It’s Thanksgiving Day here in the U.S. So what is Heroclixin’ grateful for? By no means an exhaustive list, here’s a few things we appreciate:

• A vibrant game. When Heroclixin’ launched, WizKids was closed and, as far as we knew, HeroClix was dead. So for all its flaws, it’s very good to have it around!
• So many fantastic characters. The dials have never been better. Not only have favorites been clixed more accurately than ever, but some powers and abilities are so neat that they made new fans of us.
• Great players to have F.U.N. with. Although like anywhere else, HeroClix has its jerk players, I’m continually gladdened by how nice the majority of us are, from the excited newbie to the Worlds champions. Maybe the fact that the game actually awards us for sportsmanship has a little to do with that.
• The Watch List…showing that the game makers care something about the way the game goes. (And you know Heroclixin’s going to have an opinion on the latest round just announced yesterday!)
• YOU!!!!! This little blog that started just as a way to write occasionally about this great game has endured for five years, and I’m genuinely glad for your readership.

Happy Thanksgiving.

“Wait,” some reader is saying. “Didn’t you cover all the Flash set’s Super Strength pieces in last week’s installment of this ongoing photographic record of HeroClix sculpts that can hold object tokens without assistance?”

Yes, we did think so. But we missed pair of pieces with interesting abilities to temporarily gain Super Strength. So here they are: super rare figs Abra Kadabra and Engineer (The Flash 054 and 060, respectively)

AK’s hold is very secure, but in truth he’s unlikely to use Super Strength often if at all; when he’s got the special power allowing him to choose a standard power, he’s also got Phasing/Teleport instead of Charge or Running Shot, and he loses the picked power too soon. Engineer, on the other hand, can select a combination of powers that work great with SStrength via her trait.

It’s been some time since we updated this feature photo-documenting how figs hold their tokens. (We were busy moving the site to its current home, using a new computer system and a new camera phone instead of the old digital camera.) Some may need a refresher on the whys and wherefores.

The Flash set, which just released last week, is so speedster-heavy that there’s not much in the way of Super Strength. Heroclixin’ was able to get shots of every single SStr fig in the set this past weekend with ease.

In order: Tarpit [The Flash 028] , Gorilla City Soldier [008], Gorilla Grodd [056], Girder [014] Apollo [048] and Rainbow Raider [026] all have holds ranging from tenuous to rock solid.

Some, like Captain Thunder [052] have more than one hold:

…and that’s all, folks, for The Flash set!

In upcoming weeks, look for us to play catch-up on stuff we missed from Deadpool, Guardians and War of Light!

A new HeroClix set means another new checklist.

FLASHchecklist

Download, print and enjoy!

Longtime readers know I love running the Guardians of the Galaxy in clix. I’m not the only one. Similarly longtime clix buddy Lenny is a GotG fan, too, and he played the team in a recent event. I’ll let him tell about it in his own words below!

 This Past Sunday I had an opportunity to play a thematic Guardians of the Galaxy team using several of my favorite Guardian characters. I was excited when some of the figures were previewed last year, especially when one of the figures was a new Mantis (my favorite female comic character.) I knew the Guardians had good synergy, but I didn’t realize just how good until I played them in the tournament.

The Format: 600 points modern age, you must have exactly 6 figures on your team.

My team:
 Star-Lord [Guardians of the Galaxy 030] 110 points 
 Mantis [Guardians of the Galaxy] 56 points
 Yondu [Guardians of the Galaxy] 76 points
 Major Victory [Guardians of the Galaxy] 95 points
Rocket Raccoon [Guardians of the Galaxy 052] 80 points
GROOT! [Guardians of the Galaxy 051] 100 points

 I played the Green Lantern Power Battery with the Green Ring and 6 constructs. All 3 games were played on the War of Light Korugar map.

Round 1: My first opponent was Thomas, who was playing Fear Itself clix Ms.Marvel, Tyr, Speedball, Monkey King, Raizo Kodo with Jennifer Kale. In keeping with his Fear Itself theme, he played a nearly full Book of Skulls.
I used Star Lord’s  trait to allow the entire team to share Major Victory and Groot’s 18 defense. Thomas moved his force up the map, and I grouped mine together on top of one of the buildings. Unfortunately, he moved Ms. Marvel up a little too close, as it put Ms. Marvel within range of a psychic blast from Major Victory that effectively nullified her as a threat.

Raizo and Tyr still remained dangerous, but before I could deal with them I had to worry about my opponent’s Monkey King who based 4 of my characters in an effective tie-up move. Rocket Raccoon’s ability to ignore elvated helped me take out Monkey King, while Yondu’s Precision Strike and Major Victory’s
Psychic Blast eliminated Raizo and Tyr. Jenifer Kale was the last to be KO’d. 1-0.

Round 2: My second opponent was George, a very good player who is always a formidable challenge. He also played a Guardians themed team: Iron Man [Guardians of the Galaxy 055] at 150 pts, Martyr, Moondragon, Gamora, movie common Rocket, and Mantis.

I used the power battery to put the shield construct on Major Victory, (I was counting on being able to share HIS 18 defense with the rest of the  team moreso than Groot’s) then the  Decoy on Yondu. I positioned my team on top of the elevated terrain and waited for him to advance. Although I struck against Martyr, outwitting her defense with Star Lord and hitting for 3 damage, she retained her hypersonic speed and my opponent was able to retaliate by using his Mantis’ friendly mind control to full effect, effectively giving his Iron Man extra actions and using him to wound Groot, then later knocking my Mantis to ground level and KO’ing Yondu.

As Martyr continued weakening Groot with Hypersonic hit and run in front of the elevated terrain, I moved
Mantis into position near Iron Man and got Groot close to Martyr in the hopes of further weakening her with one last attack before Groot fell. Then I saw an opportunity to use Mantis’ mind control to turn the tide of battle.

I perplexed Mantis’ attack up 1 and pushed her, successfully mind controlling Iron Man, who then made a successful breakaway roll (another of his characters was adjacent to Iron Man) and made him psychic blast his teammate Martyr for another 3 damage. Star Lord then finished Martyr off.

Major Victory’s psychic blast hurt Iron Man, but the enemy Rocket and Moondragon took Groot and
my Rocket down. Iron Man flew up on top of the building where Star Lord and Major Victory were making their stand. But he missed his pulse wave attack, which left him easy prey for Star Lord’s retaliation.

With Iron Man down, the Guardians scored with a critical attack that knocked Moondragon out and ultimately won me the game on points. A hard fought victory against a very worthy opponent. 2-0.

Round 3: My final match of the tournament was against Steve, another very good player who was using 2 Entities. His team was War of Light Krona, prime Captain Mar-Vell, Void from Streets of Gotham, and the new Gravity Feed Flash 202. The Entities were on Flash and Mar-Vell.

This time my opponent stayed on the buildings on his side of the map, taking advantage of Flash’s high speed value and hypersonic speed, combined with Krona’s long range. I made the mistake of leaving Major Victory within Krona’s range, and he was hit for 5 damage.

I switched out the Shield construct for the Nurse, and was able to regen the Major back to his 2nd click. I moved Star Lord down to ground level to make an attack on Flash, but the entity gave him shape change and he made all his shape change rolls. I moved Groot and Rocket closer to make a possible attack on Krona, but he moved Krona back from the edge of the roof.

I was able to use Rocket’s improved targeting ignore elevated terrain special to hit Captain Mar-Vell, then used Yondu’s Yakka arrows to finish him off. Steve then used a combination of ranged attacks from Krona and hit and run attacks from flash to cripple Major Victory again, and phased Krona to rooftops MY side of the map along with Void and Flash to the rooftop next to Krona’s. He also managed to deliver a KO blow to Groot, but I had Rocket adjacent to him so Groot regrew from a Sprig! I even regened him a few clicks!

I used Star-Lord’s outwit to get rid of Void’s supersenses, prob, etc. power and shot her for 3, while Major Victory did some damage to flash with a pulse wave. Rocket’s targeting special again came in handy, as he finished Void off from the ground. Nothing else of consequence happened and I won another tough battle on points, going 3-0 and winning the tournament!

Star-Lord –  His trait that allows everyone on the team to share the defense of the member with the highest printed defense makes the Guardians a competitive theme in today’s meta, and his being able to outwit through other characters as well as ignore hindering terrain for targeting purposes is the icing on the cake. A must play for competitive Guardian builds.

Major Victory – Free action TK, leadership, perplex, and psychic blast make him a solid choice, if not a must play, but be careful because penetrating damage is the Major’s bane.

______________________

Nice write-up, Len! You’ve learned the Heroclixin’ battle report style well!

Heroclixin’ welcomes battle reports from its readers. Feel free to share brief ones in the comments sections, or if you have more to say, email us at heroclixin@yahoo.com

We wrap up our look at the horror of resources with the latest (but alas, not the last):

POWER BATTERY

A distressing and growing problem seems to have cropped up where resources are concerned: How does one defeat them?

• How do you beat the Gauntlet? Beat the character before he becomes a god. Good luck with that.
• How do you beat the Belt? Beat the character, IF you can find her Stealthed next to a wall. Not easy.
• How do you beat the Book? Beat the ones with hammers, if you don’t get hammered first. Unlikely.
• How do you beat the Plant? Hope they burn out the rings before you die. Depending on your opponent to overreach is NOT a winning strategy.
• How do you beat the Phoenix? Beat every last one of them. There’s just no other way.

No wonder facing resources can be such a horror.

With the Power Battery, it appears that WizKids is trying to give players a way to fight back against resources directly. Not only is it designed to give itself damage, but the Battery actually exists on the map and can be damaged by enemies.

But it’s still a horror.

First, it’s all the way over in the enemy start zone. That’s a dangerous path to travel.

Second, it’s pretty difficult to deal enough damage to get it off the board. It doesn’t take damage like characters (’cause it isn’t one) and you can’t fight it on the move with the moving attack powers (Charge, HSS and the like).

Third, in the meantime it’s granting any number of extra stuff to its Corps Members via constructs, making them extra dangerous. Maybe you better fight them instead.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, there’s one more wrinkle: because the Battery isn’t a character, it isn’t even affected by Pulse Wave! So it’s the first resource that can’t even be fought THAT way, even.

Sigh. Even when they try to make it better, they make it worse.

______________________________________

Resources don’t HAVE to be horrors. As we saw a couple days ago, the Power Plant really isn’t so bad. And there are a couple more out there:

THE BATCAVE

Although it’s pretty strong, it’s also very expensive [85 to 100 points] and, like the Power Battery, it can be directly fought if one desires.

THE PENGUIN

Unlike every other resource, this one is fraught with actual risk along with its benefits, when used. It should be the template by which resources are designed in the game.

__________

But the simplest answer to the horror of all resources is a small upgrade to an existing power: OUTWIT.

Give this character a free action to counter a power or a combat ability possessed by a single target opposing character until the beginning of your next turn. Any game effects with a duration specified by the countered power or combat ability are removed. A character using this power must be within range (minimum range 6) and line of fire to the target and can counter use of an attached resource or relic as though it were a combat ability.

Outwit has lost some of its teeth lately, what with “can use” powers showing up more on traits rather than special powers, and worse, resources granting such powers to whomever. But this small change to the black damage power suddenly brings resources’ power in line with their very-low-for-their-benefit cost and, more importantly, makes them an actual risk to field instead of the “no-risk-all-reward” ratio they offer now.

So c’mon, WizKids. Resources are here to stay; they’re great for enabling flexible teams at the highest levels of play. But they should not be able to be played without a great risk to go with their great reward.

OUTWIT RESOURCES.

THE PHOENIX FORCE

We guess WizKids decided to make this resource more expensive than the last few cheap ones, which were only 8 or 9 or 12 points at their cheapest. The Phoenix Force has a minimum price of 18.

Still underpriced.

WHY IT IS NOT F.U.N.:  Where the Gauntlet merely took time to build up and the Belt was random (after the Watch List fix, anyhow) and the Book needed hits and KOs to grow in power, the PF needs hits with doubles and KOs and PF members to be KO’d to get to more powerful clicks. While that sounds better on paper, in practice it makes fighting the P-Force troublesome; the more you’re winning, the harder it gets to win against it.

Moreover, the Fragments give so many key powers to characters who otherwise wouldn’t have them.

TK.

Invulnerability.

Ranged Combat Expert.

And don’t forget the Flight and Poison all the frags grant. Oh, and guess what else? These powers are immune to Outwit and even KOing the offending character doesn’t remove the power from the equation as it just goes back to the resource to be available to the REST of the P-Force assignees.

Tired of taking Mystics from the Magik fragment from range? Fine, base the character…get Poisoned. KO the character. OK, now ALL the rest of the team is Mystics. With OTHER powers from the resource dial.

Damned no matter what you do. Tell me, how is that ever F.U.N. to play against?

One last bit of horror tomorrow.

Q: What’s worse than a resource that makes one member of the opposing team into a nigh-unstoppable force?

A: One that makes the WHOLE TEAM an unstoppable force, such as our next subject… 

THE BOOK OF THE SKULL

At first, this seemed a breath of fresh air after the turtle-friendly Gauntlet and Belt. It was a resource that required making actual attacks and hitting to get the best of it.

But…it turned out to be a horror, too.

WHY IT IS NOT F.U.N.: The hammers made landing those needed attacks all too easy, because WizKids Game Design still liked to hand out +2 stat boosts like politicians’ promises.

The hammers also granted between two to FOUR other powers or abilities each. And that’s not even COUNTING the free Quake dropping each hammer granted.

I mean, look at how this character, designed as a support fig/3rd-line attacker, in effect turns into a legit threat with only nine points’ investment:

The only mitigating factor was the time it took to get its characters “hammered” because getting them was still a power action despite being guaranteed unlike normal relic rolls. But even that slight balance was kicked loose like an unwanted doorjamb with the release of the designed-for-the-Book-of-Skulls Splitlip, who made the hammer grabs a free action in addition to being automatic.

Here’s the non-comic-accurate part: The hammers in Fear Itself warped their wielders’ personalities. Perhaps some disadvantage to using the book should’ve been in evidence.

But no. Like nearly every other resource in the game, the Book is just another powergaming tool for powergaming tools. And it is, therefore, something of a horror.

Bonus horror today, below:

POWER PLANT

This resource takes the free power-up aspect of the Splitlip+Book combo and goes one further by dumping the Splitlip. But there are some balances built in, at least:

• A requirement of no action tokens.
• The assigned ring goes back after clearing action tokens.
• And no more permanent stat bonuses — heck, no dial, even.

The result is that the tower itself one of the ugliest, frankly useless things in all of HeroClix except that it’s required to use the rings as a resource.

WHY IT IS NOT F.U.N.: Two of the rings, Black Light and Matter Rearranger, get right around the token clear part because using them is a free action. So conceivably, one character can grant Stealth for a whole cadre of allies for the whole game. Another can morph the map as needed, one square at a time, over and over.

It’s not much of a horror, being rather straightforward and an actual limited resource.  But there’s true horror yet to come.

This Halloween week, Heroclixin’s focus continues on the simple fact that resources are scary.

Last time, we looked at the one that started it all, the Infinity Gauntlet. But far from being limitless and never-ending, it has gone by the wayside. And more than anything else, the second resource is responsible. ______

UTILITY BELT

Folks once griped that the 40-point full Gauntlet was undercosted. Oh, for those innocent days to return. 

WHY IT IS NOT F.U.N.: Though it’s been corrected via Watch List and a game-wide rule change or two, The U-Belt is still a busted element because it essentially makes any old character into Batman.

Here’s the thing, though. Batman’s utility belt isn’t what makes Batman, well, Batman. 

Actually being BATMAN makes Batman Batman.

The dumbness doesn’t stop there. The underpriced items — ONE point apiece! — are also better than anything Bats has ever packed in his yellow britches-bearing waistband.

• Gas Grenades/Smoke Pellets: Free penetrating damage? This should be plain Smoke Cloud or Incap or something.
• Batarangs: Oh, wait, HERE’S the Incap. :/
• Rebreather: So this mouthpiece is supposed to make him swim as fast as Aquaman? Really?
• Handcuffs: Why would any Super Strong or Phasing/Teleport character care about these?

And these are just the basic ones. Look at the convention exclusive items that further upped the arms race:

• First Aid Kit. Because someone wearing Batman’s clothes is somehow a better medic than an ACTUAL MEDIC. (Never mind that ALFRED is the real combat medicine expert.)
• Night Vision Goggles. So it’s not enough that they see Stealthed characters, but they see them BETTER? Not great game balance.

One would think perhaps the limited number of these items would rein in their abuse. But no, the UB is designed to refill itself and/or prevent the items from being “used up.” Because God forbid you actually have to risk losing A) the Willpower that toting 3 items gives you or B) the team-ability-squishing skill that having 5 items does.

Then there’s the dial’s penchant for frequent stat boosts, all guaranteed. It starts with a blanket +1 to stats, that the IG had to push and wait and push and wait for. This boost reappears on stop clicks throughout the dial. Worse, there are the +2 clicks. Sure it’s only “godhood” for a turn, but good freakin’ grief.

Finally, there’s the Costume slot: Get a Batman Cowl to make you extra-Stealthy or a Robin Uniform for Teen Titans team ability or a Suit of Sorrows for Super Strength because that’s a power Batman has for some reason.

It’s 14 points of clothes that make a fig into Batman. That’s dumb. And a horror.

It’s hard to figure how resources could get worse. But they do. Check in next time, if you dare.