Tactician, Famous are good.
Warlord isn't - it costs two picks for a single hero level. Unless your plan includes heavy use of normal units, I can't recommend it.
Artifier is good but only if you have books that work well with it. In this case you should pick one of the book configurations that I mentioned in the last artificer balancing thread.
Best builds are (more books or realms can be added, these are the minimal necessary to guarantee your heroes will do well and it was worth picking the retort):
5 Nature with anything else - No resistance buff or power if mono Nature, so needs to prioritize Charmed heroes in that case.
4 Nature, 4 Life
4 Life, 4 Sorcery - But 5 or 6 Sorcery allows you to use get once very powerful ability (Haste, Phantasmal) each so they are worth it if you can afford that.
Even without Artificer, Life and Sorcery offers most to heroes, with Nature being also fairly useful.
Death and Chaos have some good uses but they are very different.
Chaos contributes either by hiring a Soul Linker hero and putting Chaos Channels on all heroes which gives the entire stack a massive two prayers worth of bonus at level 8 and 1 prayer worth at level 4, or by putting spells of mass destruction onto weapons and equipping them - not much can stop 7+ uses of Flame Blade or Doom Bolt on the first turn.
Death is probably the least suited for hero use, and also will need to rely on Spell Charges - life draining spells to allow the hero to heal itself, and for the endgame hero, massacre with a large save modifier on items.
Overall I wouldn't play Chaos or Death without including at least one of the other realms.
The hardest part in playing heroes is the early game - Life and Sorcery doesn't offer much for that and might need a military race or splashing books from Death or Nature. If you are playing Nature heroes, you won't have a problem with this, but your heroes will be a threat much later.
This is the Artificier rebalancing post, which might give you an idea what you want equipped on heroes assuming you can make items :
http://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/showt...#pid644343
As for which heroes, depends on the realm.
For pure Life you'll want thrown heroes as you can't cast web or flight.
For Chaos you'll usually want casters with as high MP as possible, but keep in mind even melee heroes can use spell charged items if needed. Getting the most durable heroes instead, might be great. You also most definitely want anyone with Soul Linker. (Beastmaster and Necromancer have it by default)
If you are making chaos items, get the Illusionist and give her something like a Doom Boltx4 Move+2 weapon with whatever else you need.
If you do not have Life, you should aim for the Healer and Swordsmen for Healing and Raise Dead.
If you don't have Sorcery you probably want Charmed for resistance, albeit Bless is enough against certain enemies.
If you are doing Sorcery/Chaos you mostly want ranged heroes that shoot or cast spells while invisible/far away. For Nature and Life you want melee heroes instead to take advantage of being near invincible.
