We begin a new weekly feature here at HOMM•V for OSX with one of the true unsung heroes of the game. The Peasant has been a dutiful meat-shield in every HOMM game since King’s Bounty, and indeed makes a glorious reappearance in HOMM•V. What explains the longevity of a unit that, by any measure, is stupid as dirt, slow as grandma, and fights three-headed hydra armed with only a rusty pitchfork?

Peasants eat a balanced diet of carbohydrates and beer

A look at the wider picture shows just how unique and endearing the HOMM peasant is. The history of video games has only seen one unit that can match the HOMM peasant for sheer uselessness: that little smiley face from Minesweeper. Like the peasant, the smiley face just keeps on smiling no matter how many limbs and gallons of blood it sees lost to the careless bravado of a heartless gamer. Although you won’t find it anywhere in the manual, the greatest skill of the peasant is the massive glee gamers get from killing their own troops (which is similar to the feeling of out-running old people). Think about it: would anyone even make peasant units if you had to drag a 1000-high stack of their rotting corpses behind your hero for the remainder of the game? No, we like our peasants just fine dead, and just finer dead and gone.

But thats just not enough, is it? No, if you are lucky enough to sacrifice your legions of peasants to a Necromancer that can resurrect them as skeletons, then by God you get to kill those stupid peasants again. Now if that isn’t a sense of duty, I don’t know what is.

And what do peasants get for that incredible sacrifice? Not a whole hell of a lot. Life as a peasant is cheap. The whole idea of a peasant unit is that their life is so worthless that you might be able to defeat a dragon by feeding it to death. And much like the theory that 1000 monkeys with 1000 typewriters will eventually write Romeo and Juliet, 1000 peasants will eventually poke a pitchfork where the sun don’t shine, no?

Yes, the peasant truly is life at its most meaningless. They are born to die terrible, painful deaths twice if their commanding hero has a sense of irony. Nevertheless, there is something heroic in having 1000 farmers happily march to their death merely to satisfy your whim and wisdom. And so to you, the hapless peasant, our salute!