Hey, it’s a Heroclixin’ anniversary: the 500th post!

This will not be a double-sized installment, though. Sorry.

Finally done with my retrospective of 2012, which was more difficult than ever due to the sheer volume of ‘Clix released last year. We got almost 625 new figures in 2012 — and that’s not even accounting for the ones that had multiple dials and/or point costs. That’s nearly 175 more than 2011’s then-record 448 figures.

For perspective? In Topps’ only full year of production in the carded era, 2008, less than 250 pieces were released.

This torrent of ‘clix, then, has sorely tested my goal of playing every figure in my collection at least once. Where I used to be able to store unplayed pieces in my smallest tackle box and take them with me to a venue, I now need six leftover clamshell packs from Fast Forces/Starter Sets to hold the overflow.

For the first time ever, this year I’ve found myself selling or trading pieces I’ve never fielded. Me becoming the judge at my venue hasn’t helped either.

But perhaps now it CAN. If there’s an odd number of players, I can play the bye round. Better still, since I’m not in the running for the prize, I’ve decided to take a page from another judge in my area and play a different team in each bye round instead of using the same one. That’ll get THREE teams off the never-played rolls!

And if the players are even and I don’t get to play the bye? Not a problem.

See, several years back, I found myself recovering from an aggravated assault that kept me from tournaments for months. I kept myself playing by running solo playtests of my figures.

With that experience in mind, I’ll just set up an extra map and play two of my teams AGAINST each other myself in between answering judge questions.

My Wednesday battle reports in the near future, then, are probably going to detail the results of these F.U.N. figure trials more than my attempts at actually winning games that matter.