Clix Critique: 2013 PAC: The New Hotness!

Every couple of year, it seems like the game developers over at WizKids twitch and decide to, for lack of a better phrase, re-weight the powers that exist in the game. I say re-weight, because they aren't necessarily rewriting the powers, but are usually tweaking what already works to make it work better and/or more efficiently. Sometimes the changes work great and stick around, No Action After Taxi (although some would argue me on that one). Other times they're frustrating and get redone years later (Energy Explosion, Pulse Wave, Telekinesis to varying degrees).

That being said, what I enjoy most is when they come up with powers that are completely new, because that tends to be something very special! The last time we got a new set of Powers was Unleashed with the lime green powers of Earthbound, Quake, Combat Reflexes and Exploit Weakness.

Now we have a new PAC and coming soon we'll have shiny new figures with pink powers making appearances on dials everywhere (judging by the prevalence of Improved Movement in Batman) in the very near future. However, before I get into that, let me throw out this disclaimer, I am not representing WizKids in any way with this (or future articles) that I decide to write about the new PAC, just like the rest of you, I'll be reading the official articles as they go up over on heroclix.com. With that out of the way, here are my initial reactions on our new Pink Powers!

The pink Movement Power is Sidestep. Personally, I love this power. My guess is that this power is a natural evaluation of the Lunge feat that we saw all the way back in Arkham Asylum and which saw a re-purposing on Wolverine in the Incredible Hulk set. The automatic breakaway element has been removed, but with the advent of Improved Movement, that can always be added onto a character through a Trait or Special Power in addition to Sidestep to grant the same effect as Lunge. It's a free move, which is awesomely powerful, but the character is also limited to a movement of 2 which doesn't make it game breaking, but it could be just the bump your character need to get out of opposing base combat to heal or find Stealth cover. Can you tell I'm excited for the possibilities with this one?

Next up, on Attack is Precision Strike. This is another power that has fantastic potential. I don't know about you, but I know in my games, outside of damage reducers my top 3 powers to Outwit are Super Senses, Mastermind, and Shape Change. Now all I need to do is pack a character on my team that has Precision Strike and Battle Fury, and I can get around all 3 powers without needing an Outwit. Who wouldn't be excited about that? The other cool thing about Precision Strike is that it stacks with your other Powers, so if you have Psychic Blast or Exploit Weakness then not only can they not Evade and/or Transfer and they're also taking penetrating damage. For big gun villains like Dr. Doom who can either reduce and/or transfer damage, you can take all their options away in one attack. That's pretty brutal.

After that, we come to Invincible in the Defense slot. Right up front with Invincible, I'm compelled to point out that unlike Damage Reducer powers, Invincible is Ignoring damage. It does not reduce it. What does that mean, well first off, it means that Penetrating Damage does not beat it, nor does Precision Strike. Kind of interesting how one new power can counter the other. One other thing to remember with this power is that it's the thing doing the rounding, so it's going to round up when Ignoring damage. That means if a figure is only doing 1, like with Poison, Invincible characters would get to completely ignore it.

Lastly, we have the least exciting but the most obvious selection for a power, Empower. This is basically the close combat sibling of Enhancement. Now you can power up your close combat buddies just like Dr. Strange would boost damage to a fellow ranged attacker. I'm sure I'll gladly use this power when it's available, but unlike some of the others I'm not sure that I will seek this one out. Not because it's bad per say, but it's almost an unconscious ability for me. Then again, it'll also depend on where we see it pop up.

Thanks for reading. In the next go around I'll tackle some of the powers that have been updated, and my take on the good or bad with those.

Clix Critique: Amazing Spider-Man (and beyond)

I know that I'm about a week and a half late to the part on reviewing the Amazing Spider-Man but I just love the set so much, I couldn't let it completely pass by without showing some praise on it. That said, with this article being late, I'm also going to look at some of the other more recent HeroClix related announcements as well.

Amazing Spider-Man in a more traditional 5-figure only release, that packs 10 5-figure boosters to a brick and 2 bricks to a case. These bricks seem to be fairly consistent rewarding the purchaser with 3 Super Rares, 1 Prime, and 1 Chase to a brick. The exception to this rule seems to be if you pull Prime Hobgoblin, being that he is both a Super Rare, and a Prime, he seems to fill both rolls in the brick in which he appears. That said, I was fortunate enough to pull him, and I'm quite happy with what I got in addition to that figure. The collation in an individual brick seems to be very fair. There are plenty of fun generics in this set, so the more of those you receive, the happier people seem to be.

In my initial case, I managed to pull and entire CUR set which I was very pleased with. For my Super Rares, I received, Ghost Rider, Nightmare, Man-Thing and Howard the Duck, Colleen Wing and Misty Knight, and Spider-Man 2099 (in addition to the Hobgoblin Prime listed above). I pulled Brother Voodoo as my other Prime, and I pulled Dusk and Prodigy as my 2 Chases. Since the Identity Crisis costumes where my top wants out of the chases, I was pretty happy with this pull, although Ricochet was my top want. On generic (and pseudo-generic) characters, I managed to pull 4 Zuvembies, 3 Werewolves, 2 Vampires, and 3 Mysterios, not bad if you ask me.

In addition to my own case, my store, Legends Games and Comics has been running a new player incentive program where your name gets put in the drawing for a free brick of product if you bring in a new player and they make a purchase while there in the store. Much to my pleasure and surprise, my name got drawn this time around to win the free brick of product!!! So, in my additional brick, I managed to pull Madame Web, Hannibal King, and Hornet in addition to an extra Ghost Rider and Nightmare, which I promptly traded for Blackheart and Baron Mordo. I also increased my generic numbers to 7 Zuvembies, 5 Werewolves, 4 Vampires, and 5 Mysterios. After 3 bricks, I'm only missing Terrax, Hobgoblin, Alyosha Kraven, and Ricochet (which I have coming in the mail) in addition to the 4 Spider Armor chases. All in all, I can't complain too much about that. Not only that, but with just a few trades, I could actually easily have a second CUR set, that I could probably turn around and sell, if I didn't let me 6 year old raid my dups.

In addition to the fantastic collation, this set actually looks really good. The sculpt are great, and the paint jobs seem a little less globby, bringing out more of the sculpts details. Sure most of the figures could still use a decent wash to really make them pop. But they look much better than some sculpt from even 2 sets ago.

My only minor complaint for this set comes from a dial design perspective. With the deluge of figures with Improved Movement in Batman and Streets of Gotham for "peak human" characters, there is a surprising lack of Improved Movement for characters that can "do whatever a spider can." We have at least 3 sculpts that I can thing of where the character is swinging on either a web or a rope, but those characters didn't even merit Leap/Climb? If it weren't for their points, they would seem like they're missing something. With their points being what they are in some cases (read cheap), they just feel like they're poorly designed. I'm saying that knowing full well that the playtesters don't see the sculpt when testing the dials, however, I expect the game designers have to have some type of a clue.

Moving on, I'd like to touch on the upcoming Teen Titans release as well, since we've now had a chance to see what the team dial mechanic (and boosters) are going to look like. At the moment, I dislike Team Dials less then Vehicles, so that's a plus in their column. I'm somewhat annoyed that they come with some of the figures for the team, but understand with the larger bases, if they come with 3, it allows you the opportunity to play them "out of the box," so from that standpoint it makes sense. It does seem that they did give some thought about the uphill battle of "putting all of your eggs in one basket" by giving you multiple actions for the team base. They do appear that they'll at least be more effective then Duo figures. I'm currently not in love with the Splitting mechanic particularly at lower build totals, but it's possible that I do not fully understand how it works.

The third thing I'd like to address is the news that poured in from Toy Fair 2013. I'll hit each announced license in turn:

• 1960’s Adam West Batman: Not that I need any more Batman Clix, but if you're going to try to get me on board for more, this is the product to put out. Who wouldn't want to have this classic show/movie immortalized in Clix?
• Kick-Ass 2: My main hope with this product it that not only will we get Kick-Ass 2 characters, but I hope to at least see Big Daddy here as well.
• The Lone Ranger (2013): I'm going to at the very least need to acquire the Lone Ranger and Tonto. I may or may not bother with anything else, but those 2 are must haves for me.
• Pacific Rim: Like with Star Trek Tactics, I'm concerned with scaling issues with this product. If all the figures are "Giant-Sized" and have the Giant Defense symbol, I'm all over this release. If not, I'll probably pass on it. That said, at least these a robots and monsters, and make more sense having a superhero-based power set.
• Nightmare Before Christmas: OK, now we're getting a little nuts. That said, I'm still on board with this release. I'm on the fence about how much I'll buy, but there are multiple fans of this franchise in my house, so more than likely I'll end up with a set here. I want Jack and Oogie Boogie. Outside of that, it's a wait and see.
• Iron Maiden: I'm not particularly a fan of the band. However, Eddie is a cool looking character. I will more than likely at least trade for at least one of these.
• Hello Kitty: Now this is the product where I'm having the most problem wrapping my head around it being HeroClix compatible. It'll definitely target a new and completely different market, but I'm just not sure how you translate the characters into a combat-based game. My daughter is very excited for this release, and I'm sure I'll buy her some when they become available. I just can't see myself adding any of these to my collection and/or games.

I think that manages to hit everything that I wanted to try and touch on in this Clix Critique. Hope you enjoyed reading, and look forward to your comments and feedback.

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
-----------------------------
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!

Top 10 Never-Before-Clixed Characters of 2012

It seems like a popular thing to do at the beginning of a new year is to do Top 10 Lists of things from the prior year. I decided I'd join in this year by picking my Top 10 Never-Before-Clixed Characters from 2012. To do this, I used what some might consider an odd set of criteria, so let me start by explaining what I did.

First, to be considered, the character had to have never been officially created in a 3D figure with a dial. This is important, because there are characters that have come close, either by being done "unofficially" or by being done as a Bystander Token. Secondly, with so many releases coming out this past year, I did try to restrict myself to 1 figure per release. In some cases this was difficult, but by choosing my Top 1 from each release, it allowed me to cover a lot of ground, even though I still had to overlook some releases (sorry Assassin's Creed and Hobbit), which I haven't bought into. That being said, I do own at least one copy of each figure that shows up on my list, and in MOST cases have actually played them in at least 1 game. Admittedly, some of the figures that made the list, I like a lot on paper, but haven't had the chance to play. That said, let's get to the list!

#10: Stan Lee: Stan the Man comes in at #10 largely because he's only a promotional figure, so technically he can't be played in regular HeroClix games. That said, they did such an excellent job making him a fun piece to include on your teams without making him completely outrageous, like Joss Whedon's click. The sculpt is a great likeness for Stan, and the powers really give the feel of him being the creator running around in his own book. Definitely a neat figure worth acquiring if you can get your hands on one.

#9 Egghead: A long-overdue inclusion for the Masters of Evil, Egghead comes in at #9. Also helping to fill the roster of the Intelligencia, this mad scientist brings a lot of nasty little tricks to your team for his 50 point price tag. Great for taking on most versions of his favorite foe, Hank Pym, he's also good at taking on any non-normal-sized adversary. His biggest issues are his low defense versus close combatants and his lack of Mastermind, as well as a short range. When Egghead gets hit, he's going to feel it. That said, he is more of a leading from the rear sort of  figure anyway.

#8 In-Betweener: Some might argue that I've placed In-Betweener too low on the list, but truthfully, HeroClix is more fun as a team game. I'd much rather field a well-rounded team that a one-man-army, or even a tent poll team. That said, I'm a fan of all things Marvel Cosmic, so I was big into the Infinity Gauntlet events. Although I have yet to field a fully-loaded Gauntlet on anyone. It's just not my style. That said, the In-Betweener is a special kind of crazy click. His ability to dish out and take damage is ridiculous, once you factor in the Soul Gem, and really, why would you be fielding him without it?

#7 El Gaucho: I'll be honest, I haven't read any of the Batman Inc. stories, but I have to admit, I like the concept of having Batmen in other countries, and a luchador Batman is just too awesome to ignore! Admittedly, he's probably not even the best of the Batman Inc. pieces, but this piece speaks to me on a few levels. My favorite part about this figure is his "surprise" range attack via his Throwing Knives. Of course, Vet IC Black Panther was always my favorite out of that REV set as well, because people always forgot he had range too, and his is printed right on the dial.

#6 Spock: As much as a I hate the idea of out-of-scale Star Trek ships in my HeroClix games, I LOVE having in-scale Star Trek crew members! This was probably the hardest character on the list to choose because I love every character in the Away Team pack so much. Ultimately I picked Spock because his 2 dials are likely the two hardest to choose between. Both provide a lot of great options. Ultimately, you're going to choose the best one to complement the team. That being said, I think I like the "A" dial just a tad more for the inclusion of the Damage Special Power.

#5 Lucius Fox: The HeroClix representation of Morgan Freeman from Christopher Nolan's Batman films comes in at #5, both for being a clix representation of Morgan Freeman, and for being one darn useful click on a Gotham City team. I'm a huge fan of the movies, as one could note from my "Playing the Movie" series on those films, but he ability to use Leadership on figures far more costly then himself is one very useful power to have. Plus he's a low enough point cost that if he gets KOd, you're really not out all that much.

#4 Harvey Bullock: As a huge fan of the old Batman: The Animated Series, I couldn't help but get excited when I found out that we were finally getting Harvey Bullock in a 3D click. I look forward to fielding him on a team with Commissioner Gordon, Renee Montoya, and a Gotham City Detective (since that is Crispus Allen before he turned into the Spectre. Harvey brings some fun options to your GCPD team as well. I love both of Harvey's Special Powers, and can't wait to put them to good use.

#3 Agent Coulson: The glue that held together almost all of Avengers Phase 1, Agent Coulson is a great support piece for the points. As an indispensable member of S.H.I.E.L.D. now with representations both in cartoons and the comics, he's good at bedeviling your opponent with his hard to eliminate Perplex, and he packs a nice kick via Psychic Blast end dial. I have plans to mod mine so that he's holding the Destroyer gun, but have yet to get around to doing it. He'd have ranked higher if he wasn't a Target Exclusive piece.

#2 Cosmo: As I said earlier in the article, I'm a huge Marvel Cosmic fan, and being both a fan of the modern Guardians of the Galaxy, Nova, and the Annihilators (all books Cosmo made frequent appearances in) it wouldn't be right for me to leave him off of this list. Plus he is one darn good support piece. I was lucky enough to pull him with Silver Surfer and Nebula in my first Galactic Guardians sealed event. Those three did quite well together. Plus, I think he's the only Annihilator to come in under 100 points (at least until we can get an Ikon anyway).

#1 John Constantine: Now, I'm not a big fan of the DC New 52, but there is 1 book out of all of them that I was particularly excited about, Justice League Dark. I loved the mix of characters that they threw together as the debut team for the book, and I love even more that we got the full roster in the Justice League: New 52 set. Their inclusion and rarity is the exclusive reason why I bought a CTD of that set. And let's face it, any figure that can shut down Probability Control on everyone else, is a pretty strong figure to have on your team, unless you have a lot of Prob (like Justice League Dark). And his sculpt is perfect!

If I get the opportunity in the near future, I'll try to do a list of my Top 10 favorite remakes and/or variants as well. Keep an eye out for it, and if your so inclined feel free to leave a list of your Top 10 favorite Never-Before-Clixed Characters in the comments.

Clix Critique: Streets of Gotham

Streets of Gotham hit the shelves yesterday, and like any good Clix addict, I was at my local shop picking up my case of the product. Over all, I'm pleased with my purchase. However, there are a few irksome issues that did arise. That being said, I'll start with those, so that I can finish on a good note.

First off, for those that aren't "in the know," Streets of Gotham is a nontraditional Countertop Display release. Like the Avengers Movie set, these displays come with 24 single-figure boosters and 4 team packs, packaged with 6 single-figure boosters and 1 team pack per mini-brick. All in all, the distribution within a single CTD is pretty good. You'll probably see about 3 dups, which is the norm in this type of release. Over the entirety of the case, you should get a full set of Commons, and it's possible to get a full set of Uncommons, but it's likely that you'll need to trade for 1. In my case, I was missing 2, which I think is excessive for the number of Uncommons that you're receiving over the entirety of the case. You'll likely pull 7 Rares over the Displays with 1 of those being a dup. In my case, I had 2 OMACs. With the team packs, you could conceivable pull all 8, although you're more likely going to pull 7 with 1 duplicate. In my case, I pulled the Outlaws twice and missed out on the Trinity, which is fine because my daughter wanted Starfire, and I have PLENTY of versions of the Trinity. If I don't get those, I'm not loosing any sleep over it. All in all, with the exception of missing 2 Uncommons, I thought the collation within my case was reasonable.

That said, where it became unreasonable is that the collation over the entirety of what was pulled at my store wasn't good. One of my closest clix friends pulled a mirror case to mine, done to the fact that we each had a broken Crux in our second Outlaws pack. The only difference we had was the he got 2 Questions instead of 1 Question and 1 Renee, which really isn't that different, since it's the same dial and 80% the same sculpt. The other problem was that only 2 people pulled Guy and Ice at all, and EVERYONE pulled at least one OMAC, and most pulled 2. What does that translate into? No one to trade with locally. That's a huge problem! It's one thing to have density within a case, but to have that same density across a number of cases is a problem. I don't mind having to trade, but you have to have people that get different stuff from you to be able to trade with. With that complaint out of the way, let's talk about what's good in the set.

First of all, the Team Packs all ended up being pretty fun, and outside of the HORRIBLE Batman sculpt, everything in the Team Packs look pretty fun. I got beat up on pretty bad by the Team Pack Birds of Prey, teamed with Blue Beetle, in a sealed last night. Seems like everyone played at least one guy from their Team Pack. I know I ran with Starfire from the Outlaws pack, and my daughter had Void from the WildC.A.T.s pack. Of course, she also had Scarecrow and Bane-Batman, with a Black Glove Demon. It was a pretty ugly team.

The paint on the figures is a bit blobby this time around, but for the most part the sculpts are passable. The only one that really looks truly terrible is the Batman sculpt that's used in both the regular set and Team Pack. There's something cartoony (in a bad way) about him.

One of the other things that I really like about this set is the fact that it complements the Batman set so well. There are a number of callbacks to that set. Blue Beetle is the perfect Bug pilot. Harvey can be Horrible Transformed into Two-Face. The Birds of Prey Team Pack round out the New 52 Birds of Prey to an even 400 points when teamed with Poison Ivy and Batgirl #025 from the Batman set. I'm sure that there are more that I'm missing, but those are some pretty strong examples in my book.

If you've bought your Streets of Gotham, and would like to chime in you're opinion as well, feel free to do so in the comments. If I get a chance to do another article over the Christmas holiday, I hope to come back with a "Playing the Comics" article focused on the various Birds of Prey configurations available thanks to the new set! My daughter and I are very excited to try some of those out.

Product Placement: hair10's ID Rings

One of the best peripheral items to get for HeroClix, if you play in tournaments with any regularity, has always been a product called ID-Rings. The old versions were colored rubber rings that wrapped around the outside of either cup or inverted Clix base. Most players used these rings to differentiate there figures from there of their opponents, although some used them to signify which figures had certain Feats, but when that mechanic was in fashion as well.

The old rings always had the problem that they didn't work on figures with larger bases, but since those at the time were mostly rare in appearance anyway, that really wasn't such a big deal. Fast forward to the age of the Oreo Base and all of a sudden the old ID Rings really don't work on any new figures at all.

That's where hair10 stepped in with a fantastic idea, and a desire to own a couple of 3D printers. Thanks to this idea, and the existence of a little site known as Kickstarter, Karl had the idea, and the means to see it come to fruition, and flourish it did! The Kickstarter did so well in fact that there were a number of Stretch Goals introduced and reached.

I'm proud to say that I was a backer of this project (at the $25 level), and to my excitement, when I got home last night, my box of Rings were sitting on my kitchen table waiting for me! So what did my investment earn me? I received 15 Oreo Base Rings, 2 Peanut Base Rings, 1 Single-Dial Colossal Ring, and 1 Light and 1 Heavy 3D (sort of) Standard Objects.

All the items are a sturdy plastic, and the rings fit very nicely on the bases they were designed for. They slide on and off easily, but fit snuggly enough, that I'm not afraid I'm going to loose them. They're also designed to be seen, but still fit fairly well inside the squares on the map. After all these are supposed to be visual aids, not obstructions. And although they aren't a perfect match for my old ID Rings, the color is close enough considering the difference in material and design.

I think my only complaint (if you can even call it that) is that I'd like to have at least one more of each of the larger base sizes. After all I need 3 Peanut Base Rings to run the Horsemen of Apocalypse, and who wants to run only 1 Frost Giant and/or Sentinel? Hopefully once Karl gets through all of his Kickstarter rewards, there will be a chance to order these items from him in a more a la carte fashion.

Mechanically Inclined: Hank Pym

As promised in my previous Mechanically Inclined article, this article is focusing on the Mechanics utilized by the very inventive, Hank Pym. That said, this article will be slightly different in focus to the last, because it will focus one how best to utilize these mechanics with Chaos War's various Dr. Pyms exclusively.

To begin, we have to look at the Ant-Man and Wasp duo figure. Why start there you ask? Because the Ant-Man and Wasp duo figure is 168 points while the combined cost of Hank and Janet only comes to 157 points. So, if we want to be able to utilize the duo, we need to start there. Now the down side to starting with the duo is that the duo is actually quite good in it's own right, so you may be tempted to stay in that form for the entirety of the game. However, for the sake of argument (and this article) you could give the duo a power action to Split into Hank and Janet at the beginning of the game (a tactic that I've employed to much success).

For the Split, Janet is the easy choice because she only has one version at 77 points. Hank on the other hand gives you up to 5 choices if you're fortunate enough to own the Con Exclusive Giant Man/Ant-Man (which I am). Personally, I either like to start with Hank Pym or the Con Exclusive Ant-Man, although regular set Ant-Man is not sloutch either. Hank gives you up front Outwit and his Tinkerer Supreme ability. However, Ant-Man gives you Stealth and Incapacitate. Fun Fact with Ant-Man: he can use Close Combat Incapacitate (because it does 'no damage') and Morph into another form.

Another thing to remember about Hank is that he can always grant you Outwit if he's in the right form. Hank has Outwit on the odd number clicks, the regular set Ant-Man has Outwit on the even number clicks. Outside of that, the most important thing to remember if you started with the Ant-Man and Wasp duo, you want to keep Hank and Janet next to each other as much as possible. This should be relatively easy, since Janet can carry Hank if they're both tiny, and she can hitch a ride on Hank if he's not.

If one of them gets injured, and you can get them both clear, you can always Merge them back together. This tactic is especially fun if they're based by an opponent that can be Poisoned. Not only that, but they have a fair amount of Exploit Weakness, which can also be surprising for an unsuspecting opponent.

The last two items that I'll touch on with Dr. Pym are his Pym Particle traits. Now if it wasn't fun enough to have Hank pay size-yo-yo during the game, he can also bring an Avenger friend along for the resize ride. Granted they have to be 75 points or less, but there's still a lot of fun to be had with other Avengers in that point range. One very important thing to remember is that this ability only works once per game and only works for as long as you have that version of Hank on the board. Be selective when you invoke this ability and make sure you plan to stay on that version long enough to make the choice worth your while. Otherwise, save it for when you can really use it. One of my favorite uses for Shrink is a Tiny Tigra.

Whatever flavor of Hank is your favorite, one thing is for sure, he's a fantastic Swiss Army Knife of abilities, and his ability to Morph is well applied. I really like every version available depending on the circumstances involved. I hope you enjoyed this installment of Mechanically Inclined. For the next article I think I'll review what I'm going to call the "Wound/Repair" mechanic that appears on Adam Warlock/Magus and Sentry/Void. As always, suggestions are welcome.