Clix madness

My regular readers will remember that I mentioned Paul giving me some cool little superhero figurines with statistics inscribed on their base for my Christmas stocking stuffer. Those of you who don't remember that, may go read my Thursday 12/25/03 Christmas Day entry if you want to right now.

Otherwise and anyway, these figurines, and the game that revolves around them, are called HeroClix, and the game and figures are produced by a company called WizKids. Pretty much everything I've done since Christmas Day has been play HeroClix, or do other things intended to result in me getting more HeroClix. Since Christmas, when I had 8 figurines (which Paul gave me) I now have 20, Paul has 18, and our friend Scott, who didn't know HeroClix from a hole in the ground on December 25, now has about 40 of them, including one gigantic purple robot figure. And how we got to this point, and became so obsessed with these damned little things in such a short period, can be found below, in this long rambling series of emails I've reproduced in which I described to my old buddy Mike Norton, who has been playing this game for years now, exactly what was going on on each succeeding day in re: HeroClix.

A couple of notes:

This is a really geeky entry. Buried in these emails are various details of daily activities such as you're accustomed to from me, but anyone out there who doesn't want to be bored by endless trivia about a stupid game none of you except Mike Norton play should absolutely simply skip this entry in its entirety. I expect no comments from anyone on this entry. Honest.

Second note: My correspondence with Mike Norton, who is a helluva great guy and a really good friend, especially given that he and I have never actually met each other in the flesh, had lapsed over the last few years, and my brief mention of HeroClix, not even by name, seems to have revived it. I'm very happy about that. It's very nice being in touch with Mike again; he's one of the finer human beings I've made the acquaintance of.

Third note: just to make this even geekier, let me mention that along with some booster packs of clix (you'll read more on that down below, or you won't; either way, I'm not explaining that reference further here) I got a stack of comics from Demolition Comics today, including a couple of issues of Avengers, some JSA, a Hawkman, an issue of 1602 and Terra Obscura, and a Promethea.

Oh, and this last bit IS important and I should definitely note it here too, because it was a very nice thing: my one female email correspondent who got annoyed with me over a recent blog entry and decided not to correspond with me any more, has had a change of heart, and I'm appreciative of that, because I enjoy hearing from her very much.

Another female correspondent recently sent me a pic of her, and she's got a very nice smile. Of course, she's married and has many kids and lives far far away, so, you know, that nice smile does me no pragmatic good, but I liked the pic, Tammy. Thanks.

Okay. The (somewhat edited, but still lengthy) email reproductions begin below. Honest to God, you are all excused from attendance for the remainder of this class period; you will be bored to tears by this entry unless you play HeroClix, which I'm fairly certain no one who could possibly be reading this (other than, as noted, Mike Norton) does. So turn off the computer and go outside or something. And Happy New Year. I'll be back in a few days, probably.

Oh... I was going to break up these emails with some explanatory notes at the most baffling points, but honestly, it's all going to be baffling to all but one of you and none of you should spend the time and effort trying to read it. However, it is an entry on what I've been doing for the past five days, and, to any of you out there who enjoy geek type games, HeroClix is AWESOME!! Better than Magic: the Gathering!! Even if you're not a comics geek, it's a great game. Check it out.

End up annoying intro and non-commercial plug. Beginning of seemingly endless and utterly incoherent email reproduction:

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From: docnebula01@juno.com
Date: Fri, 26 Dec 2003 07:12:18 GMT
To: Mike Norton
Subject: Re: Continuing blather

Mike,

Thanks for all the info on Hero Clix. The "Clobbering Time" news took a lot of wind out of my sales, as did, in general, the sudden intelligence that this is a huge thing that lots and lots of people are into, meaning it will be an enormously competitive effort to get various figures... and, dammit, I don't really care that much about the GAME, I just want the little action figures, and I especially wanted... bitch grouse snarl piss moan... to put together a Fantastic Four team. Goddamit.

Paul is bummed at the news that Doc Ock and Thor are also discontinued, but he still wants to get into the game. Just reading through the rules I found a bit confusing, but Paul knows a guy who plays, so we're going to try to get him over to teach us. I find it far easier to learn a game from someone else who knows how to play it than from the rule books.

I do recall you mentioning the game to me a few years ago, now that you remind me of the various power problems... the Wasp being able to carry people being one you'd mentioned. And I already find it aggravating that Rogue's main power isn't part of her character when it would be so easy to write up (she gets adjacent to any character and may then use those characters powers; or, she makes a successful close combat attack on any character, does her damage, and gains that characters powers for a certain number of turns). However, I guess she'd have to be a 200 point character if they gave her the powers she has (that make her a 77 point character as it is) and the power absorption, too.

Anyway... ::sigh:: reluctant though I am to enter into a Magic-like trading/collecting environment again, and annoyed as I am to find that apparently some of my favorite little figures will be impossible to get (but, you know, that REALLY sucks), I'll still try playing the game and if I can pick up boosters cheaply I will.

Paul picked this up, and was planning to pick up other packs, at Borders, however. So, I don't know what's up there.

All right, I have unread email. Thanks for getting back in touch and I hope your Christmas went well. I guess things aren't going well for you guys on the homefront; sorry about that. I hope Ari is well, at least, and so is your mom and your kids.

D.

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From: docnebula01@juno.com
Date: Sat, 27 Dec 2003 00:14:19 GMT
To: Mike Norton
Subject: Re: Friday Morning Meandering

Well, Paul and I have slowly played through two games with my 8 current Heroclix. I beat him both times. The first time we built 100 point teams, and my group of Daredevil, the Black Panther, and Turk (he's a Thug, but he looks like Turk) fairly easily whipped up on Puppet Master and Mr. Hyde (and we were doing Puppet Master all wrong, having not read the last line of Mind Control and realized his range was limited to 4).

In the second game we decided to build 200 point teams. Since I won the last game, I chose the first figure and took Black Panther (not being a complete idiot, I quickly learned that the Black Panther is a kick ass piece, with his Leap/Climb, his Claw attack, and especially his Outwit power). Paul, being a giant dope, passed on Rogue to get Daredevil because he didn't want me to have BP and DD working together again, so I snatched up Rogue. Paul picked Mr. Hyde next, and I took Puppet Master (we still had the wrong idea about his powers), then Paul took Vulture (to have a flyer) and I wound up with the Skrull Warrior, and Paul ended up with Turk.

And of course I kicked his ass again, badly; he didn't even knock out one of my characters.

We learned a bunch of stuff (action tokens are IMPORTANT) and failed to do a lot of stuff (like, taking two actions per turn with the higher point value teams). We learned that Rogue simply cannot be harmed by the bulk of characters I currently have unless the Panther cancels her Invulnerability.

(Actually, that's not true, the Panther could roll high with his claws and damage her pretty badly. And Mr. Hyde would do a click to her each time he hit her, if he ever could. But our other flyer -- Vulture -- and our range strikers -- DD and Black Panther -- could not hurt Rogue straight up.)

All right, enough of that, I'm sure you're very bored. But the really good news is, we called Demolition Comics to see if we could get some clix tucked into my next shipment, and they had FOUR boxes of 'Clobberin Time'! Which we should be getting in the mail sometime next week, and Paul is all psyched, and truth be told, I am too. He'll get half of them, so I'll have 16 and he'll have 8 (although he may ride into Tampa tonight with Scott and buy another couple of sets if they go by a bookstore that stocks them).

This seems like a fun game. Oh, yeah... any chance you could put a copy of the new rules in the mail? Even a Xeroxed copy would be cool. My printer works about a third of the time, so printing rules from online is difficult.

Okay, mad update: Scott just showed up, and had gone into Tampa, and found a comics shop, and picked up three boosters... one DC, the other two... CLOBBERING TIME! So now I have more clix: Sandman (E), Yellowjacket (the female Master of Evil) (E), an AIM Agent (E), and Blastaar (R), who even at the rookie level is a 98 point character, I mean, Jesus. My half of the DC box amounts to Black Canary (R), whom I like a lot (Paul wanted Green Arrow; he has a Kevin Smith GA graphic collection so he likes the character) and Cheetah (V), whom Paul had never heard of and, it turns out, is a fucking AWESOME character. (She'll team well with Black Panther.) So now a couple of questions:

Why... I mean, WHY, fucking WHY... does Sandman have MIND CONTROL powers? Please tell me this is a misprint and the rectangle around his speed number is meant to be black. Stealth I can understand. MIND CONTROL? For the SANDMAN? This isn't Morpheus! I mean, what the FUCK?

Other than that, do you happen to know what the JSA special team ability is? And do you need more than one member of a team in your group to use the ability? That seems logical but I can't find anything about it in our rules.

Oh, I should mention that Paul got Green Arrow, a Doombot (which looks totally cool since it looks like Doom), a Mandroid, Logan, and a Parademon Scout, all Experienced, and a rookie Black Widow. And I'm going to give him a few of mine to balance things a little, like Turk and the Skrull Warrior. I'm also going to see if he'll trade me his Black Widow for something, so I'll have DD and her.

Okay, that's about it for now.

D.

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From: "docnebula01@juno.com
Date: Sat, 27 Dec 2003 08:09:56 GMT
To: Mike Norton
Subject: Clix blather

Mike,

Paul's off at work now. I finished watching DARK BLUE, a not-bad Kurt Russell cop movie I picked up on DVD cheap at a pawnshop earlier today (before the new influx of clix, so it seems long ago). At the pawnshop, I also picked up DVDs of MONSTER'S BALL and BLAIR WITCH 2 (I know I'm going to take shit about that second one, but it was the first film I saw at the new Westshore Theater complex, and I enjoyed it) and cheaper videotapes of FROM HELL and JEEPERS CREEPERS (the last a nifty little not-quite-conventional monster-horror movie with a completely out of left field twist ending that I remember enjoying a lot in the theater).

Anyway, the main thing is, Paul and I had a monstrous clix battle before he went off to work, using the new stuff. On my side, making up 209 points, I had Black Panther, Cheetah, and Blastaar. On Paul's side, he had a whole buncha shit... Logan, the Parademon Scout, the Doombot, the Mandroid, the Skrull Warrior, Green Arrow, and Black Canary. (Oh, he and I made the BC/BW swap. He got much the better deal; BW seems as generally useless a piece as DD while BC has some nice abilities and a cool costume. But I'm pleased to have the two together, and BC belonged with GA.)

Paul started out by using his various flyers to taxi in some of his figures. He also used Stealth to park GA on some hindering terrain, just as your most recent note suggests. This didn't help him as much as he wanted it to, since I moved Cheetah in in two big runs, keeping her behind cover at the end of her first sprint, and having her tear ol' Ollie up good at the end of her second. BC mixed it up then, but I'd also had Blastaar taxi the Panther in. I wound up having to push Cheetah but she took out GA in her next turn and got in a shot on BC, and Blastaar swung in and put the Canary's lights out.

That took two of Paul's most effective pieces off the board. Blastaar and the Panther then did a good job of knocking Logan nearly all the way down (with BP canceling Logan's toughness) but I got an unpleasant surprise when he dialed down four clicks and started Regenerating on me. Logan managed to come back, move up on the Panther, and hammer him for three clicks, which since Panther had pushed himself a few times, knocked the super powers right out of him. Blastaar and a couple of range strikes from BP finally took Logan out. Meanwhile, Cheetah had pushed herself hard and managed to take out the Doombot and the Scout, but she knocked herself silly doing it.

Finally, Blastaar had to take out the Mandroid and the Skrull Warrior pretty much by himself, but he managed, just barely... I was resting him every other turn, because I didn't know how many clicks he had and I was terrified he'd KO himself if I pushed him. Turned out I was right; one more click and he'd have collapsed.

Let me say this: CHARGE and RUNNING SHOT just plain fuckin' ROCK.

Claws just rock, too.

Let me pause a moment and express my utter admiration for the brilliance of the game designer who came up with the idea of putting all the stats and powers RIGHT ON THE FUCKING STAND, and you can just click to the new stats. I mean, when I think of the work that went into this my mind is simply BOGGLED, but this is exactly the end result you want... they did all the work, you just move the pieces around and have a good time. This is how KILLQUEST should be done. If I could get these guys to make me up KILLQUEST game pieces... of course, we could simply use THESE clix in a KILLQUEST scenario, it would be easy enough...

Oddly, having played with characters with Running Shot and Charge, I'm no longer as enamored of Rogue. I mean, yeah, she flies and puts a serious ass whuppin' on folks and is invulnerable, and that's nice, and she heals herself after she takes some damage, and that's lovely, but... what the hell is all this 'move and THEN attack' crap? That's annoying.

One of the sad limitations of this game is that the way it's set up, characters may only have ONE particular power per stat per click. Panther, for example, should have a lot more stuff than he does... Toughness, at least, to reflect the vibranium weave in his costume, and definitely Leadership... although Outwit is better. But he should somehow have BOTH. He's the King of Wakanda, for chrissake.

Speaking of which, the change in how the dials work from Infinity Challenge to Clobberin Time very nearly ended up with some broken figures before we managed to comprehend what was going on. Logan actually did break, but it was because his dial did not want to turn (and the Panther did six clicks of damage to him on a claw attack, so Paul had to turn it a lot) regardless. Fortunately, I have superglue.

Someone's going to make a shitload of money manufacturing little bronze clix at some point, for the snotty elite players.

Thanks for the info on the DC TA's. I'll print that out for quick reference.

D.

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From: "docnebula01@juno.com
Date: Sun, 28 Dec 2003 11:25:06 GMT
To: Mike Norton
Subject: Re: Quick note!

Well, we had four more clix battles today, and Scott witnessed the last one and betrayed some interest in buying a few packs of his own. He's not a comics fan at all, so it's strictly on the game playability on his part, plus he's a modern day punk geek (meaning, he doesn't read; he's one of these annoying people like my brother who will forever think of THE LORD OF THE RINGS as a kick ass movie trilogy). But it makes for another player, and Scott's a good gamer who masters rules (and learns to abuse them) quickly, so it should lead to some interesting times.

Paul 'won' the second game because I gave up in disgust after rolling (no kidding) no less than EIGHT results of five or less in a row, while shooting at Logan with various different characters. Those dice were hexed. I conceded the game rather than continue to be exasperated, changed my line up, and in the following game beat Paul... but we're learning; I'm not winning by much lately, and it's mostly because, by luck of the draw, I simply have gotten better clix then he has.

Blastaar, Panther, and Cheetah remain my best clix, but Paul has learned new respect for Outwit and Charge, and Panther and Cheetah's lack of defensive options make them quick and fairly easy targets for Paul's range strikers. They haven't lasted long in today's games, although I did deliberately sacrifice Panther to take out Rogue at one point in a game, moving him into range of Green Arrow and the Skrull Warrior, whom Paul had covering Rogue from rooftops, in order to nail her with one Claw shot. The gamble worked, I rolled high after removing her Toughness and did five clicks, taking her out, but Green Arrow and the Skrull Warrior made short work of the Panther after that, since I'd had to push him to close and attack. I considered it an even swap, and in that game, Blastaar wound up winning for me, since with his Toughness, and his defense that increases as he takes a few clicks, he's MUCH harder to just blow off the board.

We're also learning the tactical advantages of using fliers as taxis, and yes, even Vulture has had his uses (he got in the final, knock out blow on Logan in an earlier fight, for example). However, I think the way flyers work is a horrible miscarriage and a complete disruption of any attempt to make this game even remotely simulate comic book fights. The Vulture, for example, simply CAN'T carry anyone; he has to flap those wings, and I don't think even the elderly, veteran Vulture has ever displayed any real super strength. Using most flyers as taxis is simply stupid and it bothers me whenever we do it. I do it, of course, but I have to reduce the game to something like chess in order to make myself do it, and while it's certainly a fun version of chess, I lose some interest in it when I take it down to that level. The flying rules HAVE to be revised sensibly. Paul suggested either Super Strength or at least two clicks of damage for a flyer to lift someone. Combine that with halving their distance and I think you'd have a winning way to make flyers work consistently within the framework this game is supposed to be simulating.

I'm gaining a new respect for Stealth, and my Daredevil and Black Widow pieces have actually been useful a few times... range strike and strike to incapacitate are nothing to sneer at. Green Arrow is an enormous pain in the ass when he gets up into some hindering terrain with his Stealth turned on. And Sandman is a remarkably effective piece as well, although the one time I tried to breakaway with him, I rolled a 1, which led to some very virulent curses.

Oh, Hyde got to pick up a fork lift and smash the Mandroid with it, and then he belted Rogue with a filing cabinet. And Puppet Master, using his wild card power to copy Hyde's TA, and with the AIM Agent right behind him, managed to use an attack of 11 to Mind Control the Mandroid once to TK the Parademon Scout into the Doombot. We had no idea if that was legal; what we did was, had the Mandroid make an attack roll on the Parademon Scout, and then on the Doombot. He made both, so we then gave both Parademon and Doombot two clicks of damage, as if the Parademon was a Heavy Object. It worked well enough, but probably further refinements of the rules have made such manipulations illegal.

Looking at our rules, we've examined Bullseye's dial, which is reproduced there. He's a hellish piece indeed. Worse, he has the TA that allows other members of his faction, or wild cards, to effectively use his godlike attack if they are adjacent to him. And he seems to have Deflection as well, so it would seem he isn't as easy a target for Ranged attacks as you indicated. While he's clearly a one trick pony (and the character is as well, so that's fine) I can see why the cheese gamers wept and guh-nashed their little teefies at the NAAT refinement. If I had a Mandroid and Bullseye, I'd have one fuck of a devestating opening attack combo on somebody's ass. Here, buddy, just take three clicks! Now I'll push myself; take three more! Buh bye.

By the way, if multiple figures gang up on one figure, do the clicks get taken off after each attack, or do you wait until the end of the turn? It's important. We're always gang attacking figures; I tend to pig pile Logan or Rogue if they're out there, and Paul puts a lot of effort into getting rid of Cheetah or BP when he can. So if, for example, Mr. Hyde hits Logan for three, and then Cheetah nails him for two, does he click off Mr. Hyde's damage before Cheetah does her attack? As I'm sure you can see, this would make an enormous difference. We've been doing the clicks as the attacks occur, but I suspect we're wrong.

We do wait until the end of the turn to take clicks from pushing; is that right?

We probably have more questions, but it's very late/early and I need to get my head down.

I'll let you know when we get the package. And thanks again.

Paul is much more psyched about this game than I am. I mean, I'm enjoying it, but Paul is nuts for it. I've warned him about the dangers of the road he is setting out on, having been down it with Magic, but he's still all nuts about the thing. He wanted me to go on E-Bay and bid on some collection of 200 clix that currently only had like a $50 bid on it... and I was tempted, but only for a moment. It's an awfully good price, but we've spent $50 on these things since Christmas... $65 if you count the original starter set Paul got me. And I'm not working and won't start again until the 12th and won't get paid until the 23rd. So we just can't afford to dive into this right now, not at around $1.80 a piece, when we both want to own hundreds of pieces. It just ain't gonna happen. But it would if I weren't weilding an iron fist over the pay checks around here, Paul has no fiscal sense.

Oh, I gave Paul the Rogue piece, so he'd have one decent piece at least with a big point value. And he's the real New X-Men nut here, so he'll have more fun with it anyway. But I love my Blastaar and Black Panther. Sandman is kinda cool, too. And I do love having DD and the Black Widow, even if they're not all that useful.

All right, I'm going. Jeez.

D.

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From: docnebula01@juno.com
Date: Sun, 28 Dec 2003 21:45:33 GMT
To: Mike Norton
Subject: RE: queries

Mike,

Scott showed up today with 14 clix of his own... he bought the $30 deluxe kit and got a lot of Big Name players, and one expansion. He's got two Kingpins (both of whom keep Leadership to their next to last click; otherwise, they ain't great, and does the Veteran get a ranged attack for the laser cane that all versions are holding, but apparently the first two incarnations haven't modified yet?), a Scarlet Witch, a Quicksilver, a Whirlwind (who is pretty kick ass), a Sabre-Tooth (who is also pretty kick ass) a Spider-Man and a Wolverine, of course, a Hobgoblin (who seems disappointing to me), a rookie Wasp (that I covet simply for the character, she's actually no better than my female Yellowjacket as a playing piece), a Hydra agent (that I also covet to field with my AIM Agent), his own Daredevil, a Constrictor (whose dial I didn't look at yet), a rookie and experienced Boomerang (the rookie sucks)...and I don't know if that's all of it, I can't remember. He and Paul are off moving some furniture around to appease Scott's wife; after they do that, Scott can come out and play for a few hours. (Scott recently got back together with his wife, which is good, but apparently she's a bit controlling. Paul assures me she's drop dead gorgeous and she is the mother of Scott's two kids who are 4 and 1 year old, so I can understand and even respect Scott putting his marriage back together, but the trade offs remind me that sometimes loneliness is its own reward.)

I think we're going to play Charge as it is very explicitly written up on our Power Cards until the new, stinky, spoilsport, worthless, piece of shit rules show up in your package, by which time I hope to have traded Scott my Cheetah for his Whirlwind. Heh. I think somewhere not too far down the line, though, I'm going to start putting together and offering some house rules... like, Flyers need to have either two clicks of damage or Super Strength to carry anyone, and unfortunately, this won't rule out the Wasp who does two clicks of damage (WHY? WHY does the Rookie Wasp do two clicks of damage? That's SILLY), and they need both two clicks and Super Strength, or three clicks, to carry someone without halving their movement. I think that will start to put flyers back where they belong (and, well, make the Vulture useless, but he should be).

All right, gotta go. Thanks again for all the info and support, both logistical and forthcoming materiel. (There should be an accent mark over that last 'e', but I don't know how to get it there.) Have a good weekend.

Oh, I still haven't seen RETURN OF THE KING yet. If I get toted to a comfie theater (not the local barn, in other words) I'll comply more or less with the wishes of fate, but I'm copacetic with waiting for the REAL version to come out on DVD in a year or so. I am so sick of Peter Jackson sending one version to the theater, the same version to DVD six months later, and then the REAL version to DVD six months further down the road to clip the hapless three times for what should simply be the same product, that I'm just not gonna play that... unless I happen to stumble into a ride to a good theater somewhere in Tampa when other people are going, in which case, well, Allah wants me there, and His minions blow shit up when one disobeys the will of Allah, so I'll go.

Come to think of it, though, it's good I'm not still living in my Tampa apartment, or I'd have seen it opening weekend.

You know, I really miss my old neighborhood in Tampa. I bitched about it endlessly while I lived there, and all its failings, but holy christ it was frickin' Hollywood Boulevard compared to Zephyrhills. But one of your notes put that in perspective for me. In Tampa I had few gaming friends (towards the end I had none; hadn't seen Will or Joe in over a year) and very few friendly acquaintances I could even say 'hi' to. I did have a mall, a movie theater, a Boston Market (and lots of other fast food), a 24 hour Wal-greens, a lot of expensive restaurants, and a Waffle House very nearby though, as well as 24 hour gas station/convenience stores, and short bus rides would take me to my comics shop, another outdoor strip mall with a grocery store and a few other things, downtown... there was just a whole lot more resources available to me, and note I'm not killing myself by mentioning the pool.

But, you know, out here I have people to hang out with.

If I'd met someone out here and had a girlfriend, I'd say it was no contest. As it is... errrrr... ::weighing each on either hand:: I don't know. UM probably isn't going to make any real money so I don't have to make the choice, but if UM brought in, say, $12,000 this summer, I'd have to really think about staying here or moving back into Tampa. Tough choice.

So, thanks for the perspective, too.

D.

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From: docnebula01@juno.com
Date: Mon, 29 Dec 2003 04:10:05 GMT
To: Mike Norton
Subject: Re: Life & clix

Hep cat MJ,

Well, just off the top of my head, the more you tell me about the Revised Rules, the more I think "This must never be". Talking to Scott and Paul tonight, I said several times "We're going to play with the rules we have until we get Mike's package... and then I'm going to evaluate and suggest some house rules."

There may be good rule mods you haven't mentioned, but honest to God, so far every time you tell me about one I'm filled with the urge to find whoever it is who writes this shit for HeroClix and take a dump in the middle of his living room. This crap is simply idiotic nonsense. Flight, for example. The problem with Flight isn't in the end result (carried characters can attack without taking a movement penalty) it's in the fact that THEY ALLOWED ALL FLYERS TO CARRY ANY OTHER CHARACTER. That's what you adjust, and you adjust it by, well, putting more requirements on it, as we're almost certainly going to do. It still won't fix the thrice cursed Wasp figure (although, mind you, I love the Wasp and just traded Scott for his and am happy to have one, and are there any Pym figures in any incarnation?) but it will make flight something that works far more consistently and as it SHOULD.

Many of the other rules changes you mention simply seem like bullshit to me too... game balance nonsense that either compounds absurdity with more absurdity, or that simply confounds something sensible.

As to worrying about point balances if we adjust the Daredevil click, if we do it, we'll simply say that all Daredevil clix act like the later, better version, whose stats I'll get from the website. So we'll just have to remember that our miserable IC Daredevil is actually a far better X-plosion Daredevil.

I was going to say we don't much care about points, but tonight we had a huge three way battle and Scott had to get home, so we counted points at ten o'clock and I won handily. So, yes, we should adjust for points. Which is a goddam nuisance, but, well, fine.

Another house rule we're almost certainly going to add: Super Senses (whatever it's called) will also detect Stealthed characters. (They should. Daredevil should be able to spot people hiding in a dumpster, as should Cheetah.)

Paul and I both traded stuff to Scott after the game was over. I traded him Sandman and Cheetah, basically, for Whirlwind, the Wasp, a Hydra Operative, and Boomerang. I'm a little annoyed with Scott because I thought I was trading for the Boomerang he played in the game (the Experienced one) but the one he put out on the table afterward as a tradeable was the Rookie, who pretty much profoundly sucks. I'll mention it to him next time I see him, but if he scoffs at me, well, I made a mistake, I'll eat it if I have to.

Still, while I gave up two very good pieces, I really wanted another Master of Evil to go with Yellowjacket, and Whirlwind is a pretty kick ass character. I love the Wasp so I'm not going to bitch about her fig; with her I now have three Avengers (Panther, Black Widow, and her) and, yes, life would be better if they had the Avengers TA but this game sucks in some ways and that's just one of them. We may make another house rule... figs have the team TA's they are supposed to have, dammit, at least, if you make the effort to built a theme team. (I'd need a few more Avengers to do that, but getting Paul and Scott to agree that they have the Avengers TA would be nice.)

The Hydra Op seems like a lousy trade, I know, but I want to get a nice little set of Hydra and AIM ops. I like the TA a lot; having my AIM agent adjacent to Blastaar in the battle helped considerably. (I was careful to keep positioning them so that the AIM Agent had a clear line of sight to Blaastar's various targets.) If I can do that with the AIM Agent and the Hydra Op, Blastaar will become even more formidable than he is, and that's saying something.

Scott got some new maps from his Deluxe Set, too, so we played in a warehouse tonight, which was fun. I parked Elektra and the Black Widow on top of some construction materials and BW proved helpful while Stealthed. Elektra I had to sacrifice to block a hallway that Sabretooth, Quicksilver, and Whirlwind were all coming up single file (Scott was attempting to pig pile Blastaar), forcing them to go around to the junction guarded by 'Tasha hidden in her pile of tools and bricks and mortar, and while Quicksilver slipped by (with that Deflection bonus he's nearly impossible to hit) 'Tasha and Yellowjacket (who had ferried her there) tied up and eventually disposed of Sabretooth with judicious use of stings and Incapacitate.

Paul positioned Green Arrow in a dumpster in the middle of the warehouse where he could have been a pain, but Blastaar had beaten some Outwit into Spider-Man by then, so Scott stole GA's Stealth so that Cheetah (who had already taken out Rogue and Logan) could go over and rip Bow-boy's arms and legs off, which she did. However, that leads me to ask... is it a New Rule that Stealthed characters simply cannot be engaged, at all, while behind hindering terrain? You've described their usage so that that's how we're doing it, but our rules write up simply says Stealth protects from missile fire by turning hindering terrain into blocking terrain in terms of ranged line of sight. We're playing it that way (that and the NAAT rule are the only advanced rules we're using right now, I'm sticking with our rulebook the rest of the time)but is that really what it says? Because honest to God, if it is, a Stealthed character can simply get under a table or up on top of something or behind a bush (or into the middle of one) and as long as they are careful never to lose Stealth, they can't ever be hurt. That seems horribly wrong to me, which is why we're going to modify Super Senses.

I realize these modifications and house rules should play hell with the point costs of each fig, but honestly, I'm far more concerned with correcting grievous game flaws, and oversights in fig definition, than I am with that.

Okay, that's enough for now. Thanks again for the continuing feedback.

D.

* * * *

From: docnebula01@juno.com
Date: Tue, 30 Dec 2003 06:45:50 GMT
To: Mike Norton
Subject: Giant Size E-Mail #309

MR. Norton,

(For the carriage trade, I put on my hat.)

The box got here, after I cautioned a slobbering, drooling, hopped out of his mind, badly jonesing Paul just last night to in no way expect either our shipment from Demolition Comics or the Norton Geek Support Clinic today. But as I type Paul is still asleep, so he hasn't yet noticed the Doc Ock, Vampire Lackey, or Rookie Thing clix I surreptitiously added to his collection on the living room bookshelves. I'll know when he's awake by the resounding scream of joy, I suspect.

First, you a crazy man. No, wait... you simply are years down a road and have completely forgotten what it's like to be at the beginning, with 12 lousy figs (okay, good figs, pleasant figs, nice figs), having seen maybe a total of 36 figs total. You denigrate your grand and awesome gift, you say 'pshaw', but I say, MY GOD!! TEN NEW FIGS!! And a complete FF, a Doom, and a Thor, too! Plus Doc Ock for Paul (he ain't gettin my Thor, nossir), an AIM Medic for me (clustering three laser sights around Blastaar in such a way that they all have clear LOS on any of Blastaar's targets begins to present a problem, though) and those totally cool action tokens!

All right. I've got various comments on the new rules.

First, the separation of Charge from Blade/Claws/Fangs must be in a FAQ somewhere, which is good, since we're going to play by the most recent rules as specifically modified by house rules. I wouldn't hesitate to modify that disastrous confounding of Charge with a house rule, but now I don't have to, since nowhere I can find in these rules does it tell me any such thing, and the new write up of Charge and Blade/Claws/Fangs specifically allow BCF to be used with Charge. (Charge - Give this character a power action. Move this character up to half its speed value and then MAKE ONE CLOSE COMBAT ACTION AS A FREE ACTION. While this power is showing on its dial, this character is not affected by Force Blast and ignores knockback. BCF- WHEN YOU GIVE THIS CHARACTER A CLOSE COMBAT ACTION, etc etc).

Now, I've gone through these rules twice and cannot find anywhere they even remotely bother to define 'power action' other than 'given to a character so that it may use a power' (duh). So, I'm assuming you're pulling that out of a FAQ, and I say to you, lighten up on the FAQs.

I do really like the new dolphin movement symbol. We have no figs with it, but I can see where that's going to come in useful, if only in limited contexts.

You mention somewhere the horror of multiple Firelord figures with the implication that these new rules correct them. Unless Firelord is a Unique, these rules do not correct that at all. They specifically state that multiples can be used. I'm going to suggest a house rule forbidding that, even on opposite teams, but I expect to be howled down. However, I think if the Black Panther is in one place, he's unlikely to be in another place (not impossible, as Chris Priest has showed us...) so I'd want to at least say that the various ranks of various pieces can only be in one place at one time. Perhaps that will fly. Either way though, your Firelord correction must either indicate that he's a Unique, or it's in a FAQ. I don't find it here.

I'm also more determined than ever to avoid convention and tournament environments, if people play with five or six Firelords. That's the equivalent of the old Mox/Black Lotus/etc etc Magic decks that the VTYO's (Vicious Ten Year Olds) used to put together with mommy and daddy's money for Magic tournies. (Vicious Ten Year Olds can be of any age. Some of them use mommy and daddy's money indirectly; they have minimum wage jobs but live at home, so they can spend all their money on rare OOPs.)

I think the Vicious Ten Year Old will offend me far MORE in HeroClix than Magic. In Magic they're just taking the fun out of the game. In HeroClix, however, they would be abusing THE MARVEL UNIVERSE'S INTERNAL CONTINUITY TO GET A TACTICAL ADVANTAGE. I would have to kill them. I WOULD. So, no tournaments for me.

I know you're kind of used to me, and I'm glad, actually, but remember, to at least a few hundred or maybe thousand people out there who have read the Martian Vision articles, I have a reputation as a fanatically obsessed Silver Age superhero continuity buff, with a special emphasis within my insane deranged extremist Silver Age zealotry for the Marvel Silver Age Universe. I simply could not TOLERATE a HeroClix tournament. I'd have an aneurysm.

Okay, here's a thing... under Pushing, these rules state "if you give an action to the same character on two consecutive turns". My worry here is that we've been doing things wrong. In 200 or 300 point games, where we get multiple actions per turn, we've been moving figures up into range and then pushing them to attack in the same turn. This seems to indicate you can only assign one character one action per turn (unless it's a free action, of course). But it's the only place I can find that implied; nowhere is it directly stated (unless I've missed it). Are we doing it wrong? It will certainly change a lot of tactics if you cannot, in fact, give a character two actions in the same turn.

Removing BOTH tokens from a pushed character at the end of the turn in which he does nothing was totally new and startling to me. I thought you removed tokens one at a time. That changes things too.

The Archenemies rule is much too strict. Doom has worked with the FF on several occasions and I wanted to throw him into my FF team, but nooooo, if Reed is there, I can't do it. I guess I have to have him take over the leadership role while Reed is elsewhere. I can do that, but it annoys me. However, it's overall a good rule and I can live with it.

Other than last night, though, when our big game ran long, we haven't been counting victory points, we've just been saying that the winner was the last guy standing. Maybe we SHOULD count victory points. I often win with Blastaar as the last piece out, though, so I think I'd trounce people worse in those games if we did it by VP.

Okay, I just got to the ‘Carrying Other Characters’ bit, so let’s launch into an exposition on our House Rules:

**Flying – now that we have these rules, I suspect we’ll put our house rules into effect immediately. So:
----- Flyers may only carry other characters their full movement distance if they have EITHER or BOTH a damage value of 3, and/or Super Strength. In the absence of both Super Strength and a Damage of 3, Flyers may carry other characters half their movement distance if they have a damage value of 2.
---- Flyers may only carry large objects (i.e., objects that do damage, not specials that are small, like a vial of deadly cancer virus or some other scenario Maguffin) under these same restrictions.
---- These are the rules on flyers and they’re all of ‘em. No special NAAT rules. Flyers who can carry folks certainly CAN carry other flyers, and, say, WizKids, bite me. (Thor can’t carry the Wasp? Right.) This means Rogue can carry Wolfsbane (a piece Paul just traded to get from Scott) or Logan into combat, and then those pieces can immediately attack or move themselves. This may open us up for a lot of cheese when and if we get a lot of pieces, but Darren the Fanatical Continuity Cop will keep multiple Firelord abuse from occurring, and, well, THIS IS HOW IT WORKS IN COMIC BOOK COMBAT. Rogue carries X-Men into battle all the time; they don’t stand there paralyzed for a couple of minutes after she puts them down.
This doesn’t address Wasp, who has an outrageous amount of damage (the Ant Man write up, with 0 damage but an Incapacitate power, is exactly the way I think the Rookie Wasp with her compressed air stings should be written up) but at least it forces her to taxi people only four squares, limiting her usefulness. I can live with that.

Okay, just to note that there has been a lapse of many hours here. Paul woke up, and then very shortly thereafter Scott showed up. Scott, it turned out, had run into Tampa and gone to my old comics shop, Hooked On Comics (I recommended it since its on the side of Tampa closest to Zephyrhills and the discount there once you’ve visited a few times is kick ass; I simply cautioned him to by no means mention my name). There Scott picked up several single figures, including a more advanced DD for me, which he gave me in trade for one of my still forthcoming Clobberin’ Time boosters (and I will gladly pay him on Tuesday for a Daredevil today), along with a bunch of other stuff… Aquaman, the Joker, and, the surprise he couldn’t wait to pop on us, a giant Sentinel figure that he got for half price because it was broken off its base (quickly fixed with superglue).

Then we had a big clix fight and I’ll get to all that later (probably hours of typing down this thing) but anyway, we’ve had a time lapse.

Going on with our house rules:

**Characters are to be treated as objects in re: being manipulated by TK and Super Strength, etc.
---- This seems a simple one, but it actually straightens out many idiotic snafus and what I consider to be ‘layering’ bad decision on bad decision in the rules, and makes things much simpler, and allows for stuff like Fastball Specials. It also makes Super Strength more useful but not in a brainless way; one has to use it tactically to hurl one’s own characters up to 6 spaces (we simply define characters as Light Objects) to get them into combat faster. Obviously, one should only hurl characters with Toughness (at least) but Wolverine seems to always have Toughness, so a Fastball Special with him, provided one has a Super Strength character in the team, is logical.
---- This seems like such a simple rule, and such a necessary one within the context of comic book physics, that not having such a rule is outrageous and idiotic. Now, neither Paul nor Scott has asked me as yet whether a Super Strength character can grab and hurl an opposing character, but the answer I’ll have ready is, sure, it’s close combat action/attack with 0 damage, followed by a range attack on whatever it is you want to hurl the captured character into (and your target must be within 6 squares). This means, of course, that a Super Strength character will have to Push himself to do this, which seems fair. It also preserves TK’s superiority as a character launcher, since it has a greater range. It occurs to me as I type this, though, that TK should have required a Push to actually use the character in an attacking fashion… but I’ll explain that to the guys next time.
---- We’ve also eliminated nonsensical crap like characters simply can’t be knocked or hurled into other characters. If you hurl or TK a character into another character, both characters take a click. If you get knockback on a character, that character can fly backwards into another character.

You know about these others, but just to note them down:

**We’re defining Stealth as I had first mistakenly believed it must be in the advanced rules from your descriptions of its effectiveness… a Stealth character in hindering terrain cannot be seen or attacked, with ranged or close combat actions. (Or, to put it another way, to a Stealthed character, Hindering Terrain becomes Blocking Terrain in all ways advantageous to the Stealthed character.) However, this is taken care of neatly by another house rule I’ve mentioned:

**Super Senses now includes the ability to see Stealthed characters. And let me note how pleased I am to have you tell me that apparently no one had ever thought of this before; I consider that high praise. It’s not like inventing the clix dial, but I’ll take it.
---- In addition to that, let me also mention that Scott demonstrated a novel way to reveal a Stealthed character in the latest combat. The Black Widow was hiding in some construction debris and wreaking havoc. The Constrictor, without knowing she was there (nudge nudge wink wink) walked up and used his super strength to pick up the construction debris to use as a weapon… and, hey, what’s this, there’s a Commie in the woodpile! Yet another non-obvious use for Super Strength… pick up the dumpster that Green Arrow is hiding in, and Green Arrow comes tumbling out.

****If one goes to the trouble of building a themed team, one can get a Group TA. For example, in our last battle, I put out the FF along with Namor (using Scott’s Aquaman piece) and they all got the FF power; Paul managed to field a ragtag group of Avengers (borrowing Quicksilver from Scott, Thor, Wasp, Black Widow and Panther from me, and using Green Arrow and Black Canary as Hawkeye and Mockingbird) and got the Avengers TA, and Scott fielded a team of all villains (Cheetah, Joker, Constrictor, Abomination – Scott LOVES his Abomination piece – and the Scarlet Witch) so we gave him the Injustice League TA.
---- Let me note here how much fun it was when Reed went down in the third turn (boy, he folds up quick) and everyone else, even Namor, got a click of healing. (I know, it really only makes sense that Namor would get the click if someone took out Sue, but, well, he was angry on her behalf, and anyway, Reed has helped Subby plenty of times). Little stuff like that, which works pretty much exactly the way it should in continuity, just makes this game so much fun.
---- Let me also note, Aquaman SUCKS as a Namor piece because he doesn’t FLY. But, well, I guess Subby was just too pissed off that day to bother.

****No duplication of pieces on a battlefield. Different temporal versions of the same character on the same battlefield are acceptable but strongly discouraged on the same team.

****I should note here that Scott shot down making each clix work the same as the best version of that clix, because he wants to have a motivation to collect the better pieces. Paul went along with that and I understand it, so I acquiesced… and anyway, I now have an asskicker Veteran Daredevil who starts out with Stealth and quickly cycles to Leap/Climb, has Super Senses (which rock even more in our house games) and can bounce his billyclub off multiple targets. So I don’t care.

****Also completely shot down by unanimous consent: this bullshit about dividing damage between multiple targets. UH uh. ALL agree that just sucked.

****We can also drop objects once we’ve picked them up without using them. I’m sure there must be some huge tactical cheese move that the VTYO’s came up with that necessitated outlawing Mr. Hyde picking up the dumpster and moving it somewhere else without smacking someone with it, but I can’t imagine what it is, and I like being able to rearrange the battlefield. So we can pick objects up, move them, and drop them again. At least until someone demonstrates to me why that’s bad.

I think that’s it for house rules, at least, that I can think of. Let me add that we used most of these in our last game and they seem to work very smoothly. The Torch could only carry his sister 4 spaces, but that works fine for me… a rookie Torch probably would have such a limitation.

I just made a quick trip to the WizKids site (by the way, is there some use to WizKids Points on the packages, or are we hoarding our packing material for nothing?) to follow up a report by Scott that he’d seen a Buffy clix at Hooked On Comix. The tantalizing possibility of some Buffy characters being included in the Indy set was enough to get me and Paul all perky, but it turns out that Scott must have been mistaken, or the monstrous bloblike shop owner at HOC has deliberately mislabeled some other good looking blonde female Indy figure to prey on the gullible. On balance, I’m relieved. If someone puts out a Buffy expansion with Buffy boosters, I’ll buy them, but I’d hate to have to buy Indy packs hoping to get one lousy Buffy figure, or maybe an Angel. (But I would. If those clix were out there, I’d have to go for them.)

Paul loves Doc Ock but hasn’t been able to play him yet. In fact, our last game with Scott had a time limit; with Amber back home again (Amber is his wife) Scott has pretty strict curfews when he comes out to play these days, and he had to be home again within a couple of hours of him arriving. (He actually wondered if he could come back late… after Amber is asleep… and play some more, which is a first; normally Paul’s friends simply don’t come around on the nights Paul is working. I probably should have accepted, but I explained that Paul’s shifts were my quiet time, and I was a much more naturally solitary person than they were, and they both seemed to accept that. And in fact, on balance, I would rather have the house to myself tonight, and do this email, and maybe watch a DVD, or read. Playing HeroClix is fun but I can only take so much social interaction.)

Okay, that was a long digression inside a digression… anyway, Scott can no longer stay as long as he used to be able to; he can usually get out for a few hours during the day (it seems) and then if he wants to pull the Mike Norton Not Sleeping Trick, he can get away again for a few more hours after Amber and the kids go to sleep. I suppose that means me not wanting to be social during one of the times he could be, while Paul is at work, isn’t very pleasant of me, but… well… I need time to myself.

Still on Scott, apparently he taught Amber and his 4 year old son Nathan to play and they more or less enjoyed it… although, as Scott wryly commented today, when he plays at home, he doesn’t get to use the Scarlet Witch, she is appropriated by Amber. I told him next time he’s at HOC, he should look through the singles case and pick out some good looking female Indy clix that don’t cost much to give Amber as a gift… it will rack up points, of course, and also give her clicks of her own that he probably won’t much want to use, unless he’s silly enough to look at the dials before he hands them over.

Scott is a weird case, anyway. He’s not simply a pure gamer because he does like some of the characters simply as characters… but he’s not a comics geek (or any kind of printed media geek) so he likes the characters he’s been exposed to through other media… movies, TV, cartoons, video games, etc. So he picked up the Joker as a single because he thinks the Joker is cool, without even knowing that the Joker is an obnoxiously annoying click in his own right (Poison! Perplex! Someone drop a meteor on him, please!) and then was delighted to discover that he is, in fact, useful. Why he picked up Aquaman I don’t know, except that he probably thought he looked cool, and he wants to get more DC pieces. He picked up Daredevil specifically for me after hearing me bitch endlessly about the lousy version I had (and while I love my Veteran DD with Stealth and Leap/Climb, I confess to some annoyance at trading in the Incapacitate, which was a perfectly valid power for a guy with a billy club cable who hits people in pressure points constantly to have) and the Abomination called out to him because he’s sick and tired of seeing me kick ass with Blastaar (I think he’s going to get just as annoyed with the Veteran Thing after a few more fights, though). And of course he had to get the Sentinel at half price just because Scott is a Bigger Is Better kinda guy.

While on the subject of Perplex… which I wasn’t except in passing, but still… boy, if they were trying to outdo Outwit for a power that really can’t be justified in game terms, they managed it. I like Perplex as a simple game manipulation power; I cannot for the life of me figure out how it works in consistent comic book combat terms, however. How in the name of GOD does the Joker make people less or more effective? Yes, he’s a lunatic, but that doesn’t keep Batman from hitting him just as hard every time. Nor should it allow him to make the Abomination hit harder. I simply don’t get it.

(With Doom, okay… he’s got a beam in his armor that makes Ben Grimm momentarily stronger… and you’d better believe my Veteran Thing combined with Doc Doom WILL be doing five clicks of damage to someone in the near future… and since the Black Panther can easily be part of that force given the histories of the characters, I suspect those five clicks will be administered to someone who foolishly thinks they are Invulnerable. Doom could fairly easily have a gamut of gimmicks that makes his teammates momentarily perform better, and his opponents worse. But the JOKER? Oh please.)

My own generous nature made me seriously consider giving Dr. Doom to Paul, since it makes sense that the FF would be opposing him a lot, and Paul has a lot of rag tag villains Doom could mold into an army. Paul also lacks a really powerful piece. And Paul recently traded his Doombot to Scott, and he misses it because it looked so cool. But… I just can’t bear to part with my only Perplex piece, and it’s DR. DOOM! Can’t do it. Say, they should do a Unique of Doom on the silver surfboard, using the Power Cosmic.

I vastly appreciate the AIM Medic you sent me. Paul seems to like the Vampire Lackey okay, although he hasn’t used her yet.

I also want to build a team of DD associates. So far I have DD, the Widow, and the Panther, whom I recall is close friends with DD and has teamed up with him on adventures a few times, even if Chris Priest doesn’t seem to know that. I need a few more, obviously, since those points don’t add up to much. I’m not sure who else I’d call a DD associate, though… well, Elektra, if I could get her off Scott; she’d be fine for that team. I don’t know what her point value is, though.

I need a few more for my Avengers roster, and I covet Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch, whom Scott has. Right now, I have Thor, of course, along with the Wasp and the Panther. Those are the only three I have that really ‘feel’ like Avengers to me, although the Widow of course qualifies and I’ll use her until someone more Assemble-ie comes along. The Thing also seems slightly more qualified to me than any of his FF teammates. I’m content to use the female Yellowjacket as the real one if necessary. With Thor, the Wasp, and a very acceptable ‘Hank Pym’, I actually only need either a Cap or a Hulk, and an Iron Man, to make a charter members team. But still, I covet Pietro and Wanda, they’d make a good line up with the others.

Other than that, I should sit down and come up with several teams at various different cost totals so I can quickly put something out when games come up. But that’s more work than I want to do, and I have clicks coming later this week… albeit only four, since I traded one of my CT boosters for the Veteran DD today.

D.

* * * *

From: docnebula01@juno.com
Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2003 07:04:31 GMT
To: Mike Norton
Subject: Re: A little break

Mike,

The most recent frustration chain has its beginnings in these Clix. See, the Friday after Christmas, before clix mania had really set in hard here (it's tough thinking back that far, but I don't believe we'd played an actual game at that point) I got up before Paul, walked over to get my last check from Village Inn, and since it was the last time I was going to be over in that neighborhood for a while, I paid a couple of visits that had been on my 'sometime' list... I checked out an honest to goodness old fashioned small town hardware store across the street (I love hardware stores; I don't know why... I'm horrible with tools and you'd think the places would remind me of the humiliations of shop class, but no, I just enjoy being in them and walking around looking at all these marvelous artifacts I have little or no idea of the purpose of).

Then I walked up the street a bit and checked out a small pawnshop I'd walked by often but not gone inside. There I picked up a few DVDs and a couple of videos... well, I mentioned that.

Then I got home and clix mania hit and, well, ever since there's been this nagging 'I have movies to watch and never seem to find the time' thing, and fuck, I'M NOT EVEN WORKING. It's just that whenever I've been conscious since Friday afternoon, I've been playing with clix or talking about clix or, very rarely, doing other vaguely pragmatic and useful things.

Oh, I've done some email, too, and run some errands, but most of the email has been about clix and some of the errands (calling Demolition, for example) were spurred by clix.

Saturday, I believe it was (could be wrong, might have been Sunday) Scott came by to drop off some packs of clix that Paul had been trying to get into Tampa to buy before Christmas to give me more, and give him some to play against me with. And I think that's when we played our first real clix game.

Sunday, I'm pretty sure, Scott dropped by again. By that time... sometime on Saturday, I guess... he'd played his first clix game and been bitten hard... I think that was the day we discovered he'd gone into Tampa, found Hooked On Comics, and bought a bunch of clix for himself. I think that was when I got the Veteran DD... could be wrong... anyway.

One way or another, every day since Christmas there has been a clix fix. Either Scott bringing over boosters for us, or showing us his new clix and trading with us some, or your box arriving, or, today, my pull from Demolition arriving with their last four boxes of CT in it. (One of which was Scott's, in exchange for the Veteran DD, which is, by the way, a crouching, Critical Mass DD, and I'm very pleased with him, but can I have my Incapacitate back, please? I didn't mean to lend it out, honest.)

Not only did we get a clix fix today, but when Scott dropped by (as he does every day now) he showed us new clix... not bought by him, this time, but bought by his wife, Amber, who drove into Tampa and stopped off at Hooked On Comics herself to pick up some packs. And he traded a few of his clix with Paul.

So, it's all been clix here, and as I said, there's been this nagging "jesus, when am I ever gonna --
***get caught up on sleep
***watch these DVDs I bought days ago
***read some more of my current book (Chronicles of Narnia, The Silver Chair)
***run various errands that need to be run (we were out of a few annoyingly necessary things around the house, Bank of America has upgraded their website to the point where I can't use it with this browser, so I have to walk over to the bank and do a Balance Statement so I know if the rent is covered day after tomorrow)
***update my blog again
???

Now, Paul's at work, the house is locked up... Paul tends to go to work without taking his keys, meaning I can't lock up unless I want to be wakened by him pounding at seven thirty in the morning, so I made him take his keys tonight so I could put the earplugs in and try to sleep through. I figured I'd do an email to you telling you about the new clix we got today and the one clix battle Paul and I did and my cool concept team. And then, I'd read some of my new comics to make me sleepy and conk off.

However. First, I decided to try the BOA website again, just in case there had been something wrong with the site the last few times I'd tried and maybe I could miraculously get in. No soap. So, okay... first on the chain of frustrations, because that ties up my browser and I have to Contr-Alt-Del and then Cancel. Then get it up again to go to my email and pull up your letter and hit REPLY.

Then I realize to tell you about the new clix I have to be looking at them because my memory just sucks. So that's the second frustration.

I get up, go out to get the clix, which live on the bookshelves in the living room. Chewie, who was begging to come in from outside ten minutes before this, is now dancing around wanting to go out again. Frustration number three (if I'm set on a task, anything that interrupts said task is a frustration). I put Chewie out. Gather up my clix, put them in a box to carry them in here, get halfway back here, realize I need Paul's new clix too because I can't remember them. Set my clix down. Go back out, get Paul's clix in my hand (he doesn't have many new ones), head back, try to pick up my box of clix and my Pepsi, end up dropping two of Paul's clix (I know because I can hear them hit the floor separately).

Curse. Put shit down. Look around. Find one clix immediately, pick it up. Cannot find the other clix. Very carefully get down on floor and crawl around looking. Nothing. No soap. I've lost one of Paul's clix. Very frustrated now; JUST TRYING TO WRITE SOME GODDAM EMAIL, JESUS H. CHRIST!!

See, I know the clix won't stay lost. If it would STAY lost, that would be one thing. But Paul or I will find it tomorrow morning sometime by stepping on it with our bare feet, which will hurt, and crush the clix.

As I'm giving up, I see the stray clix... a Skrull Warrior... has actually fallen onto the wicker framework of a kitchen chair, and stuck there. Fucker.

So, finally, I'm back here, with the clix, typing this email.

Another minor frustration: I swore blind to Scott and Paul that they should not be salivating waiting for your package or the one from Demolition. "It will not get here from Pennsylvania in two days," I told them. "Do NOT expect it on Monday. And my comics usually take a week to get here from Tampa. Do NOT expect them before this weekend." Then, of course, your package came on Monday and the Demo package came today.

Anyway. I only got to open the one package today. Paul got two; the other one was Scott's. What I got, as best I can remember, is a Vampire Lackey, an Experienced Human Torch, an Avalanche, and a She-Hulk. She Hulk, naturally, I immediately spit on, threw on the floor, and ground underfoot with a satisfying snapping sound.

Okay, I didn't. I just said "Well, Paul, I think you just got your first hundred plus piece." He said "Why, what's wrong with She-Hulk?" I just snarled something unspeakably vile in tone and threw the horrible thing at him viciously. Okay, I didn't do that, either, but Paul wound up with She-Hulk. After which he added insult to the injury of picking a booster pack with She-Hulk in it by exclaiming "Hey, she's got a Fantastic Four team logo on her!" Rrrrrggggg. The fact that I am not currently green and destroying much of Central Florida is entirely due to a distinct lack of gamma rays in my bloodstream.

Paul got a bunch of stuff. All I really remember is the stuff he's still got in his pile... an Experienced SHIELD Sniper, along with a Skrull Warrior, a Blob, a Black Cat, and a Sandman, all rookies... and the stuff he traded to me... a Veteran Human Torch (I now have three Torches, at each stage of his development) and an Experienced Invisible Girl, who is so markedly different from her Rookie Version as to constitute an entirely separate character, and a rookie Doc Ock. I traded Paul Avalanche and She-Hulk for his Torch and Invisible Girl, which most likely wasn't fair but I didn't want the goddam green creature and Paul likes the mutant stuff. (I've told him he has no chance of getting any Silver Age X-Men off me, but the Claremont Era stuff I happily trade or simply hurl at him with a sneer.)

I wound up trading the Vampire Lackey to Scott, not for my sake, but to sweeten a deal Paul was trying to float with him to get a Colossus Scott had somehow come by. Scott eventually got the rookie Thing I'd given Paul yesterday (day before yesterday now) and two Vampire Lackeys, I believe, in exchange for that Colossus, but Paul is happy with the Colossus piece, so that's fine.

Scott opened his packet... the single packet out of the four Paul and I had left unopened and unchosen, mind you... and what did he get? Well, I don't remember everything he got, but I do remember the FUCKING UNIQUE MEDUSA WITH THE FANTASTIC FOUR TEAM LOGO HE WILL NEVER EVER PART WITH UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES.

Fuck.

Amber (Scott's wife, I know, can't tell the players without a scorecard) had also picked up a few packets at HOC and Scott had found in them a Unique Mojo. Also, an Experienced Black Cat, that Colossus I mentioned that Paul ended up with, and a buncha other stuff, like a Con Artist with Perplex and other shit.

Scott had to get some furniture today from the friend's house where Amber had been living before they tried to put their marriage back together, so I volunteered to help him and we drove to Dade City, toted a monstrously heavy dresser out of somebody's house (no one was home, but Scott had a key and I'm just taking his word for the fact that I am not now an accessory to burglary). He stopped off at a Wal-green's so I could do some stuff on the way home, we forgot to go by the bank, and then he had to head back (he's on a short leash these days) so Paul and I played a two player game tonight, where I tried out my concept team of Black Panther (v), Invisible Girl (r), Dr. Doom (r), Blastaar (r), Daredevil (v), and the Black Widow (r).

DD and the Black Widow were thrown in to get up to 400 points, which Paul and I agreed to play at. Paul's team consisted of She-Hulk, Colossus, the Blob, Logan, Green Arrow, and the Kingpin, and I honestly don't know what their levels are, except the Kingpin is the rookie, I beieve, as is Colossus (a quick look at Paul's new figures shows that She-Hulk is experienced). Too late, Paul realized he hadn't put in any flyers, much less flyers capable of taxiing another fig under our weird rules.

Paul rolled first player and chose the warehouse map. I got to pick which side I wanted to come in on and I decided to start in the offices down at one end, with all the hindering terrain tables and such in the open area out in front of it, due to my Stealth pieces. I carefully placed my round Object markers at places close to the offices that I thought would be good lurking spots for DD and the Black Widow, and maybe Sue. Meanwhile, Paul, having no idea I'd built a deck designed to try out a few combinations to see how they worked, simply set his pieces out pretty much in a straightforward fashion, threw his Objects down wherever struck his fancy, and then came lumbering in.

I can pretty much sum up the battle by saying Paul was extremely frustrated to find that throwing powerful pieces like Colossus and She-Hulk into the Perplex-Outwit-Ranged Fire grinder I'd set up was simply futile. When he moved Green Arrow up into a position to start shooting, he grew extremely frustrated to discover that he couldn't see DD, the Widow, or especially the Invisible Girl, who was starting to REALLY annoy him, because he also couldn't roll high enough to hit the Panther, whom she was sticking next to and giving an 18 defense to.

I did make one mistake early on... I put Doom two spaces away from Blastaar. I'd picked Blastaar for good ranged fire back up, but also so that Doom could Mastermind damage onto a tough piece... one that could shrug off some of it and would only get stronger due to the rest of it. Then I forgot and broke contact between the two. However, even that mistake worked in my favor. When She Hulk came roaring in with a dumpster in her hand and clocked Doom for six clicks, he was forced to put the damage on the Black Widow, who was adjacent to him (if Stealthed). BW was squashed like a bug (heh) but honestly, five clicks to Blastaar would have belted him right past his best clicks and gotten him into territory where I wouldn't have dared push him. BW, while I missed her, was pretty much expendible... and since I'd used her in the round previous to that to do two clicks to Colossus (while the Panther Outwitted Colossus'Invulnerability) and blown the Charge right out of him, I felt she'd done well.

She Hulk simply got turned into hash by the Perplex-Outwit-Ranged Fire grinder,as did Colossus when he came roaring up a round later. Logan was a harder nut to crack but eventually Doom, a Stealthed DD, and Blastaar took him out (not before he got in a good shot that beat the super powers out of Panther, though).

Once everyone had a few clicks on them, Paul really started to hate that rookie Invisible Girl, because everyone's attack had dropped a few pegs, but pretty much everyone clustered in my corner still had an 18 Defense... and since Invisible Girl was Stealthed, no one could fire missile weapons at her, nor could she (by our rules) even be engaged into close combat. Paul had, by sheer random luck, not included any of the powers in his team that could deal with a Stealthed fighter in our system -- Super Senses being the primary one of those, but he could have gotten there pretty easily with Explosive Effect, or whatever it is, too, since she had people all around her... although, yes, they were frustratingly hard to hit. Putting a Poison character next to her would most likely have worked... I, at least, would not rule that a Stealthed fighter behind hindering terrain would really be protected from Poison... as would Pulse Wave.

Anyway, Paul was pretty aggravated, so I tried to explain to him that this was a learning experience, and while he blamed our house Stealth rules, I pointed out to him that he could have dealt with Sue any number of ways, he simply hadn't incorporated any of those ways into his team. (I also reminded him that I wanted to go back to using Stealth correctly once you explained it to me and I read the new rules, but he said he liked the way we were doing Stealth and asked to keep it. I like it too... it gives one a real reason to use a Super Senses character, even if that's all they really have... but it was him insisting that kept the house modification in place.)

He calmed down when I pointed out just HOW many ways he could have dealt with Sue, had he just had any of those figs in his team. (Beyond that, an 18 is hard to hit but not impossible... Logan tagged Panther for five clicks in that fight, and had Paul moved GA in a little earlier and kept him outside Blastaar's range, GA could have hit any of my figs with an 8 or higher. I also pointed out that there are combos and strategies that will boost a fig's ranged attack rating, and in fact, I've used them before.)

I was very pleased that the concept worked as well as it did. Of course, I'm aware that in an official environment, someone would simply have moved a Leap/Climber up base to base with Sue and punched her lights out... She Hulk could have hit Sue on an 8 or higher had she gone after her instead of Doom, for example. And I'm pretty sure if I put the rookie Sue out again, people are going to be scrambling to take her out. Thank God HeroClix doesn't have anything like grenades, where you only have to hit the SQUARE the character is standing in, not the character itself.

Anyway, you're right, the rookie Sue is a little gem, albeit an entirely passive one. The Experienced Sue is totally different; not getting Defend until two clicks down, when her Defense is a 17, makes her a completely different tool.

Okay, I was actually going to answer one of your most recent emails, but I keep catching myself nodding off, so I'll send this and go to bed.

Oh, wait. Your explanation of how picking up terrain with someone hiding in it is necessarily interrupted by engagement with the hiding character was succinct and is appreciated. With our rules making Hindering Terrain into Blocking Terrain in all ways advantageous to the Stealthed character hiding in it, this is more complicated. However, since it's hardly advantageous to a Stealthed Black Widow to have Colossus rush over, pick up the dumpster she's hiding in, and smash her with it, I suspect she would choose to force him to have his turn be over when he came adjacent to her, whether he actually 'knew' she was there or not.

The only instance I can think of where the player of a Stealthed character might allow an opposing character to just run on through a square adjacent to where he was hiding in/on/under an Object, is where that opposing character couldn't pick up the Object hiding him/her. But still... better to have a character tied up in a spot by someone he can't possibly affect in most cases. I suppose this is justifiable; as the opponent tried to rush by, maybe the Stealthed character lobbed something at him to get his attention... oh, I don't know.

There will be times, of course, when someone will want to run through a square adjacent to a hiding character, and this will come up, so I'll need to have this thought through. Or, you know, just go back to the real rules on Stealth... but, well, I was willing to do that before, it was Paul who wanted to stick with these.

Okay, now I AM going.

Hope your Tuesday went well and your New Year's Eve is better,

D.

* * * * *

And that concludes our journey through my recent, HeroClix centered experiences. I'll try not to turn the blog into simply a HeroClix journal from this point on, but I do expect that Paul and I will be collecting these little boogers for quite a while. The game is endlessly enjoyable, and just owning the collectible little figurines is cool in and of itself.

I should note that one good break Paul and I got from being in Florida is that one of the recent expansion sets, "Clobbering Time", featuring mostly Fantastic Four related figures, is apparently out of print and difficult to find up where Mike Norton lives (in Pennsylvania). However, we have so far managed to get about a dozen packs down here at various bookstores and Barnes & Nobles. So that was a break, due to a freak of geophysical location. I suspect the local supplies have pretty much dried up now, so we'll be buying other boosters of more recent expansions from this point on.

I should also note: if for some reason you want to do something nice for me and you DON'T want to just give me money (or take me to dinner, or if you're a good looking chick, come sleep with me), well, if you can find a place near you that sells HeroClix figurines, until further notice, they are the perfect gift item for this particular Brown Eyed Handsome Man.

On the other hand, if you DO want to give me money, please note the PayPal link in the corner. I know it's hard to see under the dust, rust, and cobwebs it's gathered in months of disuse, but still, it's there.

Okay, that's it, I'm outta here for now. Happy New Year tomorrow, everybody.