Welcome back to an occasional series Heroclixin’ likes to call Fighting Fire with F.U.N. Here, we try to help players figure how not to have games ruined by overpowered mechanics.

WizKids just came out with another Watch List, and again some was expected while other items were surprising — and still more was missing. Here’s Heroclixin’s take on each.

Entities (War of Light 060-068)
Heroclixin’ actually thinks these act like rather balanced, properly costed resources. But they have become as ubiquitous as resources lately, so we think they could use a fix. Heroclixin’ suggests recategorizing the “Entity” keyword from being a named one to generic. That one small change, we think, takes some of the teeth out of this tactic.

Hmmm…tactic. Perhaps, also, using the Possessed ability at 25 points could be reclassified as a tactic. It certainly affects the game like one!

Bill, Agent of A.I.M. (Deadpool 102)
What’s at issue is Bill’s ability to open one-way lines of fire on the highest-cost foe. This allows fellow shooters to get safe, easy shots on targets, taking positioning out of the game — AGAIN [see Spiral from last year].

Heroclixin’s idea is twofold: that it either A) be restricted to both Bill’s and his beneficiary’s range values or B) it’s a once-per-game effect.

Iron Pharaoh (IIM #051)
Heroclixin’ readers will recall this fig on our list of the year’s most needed changes. We stand by the call: Limit Iron Pharaoh to one action with locked damage value. He can Outwit, he can shoot, but he can’t do both.

Bizarro (Superman and the Legion Of Super-Heroes 039)
Fighting Bizarro can be a supremely frustrating experience, because he renders damage values virtually pointless. That’s a big part of the game to blithely ignore. So how about one of these as a fix: Either A) he can’t be healed or B) each token yields 25. For the reward of disregarding damage, Bizarros should run a little more risk.

Proxima Midnight (Guardians Of The Galaxy 050)
This is the one that baffled many. And it may be that she’s only a problem in conjunction with other figs [see Bill, above]. But her ability to hit once then possibly KO with no other hits is bonkers. Heroclixin’s fix: Tracer tokens return to her card after dealing their damage.

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What’s still missing from the Watch List? THIS:

Science Police Officer [SLOSH 004]: That anti-free action special power needs to not be stackable. Here’s Heroclixin’s rewrite:

“TACTICAL DEPLOYMENT: When an opposing character within 8 squares is given a free action, if that character has been given a non-free action this turn, after actions resolve, deal that character 1 unavoidable damage if it has not already taken damage from this effect this turn.“

It’s free damage and supreme board control. One damage is enough.

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Check in Monday for the return of Heroclixin’s Top Ten series. We’ll be looking at the 10 best tie-up specialists in the Modern Age game. Until then, have F.U.N. clixin’!

It’s Thanksgiving Day here in the U.S. So what is Heroclixin’ grateful for? By no means an exhaustive list, here’s a few things we appreciate:

• A vibrant game. When Heroclixin’ launched, WizKids was closed and, as far as we knew, HeroClix was dead. So for all its flaws, it’s very good to have it around!
• So many fantastic characters. The dials have never been better. Not only have favorites been clixed more accurately than ever, but some powers and abilities are so neat that they made new fans of us.
• Great players to have F.U.N. with. Although like anywhere else, HeroClix has its jerk players, I’m continually gladdened by how nice the majority of us are, from the excited newbie to the Worlds champions. Maybe the fact that the game actually awards us for sportsmanship has a little to do with that.
• The Watch List…showing that the game makers care something about the way the game goes. (And you know Heroclixin’s going to have an opinion on the latest round just announced yesterday!)
• YOU!!!!! This little blog that started just as a way to write occasionally about this great game has endured for five years, and I’m genuinely glad for your readership.

Happy Thanksgiving.

“Wait,” some reader is saying. “Didn’t you cover all the Flash set’s Super Strength pieces in last week’s installment of this ongoing photographic record of HeroClix sculpts that can hold object tokens without assistance?”

Yes, we did think so. But we missed pair of pieces with interesting abilities to temporarily gain Super Strength. So here they are: super rare figs Abra Kadabra and Engineer (The Flash 054 and 060, respectively)

AK’s hold is very secure, but in truth he’s unlikely to use Super Strength often if at all; when he’s got the special power allowing him to choose a standard power, he’s also got Phasing/Teleport instead of Charge or Running Shot, and he loses the picked power too soon. Engineer, on the other hand, can select a combination of powers that work great with SStrength via her trait.

It’s been some time since we updated this feature photo-documenting how figs hold their tokens. (We were busy moving the site to its current home, using a new computer system and a new camera phone instead of the old digital camera.) Some may need a refresher on the whys and wherefores.

The Flash set, which just released last week, is so speedster-heavy that there’s not much in the way of Super Strength. Heroclixin’ was able to get shots of every single SStr fig in the set this past weekend with ease.

In order: Tarpit [The Flash 028] , Gorilla City Soldier [008], Gorilla Grodd [056], Girder [014] Apollo [048] and Rainbow Raider [026] all have holds ranging from tenuous to rock solid.

Some, like Captain Thunder [052] have more than one hold:

…and that’s all, folks, for The Flash set!

In upcoming weeks, look for us to play catch-up on stuff we missed from Deadpool, Guardians and War of Light!

A new HeroClix set means another new checklist.

FLASHchecklist

Download, print and enjoy!

Longtime readers know I love running the Guardians of the Galaxy in clix. I’m not the only one. Similarly longtime clix buddy Lenny is a GotG fan, too, and he played the team in a recent event. I’ll let him tell about it in his own words below!

 This Past Sunday I had an opportunity to play a thematic Guardians of the Galaxy team using several of my favorite Guardian characters. I was excited when some of the figures were previewed last year, especially when one of the figures was a new Mantis (my favorite female comic character.) I knew the Guardians had good synergy, but I didn’t realize just how good until I played them in the tournament.

The Format: 600 points modern age, you must have exactly 6 figures on your team.

My team:
 Star-Lord [Guardians of the Galaxy 030] 110 points 
 Mantis [Guardians of the Galaxy] 56 points
 Yondu [Guardians of the Galaxy] 76 points
 Major Victory [Guardians of the Galaxy] 95 points
Rocket Raccoon [Guardians of the Galaxy 052] 80 points
GROOT! [Guardians of the Galaxy 051] 100 points

 I played the Green Lantern Power Battery with the Green Ring and 6 constructs. All 3 games were played on the War of Light Korugar map.

Round 1: My first opponent was Thomas, who was playing Fear Itself clix Ms.Marvel, Tyr, Speedball, Monkey King, Raizo Kodo with Jennifer Kale. In keeping with his Fear Itself theme, he played a nearly full Book of Skulls.
I used Star Lord’s  trait to allow the entire team to share Major Victory and Groot’s 18 defense. Thomas moved his force up the map, and I grouped mine together on top of one of the buildings. Unfortunately, he moved Ms. Marvel up a little too close, as it put Ms. Marvel within range of a psychic blast from Major Victory that effectively nullified her as a threat.

Raizo and Tyr still remained dangerous, but before I could deal with them I had to worry about my opponent’s Monkey King who based 4 of my characters in an effective tie-up move. Rocket Raccoon’s ability to ignore elvated helped me take out Monkey King, while Yondu’s Precision Strike and Major Victory’s
Psychic Blast eliminated Raizo and Tyr. Jenifer Kale was the last to be KO’d. 1-0.

Round 2: My second opponent was George, a very good player who is always a formidable challenge. He also played a Guardians themed team: Iron Man [Guardians of the Galaxy 055] at 150 pts, Martyr, Moondragon, Gamora, movie common Rocket, and Mantis.

I used the power battery to put the shield construct on Major Victory, (I was counting on being able to share HIS 18 defense with the rest of the  team moreso than Groot’s) then the  Decoy on Yondu. I positioned my team on top of the elevated terrain and waited for him to advance. Although I struck against Martyr, outwitting her defense with Star Lord and hitting for 3 damage, she retained her hypersonic speed and my opponent was able to retaliate by using his Mantis’ friendly mind control to full effect, effectively giving his Iron Man extra actions and using him to wound Groot, then later knocking my Mantis to ground level and KO’ing Yondu.

As Martyr continued weakening Groot with Hypersonic hit and run in front of the elevated terrain, I moved
Mantis into position near Iron Man and got Groot close to Martyr in the hopes of further weakening her with one last attack before Groot fell. Then I saw an opportunity to use Mantis’ mind control to turn the tide of battle.

I perplexed Mantis’ attack up 1 and pushed her, successfully mind controlling Iron Man, who then made a successful breakaway roll (another of his characters was adjacent to Iron Man) and made him psychic blast his teammate Martyr for another 3 damage. Star Lord then finished Martyr off.

Major Victory’s psychic blast hurt Iron Man, but the enemy Rocket and Moondragon took Groot and
my Rocket down. Iron Man flew up on top of the building where Star Lord and Major Victory were making their stand. But he missed his pulse wave attack, which left him easy prey for Star Lord’s retaliation.

With Iron Man down, the Guardians scored with a critical attack that knocked Moondragon out and ultimately won me the game on points. A hard fought victory against a very worthy opponent. 2-0.

Round 3: My final match of the tournament was against Steve, another very good player who was using 2 Entities. His team was War of Light Krona, prime Captain Mar-Vell, Void from Streets of Gotham, and the new Gravity Feed Flash 202. The Entities were on Flash and Mar-Vell.

This time my opponent stayed on the buildings on his side of the map, taking advantage of Flash’s high speed value and hypersonic speed, combined with Krona’s long range. I made the mistake of leaving Major Victory within Krona’s range, and he was hit for 5 damage.

I switched out the Shield construct for the Nurse, and was able to regen the Major back to his 2nd click. I moved Star Lord down to ground level to make an attack on Flash, but the entity gave him shape change and he made all his shape change rolls. I moved Groot and Rocket closer to make a possible attack on Krona, but he moved Krona back from the edge of the roof.

I was able to use Rocket’s improved targeting ignore elevated terrain special to hit Captain Mar-Vell, then used Yondu’s Yakka arrows to finish him off. Steve then used a combination of ranged attacks from Krona and hit and run attacks from flash to cripple Major Victory again, and phased Krona to rooftops MY side of the map along with Void and Flash to the rooftop next to Krona’s. He also managed to deliver a KO blow to Groot, but I had Rocket adjacent to him so Groot regrew from a Sprig! I even regened him a few clicks!

I used Star-Lord’s outwit to get rid of Void’s supersenses, prob, etc. power and shot her for 3, while Major Victory did some damage to flash with a pulse wave. Rocket’s targeting special again came in handy, as he finished Void off from the ground. Nothing else of consequence happened and I won another tough battle on points, going 3-0 and winning the tournament!

Star-Lord –  His trait that allows everyone on the team to share the defense of the member with the highest printed defense makes the Guardians a competitive theme in today’s meta, and his being able to outwit through other characters as well as ignore hindering terrain for targeting purposes is the icing on the cake. A must play for competitive Guardian builds.

Major Victory – Free action TK, leadership, perplex, and psychic blast make him a solid choice, if not a must play, but be careful because penetrating damage is the Major’s bane.

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Nice write-up, Len! You’ve learned the Heroclixin’ battle report style well!

Heroclixin’ welcomes battle reports from its readers. Feel free to share brief ones in the comments sections, or if you have more to say, email us at heroclixin@yahoo.com