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#6 is

Captain James T. Kirk (Star Trek Away Team 001b)

The famed skipper of the U.S.S. Enterprise is the next boss on the list. Like almost all of the rest, His version of Leadership comes with a bonus: when he rolls 3-4, he can throw a token on an opposing character within 3 squares. Given that he starts with Charge and Combat Reflexes and has the Federation Away Team TA to enable him to make a strike as far as 17 squares out, he’ll have ample opportunity to affect foes that way.

The downside is that he might be too isolated from fellows for them to take full advantage of the normal effects of Leadership. But that’s on the player to ensure that doesn’t happen to Heroclixin’s #6 Leadership piece.

#5 is another from a non-comic property:

Bartolomeo d’Alviano (Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood 004)

His Leadership SP not only works as normal, but he can drop a token off a friendly as much as 55 points more than his 70 AND from four squares away! Aside from his super-Leadership, though, he’s just a competent melee fighter. Still, Bart’s the #5 pick for Heroclixin’s list.

#4 can barely fight at all, being crippled:

Chief (Crisis 036)

Unlike many others on this list, The Chief’s SP Leadership “Manipulate” doesn’t really grant extra actions to your total for the turn. Instead, players will usually opt to build tokens that give pushing allies a 66% chance of avoiding the pushing damage. The ability to essentially give pals Willpower much of the time is potentially powerful.

But Chief makes the top half of the list despite his lowish 63-point cost because he’s packed with a half-dozen team-enhancing powers including “Manipulate:” Outwit, Perplex, Mastermind (that works on higher point figs that share his Doom Patrol and Scientist keywords), Outsiders TA and Support. It’s more than enough to earn his spot as Heroclixin’s #4 Leadership piece.

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Finally: The top three Leadership figures in Heroclixin’s Decision 2012.

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I had another Top Ten idea I was preparing for this week, but it occurred to me that with America voting in the next leaders of the free world tomorrow, Heroclixin’ ought to list the Top Ten best Leadership pieces in the game.

What qualifies one to be a great leader?

  • The right point cost. It can’t be too low, because you want to be able to remove tokens from cheaper teammates upon successful rolls. But a leader too costly could crowd out the build total, leaving you with no other characters to use the extra actions granted by Leadership.
  • The ability to stay adjacent to allies with minimal effort. Your leader needs to always be in position to remove tokens from less-costly allies with the 5-6 roll. That means being a taxi or being taxiable.
  • Using that adjacency for something other than Leadership. It only works a third of the time, so the Leader really ought to have something else to benefit — or benefit from — adjacent allies.
  • Starting Leadership. Pushing to get to the power is useless. But…
  • No more attractive power on click #2. Nightwing (Crisis 029) is a prime negative example: though he begins with Leadership, unless a player is either using one of the feats associated with it (Inspiring Command, Contingency Plan) or married to leveraging his top-dial Incapacitate, Nightwing’s nearly always going to get pushed to click #2 for his Perplex. A better leader will not require feats and will get some actual mileage from the power.
  • Finally, the leader should have followers to benefit from the Leadership. Does she have any teammates that are a natural fit for her style (via team abilities, keywords or whatever)? This is taken into account.

 

 

 

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OK. Those are the ground rules. Starting tomorrow, see what Heroclixin’ voted as the 10th, 9th and maybe 8th best Leadership figures in the game!