Playing the Comics: Johnny Blaze/Ghost Rider teams

This is turning out to be one heck of a week for me! Starting Sunday night, I got to cheer my favorite football team, the Baltimore Ravens on to a Super Bowl victory. I got to spend yesterday with my wife (sans kids) celebrating the victory from the night before. We took in a movie, Warm Bodies, which incidentally was a really entertaining, quirky spin on a zombie flick, and we got free burgers at our local Z-Burger, in honor of the Ravens win.

This week also marks the release of Marvel HeroClix: Amazing Spider-Man set, which would be cool enough if it were just a Spider-Man set. However, this set has strong Marvel Horror and mystical sub-themes represented in this set, and we are receiving a ton of characters that I personally have been begging WizKids to make (or make correctly) for 10 years. This culminated today in the preview of one of my all-time favorite characters, Johnny Blaze/Ghost Rider.

Before I get to the teams I'm presenting today, let me give you some background on my history with and love for the character. It dates back to one of my favorite memories from childhood. Growing up in West Virginia, we didn't often have access to things like comic conventions, or even a decent hobby shop for that matter, but I was into comics, and occasionally  I'd find out about one that was happening in the general geography. I was getting into the New Warriors at the time, and Mark Bagley was coming to a semi-local convention in the Pittsburgh area. My father agreed to take me so that I could meet Mark (who was super cool by-the-way). I managed to get a comic and some New Warriors trading cards signed, and my dad let me buy a couple of cheap back issues. I picked out an old issue of A Man Called Nova, after all he was my favorite character from the New Warriors. The other issue I picked up was an old issue of Ghost Rider, which fortuitously contained a retelling of his origin (to a criminal posing as a priest if I remember correctly). That single issue started my love for the character. And later when he popped up in the new Ghost Rider's series, I was completely hooked. Between that, and being a fan of the other Midnight Sons as well, I'm practically crying tears of joy over this set.

So without dragging this out any further, here are the Top 5 teams I can't wait to play once I get my hands on this set:

Midnight Sons

 85 ASM004 Blade
 50 ASM007 Johnny Blaze
 55 ASM013A Frank Drake
107 ASM013B Hannibal King
133 ASM028 Morbius
125 IH037 Ghost Rider
-------------------------
555 Total


Sure you could swap the set version of Blade for the CTD version, or you could tack on a version of Dr. Strange, but I really like this build, and I'm hoping for an interesting Additional Team Ability for the Midnight Sons to round it out closer to a reasonable build total.

Legion of Monsters

 81 ASM015 Werewolf By Night
133 ASM028 Morbius
200 ASM033 Man-Thing
145 ASM046 Ghost Rider
---------------------------
559 Total

If you're going for a comic accurate version of the Legion of Monsters with Ghost Rider on it, he's only ever been on the original team, which isn't a very clean build, but again, hopefully the Legion of Monsters will be receiving an Additional Team Ability that helps bump them close to a full team build.

Champions

145 ASM046 Ghost Rider
 85 CA006 Black Widow
 98 CA043 Darkstar
 50 GX031 Angel
104 GX038 Iceman
142 SI016 Hercules
 58 SI022 Goliath
-------------------------
682 Total

Next, the expanded roster for the original Champions. The problem with this team is there's still no theme-able version of Angel (a founding member), so if you want him, you're breaking theme. Maybe Wolverine and the X-Men will finally give us a Champions version of that character.

Heroes for Hire #2

 82 ASM034 Satanna Hellstrom
 70 ASM044B Misty Knight
145 ASM046 Ghost Rider
 56 AW006 Paladin
 43 MM035 Silver Sable
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396 Total

This is the team Misty Knight pulled together for issue #2 of the latest Heroes for Hire run. This also isn't a theme team because Satanna did not get the Heroes for Hire keyword, even though Ghost Rider did (and they're in the same issues) nor is there a keyworded version of Silver Sable.


Heroes for Hire #7

 82 ASM034 Satanna Hellstrom
109 ASM032 Moon Knight
 70 ASM044B Misty Knight
145 ASM046 Ghost Rider
 75 ASM201 Spider-Man
 85 ASM202 Cloak
 79 CA030 Falcon
 52 WS026 Black Cat
 85 AV016 Luke Cage
 56 AW006 Paladin
 53 MM036 Silver Sable
-----------------------------
891 Total

The final team is an expanded version of the previous one, for higher point games. Again, it's not going to be a theme team proper because Cloak and Spider-Man join Satanna and Silver Sable in the club of not having the keyword. The rest of the team surprising do have it though. For a "rotating roster" team, that's really not that bad.

That's all I have for today. Later in the week, I'll be doing a Clix Critique on my actual pulls for the set. In the mean time, if you're planning on picking up the new set, I hope you have good luck with your pulls, and I hope you enjoy this set as much as I hope to!