There’s been a lot of talk about the surprising rules changes coming to HeroClix in mid-spring — the biggest changes since 2017. But unlike other commentaries, Heroclixin’ is focusing on how F.U.N. these changes promise to be — or not.
- F = Friendly: How unpleasant is this aspect of the game likely to be to face when it’s not on your side? The more so, the less it rates on this metric.
- U = Useful: It’s still nice to have utility on your force. So how’s it rate in this manner?
- N = Nerdcore: Finally, there’s the question of whether this change adequately reflects the source material, the comics. And we found that this metric mattered to us much more than we expected in rating these new rules.
Let’s dish.
One of the core rules of HeroClix — getting a second action token deals you damage — is no more. It’s a seismic change, but also a pretty F.U.N. change: No more calculating the risk/reward of taking a click for an action that might fail. Instead, the cost is taking the second token, which for many figures is risk enough as they’re unable to effectively act while thus tokened. The overall tempo of the game should increase.
But Indomitable is now effectively gone, because WizKids is retiring the ability. So any high-cost characters without actual Willpower will get out-actioned even more. Meanwhile, Power Cosmic/Quintessence/Cosmic Energy TA will get a major boost by being able to self-remove tokens. This is slightly less F.U.N. — Indom figs will be effectively overcosted, maybe — but the level playing field might balance things out.
Giants get a big boost as well, gaining Willpower as a matter of course — and an improved version of it, to boot. But only ACTUAL giants, not many of the part-time ones such as Heroclixin’ faves Power Girl (Rebirth 022) or Micron (JLU 059b). I guess that’s an OK tradeoff of those characters being able to opt-out of the drawbacks of Great Size.
Finally, although WK is removing Colossal Stamina from the roster of keyphrase abilities on the 2021 PAC, the odd character that still has it on their card as a SP or trait will still have it.
But that means Masters of Evil team ability is getting a wholesale change from Colossal Stamina to this: “When an adjacent friendly character makes a close attack, modify the target’s defense -1 if the target is adjacent to this character.”
Heroclixin’ HATES this change. It’s absolutely useless and actually detrimental for range-focused MoE TA figs. It’s absolutely useless for the actual figure that HAS the TA in ANY case. This would be tolerable if it were inexpensive, but the MoE TA seems to have traditionally added a lot of cost. But Heroclixin’ has to grudgingly acknowledge that the rewrite is well in line with the spirit of the source material: gangpiling a single enemy in close combat.
Specifically, WK said for the new Wonder Woman set it was deemphasizing:
- Leap/Climb, which is mostly overshadowed by Improved Movement
- Super Strength, which has diminishing returns due to the scarcity of heavy objects
- Willpower, which got overshadowed by Indomitable before and now is a whole new thing so I guess they don’t wanna overdo it maybe
- Earthbound/Neutralized, which people hate anyway
- Precision Strike, which is overshadowed by Penetrating/Psychic Blast and Exploit Weakness … sort of
- Pulse Wave, which, as the ultimate solvent, probably ought to be more rare anyway
- Battle Fury, which is mainly only useful against Shape Change, which is also taking a break
- Ranged Combat Expert, which overshadows Enhancement, which WK wants to use more
- Perplex, which overshadows EVERYTHING because it is the most useful support ability and WK wants to let Empower/Enhancement get some shine
- Shape Change, which WK thinks is “redundant” and “off” compared to Super Senses
- Invincible, which WK says is “an exception to an exception” through its resistance to penetrating damage. We guess they just want penetrating damage to matter again
- Force Blast, which is pretty niche and difficult for new players to weaponize
- Hypersonic Speed, which WK says is “redundant” but they also recognize that it’s very good and I guess they want more risk for reward in gameplay
- Support, which WK says “feels bad” because it requires three dice — which begs the question of how much worse Mind Control is on that score
Heroclixin’ doesn’t like this change. Yes, we understand the goal is to ease the complexity of play for new players and add to the flow of the game. And every power need not show in every set. (Indeed, a survey of recent sets will show that a number don’t appear.)
But one of the key aspects of the F.U.N. factor of Heroclix is the N for Nerdcore. We love when a figure is just right and reflective of the source material. That means a Wonder Woman maybe needs Hypersonic Speed and Invincible instead of Charge and Impervious.
That said, this isn’t really a change to the PAC but maybe a throwback to simpler dials. We’re not necessarily opposed to that. We just like variety.
Some powers are getting changes, too. We’ll dish on those in Part 2.
PART 2
Rather than do a separate article, we’ll just add to the previous one so this’ll be Heroclixin’s definitive post for posterity on the 2021 shift.
The designers definitely went on a mission to streamline the base game as much as possible this go-’round, simplifying a lot of powers.
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Leap/Climb: It’s no longer a MOVE action but always on. Also lost the attack on different adjacency ability
In their reasoning, WizKids said the attack part only came up very occasionally. And for our part, the power wasn’t terribly F.U.N.: definitely Friendly enough but not really Useful (compared to Improved Movement not taking up a power slot) or that Nerdcore, even. Making it so it works with the likes of Charge and Sidestep boosts the F.U.N. a lot — and cuts down on the annoying question “Does L/C work with this other movement power?”
Yes, Timmy. Yes it does. Finally.
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Telekinesis: Lost all its range attack ability. Only for placing friendlies and objects now
This is the least F.U.N. change of the lot. Heroclixin’ likes the Darth Vader aspect of this power to hurl objects into faces!
But in truth, we hardly ever used this object attack. And the range attack to reposition enemies? Forget it! It was almost never worth the attempt. So I’ll happily leave that part of TK in the Dark Side.
Worse on the usefulness scale is the (potential) loss of the ability to TK enemy objects. That’s an issue, because sometimes taking an opponent’s equipment is the key move. But even that tactic is pretty niche, so we’re not that broken up about it.
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Close Combat Expert/Range Combat Expert: Now a passive +1 to both attack and damage in attacks or Destroy actions
We’ve long liked the flexible CCE stat boosts, but we did not like that the powers lacked the ability to combo with, well, anything.
Now they *do* combo with most anything, giving powers such as Charge or Penetrating/Psychic or Hypersonic Speed a boost. They work with multi-targets. Both become so much easier to use, making them Friendly to new players AND Useful to all, and it’s Nerdcore to boot.
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Perplex: Doesn’t work on damage anymore.
When I started playing HeroClix 15 years ago, the very name and nature of this power bugged me. How in the world does Joker making a quip or Mystique’s … I don’t know … changing form or something … equate to higher damage on an ally? And isn’t perplexing something you’d do to an enemy?
With time, it’s become my favorite support-style power over the rest, as I’ve come to see it’s an unfortunately misnamed power (“Cunning” might have been a better choice). But its ability to boost damage was always way out of scale. Note how almost every souped-up +2 version of Perplex excludes damage from the modified stats.
So Perplex gets nerfed so that the risk/reward factor of damage boost goes up. And Heroclixin’ likes appropriate risk/reward ratios.
The article hints at a global change coming to hindering terrain and breakaway (the new L/C refers to neither), as well as themed teams. We’ll delve into that with Part 3.
PART 3
WizKids’ design team thought themed teams needed streamlining some more. Let’s unpack.
The biggest shift is that TTPC no longer requires getting an action token and characters can Prob themselves — which is important for the new rule that literally allows single-character theme teams now. Heroclixin’ thinks that One Man Army “team” loophole fails spectacularly on the F.U.N. scale (it’s likely not Friendly, hard to Use (what good is a one-time Prob Control, really?) and a Nerdcore flop as there’s no such thing as a team of one) but overall this change is great — and it self-balances with the OMA allowance (only one TTPC, +1 map bonus).
Also, the capping of the initiative bonus is one that I’ve been advocating for a long time now (in a planned-but-never-published “needed changes to HeroClix” article). We would’ve set a max of 5 to match the max number of TTPCs, but 3 is better on both accounts. Heroclixin’ approves — this is F.U.N.! Friendly in that it doesn’t lock players into oppressive maps, but still a Useful benefit and Nerdcore in that the battlefield is not always of one’s choosing.
The least favorite thing about this rule shift is the loss of distinction between named and generic themes — we like the former better on principle — but yours truly has always appreciated themed play long before keywords were ever a thing. Ask about my “Bright Yellow Boots” themed team circa 2005 sometime.
Revelation of a hinted-at global change coming to hindering terrain and breakaway rules still is forthcoming. We’ll delve into that with Part 4, probably.
PART 4
The big changes keep coming, as WK shakes up hindering terrain — which we expected — along with targets and knockback, which WEREN’T expected. Direct quote:
OK. Let’s consider each.
Multi-melee is a FANTASTICALLY F.U.N. change to the game … eventually. Right now, almost no 0 range characters have more than one lightning bolt symbol on dial, so this won’t affect the vast number of punching characters out there. But superheroes are constantly depicted in fights against swarms of thugs or ninjas or robots or whatever, making this a really great F.U.N. shift. It will also be much more intuitive to new players. As for us vets, we’ll be able to weaponize stuff like Flurry even more — getting to split the damage of both attacks could clear out a swarm of pogs in the way. Or maybe Blades will get to split ITS damage!
Hindering terrain, though, is a mixed bag. On one hand, explaining to new players that you have to stop in hindering, and the whole halved speed thing was always a bit burdensome. Worse — and this was a point the WK article brings up — it really hurts the effectiveness of melee figs vs. range, and the game design team wanted to better balance the two sides more. So removing the movement penalty altogether is a pretty F.U.N. fix that aids in that endeavor.
What Heroclixin’ doesn’t like is the implications for certain other abilities:
- Smoke Cloud — long a nice niche power to slow down enemy movement, it will now be MUCH less Useful.
- Obscuring Terrain — introduced a few years ago as a subset of hindering terrain, it’s now effectively pointless. But we won’t miss answering player questions about it, either.
- Water Terrain — OK, so I have always, ALWAYS hated the fact that, for a very long time, water was just like a weaker version of hindering terrain. UPDATE (2/10/21): It could have had a chance to shine by becoming the new version of hindering terrain — stopping boot speed movement — while hindering gets to just mess with line of fire. But the designers opted to keep it the same. This is a good move to aid new players but a Nerdcore disappointment.
Knockback damage is being removed entirely. This is another change we’re unsure about. Sure, what seems like a very simple mechanic somehow got ridiculously complex, so Heroclixin’ can get down with the blanket 3-square knockback. We are less enthused about the loss of the damage — getting slammed into walls and off buildings is one of the most Nerdcore things there IS! So we can’t wholly approve of this one.
All this and breakaway still to come. Standby for Part 5 in a new post.