Merry Christmas to my readers! I gift you with a blow-by-blow battle report of a recent HeroClix game I played.

So most of the time I’m just glad to be playing, trying new figs, building goofball themes — y’know, having F.U.N. But after all the mental errors and straight up FAIL I recounted in last week’s report, I decided to go hard one time with a team designed to straight-up beat faces in. 

I know, not exactly “goodwill and peace on Earth,” right? But this is just a game.

War Machine [Invincible Iron Man 029a] 245
Forge [Wolverine and the X-Men] 90
Rescue [Invincible Iron Man 002] 65
=400 points on the nose. This prime version of War Machine is a tentpole designed to get the alpha strike and never get completely outactioned thanks to the double power action SP, his Indomitable and his Retaliatory Strike trait. He’s ably backed by the Telekinesis-using Rescue, who nearly guarantees that first strike, and Forge, who serves as a secondary attacker if needed.

I tested the team first in one of the FAIL efforts from last week. It was there that I realized that not using the DPA Alpha Strike was a mistake, one that probably cost me that game. Landing Bane [Arkham Origins 021] on his “stop” clicks would have set him up nicely for Forge’s followup KO (Forge being one of the few characters able to deal with Bane’s end dial with no difficulty). But instead Bane was able to heal and later deliver the game-ending blow.

Thus forewarned, I face Bill’s Animal team of Alyosha Kraven, WATX Wolfsbane, IIM Snowbird, Cosmo, ASM Lizard and 30-point FI Loki on the Soul World map. He’s got a Gamma Bomb, too.

I’m not at all afraid of the Bomb, because Forge can dismantle it via his SP to remove an object to gain Perplex. But I don’t go for it because it’s bait for a TK+Charge threat from the other side. I instead fly Forge and Rescue to a spot seemingly safe with elevated between us.

That first decision nearly costs me the game thanks to my first User Error: I’ve fallen into a bad habit of eyeballing ranges and lines of fire instead of focusing and actually counting squares. I’m very good at lines of fire and use it to take opponents by surprise. I need to be more vigilant about the ranges, though, because I’M the one who gets jumped.

In this instance, Snowbird uses a Kraven-granted free-action move to fly over the mountain to get within Sidestep range of Rescue to claw her. Lizard follows up with his own attack, landing her on her last click and keeping her from acting. That’s due to my second User Error: Thoroughly forgetting that the adjacent Forge could heal her one click FOR FREE through his trait. So even though she was doomed, she still could’ve attempted a last-gasp push to Incap either of her assailants. Who knows? It might have saved her.

Instead, though, next round, Forge just cobbles Perplex from the light object he’s on. War Machine uses Alpha Strike to first move next to Forge, then to Running Shot and carry him away into the water so no Charge figures can reach either for a few turns. With 2-arrow Sharpshooter, War Machine can fire at both Lizard and Snowbird.

BOTH hit their Shape Change roll.

Two more Shape Changes would succeed, leaving only the 0-point Guyladkin lion pog as a target for Forge’s sole attack before he is overwhelmed by the animals closing in.

And then there is one: War Machine all alone, with the Gamma Bomb about to explode at the cost of only one of the enemy (Loki).

The rest of the match is a lesson on never giving up. War Machine manages to KO Lizard, Alyosha and Snowbird without a great deal of fuss, leaving only a wounded, Battle Fury-laden Wolfsbane in the lake and Cosmo on mid-dial against a still-Invulnerable War Machine. Cosmo attempts and lands a Mind Control to move WM next to Wolfsbane, who claws him onto Hypersonic Speed clicks

Here, then, is my final User Error, in retrospect. I choose to HSS away to finish her off with Precision Strike instead of, well, finishing her off with Precision Strike right there. But I roll a 1 on the break attempt and she doesn’t miss her next chance.

I came to win and am instead 0-1 in a game that, in Bill’s words, I was not supposed to lose. But that’s what happens when mind and dice both fail.

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The second and third rounds go much better for me, as my long-out-of-the-game opponent Jocelyn is thoroughly outmatched — she’s running Shadow King, Deathlok [WATX 011a], Longshot, Korvus and Pepper Potts cum Rescue — and Paul A. isn’t prepared for the assault of War Machine.

He’s running Thor, Spider-Man, Scarlet Witch and Magik, all of the Avengers vs. X-Men starters and all at their lower point values. He forgets to call Mystics during his turn for his wild card Spidey and I blast him (though it doesn’t matter, as the adjacent Forge would have healed WM immediately of the unavoidable damage anyway) off the map and Thor, with the second Alpha attack, into near-uselessness.

Paul makes the mistake of retreating to what he thinks is safety instead of first attempting to heal Thor when he has the chance. Thus my whole team gets a turn to set up for the endgame, and the win.

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The eventual winning force was a team led by Fear Itself Dracula, whose Stealth may have been the perfect counter to War Machine’s range attacks. But if Drac were forced to attack outside Stealth, he’d be open to Retaliatory attacks which could prove the difference. It’s a shame we couldn’t face off to see which would come out the winner.

Overall, I wasn’t disappointed in the team’s results. WM turned out to be stronger than I expected, and both supporting pieces very much made the big prime work. And despite the fact that the team was meant to go harder than my usual F.U.N. builds, I still had the F.U.N. factor going:

• It didn’t use resources. Resources are rarely any F.U.N.
• It still rocked most of the STOPP formula [Support, Telekinesis, outwit, Probability Control, Perplex] and had great synergy, from Forge’s armor heals to Rescue’s ability to carry the wounded War Machine at need.
• It had an Armor/technology theme going for the Neato part of the equation.

Hope your Christmas is or was beautiful. Look forward to the start of 2014 next week and beginning of Heroclixin’s annual best of series of series.

One of the things that keep me humble is how badly I still manage to muck up in this game after all this time.

Part of the reason is that I’m always, ALWAYS trying out unfamiliar figures. Other times it’s due to straight-up mental error.

And then there’s dice.

Evil, capricious, uncaring dumb DICE

Take this weekend’s fight using the new AvX Spider-Man at 125 points and the No Man’s Land Batgirl I’d finally got. I didn’t make any real misplays with either. He just managed to miss about six of the seven or eight attacks he attempted with objects, while she missed or critically missed her early Flurry tries and had her 18+ DV easily tagged. Add to that a Deathlok with an aversion to successful shooting and it’s a wonder that I clawed 2 victories out of the three, nearly making it to the sudden death final match.

So yeah, sometimes the dice just kill ya. But more often, it’s massive user error, like in the Iron Man Marquee. Here’s my sealed team:

Guardian 100
Dreadnought 50
Justin Hammer 54
Shaman 92
= 296 points. I fight my bud Paul, who’s fielding Controller, Mandarin+Black Light ring and Iron Man 038. I’ve got his whole team on their last or next-to-last clicks when I decide not to Outwit Iron Man’s Pulse Wave, thinking he won’t risk catching his Controller in the blast. But I forget that even though Dreadnought, a giant, has been punching at Controller, the smaller enemy is not tied up and thus pushes to move away for IM to single-target Shaman with knock back to KO him (thanks to the crit-miss push from a few turns earlier). Lesson Learned: Just use the Outwit, fool!

It gets worse. As sharper-minded readers have already noticed, Paul’s team outweighed mine by some 80 points. That’s because this event was 400 points, not 300. ARRRGH!

I was allowed to add to my build for the next two rounds — a Sasha Hammer and the Hammer Industries ATA. And while I handily won my next two rounds, I never once thought to use her trait that keys off a friendly Justin Hammer.

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Unfamiliarity hurts me a lot. The next day, I ran a whole game with The Penguin [Arkham Origins] without thinking to use his Outwit special. Worse, MUCH worse, I was running Iron Monger [Invincible Iron Man] on the same team, in total obliviousness to these traits:

• CORPORATE TAKEOVER: Iron Monger is a wild card, but can only copy the team ability of an opposing character instead of a friendly one. When Iron Monger is copying a team ability, opposing characters can’t use that team ability.
• PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE: Iron Monger can use Perplex, but only to modify opposing character’s defense value by -2.

Both might’ve helped in a match against an Avengers Initiative shooter. But the match was really a training session for a new player, so maybe it’s just as well that I didn’t go balls to the wall this time.

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Sometimes the FAILfactor comes in my choice of team build, as in this force for an 1100-point “Make a theme” event. I went with this:

The Thing [Secret Invasion] 100
She-Thing [Secret Invasion] 50
Thing [10th Anniversary] 128
The Thing [10th Anniversary] 82
Thing [Galactic Guardians] 140
The Thing [Fantastic Forces] 83
Thing [Chaos War] 70
Thing  [Clobberin’ Time] 75
Benjamin J. Grimm [Secret Invasion] 100 
Angrir 235 + Lunge 5
+ FF ATA 
+ Generator
+ Eleha’al Vine

There were no theme team bonuses, so I lost map roll and ended up on the Bioshock Infinite starter map, one that is pure hell for a boot speed team like this one. The Things just got shot and shot and shot at before ever getting into Charge range, and then missed all their attacks.

There’s those dice again.

The Lesson Learned in this match was also my User Error. I hid only my best attackers too far off to the side, which blunted my attempts at counterattack with the others. I also didn’t push nearly enough, which meant the Fantastic Four TA was basically worthless (to say nothing of the FF ATA, which requires, oh, ACTUALLY LANDING ATTACKS to get the KOs to activate the thing).

I should have hid ALL my force off to the side, to limit lines of fire to the Things. Then, perhaps, the enemy would have to venture within the Charge range of several Things rather than just one or two.

As it was, though, the combination of a disadvantageous field and matchup, bad play and and worse dice equaled a perfect storm of FAIL.

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The last example involves Resources, which are difficult to handle in the best of circumstances. In this case, I’d retreated my tentpole fig to a rooftop to avoid a coming counterattack from a close-combat foe while remaining in LOF to make my own followup later. But I’d neglected to check whatever was showing on the Book of Skulls resource dial, and so I inadvertently remained in sight of an Outwitter…who WASN’T an Outwitter when I ended my turn.

I HATE resources, because of the Lesson Learned: When a Resource is on the team, characters no longer do what they’re designed to do. So assume they’re dangerous and always ask what a so-equipped foe is capable of now.

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Tomorrow, some Token Totin. Then Friday, the long-awaited fate of my Wolverine collection, past, present and future.