THE SETUP: At the beginning of the game, choose a character on your force. The chosen character is your Champion. Put 10 champion tokens on your Champion’s character card.

WHAT IT MEANS: Read on.

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MORE SETUP: Once per turn when your Champion is given an action, you can remove champion tokens from its character card and modify one of your Champion’s combat values (other than damage) by an amount equal to the number of tokens removed until the action resolves.

WHAT IT MEANS: One key character essentially gets to use the Contingency Plan feat on themselves for free. Not bad.

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STILL MORE SETUP: When any character on your force makes a critical hit, put a champion token on your Champion’s character card.

WHAT IT MEANS: A chance to get more use out of the Champion thing.

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TURN THE DIAL: At the end of a round in which any player’s Champion was given a non-free action.

WHAT IT MEANS: A dial that can move as quickly or slowly as the players want it to.

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WE FIGHT TO LIVE AS LONG AS WE CAN (purple, slots A-B, G-J): Your Champion can use Willpower if it can’t already use it. Once during your turn, you can heal a friendly character adjacent to your Champion of 1 damage.

WHAT IT MEANS: You can push early and often. Not only can your Champion do it freely, but non-Champs can get free healing by hanging near him, making the self-damage of little concern.

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RECRUITED BY HARBINGER (yellow, slots C-E): At the beginning of your turn, roll a d6. You can choose a number of your characters up to the result and put them in unoccupied squares in your starting area (they do not have to break away). After the first character is placed, each character placed must be placed adjacent to another character placed by this effect.

WHAT IT MEANS: Need to beat a hasty retreat? No problem with this effect. Field a character with Support (and perhaps the feats Triage or Invigorate) to hang out back there.

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UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF THE PSYCHO-PIRATE (cyan, slots D-F): When you give a character other than your Champion a move action, after moving, the character can immediately make a close combat attack targeting an opposing character as a free action.

WHAT IT MEANS: This is a good reason to not go too top-heavy with your Champion and field some good melee fighters in addition. Note that you get a free close combat attack, not a close combat action, so no Flurry, Blades, Exploit Weakness, Close Combat Expert or the like. Super Strength, Steal Energy and plain ol’ high damage work fine, though…and hey! Leap/Climb is thoroughly compatible with this Pounce-like attack.

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WORLDS IN LIMBO (red, slots F-J): At the beginning of your turn, roll 2d6. If the result is 9-12, you can choose one of the following: characters, hindering terrain, or blocking terrain. Until the end of your turn, all your characters other than your Champion ignore what has been chosen for movement purposes, but characters can’t end their movement in a square containing what has been chosen.

WHAT IT MEANS: High-Speed characters can take extra advantage of this effect.

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JOURNEY TO THE ANTIMATTER UNIVERSE (green, slots G-J): Rolling two 1s is a critical hit. Rolling two 6s is a critical miss.

WHAT IT MEANS: Madness!!! Seriously, it’s almost exactly like the old battlefield condition. No big deal.

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THE STATUARY IS ALIVE! (gray, slots H-I): Once during your turn when an opposing character occupies or is adjacent to hindering terrain, blocking terrain, elevated terrain, or a square containing an object, you can roll a d6 and deal damage to the opposing character equal to the result -4 (minimum 1).

WHAT IT MEANS: You’ll probably want to avoid Stealthy characters entirely, unless they’ve got some sort of damage reduction. “The Statuary Is Alive” will eat them alive if they use hindering terrain to hide in and the other team will if they stay in the open.

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THE DEATH OF SUPERGIRL (black, slot J): All damage dealt to and by your Champion is penetrating damage.

WHAT IT MEANS: Hope you picked a Champion with a long dial, because he or she’ll need it to survive this effect. Strong Attack and Defense Values down the line will also help. Penetrating damage doesn’t matter if the attack doesn’t land.

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SUMMING IT UP: Although this dial appears to encourage extreme tentpoling, DON’T DO IT. There’s just as much for lesser pieces to benefit from. And as you can see, it rewards a pre-built team a bit more than a random one. But it won’t completely hose any team other than a Stealth-heavy one. And nobody plays that anymore…right?

Next installment will literally bring the Crisis to its KNEES.