Only a few heroes actually have the thrown attribute: Gunthar the Barbarian, Bahgtru the Orc Warrior, and Shalla the Amazon. However, as these heroes approach Demi-God status, their thrown attacks become incredibly powerful. To really boost a thrown attack, equip your hero with an enchanted axe. I often keep Bahgtru throughout the game, even though he is only a low-level hero. After giving him an enchanted +6 axe, he often winds up with a 20+ strength thrown attack!

The real beauty of thrown attacks is that they can hit flying units, even if your hero cannot fly! Just walk up next to the flying unit and chop away. Keep this in mind the next time you attack an opponents hero with your flying unit.

Another possible reason is that your opponents are "webbing" your heroes. For most flying units (non-corporeal excluded) having a web spell cast on them grounds them, taking away their flight for the duration of the combat. This is a quick and easy way to make a hero (or any flying unit) a ground target for troops. Be extremely careful of taking a flying hero into lairs with Great Wyrms. Giant spiders often accompany Great Wyrms and will ground your heroes before the Wyrms take their turn. Once grounded, the Wyrms move in and chew you up!

A guardian spirit does just that: it guards his wizard's node and attempts to kill any other spirits, even guardian spirits, that attempt to meld with the node. If you attempt to take over a node protected by a guardian spirit, you have a 25% chance (or 1 in 4 chance) of taking over the node. It's very frustrating. But here is how you do it:

1) make sure you opponent's node is empty of any troops.
2) Summon your spirit and send it to the node.
3) Once the spirit is at the node, save the game.
4) Attempt to meld with the node. Chances are you will fail. If so, simply reload the game and you will be right back at the node with your spirit and you can try again!
5) Keep trying until you finally get the node (it changes colors) and then save the game! Ta-da!

My favorite use of spell saves is to create a "Staff of Destruction" for one of my spell-casting heroes. Using the Create Artifact spell, I create a staff with -4 spell save and 4x Disintegrate spell stores. Disintegrate will absolutely destroy any unit with a resistance lower than 10 (with no saving throws!). However, with my "Staff of Destruction", I can Disintegrate a unit with a resistance of 13 because the -4 spell saves lowers their resistance to 9! If I were to give the same hero two more items which had -4 spell saves, he/she would be capable of Disintegrating a unit with a resistance of 21! This is why I always give my wizards the Artificer pick.

But enemy heroes, on rare occasion, will be equipped with a magical item which they found in a lair/node. And I believe that if you lose a hero in battle -- who is equipped with a magical item -- they enemy gets that item and will give it to one of their heroes. I'll give this a shot sometime and see if its true.

However, as the truly good MoM players know, fame is much more valuable than for just attracting heroes. Fame has the following effects:

Fame reduces the cost (in gold) of your army by 1 gold per fame point. For example, a wizard with a fame of 30 saves 30 gold each turn on his total army cost! This can be a life-saver at the start of the game when gold is scarce.

If you've read the material on this site, you know that fame increases the frequency and quality of a hero/champion approaching you for work. But you fame also determines the frequency and quality of mercenaries and merchants approaching you. Personally, I am always on the lookout for good mercenaries. Especially from races which I don't own (Stag Beetles, Dragon Turtles, Golems, ...). Also, merchants can sell you some amazing magical items which your wizard would not be able to create otherwise. Its your fame which determines just how good the mercenaries and items are, so the more fame the better.

Finally, I believe that fame also helps to reduce unrest in your cities. I'm not positive about this, so don't hold me to it.

So as you can see, fame goes much farther than just attracting heroes. This is why so much time and attention has been given to the collection of it.