My Brightest Day Review

I recently got my Brightest Day Heroclix starter set and I have to say I am very pleased. This set has some thrilling aspects on top of being fairly well made.

Only one complaint and I may as well air it first. Half the dials had to be fixed to even be turned. This isn't a major issue to those of us who are good at being "dial mechanics". I just took apart the dial and used a pair of fingernail clippers to trim down the plastic bump that the dial clicks across. On two of them, there was a "tag" of sorts on the side of the dial that I had to trim off. Once that was done, they were ready to rock.

As for how the figures were made, the sculpts are awesome. They are made of a good solid grade plastic and show off great detail. And if looks aren't enough for you, how about this:

Keywords: Much, much better than in Darkest Night. I think most venues would accept "Lanterns" as a custom keyword in play, but this set makes it unnecessary. Several keywords allow for good team building strategies. That's even if Deadman's White Lantern power turns out to be a "one set wonder" in 75th.

Yes, I'm talking about his "Summon the White" ability limited to calling in those of the Brightest Day or White Lantern keywords. It should be a great game ability for 75th (I like it!), but what about after that? See what I'm saying? We'll see. There's plenty of time to put Deadman to good use. I'm pretty excited about him.

I'm also excited about having an Aquaman and Firestorm that can be a real threat on the table. Yeah, there's been a couple of "usable" Aquaman figures, but they just haven't seemed right to me. This one rocks. His Undead Sea trait could make for some evil Atlantis teams and I'm sure that will happen soon. Two clicks of punishment for KO'ing anyone with the Atlantis keyword? Nice.

I'm not sure how I feel about Firestorm's trait since it's only good for when he has no tokens on him at the beginning of your turn. Still, the powers are good ones. Starting out with 8 range, two targets and four damage is nice too. Later on, he can rearrange terrain a bit by destroying entire squares of blocking terrain. I don't care that he's so locked down to one keyword. I would have liked to still be able to build them as JLA, but oh well.

And welcome back, Hawkgirl! It's good to see her come back into the mix. Her trait against other fliers is very, very nice. Against other fliers, she gets +1 to both attack and damage. She starts out with an 11 attack and 3 damage, so jump to a 12/4 respectively? Awesome! She doesn't have a real long dial, but she's dangerous for what she does have.

Martian Manhunter is much more likely to see play than his last incarnation with all the cookies. That's because he no longer costs over 200 points. For his new pointage of 158, you get a short range (6) but some decent attack and power usage. His trait that rewards him for your team knocking someone out is quite an admirable feature too. He gains Exploit Weakness, Outwit, and Probability Control until the beginning of your next turn. Having him in the right spot after a successful KO could mean a follow up KO if you do it right.

So, a cool set of pieces, very playable together and I found them affordable in price too. Got my set for around 25 bucks. Oh, and yeah, Captain Boomerang and Osiris get honorable mention. Check em out!