I was torn between a highlander-friendly all-Batman and Robin (and Alfred) team, a nearly full complement of Runaways, and a Red Hulk/Leader-led Intelligencia squad for a recent 400-point tourney. Because the last team had the most never-before-played pieces, I went with it:

Red Hulk (Incredible Hulk 028) 187
The Leader (Incredible Hulk  014) 100
Humanoid (Incredible Hulk  001) 40 x 3

= 398 points. No room for an Additional Team Ability of any kind. So how’d this team do in the potentially ultra-competitive Infinity Gauntlet event?

FIRST ROUND was against Charlie’s Justice Society: Shazam and Black Adam, Wonder Woman (DC 75th Anniversary 051), Mr. Terrific (DC 75th Anniversary) and Dr. Fate (WizKids D-002) on the event-required Collector’s ship map. I made two critical mistakes of such degree that it reminded me of the “FAIL scale” I came up for on my all-Alter-Ego game played last summer:

• Ran a Humanoid out to tie up his team or draw fire. It worked too well, costing me those 40 points immediately due to my forgetting Wonder Woman’s Exploit Weakness. Moreover, said Humanoid lost the light object he’d been holding as well. FAIL level: 2
• Leapt Red Hulk 11 squares to make his free attack, completely forgetting that he could only do so for 6 squares and still do it. This is with Leader fully able to TK the brute within the needed range. This landed him next to Shazadam holding a heavy, so I’d depend on Red Hulk’s Toughness to help him survive the possible preemptive strike. But I’d inadvertently jumped in range of Wonder Woman’s Charge, and she punched right through Rulk’s defenses with my own light object dropped a couple turns earlier. One failed Impervious roll against Shazadam’s 7 damage the next action and my heavy hitter was gone in two actions. FAIL level 3.

The rest was just clean-up. Got skunked (wiped out with 0 victory points).

SECOND round, CC brought the Infinity Watch: Gamora (Galactic Guardians), Mole Man (Galactic Guardians), Drax (Galactic Guardians 011) and Adam Warlock (Galactic Guardians 032). This time I was actually doing OK, getting Drax tied down with a Humanoid and knocking Moley off Outwit. But Red Hulk continued to miss attacks, and I made my FAIL level 2: Even though I remembered to use the Humanoid’s Poison, I totally overlooked Red Hulk’s far better version of the power. (The only reason this isn’t a level 3 is because the Poison wouldn’t have saved me. Only actually landing an attack would.) Got skunked again, not even taking out the very wounded Mole Man or last-click Gamora.

FINALLY, Paul W. joined me on the loser table to see who the biggest loser would be: his Metropolis team of Eradicator, Superman (Superman 001), Mercy Graves and Fast Forces Lex Luthor, or my thus-far (un)Intelligencia.

I managed to draw out his deadly All-Star Superman out to Outwit my Leader from 10 out, out of Leader’s retaliation range and with Eradicator ready to make a deadly Psychic Blast, too. But I jumped Red Hulk out to Outwit A.S.Supes (and Poison Lex) and a pair of Humanoids to tie up all Superman’s buddies with Plasticity. Meanwhile, with Leader free to Outwit again, the little bighead deactivated A.S.S’s Hypersonic and Indomitable, stranding the Kryptonian for Rulk to  push to L/C with a heavy and one-shot him.

It would’ve worked if not for a FAIL level 1 dice roll that, in retrospect, was actually a massive FAIL level 3.

See, before getting Poisoned, Lex Luthor managed to punch Rulk for 1 damage, knocking him to a 10 Speed instead of 11. In my mind, for some reason, I seemed to think that meant he could only L/C 5 squares to clobber Superman instead of the 6-square limit his SP actually calls for. So I pushed Leader to TK Rulk out to jump the 5 squares, landing a solid hit…that A.S.S. Theme Probability Controlled into a miss. That completely unnecessary TK left Leader unable to Theme Probability Control that miss into a hit.

FAIL level 3. BIG TIME.

A.S.S. proceeded to immediately crithit Rulk into his AE clicks and too far away to even maybe get into the fight later. And though I wasn’t skunked this time — I got Lex and his girl Mercy, at least — the game was essentially over with that.

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Piece-by-piece:

Red Hulk: His very light defenses on opening click blunt his effectiveness a lot. It cost me in EVERY SINGLE MATCH as he was far too easily damaged by heavy and light hitters alike. But some more aware play on my part would certainly have alleviated that some. You can’t totally stop dice fails. You can stop stupid moves.

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The Leader: With Rulk failing miserably, he needed to be able to fight more. But with him either hurling big Red into the fray or support him with Outwit from the safety of hindering terrain, he never could provide the backup Rulk sorely needed. He’s no secondary attacker despite his solid AV.

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Humanoids: Pulled a pair of regenerated ‘oids  in the first two games, resulting only in extra victory points. Too weak to be good cleanup (and lacking the object pool to make good use of their Super Strength beyond a single shot or so) and too slow to be great tieup, they’re a tad disappointing. On the other hand, they have that Strength, the Poison, the respawn ability (with the right Leader, of course) and the Willpower to make them a credible threat even as they tie down targets with Plasticity, and ALL of those qualities came into play. They just need more effective fighters for them to back up.

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All in all, the Intelligencia was, well…the UNintelligencia in my game. Not even the ATA could’ve helped me here. But maybe it’ll help the team in the next Battle Report in a couple of weeks. (Next is the monthly scheduled Top Ten.)

A I wrote last Friday, I’ve been all about theme teams in HeroClix since I started in 2005. From attempting to run teams composed entirely of bug-people — Ant-Man, Spider-Man, Wasp, to name a few — to a “Bright Yellow Boots” squad of Unleashed Shazam, E Black Adam and Vet Power Man, it’s clear that “theme” has a broader meaning than just running a bunch of Scientist-keyworded fellows on a team. Case in point was the Luchador team I posted Friday.

Bane (DC 75th Anniversary) 140 + Secret Six ATA 3

Atom Smasher (Giants) 97 + Protected 8 + Not So Special 3

The Atom (DC 75th Anniversary) 50

Red Shift (Galactic Guardians) 106 

Juggernaut (Giant-Size X-Men) 193

= 600 points.

Each fit the Luchador archetype:

• male
• masked, with head fully covered
• at least partially bare-armed

FIRST GAME was a loss to returning player Vic’s cosmic team of Lord Mar-Vell, Adam Warlock (Galactic Guardians 032), Red Shift and Rick Jones/Capt. Marvel. The Darkness BFC cut his range advantage on the Dawn of Time map and an early critmiss on Vic’s Hypersonic attack ceded the early momentum to me, but a round of total misses on my part in the mid-game coupled with Lord M’s dominance left the Luchadors in too deep to climb to victory. Lost Red Shift, Juggy and Atom while only taking Warlock and Red Shift.

SECOND GAME was versus occasional guest columnist Morrison, who made a surprise appearance (usually, this overachiever is too busy pursuing Eagle Scout status and earning early college credit to play with little plastic superheroes)! His Armor force of Iron Man (Secret Invasion and Supernova), Abner Jenkins, Doombot 5359 and Master Chief (Battle Rifle) was only made tougher by his choice of the Crater map. My Skyscrapers BFC was rendered utterly useless because it’s illegal on maps where the starting areas are on elevated terrain.

I made a decent fight of it, despite taking a fair amount of fire along the way, KOing both Iron Men and the ‘Bot. But my team was wiped completely.

FINAL GAME, I had the choice of facing the judge’s team of Frost Giants or a squad of Martial Artists. Of course the Lucha Libre vatos wanted to test the kickboxers! They were: Batman (Dark Knight Rises 201), Catwoman (Dark Knight Rises 203), Gamora (Galactic Guardians), Hawkeye (Avengers Movie 208), Diana Prince (Brave and the Bold 103) and The Question (Arkham Asylum) on the Graveyard.

Juggernaut again got pounded and sent running right off with a heavily boosted Legolas shot. I returned the favor with interest by one-shotting Batman with an Atom Smasher charge. From there, though, things went well south for me as Question began Outwitting (thanks to a FAIL level 3 on my part — I was playing the Resistance BFC and thoroughly neglected to use it!) and Legolas made multiple Super Senses rolls in between Sharpshooting first Juggernaut, then Bane and finally Atom Smasher into so many victory points. My only other KOs were Gamora and Hawkeye.

So the Luchadors went winless at 0-3. But they competed in every match. With a different strategy (and fewer mistakes) I might’ve come out on top anyway.

PIECE-BY-PIECE:

Bane (DC 75th Anniversary): I held this guy far too much in reserve due to his weak starting 16 DV with Toughness, instead waiting to Charge him in with a +2 Venom Pump to land on his Invulnerability 18 DV. The problem with this strat was that I needed his firepower sooner. Moreover, even a solid hit lands him on a long run of Outwit, which could’ve evened matters up for me a bit. Finally, if he goes down fighting early, he has a chance to use the Secret Six ATA to blow up an adjacent foe.

I never once remembered to use his Secret Six ATA.

—

Atom Smasher (Giants): Despite being a giant, somehow big Al here got a solid Charge and hit in every game. He also got hit back pretty solidly in every game, being a giant target, and that’s his weakness: his mid-dial sports the most mediocre stats imaginable on a piece of his 97 cost. The Not So Special feat is an absolute must in Golden Age games — it REALLY helped in these games — as is a fellow JSAer/wildcard to help his DV. Speaking of which…

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The Atom (DC 75th Anniversary): The littlest luchador had the biggest impact. He serves as a much-needed DV sharer for Atom Smasher, a hard-t0-target meat shield for the bigger boys of the team, a tie-up piece and, not inconsequentially, a capable minor attacker to bat leadoff or cleanup as needed. My problem and regret with him is that too often he was the first gone and Atom Smasher was without his needed partner. But for 50 points, whaddaya expect?

—

Red Shift (Galactic Guardians): It seemed every game went like clockwork; he’d make  a HSS strike, would have to base a dangerous shooter to let the rest of the slow team advance, and take just enough damage to end up on his very soft ESD clicks. The extra mobility and range were quite welcome, though. And though he was a KO in each match, he gave the team a shot at victory every time.

—

Juggernaut (Giant-Size X-Men): Never truly was unstoppable in these games, as opponents invariably not only had little trouble hitting his 18 Impervious but seemed also to make it stick every time. I needed to use him and Bane as a total tag team, piling on foes together instead of Juggy trying so hard to get that first big hit in.

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0-3 record notwithstanding, I loved this team. I’d like to try it again sometime, this time using Bane more aggressively and remembering my much-needed features like BFCs and ATAs.

So this little feature grew to be one of the toughest to do, each week. Part of the reason is because I really wanted to go into detail writing about each step of the match. But time just simply doesn’t allow for it.

Lack of time and opportunity also did a number on my actual clix playing for the first quarter or so of this year. As a consequence, I have a lot of unplayed pieces.  Lately, every game I play is dedicated to running as many of those unplayed ‘clix as I can stand, whether it’s a simple 200-point pickup game or a sealed Infinity Gauntlet tournament for a coveted Elder of the Universe figure.

As a result, this space on Wednesdays will be dedicated to mini-reviews of a newly played HeroClix piece from the week before rather than full-blown battle reports. To wit:

On last Saturday, I came into the venue ready to play a Nova Corps team (the week’s scenario being “Assemble!” —  700 points of a single faction) but saw that two others of the seven players also had Nova Corps. So, having come fresh from a 2nd viewing of “The Avengers” — yes, it was that good — I swiftly rebuilt a second team around the brand-new Free Comic Book Day Thor figure:

Thor (Avengers Movie #200) 150
Iron Man (Avengers Movie #006) 160
Hulk (Avengers Movie #202) 255
Black Widow (Avengers Movie #036) 35 
Captain America (Avengers Movie #204) 100
= 700 points, unplayed pieces in boldface. No theme bonus, just movie-accurate awesomeness. It got pretty easily to the final match, where I was overmatched by an identically named team of comic-accurate Avengers: Thor and Cap from Hammer of Thor, Black Widow from Cap set, one of Galactic Guardians’ Hulks and Secret Invasion Iron Man. They took out Hulk in just three shots — WizKids really needs to implement my suggested fix to Outwit — providing the only margin of victory needed.

FCBD Thor: At the 150-point level, he made a great tag team running shooter with Iron Man, especially with his Pulse Wave option to get him in close if necessary. He seemed to take damage down to his late-dial Hypersonic Speed clicks a lot, to my opponents’ distress.

Iron Man 006: Performed well but lived by the skin of his teeth in every game. I should’ve considered pushing him to Outwit more often than I did. It might have made a big difference in the champ match I lost if I’d been able to nerf SI Iron Man’s powerful Extremis power.

Black Widow: She was key tieup in every single match except the one I lost, because she just couldn’t get to her mark. That role kept her from being used for her SHIELD team ability, though. I have to find the proper balance for that in the future.

Captain America: A bit torn between keeping him strictly on defense (the +1 DV trait to adjacent pals) and using that 11 AV right off. He also seemed to be a magnet for good enemy attack rolls. Fortunately, he never becomes useless and found a way to help the team to the end.

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So, it’s a little less meaty than I’m used to writing. But it’s actually, y’know, done and published, so there’s that. Hopefully, I can keep this going!

Tomorrow, plan to see a normal-sized Token Totin’ entry.