Q: What’s worse than a resource that makes one member of the opposing team into a nigh-unstoppable force?

A: One that makes the WHOLE TEAM an unstoppable force, such as our next subject… 

THE BOOK OF THE SKULL

At first, this seemed a breath of fresh air after the turtle-friendly Gauntlet and Belt. It was a resource that required making actual attacks and hitting to get the best of it.

But…it turned out to be a horror, too.

WHY IT IS NOT F.U.N.: The hammers made landing those needed attacks all too easy, because WizKids Game Design still liked to hand out +2 stat boosts like politicians’ promises.

The hammers also granted between two to FOUR other powers or abilities each. And that’s not even COUNTING the free Quake dropping each hammer granted.

I mean, look at how this character, designed as a support fig/3rd-line attacker, in effect turns into a legit threat with only nine points’ investment:

The only mitigating factor was the time it took to get its characters “hammered” because getting them was still a power action despite being guaranteed unlike normal relic rolls. But even that slight balance was kicked loose like an unwanted doorjamb with the release of the designed-for-the-Book-of-Skulls Splitlip, who made the hammer grabs a free action in addition to being automatic.

Here’s the non-comic-accurate part: The hammers in Fear Itself warped their wielders’ personalities. Perhaps some disadvantage to using the book should’ve been in evidence.

But no. Like nearly every other resource in the game, the Book is just another powergaming tool for powergaming tools. And it is, therefore, something of a horror.

 

Bonus horror today, below:

POWER PLANT

This resource takes the free power-up aspect of the Splitlip+Book combo and goes one further by dumping the Splitlip. But there are some balances built in, at least:

• A requirement of no action tokens.
• The assigned ring goes back after clearing action tokens.
• And no more permanent stat bonuses — heck, no dial, even.

The result is that the tower itself one of the ugliest, frankly useless things in all of HeroClix except that it’s required to use the rings as a resource.

WHY IT IS NOT F.U.N.: Two of the rings, Black Light and Matter Rearranger, get right around the token clear part because using them is a free action. So conceivably, one character can grant Stealth for a whole cadre of allies for the whole game. Another can morph the map as needed, one square at a time, over and over.

It’s not much of a horror, being rather straightforward and an actual limited resource.  But there’s true horror yet to come.