Hey, there was a pre-release at my venue. Two of ’em, in fact. So Heroclixin’ got as many shots of figures with Super Strength holding object tokens as possible.

yes, Jimmy Olsen [027] gets Super Strong when he turns into Turtle Boy. No lie

Lord Satanus [046] has a devilish hold on his object tokens

Superman II [019a] can only manage the ol’ chin-and-stat-window hold. Such a pacifist

The three main Wonder Woman pieces [002, 018 and 033] can’t do much better than to lean the object on their bodice.

We should have gotten the photo from behind to show how his long ponytail is doing the heavy lifting here

First Born [037] uses traited Super Strength.

Steel [012] gets a hold on things with, as usual, his hammer

yes, Amazon [005] is using her ponytail to hold the token

We had a grand time at the Realms Open Championship as part of the judge staff. I was wondering how well I’d enjoy the ROC finals without the unparalleled experience that is DragonCon surrounding it.

The answer: Just fine. It’s actually a more purely HeroClix function and improved, not lessened!

Personal highlights:

1. Meeting the Generation Clix trinity of Skyler, Chase and ROC participant Travis on Friday. I’m enjoying these guys’ semi-weekly podcast on all things HeroClix and they are very cool in person. (I may be featured in a little spot during a brief interview about becoming a ROC judge.)
2. Winning Fellowship in former HeroClix Worlds champion Jeterey’s late-night Minions game format despite going 1-2 thanks to the worst error I have ever made in a HeroClix game in a long and humiliating tradition of making incredibly terrible errors in HeroClix games. More on that in a future post.
3. Meeting my weekend roommate, Ryan of Glass Cabinet Hobbies. What a cool, friendly fellow! I need to eBay more clix from his store. If you got a chance to view any of the live stream from the event, that was his voice you were hearing most of the time.
4. Re-encountering faces from previous ROC events and getting to recall their names with only a few embarrassed questions!
5. Encountering familiar HCRealms screen names and getting to shake their hands and share war stories, techniques and smiles.
6. As always, working with the ROC staff is an absolute pleasure!
7. And, of course, seeing the ascent of the 2015 ROC World Cup champion, 10-year-old Isaac, who straight-up outplayed nearly all challengers — including the theretofore zero-loss Phillip, whose team was runner-up in Worlds as well (but against the grossly overpowered — and still banned from ROC — Felix Faust). I’d noted Isaac’s play earlier in a battle royale and thought at first that, while skilled, he was simply having fun tagging along with his dad. But no, he came to compete.

   When I heard how Isaac dealt with a new friend’s team, one that I thought was impressively outside the box compared to the rest of the meta, I remarked, not for the last time, that this kid was scary good.

8. Seeing the last of the HCRealms “HeroClix is like chess with superpowers” T-shirts I conceptualized years ago. Made me feel nostalgic and a little proud.
9. Last but not at all least, getting to meet the man behind the Starting Over podcast, Edward Shelton, aka Darklogos. Dude is even sharper than I knew from our previous encounters via interviews and correspondences. It was worth leaving the hotel much later than I intended to hear him school a newer player of my acquaintance onto the path to better play. Edward was talking to John, but yours truly was listening, too, and assessing his own deviance from the path that would lead to the top table.

   Part of it is Heroclixin’s commitment to F.U.N. play. It’s truly the path that suits me best. But Mr. Shelton made a driving point of encouraging our younger friend not to try so hard to netdeck the metagame or be so in awe of the best players, but to instead learn what his own actual style of play is and to grow excellent by being himself. Perhaps, then, I may be able to grow into an excellent HeroClix player in my own F.U.N. manner.

Although such hyper-competitive gaming isn’t Heroclixin’s purview, we are going to be there as part of the judging staff this weekend in Atlanta, Ga., Oct. 16-18! Come say hey to me, Rurouni KJS! I’m the short black guy in the judge shirt and glasses. There’s an off chance I may even play in one of the side events.

Go to Hcrealms.com for further official details such as registering for the badge — it’s free — and learning about the events.

A super-occasional feature of Heroclixin’