I am sick of the increasing darkness in modern comics of recent years. So the promise of, if not lighter, at least more heroic fare in Marvel Comics is very welcome in this reader's eyes.

As a HeroClixer, I’m always inspired to make teams based on comics. So when I saw this promo art, I immediately started team-building and ran it only a few days later in an 800-point tournament (from right to left):

Gorilla-Man 61
V Black Widow (Ultimates) 59
Benjamin J. Grimm (Secret Invasion) 100
V Beast (Mutations & Monsters) 73
U Hawkeye (Avengers) 56 + Alpha Flight 0
Captain America (Hammer of Thor) 72 + Alpha Flight 0
Thor (Hammer of Thor) 226
Spider-Man (Secret Invasion) 50
U Iron Man (Mutations & Monsters) 100 + Alias 3

= 800 points.

ROUND ONE: Cosmic Clash! starring Silver Surfer (Avengers), Firelord (Avengers), Stardust (Avengers) and Air-Walker.

No Battlefield Conditions used on the Junkyard map. The player was a bit reckless, immediately pushing to KO Black Widow in a single turn. That left him unable to respond as my whole team attempted to pound his with Running Shots. Aside from some odd misses on Thor’s part (two crits?), it was a very systematic takedown. Wiped his team with Widow being my only loss. 1-0.

ROUND TWO: Siege of Asgard? starring Namor (Secret Invasion), Arkillo, The Riddler (Arkham Asylum), Green Arrow (Justice League), White Martian, Hercules (Secret Invasion) and Iron Fist (Secret Invasion).

This match so named because of my opponent Stephen’s choice of the Rainbow Bridge map, early in it my Running Shots were miserable failures (though not critical) and it seemed I might be heading for a slow loss. But a timely Alias roll saved Iron Man’s Invincible click and soon I started landing attacks while Stephen missed many of his (most notably Namor’s Charge+Flurry on Ben Grimm). KO’d Hercules, Namor and Iron Fist, losing only Alias. 2-0.

ROUND THREE: When Cheese Goes Bad, starring V M’onel, Ms. Marvel (Secret Invasion B) + Protected, Batman (Justice League common) + Protected, Nightshade (x2, one + Armor Piercing), Spider-Man (Secret Invasion) + Vault (x2), Dawnstar, Gee.

Player Charlie freely admitted this was a total cheese team, mitigated only by the lack of Probability Control or Perplex to really make it stinky. So after completely dragging the first teams he faced in the tournament, he took it completely in stride when V M’onel’s Hypersonic alpha strike  with a Meteorite critically missed. He didn’t roll much better all game long (calling it karma for his cheese), which saved Thor by a hair and got me the victory. I’d KO’d Batman, a Nightshade and both Protected feats while losing only Alias.

FINAL: 3-0.

To be a team just tossed together from a piece of promotional art, it performs surprisingly well together! Gorilla-Man is a great tie-up piece for the shooters, being highly survivable on his own. V Black Widow was key to the last win by seeing through Stealth (and loaning the Ultimates TA to Spidey for same). Benjamin J. Grimm provided the additional punching power this otherwise range-heavy team needed. (I selected Grimm over the similarly capable Thing from Secret Invasion because of his Indomitable adding to his ability to press the attack. His trait could also have been useful to give Spider-Man, a fellow Fantastic Four keyword-bearing piece, a damage reduction, though it never came up.) Beast was brilliant as mobile Perplex, of course, and a simple push would provide Outwit if needed.

Avengers Hawkeye, a piece I’ve never respected before (due to his unusable-with-Running Shot SP), proved to be a key extra attacker; when the high AV shooters missed easy shots, the law of averages would make his pithy 9 AV an improbable hit. More importantly, his starting 3 damage made sure it was an effective hit.

Cap and Thor, as evidenced by my recent Top Ten list, were a great tag team of shooting (even though, as I implied above, some of my dice rolls with them weren’t so hot); the latter was the main damager while the former made the sneakier shots needed against targets the thunder god couldn’t reach.

M+M U Iron Man I selected not only because his 100-point cost is slim enough for the build, but also because this new armor should not have the Extremis powers the excellent 188-point Secret Invasion piece does. (I put Alias on him to represent some sort of holographic misdirection.) His SHIELD TA was highly useful because he usually taxied Spider-Man around. The wild card then frequently copied SHIELD TA to boost Tony’s damage. That’s when he wasn’t using the original Avengers TA to help deploy, or to potentially heal or be healed via X-Men or Fantastic Four TA. I’ve already mentioned him using Ultimates.

This is a perfect team for me. It’s theme-y and powerful without being terribly un-fun to play against or too complicated to use effectively. What do you think?