Heroclix picture puzzle: Bank Chaos

Have you ever read those I Spy books with the picture puzzles? You know, the ones where you have to do a "where's Waldo" with a varied list of things in a clustered photo? Well, here's a little challenge for you and I may do more. Click on the image to see it larger (you may have to copy it to your computer so you can zoom in on it better. Future ones will be a bit smaller. Try to answer the trivia questions below. I'll come back with answers in the next blog I write. So, with that, good luck!

1: How many custom figures are there? Can you name them?

2: What do the custom duo figures have in common?

3: How many little red dice are there?

4: How many Multiple-man's are there?

5: Which figure has no dial?

6: How many Assassin's League figures are there?

7: How may Wolverine's are there?

8: How many "spider" characters are there?

9: How many "archer" characters are there?

10: How many sentinel fists are there?

11: What is Shadowcat doing?

12: What is Robin doing?

Making Heroes

Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Frank Miller; well respected names of the comic industry and creators of heroes and villains alike. If it weren't for them, the industry wouldn't be what it is today. You wouldn't have Spiderman for one. Their work has inspired countless artists and writers in comics, movies and of course, the gaming industry.

So when I read that Giant Sized X-men for Heroclix has sold out at manufacturing level world wide, I took it as one more part of the legacy started way back then. I don't mean to take kudos away from the marketing team behind Heroclix, by the way.

Making heroes has inspired me too, more than I may be able to explain. I really have a great deal of respect for the industry and there's good reason I'm so opinionated on the subject and its variations.

My first comic book was an issue of Spiderman against a silver dragon and I was five or six years old. Not long after that I went through some serious changes in life and hard times ensued well into my teens. I grew up with undiagnosed autism (Asperger's Syndrome)and survived an abusive step parent and, well, my escape became the heroes. Finally it came to creating my own. Yes, I created my own universe of characters.

I wrote a role playing game and documented histories of over 200 alien races and 400 characters. I've done a hundred illustrations and now I work on novels with my own hopes of publishing. My heroes were my escape and I got to know every trivial things about them for the times I grew up in. I was a comic book junkie in the truest sense of the word.

So, I'm pretty opinionated on the making and stats of those favorite characters and even a few others. I like to believe I have a solid understanding of character development and powers.

I'm currently considering creating a Facebook page to share my universe with my friends and who knows, maybe more will come of it. I've even done custom heroclix of over 70 of my characters. So, I may be sharing my passion and universe upcoming, who knows, but until then, I'll be waiting to get my hands on a case of X-men!

I do want to add that I have great, great appreciation for the work that they've done with heroclix. There are good people working in the company and I can thank them a lot for all they've done. Not only for the great characters that have done so much for me, but also:

My godson, Zach, in Lincoln, Nebraska was on his way to a tournament in late 2007 (or was it early 2008?- hard to remember clearly) when he was in a car accident. He was 19 and a great kid. He was a hardcore player too. My playing group contacted Wizkids and told them of the loss of a great player, who was gone before he could finish his last collection from the set out at the time. Do you know what they did for him? They sent his mother an entire factory set. So know this, Wizkids and all working with them... you're okay in my book.

Now my son's 9th birthday is the 15th... guess what he's getting for his birthday? Ha ha, that's right. X-men here we come. Hope this one wasn't too heavy for any of you. Hope your draws are awesome! Keep clixing!

Marketing the sub sets

I recently posted a question on Wizkids Facebook page about buying a set with figures you never heard of. Would you? There weren't as many answers as I might have hoped for, but the ones I got were fairly diverse with good reasoning. I think they may be a good representation of the buying community for the most part.

Most said that they needed to know the characters and have an interest in them. One said he would probably buy and I do know of a few die hard collectors who will take anything Heroclix. Another commenter mentioned that the mechanics would have to be very good to get him to buy characters he had never heard of before. He would even research the character if he liked it enough. I found that interesting too.

When Invincible came out, I have to admit, I never heard of the characters in it before. What can I say? I just hadn't. I still bought the set. A commenter suggested that the sets at the time and Indy was a matter of experiment. That may be. I think the greatest failing of Indy was having awesome figures that you could only get in the UK or US. An interesting marketing ploy meant to work by geographic marketing sector, but a failed one. People were upset about having to go out of their way to get missing pieces for the set. Along with that, there may not have been too much in extra cost to do separate packaging for all that, but it had to be time consuming. Time creates cost.

Now there's some new subsets coming out and I wonder if there's any experiment intended with these or if some marketing research was done? Let's take a look at two sets upcoming.

STREETFIGHTER: I think this set is going to sell hot. There's been a long time cult following of this game. It's very well known and bridges genres from video game to table top. Not a bad idea at all. Cool characters with cool abilities. I'll be interested to see the translation. Could this mean other video game related clix in the future? Maybe, but licensing could be a nightmare. Streetfighter has all it's characters in one place. Halo saw some popularity, but I never bought it. Here's something to chew on, I think Streetfighter's sales could be hotter than Halo. What do you think?

MEGADETH: This one is tricky. Megadeth is popular, I like them, but music tastes are more fickle than gaming tastes could ever hope to be. I could see this as an experiment to see if music tastes could bring more players in for heroclix. It's a small set, so sort of safe as a test launch subject. There are plenty of metal collectors and there have been plenty of genre cross overs in the past with music to comics. Just look at KISS. Timing could also be crucial in getting a good sell out of a music based set. Megadeth's next major US tour is in July with them in Europe for March and April. It could be good for cross marketing of the tour and I could see that as a marketing tactic. I also wonder, is Dave Mustaine a clix fan? And does this mean we could see a KISS box set sometime? Rock and Roll clix? Hey, in the video game genre's Rock Star saw a nice long sell. Maybe, but I'm not counting on it and probably wouldn't buy it myself.

Our great big collections

So, how many figures are in your Heroclix collection? I've been playing and collecting from the very beginning and have a good couple thousand of those old pieces stored away in boxes. So you don't see those in the photo, this is my current collection not counting what's been stored. Suffice to say, Heroclix takes up a lot of room in my gaming library.

I've changed how I store them a few times over the years. It seems like I just can't find a way that I can really stick with as new sets come out and adjustments have to be made. I've seen pretty cool ideas though.

Lots of people use tackle boxes, tool boxes, and various forms of tool storage bins. Those work nice, but you will wind up with a lot of what ever you use for storage as you run out of room.

I currently have mine in bins by keywords as I would most likely use them. I have a small portable carrier that I use for all my tokens, objects, and any teams I take to a tournament. I prefer to build my team before I even go anywhere because of all the pieces I have. It's just too much to carry all at once (ha ha).

Some of the highlights of my collection include the original Galactus, Dark Phoenix, and the World's Finest brick mail away (Superman and Batman). I also have one of the original Sentinels, three of the updated ones, the Sinestro Corps Anti-Monitor, and yeah, Purple Pants Fin Fang Foom (useless against the others).

I have lots of the old uniques to include Clobberin Time's Nightcrawler and Spiral. I have a purple ring Thanos and Gladiator. I also have metallic Silver Surfer and Nova. Remember the first LE Superman from Hypertime? Yep, got him too. It sure gets hard to keep track after all this time and all these sets and pieces. How can our collections do anything but get huge? I wonder how many of you have had to put old pieces away in storage? I'm sure there's plenty of you. And the highlights change with the current collections; the chase figures, White Lanterns, Cosmic Spiderman, etc. I don't have a lot of the chase's these days because I just can't afford to dump as much money into it as would be required for a good chance. But I do have a decent collection to draw upon for play. I think that's more important than the chase figures.

So, how do you contain your bursting collection?

Click on above image for larger view.

Modders concerned over new dial type

Recently a new "oreo style" dial base was announced by Wiz Kids and I have to say it looks pretty sharp. You can see it at Heroclix World (<--click).

I was looking through comments on the article and the Wizkids facebook page and noted that there were two essential concerns with the new dial.

1: Will the cost of boosters go up?

2: How will modders do their thing?

While I understand the first one, I had to double-take on the second. As for the first one, it's been stated that the current intention is for price to remain the same. This may take some negotiation in manufacturing, but it's the intent as of now. I don't know how they'll do that if the dial costs more, but all we can do is wait and see.

Now for the second issue. I've done my own fair share of modding and have even done some figures that friends really enjoyed. Even so, with my own hobby in mind, I have to mention something.

Heroclix was never made with the intent of anyone cutting up figures to make their own figures. It's never been in the rule books or any advertisements. When you read the box it does not say " and you can chop them up to make other people out of them". Nope, that's never been an openly supported venue in any way (advertisement wise). Granted, they haven't said "hey, don't do that!" and I'm sure they've gotten a few sculpt ideas or set ideas from watching. And they have to be watching, it would be silly not to.

Yes, the facebook page allows you to share pics of your mods and there are pages and people selling them, but.... this is the land of copyrights and licensing issues. Modding is being tolerated and shouldn't be pushed.

I guarantee you that new sets are not formed with the idea of "Oooo this will be easy to hack up!" in any way.

So modders, I suggest we wait until we get our hot little hands on them and figure it out then. I suggest we not cry about it before we have all the facts. This is not a function owed to us in the least. It's not what we are paying for or what it's marketed for. Keep it reasonable and don't worry so much, let's just enjoy our game.

Photo is my easy mod of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Giant size X-men poster hits web

So this poster was recently released on the internet and is creating quite a drooling stir for the upcoming Heroclix set: Giant sized X-men. HCRealms sports page after page of excited dialogue in the forums and there's talk at the Wizkids facebook page too.

I was surprised to see such a spoiler released this early but I don't think it's going to hurt sales at all from the reactions. I'm pretty excited about this set too. There are certainly pieces coming out that have never been made before. Amongst these are Lockheed the dragon, Gatecrasher, and Ch'od. I do hope that keywords don't leave any of these newbies lacking for good team play.

Ch'od has a chance in golden age open formats if anyone has any of the older figures. Sadly, I find most of them unable to survive in current formats.

We've needed a new Magneto for a long time and having his original Brotherhood crew isn't shabby either. But where's Toad? Oh well, so long as this incarnation of Blob is better than the last, I can do without Toad thanks to having the rest.

I also don't see a few other key players for X-men or one for Hellfire Club. It's nice to have Siryn, but Banshee was a key player in the old X title this set is based on. Siryn is Banshee's daughter for those who don't know. And where's Shadowcat? I also realize that there are incarnations in recent sets, but what about Colossus? He was also a key figure in the Giant sized. It's also been mentioned that Strife will be a bit lonely without Cable to pick on. And how about Mr. Sinister? As for the missing man from Hellfire club, I'm talking about Sebastian Shaw. Yes, he's in an old set too, but he needs a revamp badly. There are plenty of figures who've seen way more remakes.

I will also be glad to have my hands on a new Juggernaut and Phoenix, I have to say.

Now, I note that we also don't see any of the giant pieces on this poster, like Apocalypse or the rumored new Sentinel. So what else are we not seeing? Makes you wonder doesn't it? Oh, and just click on the image to see it larger.

DC 75th, least favorite five

So, I've done my top ten favorites of DC 75th and now I'm going to show my top five choices for greatest disappointments of the set. This doesn't mean I think they're totally unplayable or gawd awful trash. Just that they were the least of the set for me and some of you may agree. I'm certain opinions may vary. So, without further ado, here they are from "best to worst".

5: The Wonder Twins: They are actually a cool collector's piece and I'm glad to see them get made. Still, it's unlikely that I'll ever play them. My first problem with them is keywords. They get just one keyword and that's "teen". Sure, that makes for plenty of teams they can play in, but how often were they actually teamed up with teens in the stories? Usually they were hanging out with the JLA as junior members. I think they should have had the keyword for JLA at least, if not the team ability. The second problem I have with them is the same issue I have with any dual figure. The duo attack ability is horribly watered down. For having two figures take a swing, it's a weak power. This may depend on the figures in some cases (and it should), but in this case it's a good example. The duo attack ability is a power action and cannot be used with most powers. It also weakens on the second attack with a nice minus one to damage. So, while there's plenty of cool powers for the twins to use, a dual figure is usually just as slow as a single figure and you won't see accurate team usage of those powers thanks to how dual attack works. That's why very few dual figures see gameplay. Two pieces are usually better than one every time.

4: Wonder Woman: I know, she's actually more useful than the twins, but still a disappointment to me for one major reason. Her defense power. I think she should have had defend as a trait. It would have had better strategic use and she wouldn't have the risk of getting knocked right past her invulnerability on the first hit she takes. Wonder Woman is a front line fighter, always has been. She needs her hardened defense first. If she lends anyone defense, it should be a secondary issue. On top of that, an 18 defense just isn't that hard to hit anymore, so you really can't count on it in opening combat. Another good power for her to have had for up close would have been combat reflexes. She is an Amazon warrior after all and one of the best. Sorry, but her defense just isn't character accurate. What are some other tactics that could be arranged for Wonder Woman? Well, for one, give her a power for that lasso that allows her to pull someone to her from about 6 range or so. That's what lassos have been used for with people you know. With Wonder Woman's strength that would be a cinch power. It could also be used for limited telekinesis to grab an object and whip it at someone.

3: Superman: Poor sad Superman. He looks like Lois turned him down for a date with Aquaman or the Flash. But really, he has good reason to look sad and worried because his chances of standing up to his main nemesis in this set is practically zilch. Who's that, you ask? Why Doomsday of course! I'm not the first person to mention this either, it's a pretty common opinion. While Superman's dial is "good", it's not Superman accurate at all. All he has on Doomsday is movement. He still has to hit a 19 defense with a 10 attack. Good luck, Supes, you'll need it. So what else is wrong with this figure? How about NO hypersonic speed? A Superman without hypersonic is like a Hershey bar without any chocolate in it. Just an empty wrapper. As for what he doesn't have, it's little use to have him using flurry or defend. His defense drops badly in that area and he has to stay up close and personal. At this point on his dial he's in desperate shape, for being Superman that is. As for defend, he does have a 17 defense for it, but again, not hard to hit at all. When you consider his points versus what size of a team he'll likely be in, Superman needs major back up and that's not accurate either. Just two hits from Doomsday is "bye bye" for Superman. Heck, most of the Green Lanterns are tougher than he is.

2: Aquaman: The one from the Brightest Day set is pretty cool. The one from the 75th... not so much. I gotta give props though, it's hard to make a good Aquaman. In this case, he should have had most of the powers from Supes' dial. Charge, super strength and flurry are all good ones for him. He should also start with invulnerability and go to toughness after that. He is, at least that strong. Past that, for all his tricks, his usefulness is limited. He needs to be in the water and against other Atlantis characters to be of the most use. Yes, he has the transporter ability, but let me tell you how much I value that. Not very much. First of all, a "transporter" (especially one that can fly) should not suffer the minus 2 penalty for carrying someone. It just doesn't sound right. Also, the minus two on attack with the move and attack ability isn't strategically sound when it drops your attack below a 9. I only use this ability out of desperation or to try and get in an early hit at a distance. Yes, it's a nice option, but just doesn't do much for me. A minus one for the attack value makes more sense than 2, honestly. Yes, it is cool that he can transport while he's grounded, but it's not enough for this piece in my opinion.

1: Ganthet: I know what you're thinking; "why are you bagging on Ganthet? He's awesome!" Sure he is. Except if he's in a 300 point match, he's alone. In a 400 point match he can have cheapo minions. A good 300 or 400 point team will annihilate him. In a bigger match, he gets better, but it takes a lot. And his Green Lantern team ability is virtually useless in those low point tournies that almost no one will play him in anyway. Now, he is powerful, I'll give him that. He can't be outwitted and has built in willpower, also very nice. But he's also slow. Putting him in range to do anything makes him and instant target. For his kind of power, an 18 defense is too easy to hit. It's another matter of accuracy in a way. For the kind of cosmic power we are talking about and to be worthy of a 299 point value, his stats need to be better. To me, he's worth 200 points and no more. Even with regen mid dial. One five click punch from Doomsday takes him right past that. So, too point heavy for the arrangement of his dial, his stats, and accuracy, puts Ganthet at number one for my least favorite, and least likely to use pieces of 75th.

Now I will give honorable mention to the one figure I've given the most credit in this posting, Doomsday. Why bag on Doomsday? For his six space opening movement, that's why. He can leap like the Hulk but only for six spaces? Well, I will give him this after playing him against Supes and Ganthet; he's still deadly. I guess the six space opener can be forgiven.