We had a recent 1200-point anything goes tournament. Promo pieces, feats, Star Trek ships, whatever — it was all legal.

Me, I had some pieces that’d languished in my unplayed fig box for nearly a year. Time to try ’em out.

Unfortunately, my fellow players brought out the velveeta (not cheese, but close). First, I faced a Brute team of Movie Hulk, Mighty Thorr, Wolverage, Big Figure surrounded by Thugs, all led by Sentry / Void. Then I had the “pleasure” of battling an all-Thanos team of the chase, the 150-pointer and the 800-point “Issue 1” colossal.

• A-Bomb: Camouflage really helped him out, especially when chase Thanos snatched him but put him next to blocking terrain. His 19 DV also held up, even against the 12-13 AVs of the Thanosi. Too bad he wasn’t able to hit so much.
• Arkham Asylum Inmate: Only good for resetting the Gamma Bomb. Otherwise completely overmatched.
• Elite Zealot: Despite his starting with Leadership and Outwit, he was useless at both due to adjacency issues and immunity-to-Outwit opponents. Really needed to be more aggressive with him, but my team was very movement-challenged. (It didn’t help that Issue 1 Thanos knocked him off his sole movement click at game’s start.)
• Gollum: Very useful for his support powers, but the little slinker took himself out via those very powers.
• Hawkeye (Chaos War): The only piece of the team to perform well at ALL. Which, unfortunately, made him a victim of colossal  Thanos’ power to remove Hawkeye temporarily from the game when the archer managed to damage the mad Titan.
• Master Chief (Battle Rifle): Disappointing. Lack of movement powers hobbles the Halo star. I pushed off his sole top click of Outwit to my regret.
• Morg: Too glass-jawed. Perhaps on a team with TK, he’d have done better. As it was, he was just easy meat for first Sentry / Void and then chase Thanos. Seems like I’ve never seen this piece work.
• Mouth of Sauron: If I had any chance in these games, it was because of this fellow. Being able to Demoralize and knock stats down -2 from behind cover is HUGE. In fact, I might have salvaged a win in the first game had I used him better. Unfortunately, I made most of my user errors with him, in A) his placement for Prob Control, B) opening him up to Outwit at a crucial moment and C) making a suicidal Mind Control of colossal Thanos (who missed BOTH his Multiattacks — it was that sort of game).
• Nebula: her trait is so useless in these modern games where bringing objects is optional. If only she had more keywords to fit onto more teams! Or a slightly higher AV. Or damage. SOMETHING!
• The Sharpshooting Avenger: Scored an early hit on 150-point Thanos and was useful for his SHIELD TA. Still pretty much the last version of Hawkeye I’ll ever pick for a team. Why did I trade for him, again?
• Thor (Avengers Movie 201): Not bad, aside from the critical miss against Issue 1 Thanos that sealed my loss, big time.
• U.S.S. Yeager: Worthless outside the Trek game thanks to single digit AV and 2 damage.

 

In fact, 2 damage was my problem across the board, as I lacked the ability to harm the Thanosi at all aside from a few characters. Had similar issues with the Brute squad.

In general, my unfamiliarity with pieces and the more highly competitive nature of the forces I tend to face these days make using untried characters a losing proposition. I think I’m going to resort to something I haven’t done in years: playing solo games on my dinner table.

Seriously, the last time I did that, the Olympics were being played in BEIJING. So maybe, as this article is published, yours truly will be watching the Games and playing a game simultaneously.

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Tomorrow, a new Token Totin’ figure. Then, on Friday, the wrap-up of my Dark Knight Power Creep Rises series.