Top Ten Torrid Tactics of 2012 (part 4)

One thing you always used to be sure of: If you saw a themed team of a certain type, you knew the other player was likely just a little more limited in what she could bring to the table than if she’d built a truly maxed-out team.

Used to.

But in 2012, even that was no longer any guarantee, thanks to the #5 most torrid thing in HeroClix this past year:

Keyword “wild cards”

It started with Morgan Le Fay (Chaos War 049) and her trait that allowed her to team up with Avengers — already one the most-populated and potent of the named keywords — and add her considerable talents without breaking the theme. This unprecented bending of the theme rules was mitigated by the fact that she didn’t actually add to the themed team bonuses; she can’t add to the map roll or use the theme Probability Control. But her being a Mystic and bringing her own PC made up for that little balancing act.

Then came Nightwing (DC 10th Anniversary 007), who not only doesn’t break theme teams, but actually gains the needed keyword in addition. So if you need a keyword to activate an effect, just make sure to assign it to the former boy wonder and let fly with the game abuse.

WizKids really should have at least, in the interest of character accuracy, limited the effect to DC keywords only. It’s like they learned nothing from the original Thunderbolts feat.

They still weren’t done. Gandalf (The Hobbit 002) also has the same trait. While the trait makes a bit more sense on him (after all, a wizard comes and goes precisely when he means to!) it should have been limited to generic keywords. Gandalf brings more general utility to teams than Nightwing thanks to first-click TK and Perplex. Thankfully, he’s not Modern Age-legal.

The three chase Skrulls represented a last bit of keyword “wild card” action. While they neither get nor grant keywords, they instead grant team abilities to all their fellows with the Skrulls keyword in addition to their inborn Skrulls TA. To that end, chase Spider-Man (Marvel 10th Anniversary 024) is the last link of the wild card keywords. Joined by the two previous pieces, he can turn fellow Skrulls into actual wild cards so they can copy Batman and Mystic TAs.

Torrid. Just torrid.

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