For shame, busting up a perfectly good DC team with that green cheesecake chick from Marvel.

Couldn’t resist the temptation to mutilate the theme by adding a conveniently brainwashed R Ragman to the team.

R Ragman: NOT a villain. Just conveniently “brainwashed” by Dr. Psycho into aiding them. Perma-Stealth for these wildcards, well, wildly increases their effectiveness. For the 25-40 points that the Alex Luthor build offers, there’s no better DC clix for the role he plays here. Maybe none in the game at all.

Taking a quick break from the Event Dials series to deliver some battle reports.

Way back in December, I set about reacquiring a Dr. Psycho from 2006’s Collateral Damage set so I could play this team:

The Society

From left: Talia, Black Adam, Lex Luthor, Deathstroke, Dr. Psycho, Calculator. From Villains United #1.

Essentially the anti-Justice League, but worse than that, since each of these characters have been able to singlehandedly challenge entire teams with their machinations. Together as The Society’s inner circle? Nigh-unstoppable.

As an 800-point HeroClix team, though, they are somewhat less terrifying. Four of them — Luthor, Deathstroke, Calculator and Dr. Psycho — are wild cards with no team ability to copy from the team-less Talia and Black Adam. So immediately, I have to bend the theme somewhat to get any real playability from them.

Here’s my first take and my first match.

The Society

Black Adam (Crisis) 254
Lex Luthor (Justice League) 161
Deathstroke (Crisis) 156 + Outsmart 10
Dr. Psycho 100
Calculator 55 + Outsmart 10
Gotham City Detective 27
Talia (Batman Alpha) 20 + Loner 5

=798 points

vs. the Justice League of…well, Lenny.

Superman (Justice League) 226 + Fortitude 25 + ICWO 10
R Shazam (Origin) 105
Green Arrow (Crisis) 104
Wonder Woman (Justice League) 94
Batman (Justice League) 75 + ICWO 10
Gamora 73
Cosmic Boy (Legion of Super-Heroes) 70

= 792 points

For shame, busting up a perfectly good DC team with that green cheesecake chick from Marvel.

Lenny won the roll and picked the Days of Future Past map. I holed up inside. No BFCs played.

Black Adam parked on the Kinetic Accelerator. Lenny TK’d Gamora to attack him, but she missed and got pounded for a quick KO. Superman snaked his subsequent attack, losing the Meteorite vs. Black Adam. Adam, Calculator and Deathstroke ganged up on R Shazam, keeping him Outwitted until he was done.

OOTS Batman sat on an object but lost it from an Enhanced attack from Talia. That didn’t save Dr. Psycho, who missed his Mind Controls and got pincushioned by Green Arrow. Lex Luthor also underperformed and fell to a double KO by Superman (which he Masterminded to the GCD) and Wonder Woman (no one left to MM to). At least Calculator got to the Vine to heal (dodging a shot from WW) as Black Adam, now on Hypersonic Speed, successfully took on Superman, Batman and Green Arrow with Deathstroke in tow. Cosmic Boy went down and WW was the last to fall. I had BA and Ds left.

Played the same team the next day against Scott’s semi-cosmic team:

Annihilus 126
Proteus 180
Magus 184
The Mighty Thor 286

= 776 points.

On the Junkyard map, I ran Infiltration and got Poor Teamwork’d. Deathstroke hunkered down safe in the map’s swath of hindering terrain, but Talia got OHKO’d by Thor right off. Psycho successfully Mind Controls Thor to attack Annihilus but the enthralled Asgardian fails. The bad Dr. takes 2 (and needn’t call anyone when he wakes from his impending KO). Lex Luthor gets tied by Magus. I return the favor, pushing Gotham City Detective  to cuff Annie and prevent the space buglord from Psychic Blasting Adam. GCD doesn’t last a turn.

Calculator takes Obsessive click (after a lonnnnnng check on the computer to  check for common keywords on older figs), then takes a KO by TK’d Dumpsterator. Time’s up just before I can finish laying into Thor (due to that slooooooow-loading computer) so I take the time-limit loss, having KO’d 0 points to Scott’s 217.

We play on. Thor fails his Flurry and falls to combined Deathstroke/Black Adam assault as Dr. Psycho gets hit off board. Now Hypersonic and Super Strong, Adam starts beating down Magus and Proteus as Lex pushes to weaken, then KO Annihilus. Alas, the “Price” is not right and Lex goes down from his own Perplex. But now Black Adam and Deathstroke can’t be stopped and they again clear the board of all foes.

Because it takes a while to get KOs, this team isn’t very good in the time limit, but when played to the last, the two high-pointers tend to win out. I made an adjustment for a game played a few weeks later:

Black Adam (Crisis) 254 + Fortitude 25
Deathstroke (Crisis) 156 + Outsmart 10
Lex Luthor (Crisis) 113
Dr. Psycho 100
Calculator 55 + Outsmart 10
Gotham City Detective 27
Talia (Batman Alpha) 20 + Loner 5
R Ragman 25

=800 points. I just didn’t seem to be getting results from Lex, and since Alex was the REAL power behind the Society, having disguised himself as Lex, it fits.

Couldn’t resist the temptation to mutilate the theme by adding a conveniently brainwashed R Ragman to the team.

First, I played Mohammed, a very young player still very shaky on the rules. He had a cobbled-together team of borrowed figures:

Dr. Doom (Fantastic 4) 200
The Flash (Justice League) 114
Yellowjacket (Secret Invasion) 100
Yellowjacket (Skrull) (Secret Invasion) 100
Batman (Arkham Asylum) 64
Robin (Arkham Asylum) 66
The Caped Crusader 50
E Deathstroke (Cosmic Justice) 50

We played on the Dawn of Time map. My victory was never in doubt — the poor kid’s not a solid player yet — but my score wasn’t very high due to coaching him through the rules and Skrullojacket making too many Shape Change/Skrull rolls to KO him early enough to add more than that 100 points to my victory points.

Second round was against Lenny, who ran:

Silver Surfer (Avengers) 231 + Protected 8
Susan Richards (Fantastic 4) 120
Mr. Fantastic (Fantastic 4) 100 + Brilliant Tactician 20
Johnny Stom (Fantastic 4) 100
Benjamin J. Grimm (Fantastic 4) 100
Winter Soldier 70
Spider-Man (Secret Invasion) 50

Battlefield conditions: He Sabotaged me by tokening Black Adam (I missed my roll) while I tried to cause Telekinetic Strain. But he got to choose the Fantastic Four map, which played to his strengths and hurt many of mine.

I used the Sabotage to immediately push Adam to Hypersonic Speed and the Kinetic Accelerator, pretty much ensuring that he could reach any target on the map once he cleared. I also clustered the rest around him in case Surfer tried to alpha-strike my big gun. But Lenny was much more careful than that, positioning his whole team so that any Adam attack would leave him open to a massive counterattack.

I took the bait anyway, successfully hitting Winter Soldier within a click of his life. Nearly paid dearly for it when Sue TK’d Grimm a short distance  to try hitting with a Meteorite (missed), then Johnny Running Shot Adam for 5 clicks (hit) and Surfer tried a HSS driveby (crit-missed).

Psycho Mind-Controlled Surfer away to double target Winter Soldier and Sue (only KO’d him, though) then end up in easy range for Alex to Psychic Blast him (missed, though). More shots on Grimm landed but failed to KO. And somehow, time ran out before any more KOs could occur. Lost none.

Finally, I face Lord Timothy’s quartet of Deities:

Ares (Avengers) 275 + Protected 8
Thor (Ultimates) 186 + Protected 8
Hercules (Secret Invasion) 142 + Protected 8
Circe (Arkham Asylum) 149 + Alias 3

On the Dawn of Time map, I Infiltrated half my team into the bushes. Tim used no Battlefield Conditions, since the one he would have played — Skrull Kill Krew — would have hurt his Circe worse than me.

Using the Dynamostat to cover Adam on the Accelerator, I immediately Mind Controlled Herc to beat Thor. Thor got his Impervious, though. My backup plan to Psychic Blast Thor with Alex worked a bit better.

Tim ran Herc behind Thor, which opened the Norse thunder god to Dr. Psycho’s MC. He took 2 more clicks of damage into utter deadweight, but it was worth it: Circe took 5 clicks from the hammer and Thor took 1 from the Mystics.

Ares had just failed his Running Shot at Adam with a ridiculously low roll (13 on 19 missed? Really?) so it was time to return the favor. Only I did too well, with another ridiculously low roll into a miss. Feh. At least the taxied Talia managed to follow up with an actual solid hit…especially with Deathstroke countering Impervious. Too bad Protected swallowed it up, and Circe Outwit Talia’s little sword next time. Black Adam, now on Flurry, landed another hit but was rapidly taken out by Herc and Ares. Talia didn’t last much longer. Neither did Circe…Alex took her down.

Now Ares closed in on my Detective and Calculator. While Calc took the defeat, Deathstroke, well-Perplexed, took on the god of war and came out on top while Herc was tied up by GCD’s Plasticity…I thought. Good thing I Outwit his Wrestler SP (was concerned about Charge and Flurry and had forgotten Herc’s Plasticity)! Herc couldn’t take on two Outwitters alone and fell.

3-0! Nice, but with Adam Fortituded, the Outsmarts were a waste. So in a later game, I swapped them out:

Black Adam (Crisis) 254 + Fortitude 25
Deathstroke (Crisis) 156
Lex Luthor (Crisis) 113
Dr. Psycho 100 + Compel 15
Calculator 55
Gotham City Detective 27
Talia (Batman Alpha) 20 + Loner 5
R Ragman 25

= 795 points.

There was weird format in this game…a special third die was rolled with every attack roll:

1=nothing

2=knockback x 2

3=heal after the attack (1d6-2, like Support)

4=automatic crit miss

5=automatic crit hit

6=nothing

FIRST match I faced John and his:

Thanos 267
Trigon 263 + Protected 8
Darkseid 210
Doombot 5953 40

We were on the Crash Site map. I used the hindering to keep just out of range of that range-heavy team. Again Dr. Psycho did his thing, forcing Darkseid to punch Trigon in the shins and take Mystics feedback. But that just made Trigon start tossing Dopplegangers out and forced me to Outwit that so Psycho could get taxied to the Eleha’al Vine and start tokin…uh, I mean healing up.

My opponent was highly frustrated with my solid Stealth bunker, as I was with Black Adam’s inability to hit his lone lead man, Thanos. So he closed in on me. But it was too late as time ran out. I got the points for Protected for the win.

Then there was Christian’s team:

Iron Man (Secret Invasion) 188 + Fortitude 25
Iron Man 154
Mr. Fantastic 100 + Brilliant Tactician 20
R Kang (Supernova) 87
Ant-Man (Infinity Challenge) 50
E Dr. Mid-Nite 43
R Mandroid Armor 28
R Black Panther  (Infinity Challenge) 27
V Lockjaw 38
R Destiny 20
R Paramedic 8
+ Thunderbolts 15 (Defenders)

Wow. That’s a full T.O.P.P.S.-style Pit Crew*, there. I actually got the taste for a pizza after seeing all that cheese.

I stuck us on the Armor Wars map. I managed to get Lockjaw and then Kang. But a Compel, a pair of missed attacks, an untimely (for me) Impervious roll and a tactical failure to tie up AV Iron Man with Ragman left a pushed Black Adam way too open to a massive pair of Running Shots from the Tonys that dealt him 10 clicks when he could only take 8. That was the game.

So how’d this cadre of villainy wind up working? Basically went 6-1 (technically 5-2, but the loss against Scott within the time limit would be invalidated had that keyword check taken 1 minute instead of 5). Piece-by-piece:

King of PAIN.

Black Adam: the beater really has to pull his weight at this point level. In the first build, the Outsmart combos really encouraged me to hold him back, causing the rest of the team to take a lot of early fire and forcing him into a cleanup role too late in the game for timed matches. In the later builds, he was often the first to go into battle and usually paid for it by getting pounded by multiple counterstrikes. It’s hard to find a proper balance.

Dunno what HE'S so happy about, getting KOed all the time.

Lex Luthor: Key example of a piece forced to do too much in the first build. Great AV, but his defense always took that first hit into less usefulness. He’d probably do better in the Ragman build…if the points allowed! That 161 cost and my general insistence on sticking to the villain theme kept Rags out the first go ’rounds.

He got his own series because he never got KO'd in any of these matches. :)

Deathstroke: Like Adam, he’s one of the main fight engines of the team. But he lacks the mobility to really get into it alongside Adam. Still one of the major keys to this team’s viability.

Younger model. Smarter model. And dresses 100% fruitier. (Which is saying something. You SEE that purple & green getup?)

Alex Luthor: Quite the upgrade from Lex for nearly 50 points less. He made room for more TAs to copy and better feats. His upfront Perplex also made him more effective as a backrow type to boost the real fighters’ attacks or defenses. (In fact, he’d be a great Brilliant Tactician for his fellow Calculators…something to consider in future runs.) Still disappointed that I NEVER got to use his BFC-canceling SP!

Short but slow.

Dr. Psycho: If not for this theme, I’d never play him again. He was highly, HIGHLY ineffective in the first build for want of decent die rolls. He simply can’t afford to miss those Mind Control rolls when he’s going to be taking the next attack thanks to that dismally low defense. With Bat-Stealth, though, he had new life. It was more than worth taking multiple clicks of self-damage from feedback and pushing to make the enemy do some of my work for me. In any future runs, I may try using Mental Shields instead of Compel on him. In a build without Bat-Stealth, I think I’ll go with Contingency Plan and keep him well out of the fray.

Love the megalomania evident in this cover.

Calculator: Similarly, Calc is suspect as a piece. Sure, he’s got built-in Brilliant Tactician, sorta, and Outwit. But that Outwit is gimped by the keyword factor — he’s toast against themed teams — and losing his single Stealth click is really dangerous for him. And there’s not enough Mastermind fodder to help him AND Psycho. Maybe I need to invest in pogs…

Gotham City Detective: the corrupt cop on the villains’ take. Basically only there as Mastermind fodder and, more importantly, a source of TA for the four wildcards on the team, especially Dr. Psycho (who’s useless without a TA to copy). Also served well to tie-up thanks to 2nd-click Plasticity.

R Ragman: NOT a villain. Just conveniently “brainwashed” by Dr. Psycho into aiding them. Perma-Stealth for these wildcards, well, wildly increases their effectiveness. For the 25-40 points that the Alex Luthor build offers, there’s no better DC clix for the role he plays here. Maybe none in the game at all. That said, I’d much rather run an Alfred pog in his place instead. Anyone want to sell me one?

Best 20 points in HeroClix?

Talia: most of the time, she was just tie-up fodder. But sacrificing that 25 points wasn’t so bad if it meant Black Adam lived to fight another round or two. Which it usually did, to my benefit. And when enemy Outwit is focused on a 20-point piece instead of elsewhere, that’s pretty OK, too.

So much for the bad guys! Next comic-accurate theme is likely to be the Inhumans Royal Family. But that’ll have to wait until I get another string of 800-point games to play. In the meantime, enjoy a return to the Event Dial series. Ciao!

* ( Telekinesis. Outwit. Perplex. Probability Control. Support. A “Pit Crew” contains figures whose sole purpose is to cheaply provide one of these powers.)