This was a fun team...

This was a nice casual 300 point team. DOFP Wolverine is amazingly good.

HEALING FACTOR: Wolverine can use Regeneration. When he has two action tokens, he can use it as a free action.

His healing trait is excellent and exactly comic accurate. Throw him in the middle of your opponents and let him go. If he gets hit, he can regenerate, or better yet, he can attack someone, get the second token and then regenerate for FREE.

Add in the AVX Phoenix Force and he has Invulnerability. I did exactly what I advised and he charged right into the enemy and started slicing and dicing. He took a shot or two and on my next turn, he attacked again and then healed up to his first click.

The DOFP Nightcrawler is also a lot of fun to play, With traited Combat Reflexes AND Energy Shield/Deflection, he's hard to hit. Precision strike means he will do some damage so he can almost be as reckless as Wolverine.

ASM Spider Girl is really a lot of fun.

This is her Special Power:

RESCUE THE INJURED: Spider-Girl can use the Carry ability, but only to carry a friendly character that's adjacent to an opposing character. When she does, after actions resolve, heal the carried character of 1 damage if it's adjacent to no opposing characters

For 41 points and a push, you have a 10 AV for 3 Damage click that can grab one of her teammates and carry them away from the battle and heal them one click. I've used her a couple of times and she is always well worth her 41 points.

The Spider Man set is when I first got hooked on Heroclix so there are a lot of figures from the set I like, but there are some really nice figures in that set.

How I went from building a fun team to a 14 AV, 7 Damage in one shot...

I try to build competitive teams that don't suck all of the fun out of the game. I'm not playing Heroclix to win at all costs. I like to win, of course, but would much rather lose a fun game than win a game where the other guy is unable to do any damage.

That being said, I ended up playing a team where one character was able to attack with a 14 attack and 7 damage....

Last week at our local shop, it was announced that this weeks tournament was going to be 600 points, Silver Age, no team bases allowed; in other words, just about anything goes.

One of the guys, who had just returned from Comic Con, said he may be tempted to play his new Zombie Galactus. Youch!

That statement stuck in my head all week but I wasn't sure I was going to make it this week. Friday night, I sat down and looked through the units section to see if I could build a team that could be fun but stand a chance against Zombie Galactus.

At 400 points, Zombie Galactus has an 18 Defense with Invincible.

I also knew that a couple of the regulars would pull out their usual powerful teams, so I decided to look through my pieces and see what I could come up with.

I have been wanting to play some of the pieces from sets that have recently come out but haven't been able to since new sets are being blown out monthly, for example, I am dying to build a team from the Captain America: Winter Soldier set. The synergy there looks like a lot of fun, but decided to pass as I'd need some big damage if I was going to face a Colossal. Plus, I figured I wouldn't run up against a theme team ( I didn't) so using the Black Widow wouldn't add much.

I thought of using WOL to build a team, Weaponer is fun, but decided not to use him. I always end up trying to use new figures, or at least build most of my team from figures I haven't used before.

So, I decided to check out the Wolverine and the Xmen set. I hadn't used much of that set (well, I've used Shatterstar and Korvus quite a bit but not recently...) and remembered a trick that was used on me back at a Fear Itself Tournament involving Valkyrie being placed in a spot where a friendly character had been KO'ed.

I had also seen a post on HCRealms where someone used WXM Magik  to teleport acorss the map carrying a Pog. The Pog would be KO'ed and Valkhyrie would be placed there, ready to attack.

And the cool thing was I haven't used FI Valkyrie or WXM Magik. They were in!

While looking at the WXM set, I saw Fantomex. When WXM came out, I used him and he did well, but didn't use him correctly and then it became evident how nasty he was so I never ended up using him again. I added him to the list, especially since he is a favorite of one of the local guys who plays powerful teams.

I had also read about someone that used DP Black Talon to mind control Shatterstar to port next to the enemy which would then mean you could use Shatty to Flurry and BCF on your first move(assuming your opponent went first).

So, I was thinking you'd be able to have two attacks on your first move, hopefully catching your opponent by surprise.

But, I kept working on my team and checking the units section and then had some evil inspiration and this is the team I ended up playing:

WXM Magik 102 pts.
FI Valkyrie 130 pts.
WOL Despotellis 30 pts.
DP Weasel 27 pts.
AVX Scarlet Witch 100 pts.
WOL Entity 25 pts.
WXM Fantomex pts.
AVX Phoenix Force pts.
FI Old Woman 3pts.

In one word: brutal.

Here was how the team played:

Magik would use her special to 'port out carrying the Old Woman and Despotellis, and the Old Woman would take the one damage and be KO'ed. Valkyrie would then use her special to move to that spot and attack.

Fantomex would have placed Eva and sometimes Eva was able to move up close enough to outwit before Valkyrie attacked.

But Fantomex was just nasty with what I played. He had the Entity so I'd replace his 3 damage with 4 from Entity. Then with Weasel's cool enhancement, he'd already be at 12 attack, 5 damage. Scarlet Witch would then perplex him  up by one, and his Ranged Combat Expert would add to whatever was left. Also, depending on where the Phoenix Force was, he was at 13 Attack, 7 damage or better.

13 attack, 7 damage. With two probs from Entity and Scarlet Witch.

I didn't lose but I didn't feel too guilty as some of the other pieces played were:

Brother Voodoo and Iron Pharoah (on the same team!), Fantomex, Black Lantern Anti Monitor, Con Ex Impossible Man (who is quite cool and very comic accurate, but still it counts, right? It is a Con Ex!) and Con Ex Hulk and Red She Hulk.

Here is my team:

And here is Tony's team, this was the first team I faced today, what's funny is I kept hitting BLAM, and after dealing 14 clicks to it, we stopped the game and realized he had played him at 600 points! :)

War of Light Month Two!!

Our local shop had the War of Light month two tournament today. The build was sealed, 300 points.
I pulled:
White Lantern Ring
007 Blue Lantern Recruit
009 Controller Construct
011b Hal Jordan (blue) *2
013a Romat Ru
019 Bedovian
027 Graf Toren
035b Sayd
043 Hannu
063 Entity!!!
I pulled an Entity in our first month, too. I couldn't believe it and felt a little bad noone else has gotten a chase.
I decided to play:
Bedovian with Entity
Hannu
300 points exactly.
There were 9 of us but one of us left after opening the boosters, he had pulled nothing but dupes so he decided not to play.
So 8 of us sat dawn to play. My first game was against:
Weaponer 135 points
Blue Lantern Recruit
Green Lantern Recruit
Orange Lantern Recruit
and Sinestro Ring
He TK'ed Weaponer out and attempted to pick up the ring and failed. He then sidestepped out of line of fire. I took my turn and for some stupid reason thought he'd try to pick up the ring again. Or something. I don't know.
He sidestepped back out and took a shot at me. He missed.
With a quick outwit from Hanu, Bedovian took a shot for five from Bedovian. Looking at the dial, that was the best move as hitting him with 6 would have knocked him onto regeneration.
Weaponer died the next turn and the rest of the team followed. If he had made that attack, this may have turned out differently. 1-0
The next match was against the best player in the shop (in my opinion). He played:
041 Parralax
Green Lanter Recruit
This was a close game but I lost. Running shot with a 9 range is painful. Single target pulse waves hurt, too. Hannu soaked up a lot of damage and Bedovian almost pulled out a win but Parralax won. 1-1.

The next game was against one of the long time regulars and he is always fun to play against. He played:
Despotellis
Weaponer at 135 points
Karu-Sil
He had played Karu-Sil last time and I was aware of how painful the pack could be, but they actually have not done too much damage to me. He actually had two rolls of six on one attack in another game, that was a nice turn :)
I noted he wouldn't get Despotellis near me, thinking Bedovian and/or Hannu would KO whoever was carrying him before he got to me. I moved my team out and he TK'ed Despotellis next to Hannu!
I completely missed that, awesome move. Hannu attacked  and hit but he theme team probbed it. I rolled again and hit which was TTP'ed again. So Bedovian had to push and KO'ed Despotellis.
He had pushed for the TTP and all of damage plus losing Despotellis put him behind.
It was still a good game. The pack got a nice attack off on Bedovian, hitting all three BCF rolls but I only took one click total after reducers.
Weaponer and Karu will KO'ed and that was the game. 2-1
The next game was against a Blue team including Brother Hymn
Brother Warth
Blue Hal Jordan
One of the players came with his Dad, who used to play 10 years ago, but he picked it up pretty quickly. We took our time and helped him with rules and everything else.
This was a fun game but I won and ended up 3-1 and got second place!

Learned something new today...

At our local shop, the War Of Light month 2 tournament was delayed for a week and this week was going to be a Master Mold scenario, 1200 points, divided up by the number of players that showed. Several of the locals were not available so it was me and a newer player against Master Mold.

I am not a real big fan of Collosals but had not been able to go to the shop in the last two weeks so I went anyway.

I'm glad I did, it was a lot of fun, but the game took forever and it was called as the shop was about to close. Plus, I had never played against any Sentinels and we went up against Sentinels from GSX, CW, DOFP and of course, Master Mold.

I ran a team of DP 019 Deadpool with the Hammer Time word bubble, DP Banshee, DOFP Moira McTaggert, DP Speed Demon and SLOSH Bizzaro at 175 points. I also threw in a Book of the Skull with 7 hammers (any one have a spare Skadi's hammer?!)

Bizzaro is incredible, but we all know that, right? And every time I use Speed Demon, he rocks. I love his special power and if he gets hit once, he usually ends up on an even more powerful click, where he can make two attacks when he uses Hypersonic Speed, plus his Special: Speed Cyclone Uplift.

Oh, the new thing I learned today? Well, I was unaware that force blast could be used in conjunction with ranged attacks. I had looked at the power but it always said it was used against adjacent characters. In the 2014 PAC, it states ' When this character hits with an attack, you may choose that it generates knock back if it doesn’t already.'

So, very cool. It gives some characters some awesome new options. AVX Cyclops becomes even more devastating with running shot and force blast in the same turn.... I'm going to run WMX 37a Magneto and see how many people he can smash into walls :)

In the right situation, the updated Force Blast could be a game changer.

Avengers Vs X-Men month three.

Our local shop is very new to Organized Play and since we have a fairly small player base (6-8 players usually) we ran into some scheduling problems. It was set back for me, then set back again for another player and set forward for yet another player. Finally, it was decided on a Thursday that the tournament would be on that Saturday.

Yikes,

Time to plan. This tournament was tough to plan for as most of our games lately have been for 400 or more points and it's easier to plan a team with more points.

This month was 300 points, must use at least one figure from AvX starter.

From Month two, I knew I'd run into AvX Cyclops, whose Special Power is murder:

I CAN STILL SEE THE DREAM: Improved Targeting: Ignores Blocking Terrain. When a ranged combat attack resolves, any blocking terrain along its line of fire to the target is destroyed; May make a ranged combat attack when adjacent to an opposing character. So, add in running shot and an 8 range and he can hit you just about instantly. The only defense is stealth, I will go over AvX Month two tomorrow but the Power Plant with the Black Light Ring works well against Cyclops.........but you have to clear sometimes. I decided I was going to build my team to counter Cyclops, but to also be a pretty good team for my venue. This is what I came up with: AvX Scarlet Witch 100 points: Probability Control, Perplex and support on the first click. I love her. I also forget she can actually attack with a decent 10 AV, Precision Strike and 3 damage. 1she also has an impressive 8 range. Not too bad at all. SLOSH Timber Wolf. 97 points. Timber Wolf was my favorite Legion of Super Heroes member from when I was a kid back in the 80s. Well, Wildfire, too but I haven't gotten him yet. Timber Wolf is nice, with an 11 movement with charge, 11 AV with BCF, 17 Defense with combat reflexes and 3 damage. If he can get in close, he can do some damage. He also has the animal keyword. So, the next guy on my team: ASM 031b Alyosha Kraven He has a nice dial but his special powers put him well over the top: Special Powers GULYADKIN: As you place your force on the map, you may place in your starting area a Gulyadkin the Lion bystander token as described on the back of this card. As long as a friendly Alyosha Kraven is on the map, Gulyadkin the Lion can be given one action as a free action. ANIMAL INFLUENCE: If Alyosha Kraven was given a non-free action this turn, you may give Gulyadkin the Lion or another friendly character with the Animal keyword a move action as a free action. I added the Book of Skulls but do not own Splitlip. I always look at getting the scenario pack but always decide not to since if I buy it, it won't arrive before the next Saturday's Tournament. Yeah, that's not logical, and doesn't make sense. I'm going to buy the scenario before the next tournament. Trust me. Anyway, my plan was to alpha strike Cyclops, so he wouldn't smear my team all over the map before I could reach him. Alyosha was going to give Timber Wolf a free action move. Timber Wolf would carry Scarlet Witch 9 spaces, then he would charge and smack Cyclops, hopefully for 4 or more damage. Not a bad team, and it did well, I ended up going 2-1 and won the LE: Phoenix Hope!! I also did well enough that I'm in the running for the overall grand prize! Here's what I came home with from the tournament:     

Went to my first Bizarro Tournament....

It was a 444 point Modern Age, resources allowed. I decided to use the Power Plant, as I think it is really very powerful, it just takes a little more planning.

So since the Bizarro format means you start on the last click and work to the start, I started looking for figures with really nice end dials. There were a lot:

ASM Spiderman 2099 - Cool stop click could do some big damage

WXM Spiral - Has a nice values the entire dial, even post watch list.
WXM Kid Omega - The Phoenix Force clicks are awesome.
WXM Silver Samurai - Has a nice dial.
WXM Strong Guy - Really wanted to use him as he is of my favorite comic characters and I thought if he got hit once, he'd be a beast.
WXM Black King - 11 click dial and his last click has 6 range Hypersonic Speed, 12 AV, 19 DV with Impervious and 5 damage with Close Combat Expert.

And for DC:

TT 037 Dr, Light - I knew I was going to use him. On his second to last click, he has a stop click:

YOU...TOOK...MY...MIND!: Dr. Light can use Super Senses. If this click is revealed due to taking damage from an opponent's attack, stop turning the dial, remove all action tokens from Dr. Light and Dr. Light can't be targeted until next turn. This power can't be ignored. So. He gets hit for a lot, he will take one damage and then you remove his tokens and he can't be attacked again that round. Next round, he has an 11 AV, with P/pb, 4 damage with Outwit.... It was nice. I used Dr. Light, Black King and Silver Samurai and had a lot of fun. To be honest, the Black King did the most in my games, but I was worried. In the first game, I 'burned' a ring to get plus one to my combat stats, which left me with a 13 attack, 20 defense and 6 damage. I needed a 4 to hit. I missed. He missed his next attack, too. But then he went on a tear and did massive damage. The second game was against Omega Batman and IM3 002 Iron Man. Omega Bats had the utility belt. The belt was misused as the other guy never moved the dial but it was still a fun game. Iron Man went down to a massive attack from Black King and a follow up attack from Silver Samurai. Dealing with Omega Bats in Stealth was a problem and it came down to Dr, Light and Black ?King trying to hit. Black Kind had taken a massive shot and had a 9AV.  Using the Power Plant kept my team in it, the Black Light ring is very nice, but the Power Plant is really geared to a ranged team. I had burned the Vortex Beam ring and could have really used the power it granted to knock Omega Bats out of hindering. (Is that legal?) Anyway, Omega Bats ended up winning (although he was using the belt without rolling it and had prepped it to the +2 slot...) All in all, the games were still a lot of fun and makes me want to play both Dr, Light and the Black King again. I've used Silver Samurai many times and he's fun to use. The power plan is really quite powerful...maybe as powerful as the Book?

HCRealms trading...

I hade made around 20 trades on HC Realms and usually just post what I want to trade and what I'm looking for. Sometimes, I get offers for stuff on my H/W list and have gotten some really good offers.

I don't haggle. If it's a good offer and the value is pretty close, I'll usually take the offer. I was lucky enough to get one of the newest hot pieces, an Electro Blast ring, from the Invincible Iron Man set. A week or so after I got it, the 'value' of it blew up to crazy values. It is going for $25-35 on Ebay and has gone for over $50. I also had pulled the other hot ring, the Black Light ring and so offered them for trade on HCRealms.

I got an offer pretty quickly, offering several Super Rares, including GSX Sinister and JL 52 John Constantine, WXM Mikhail Rasputin. He then offered many of my wants from older sets, and also stated he would go through his collection to make sure he had others items from my Wants list.

All in all, I was offered 28 figures for the Electro Blast ring. No haggling, no counter offer :) I happily agreed to the offer. In the messages we passed, he said that what he was offering were duplicated he had and wanted to completes his ring collection.

So, I traded this:

 

 

for this:

 



Team Building for newbies, pert 2.

Our local shop had a tournament Saturday, 400 pts, Silver Age, for keeps. In other words, if you lose, the winner can take your team. The other requirement is you had to have a prime, super rare, limited edition or chase on your team.

Interesting.

I spent time going over my collection to see what dupes I could use to build a fairly strong team. I was seriously considering using WXM Shadow King on Hope Summers, but decided to hold onto that idea for an OP tourney, I think that team would be painful to play against.

So, I also decided I'd try to use figures I had never used before. I've been trying to use more of my collection lately and have a lot of fun finding awesome Clix I had overlooked previously (ASM Daimon Hellstrom, WXM Lillandra, etc)

I took a look at my collection of the Spider-man set. I have quite a bit of that set and many dupes (six Dr. Strange!!!!), I had never used the ASM Dr. Strange and decided this would be a good time to get rid of one of them if I lost. I kept looking at my team and ended up adding ASM 13 Frank Drake and 13a Hannibal King to the team and tossed in a CW Donald Blake.

Looking at the team I also realized I could use the Midnight Sons ATA. I had looked at ATA's before but like I have mentioned, we don't really play super competitive teams, People will use figures like Brother Voodoo, Superboy Prime or Fantomex but it's not highly competitive.

So, my first match was against a mish mash team of:

JL 056 Timetrapper
FI Monkey King
IC Firelord
IN 021 Johnny Alpha

He took the opportunity to play a lot of silver age figures and this was a fun game. He was not happy at the ATA I was using which is:

 

 

 

All three games I had to remind the other player that they actually couldn't make a ranged attack against my team, well, except for Donald Blake. He got smashed a couple of times. I had looked at the ATA's before but wow, did I miss that one?! Even if my three guys got based and took damage, chances were I could either TK the wounded to Blake for a heal or hurt the attacker enough to KO

him and then heal.

I ended up winning but it was a fun game. I offered to let the guy keep his team but he declined and stated he brought the team and was ok with losing the team.

The next guy I played ran a team of :

IIM 047 Titanium Man
CA 015 Red Guardian

The other player was a newer guy at our shop but not new to Heroclix and seems to run themed teams. This was a fun game but without being able to knock enough of my team off their first click and keep them off, he ended up getting KO'ed. I also think the sheer number of actions he gave up, 2 to 4, really helped me win.

This player had wanted the Time Trapper and after I made sure he had another Titanium Man, I kept him and gave him the Time Trapper.

The last match was against the best player in our shop, who also judges our OP Tournaments. He was running WXM Deathlok Prime and BSI 008 Vox Handyman.

This match was fun and eventually we maneuvered into position and his Vox Handyman moved in for an attack. He hit pretty hard, knocking Hannibal King onto his fifth click, which is pretty nice, 11 attack with BCF and Super Senses for defense. I rolled for attack and hit, and rolled a six for BCF. One shot the Vox Handyman!

The next turn, Deathlok was able to running shot into adjacency and use Sharpshooter to hit turn the tables in his favor. Deathlok ended up winning but that was a great match.

All in all, very fun games and the lesson to learn is use ATA's.

Was looking at my Heroclix figures....

and since our local shop had not received the Avengers Vs. X-Men starter sets, the format was Modern Age, 600 points, no resources or relics. Due to a thread on HCRealms, I have decided to try my best to use as many new figures on my team as possible.

The week before, I used ASM Franken-Castle, ASM Jennifer Kale, MOS Kryptonian Scientist and ASM Dr. Voodoo to great success. The team was rounded out by FI Serpent (the old guy, not the Colossal) and XP Destiny. That team rocked, with triple Prob Control, Triple Enhancment, and all the Penetrating/Psychic Blast. It was nasty.

So, this week, I was tempted to use the same team but decided I wanted to try some new figures, as I have several hundred now, but have only used maybe 100 or so. So, off to HCRealms I went to review figures I had.

I have realized my team building has gotten better by leaps and bounds as I play more games, and play more games in a Organized Play Tournament setting. So, when I go back to look at my collection, many times figures I had originally dismissed suddenly jump out at me and I wonder why I did not recognize the excellence of the figure the first time.

Anyway, was looking through the Wolverine and X-Men set, and read the comments for Warstar (not sure how I got there, as I do not have that figure) and was intrigued by the comments about his '17 range'....then I was really interested in finding out how Lilandra from the same set could grab him and place him in safety.

I had pulled Lilandra when WXM was released and dimly remembered some Trait she had but at the time, it didn't really matter as it only applied to Shi'ar....and I only had Korvus, Starbolt, some Guards and Lilandra. Oh, and the team base, which I never used and traded away.

So, here are her stats:

wxm052 R Lilandra
Team: No Affiliation
Range: 6
Points: 93
Keywords: Cosmic, Pilot, Ruler, Shi'ar, Starjammers, X-Men

12 10 17 2

8 10 17 3

8 10 17 2

7 9 17 2

7 9 16 1

6 9 15 1

KO KO KO KO

KO KO KO KO

KO KO KO KO

KO KO KO KO

KO KO KO KO

KO KO KO KO

(Special) Defend Me, Shi'ar Warriors!: Other friendly characters with the Shi'ar keyword and within 8 squares modify their attack values +1. Other friendly characters with the Imperial Guard keyword and within 8 squares modify their damage values +1.

(Attack) Help Me, Charles Xavier: Give Lilandra a free action and choose a friendly character not within 6 squares. That character can use Sidestep this turn. If that character has the Shi'ar or X-Men keyword, you may give Lilandra a power action instead and then place that character adjacent to her.

(Damage) True Majestrix of the Imperium: Lilandra can use Enhancement and Leadership. When she uses Leadership and succeeds, in addition to the normal effects, she may remove an action token from an adjacent friendly character with the Shi'ar keyword.

So, with a little more team building experience under my belt, I was floored. And then I immediately kicked myself for trading away the team base that had Gladiator!! I knew he was the heavy hitter in the Shi'ar Imperial Guard in comic books, and imagined he'd be the heavy hitter in Heroclix form.

But, I had gotten Gladiator in trade, the Galactic Guardians figure. Here are his Stats:

gg040 V Gladiator
Team: No Affiliation
Range: 5
Points: 195
Keywords: Annihilators, Cosmic, Shi'ar, Ruler, Soldier,

10 12 18 5

9 11 17 4

9 10 17 4

9 10 17 3

8 9 16 3

8 9 16 3

7 8 16 2

6 8 15 1

KO KO KO KO

KO KO KO KO

KO KO KO KO

KO KO KO KO

(Special) My Confidence is My Strength: Each time an opposing character takes damage from Gladiator's attack, place a Confidence token on this card. Give Gladiator a free action and remove any number of Confidence tokens from this card; Gladiator can use Perplex targeting himself once for each Confidence token removed this way.

I decided to use a Shi'ar Team which consisted of:

WXM:

Lilandra
Korvus
Starbolt
Oracle
Deathbird

GG

Gladiator


So, first click, Gladiator has a 10 range Hypersonic Speed and 5 range, 12 attack value and 5 damage. My opponent went first. Gladiator HSS'ed out, smacked FI Ms. Marvel, who made the roll for Impervious. So....... at this point, Gladiator was 2 spaces away from FI Ms. Marvel, FI Valkyrie and CW Captain America. My opponent was more or less drooling at being able to take three shots at Gladiator, especially after he noticed Gladdy did not have Indom.

But, Lilandra took a power action and yanked Gladiator back to my starting area and Oracle tossed up a barrier. The next round, Gladiator used Leadership and succeeded in taking a token off Lilandra, so she was able to move Starbolt back after he took a nice P/PB shot at Ms. Marvel.

The rest of the game, Lilandra was toted around by Starbolt, so he could benefit from Lilandra's bonus to Attack and Damage for Shi'ar and Imperial Guard keyword. Gladiator didn't need any more help and continued to do massive damage against the opponents team.

Actually, the entire team did well, Oracle even hit for some damage. I had used Korvus before (actually, at least 5 or 6 games, he's fun) and Deathbird and Oracle several times. But Lilandra's SP and bonuses were excellent.

So, if you haven't tried her, by all means, throw together a Shi'ar team and have some fun with the feather haired team.