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Longtime friend and Heroclixin’ board member Lenny likes to play massive themed battles with me, and has done so for years.

Those are just the ones I’ve written about in Heroclixin’. There are probably a dozen more undocumented. But this one is about to be: just not as exhaustively as some in the past.

This one is the third of our Avengers/Masters of Evil battles.

 

I’m not listing all the figures. Just gonna let the photo do the typing.

MASTERS v Avengers

We opted for Silver Age to cut down on the sheer size of the pool of figs. But I wanted to play as close to a perfect Highlander corps of Master of Evil as possible (with some multiples of Ultron, because, y’know, Ultron, and a quartet of Vulturions) and that build came to 3,200 points.

For his part, building a similarly sized, similarly Highlander’d Avengers squad was super-easy.

I chose the map Bank Heist from Superior Spider-Man. I had a plan. Several, actually.

 

PLAN A: PLAY NEW FIGS

New to this MoE squad and to any build at all were the starter set Hydro-Man and Shocker. No matter what, I wanted to get them into the action.

Hydro-Man got TKed and Perplexed so he could use his trait to sweep away Lenny’s elevated terrain at earliest opportunity. But he was also the earliest casualty of the match.

As for Shocker? We’ll get to him.

Result: MIXED

 

PLAN B: WRECKER

Wrecker 043b was my prime, replacing Diablo from a previous massive Masters team. Goal was to possibly win on Mission Points with his Wrecking Crew pogs. But I misread the text (I didn’t realize EACH pog could score the points every turn) and didn’t deploy the Crew at the right portion of the field, so they weren’t able to smash many walls before the battlefield got too clogged for them to freely move. Result: FAIL

 

PLAN 3: ULTRON MISSION Infinity

Ultron Infinity can score Mission Points, too. But Lenny cannily put the Infinity tokens on characters who either weren’t going to be accessible, or needed the “get out of damage free” card it offers.

It was ultimately a moot point: The only target of opportunity was Captain America 056, who was protected by Stealth most of the time — and Ultron Infinity’s MP trait doesn’t work with his Energy Explosion (because both EE and this are “instead of normal damage” effects … gotta choose one). Worse, I forgot to keep Ultron in Stealth always (ALWAYS!!!) so he got one-turned right after the Doctor Octopus 046 he was hiding behind did.

That was a really bad round.

Result: robotic FAILURE

 

PLAN 4: OTHER ULTRON MISSION

Ultron 053a sent Ultron Drone pogs to the starting area to score Mission Points that way. The trouble was that the field was again too crowded for the non-flying Drones to reach the back field without dying. I also lacked actions to do so (even with 10 or 11! They go fast in this format) until very late in the game.

Between all three Mission Point sources, I got 10 MPs overall. If I’d played it better, I might’ve gotten as close as 15 to REALLY press the issue.

Result: MIXED

 

PLAN F.U.N.: RECRUIT NEW MASTERS

This was actually my primary goal today, though. I opted to only play one version of Helmut Zemo on the team, leaving off the, ahem, superior Superior Foes of Spider-Man model (who gives all MoE and T-Bolts +1 AV and Sidestep) or the Captain America & the Avengers Zemo (who can give the whole team any copyable Marvel team ability with each Leadership roll) or the OTHER CAAV Zemo (who can give the team the ENEMY’S TAs for a turn).

No, instead I used the WOTR recruiter Zemo, with the aim of recruiting some very specific characters from my Sideline:

  • legacy Black Knight L006 in place of original villain Black Knight 046
  • Atlas 063 to replace Power Man 014

A few more, too, but these were the main ones. That meant I was happy to play Black Knight and Power Man aggressively even if they got KOed. I *wanted* them to be KOed.

Which led to the first great moment of the game.

After the swift exit of HM, I set up for Black Knight to Pulse Wave a good portion of the pieces that had killed HM — including pogs Redwing and Alicia Masters, denying their usual extra effects upon dying. Rolled doubles, too, so most of the dozen enemies went flying with knock back and took more damage from walls.

Lenny said that was his lowlight moment of the game.

Also got Atlas into the match after Power Man took a dive

 

ALAS, THE BEST LAID PLANS…

But none of this really mattered because with Avengers, Lenny had three huge advantages that amounted to the equivalent of CHEAT CODES in a game this size.

CHEAT CODE 1: BLACK WIDOW 017

Invalidating my meager Prob if I rolled too low or he rolled too high, chase Black Widow’s “Patience” trait really scales up in a game this size where she can completely safely hide in the back yet have a super-powerful global effect. Strong in 300 builds, it’s insurmountable in 10x the build.

CHEAT CODE 2: MILES AND MILES OF SENSES ROLLS

Even worse. I lost so many attacks on characters who don’t have Super Senses and me without enough Outwit to spread around. At least half the evade attempts were successful.

CHEAT CODE 3: ANTI-VENOM

He has Support as FREE, which is really really effective with no roll needed to succeed. So even that early Pulse Wave was invalidated on a pair of foes.

In the end, 10+ hours later with a dinner break in there, we wrapped with a score of 1175 to 950 in favor of the Avengers.

But even though the day was generally a losing effort, I had some more successes.

First there was Blackheath, who cheated death not once but TWICE needing a 1 roll to survive. Best showing ever for the piece.

Then there was Shocker. In last turn, I got him to where he could Force Blast and nix Thor’s defenses for the turn and set up the god of thunder to fall in that last turn.

And unlike my sparring partner, I actually moved nearly all my pieces!

MASTERS v Avengers 2

UNLIKE THE COWARDLY AVENGERS