming up in all 3 coming rounds!) as well as Gazelle some time should be nearly guaranteed, while BK might be skipped due to more red than other colors in the group.
This time we ran out of S3 heroes and they were replaced with the oldest group of heroes available: The seasonal event heroes: Round 1 of 2. So in order to possibly plan your choices better: besides this current group, we will next time most likely receive: Killhare, Krampus, Vanda and then either Roostley or Roc as well as Yunan or Francine.
As always
This is a feature mostly designed for people that spend little to no money at all, as all the heroes on this list are badly outdated and will not stand up against a team of current heroes. Still a few heroes can be useful to many players especially some niche heroes that have a very limited area of use, but in that small area they are really good.
If you have costumes of of any of the heroes on this list, picking a duplicate may be the best thing to do as you at least get a hero with better stats than what is on offer otherwise.
So lets get to the individual heroes:
S1: Ignore them all as usual
Hotm Special this time is that all 5 of them are from the 2017 family which means they are a) very old and have horrible stats b) have a very powerful mana boosting family bonus. I will explain a bit more what that means for each of the 5 options below.
Ares: Not especially interesting, but since none of the red ones this time are, some people might still pick him? I would recommend switching focus to another color. As a 2017 family member he can be used to boost mana for other family members, but being avg speed himself, it is rather irrelevant to himself and being less useful than the others makes him the lowest priority among all hotm choices for this purpose.
Alberich: a reviver has a place in rush settings as slow revivers usually do. See my comments on MN as it is the same story there. In comparison to MN: he revives fewer heroes than MN, but the heroes he brings back have a much higher chance to stay alive. He also gives an additional mana boost, which I think may make him better than MN. One additional bonus is his 2017 family (see other hotm options), in his case it means it is relatively easy to bring him down to 9 tiles (at 34% mana boost, so 20%troop, 4% class, 10% family bonus with 1 additional family member), which then makes him definitely more useful than MN at regular speed.
Athena: still the best DD hero for titans if I am not mistaken (of course the costume would be an upgrade), but can also serve well in a blue avg speed damage stack. My recommendation among the hotm as well as the blue heroes. Also 2017 family, which at avg speed matters much less for herself (9tiles is a given anyway), but she can be used to bring other family members up to important breakpoints (see other hotm options).
Musashi: the main use I can come up with for him would be the mana boosting 2017 family bonus, so if you have others of his year (see other hotm options), maybe, but not much there besides that. The problem is he himself is a “bad class” for mana and he would need 2 family members (15%) and a 20% troop to fire in 6 tiles, to make his skill acceptable.
Thoth Amun: Same mana boosting 2017 family bonus as other hotm otions and a good hero to boot! His 4% class bonus with only 1 family member and 20% troop gets him to 6 tiles. Nice potential combo with Alby and both get major breakpoints. He also gets a special mention for fighting Master Lepus for best damage hero in this FS4. The damage itself is not what puts him above Lepus, but the better utility addons. Generally damage heroes suffer most from power creep, so I do not recommend damage heroes and would rather look at utility heroes that loose less quality over time, but since this guy here has both damage and utility (plus potential super speed) I think he makes a good choice.
CF1
Kestrel: See Ares and Toth Amun.
Locke: See Toth Amun, in addition to being a damage hero, she deals her damage through a cleansable ailment starting with low damage, which is already worse than normal damage and on top of that DoT suffers even more from the recent HP increase in heroes.
Arthur: Worse than last rounds Frida, so hopefully you have no reason to even think of him, but if you missed out on Frida and still don´t have a blue EDD for titans. But even then I would rather use Nordri than this guy.
Guinevere: Once a great tank, now invisible. But still not a horrible choice for the mana steal and heal. I would say most interesting yellow hero in SF4.
Panther: Best CF1 hero for sure and in my opinion top choice for the entire SF4. Fast speed, dispel and EDD, make her useful for titans, or damage stacks.
Seasonal event heroes
Santa: slow, not much damage, but at least AD and DD, so usable in rush. Not much competition in red.
Mother North: Will most likely be the most popular hero in this SF4. In low level play revivers may still be the top option for rush wings. And if you have Kalö as a partner (or another reviver, see Alberich) it can be an annoying combo for the wings in your defense. Certainly not any more at top level play, but I guess that is not what we are talking about here anyway 
Outside rush, she´s just another slow healer, the revive making her better than say a vanilla Vivica. So yes a good choice for sure. Just not my favorite.
Master Lepus: One of the two best hitters in this SF4, see Thoth-Amun.
Rana: A few little things, but nothing much of anything.
Victor: Stands out with his very fast speed that somewhat makes up for the low everything else. Not a bad hero at all, but purple is a competitive color this time.
So as a summary:
Top picks:
- Guardian Panther
- Athena
- Alby / Mother North / Thoth-Amun
For people that really want a specific color, I would add Guin as OK for yellow and Santa (for rush) or Ares (purely for the family bonus to others) as not really OK for red.
Have fun with your shiny old toys! May they serve you well!
