Trade-Offs & Today's Biggie
[Heroclix, game mechanics, dial design, trading]
[Heroclix, game mechanics, dial design, trading]
All Heroclix items in this post, as indicated above.
Today's sneak peek is Rita Farr, whose vaguely pornographic superheroine name is Elasti-Girl. She's part of the seven piece Giants collectors' set they're unveiling one piece at a time on consecutive Fridays. They've been counting down from 7, and Rita's #4, the middle of this Brobdingnagian sandwich.The thing that struck me first was that they've decided to give her the Outsiders Team Ability/symbol. The game mechanic is one the average player is still getting used to, both because not many released characters have it and wild card pieces can't copy it. Given to a giant -- someone who can see over the heads of other players and pieces of debris -- the ability to keep an opposing piece from having any of its stats raised through any means makes her a potentially valuable asset, and something to make her 76 points worthwhile down her full 7 clicks of consciousness.
Speculation was that since Changeling/Beast Boy - who started out as an addition to the original Doom Patrol - only has the Teen Titans affiliation that this would set the pattern for Doom Patrol members. Somewhere down the line, we thought, there would be an alternate TA card to give the Doom Patrol pieces something special if a player so chose.
I'm not objecting to the choice they made -- this TA is an underappreciated power thusfar in a game where people routinely build teams to enable characters to get boosts to their stats left and right; being able to see the most likely recipient and block those options -- everything from Perplex to In Contact With Oracle and perhaps to Ranged Combat Expert and Close Combat Expert isn't to be sneered at. Of course, it'll also make her a big target, and just as she can see most everyone everyone can see her.
As for her dial, it's reasonable enough, though I'm still puzzled by any giant lacking Super Strength. We've seen Rita pick up tanks in her white-gloved hands, after all, and Super Strength (or Telekinesis) is a prerequisite for picking up any object in this game. Still, yeah, this was undoubtably the one of those compromises directed at keeping an otherwise soaring dial cost in check. Maybe the upcoming rules changes regarding giants will at least give them the innate ability to carry other non-giant characters. I doubt it'll allow them to carry objects, though, because then the giants who have Super Strength would be over-costed.
So far, so good with this set of giants. Four down, three to go: Atom Shasher, Colossal Boy and Validus. That should mean we'll see the last of them February 17th, two days after Collateral Damage hits the streets.
Sunday, a local venue will be having a Heroclix trading event, so tonight I'm planning to take a swing at pinning down which pieces I'm missing, putting a list together, and deciding how broad a swath of extras to bring with me and how best to quickly organize them. No major effort, I'll keep it under an hour unless I wander down some fun side street.
As so many of the people at the venue have only come aboard with the past few sets I'm hoping that many of the extras I have from much earlier sets will be a hit as people look to fill out teams and get characters that have been out of production for a while. While many of the early clix are lacking in move-and-attack powers, when compared to the average set of stats in both the recent Armor Wars and the impending Collateral Damage they're worthy additions.
Trading sessions can be irritating, of course, between the completely disrespectful, bullshit offers and those who want everything you have but having nothing you want. Then there are the inevitable pushes to only want the veteran versions.
Unless I get caught up in a game with someone I'll likely try to keep this brief - an hour or less - but I'll play it by ear. I'm not going to be looking for much -- unless there's someone looking to trade some LEs for five or six (relative) commons.
Earlier today I took a look at Wizkids' forums (unless you're signed in over there a direct link to the forum would be useless) and responded to a simple question -- Activation clicks: yea or nay?, and then asked us to provide reasons.
An activation click is a starting click on a Heroclix dial, generally meant to show us a character in their human form. Bruce Banner before he gets too angry or excited. Billy Batson before he yells "Shazam!" That sort of thing. From a head-on, surface-view perspective it makes perfect sense. However... the following is essentially how I responded. (I've expanded it slightly.)
As they're currently configured? Nay. Much depends on the character in question, but while it's ostensibly "comics accurate" it's only so in theory.
Most characters who transform are essentially independent beings from who they "transform" into. A battered Hulk or Billy Batson doesn't result in a weakened form of Captain Marvel or Hulk. Even with the Hulk, where one might argue (depending on the dial) that a few clicks of damage up front might land him on his best stats, it's still not in the least accurate given that we're on a countdown clock of clicks of "life".
Someone like the Black King or Absorbing Man should be almost impossible to really damage up front, and the possibility that either would be knocked several clicks closer to a KO by a single, initial attack makes little to no sense. Shaw (Black King) absorbs kinetic energy, so to strike him is to power him up. Creel (Absorbing Man) magically turns from flesh and blood to steel as soon as bullets firing at him (or Thor's Hammer) touches him. There's no real damage - wear and tear, whatever - going on from an up-front attack.
If anything -- and I say this knowing it could cause other, comics-inaccurate problems, too -- I'd say it would make sense in the case of all of the activation clicks to give them Impervious or at least Invulnerability - on that first click. No high defense -- in their human forms they should be relatively easy to hit -- but something to prevent (under most circumstances) seeing them hit with damage that sends them skidding several clicks into their transforemed dial.
I'd even be in favor of a new color or power marking that would simply prevent someone with an activation click from being able to take more than one click of damage, though I'd have to balance that with some chance (say, one in six?) that up-front damage could lead immediately to a KO. That way an opponent would think twice or more before taking a shot at them. They might be able to take a piece out, but they could also land him immediately on his most powerful click. Obviously, that works much better for most of the transforming characters (the various magically-transforming Captain Marvel family, Absorbing Man, etc.) than it would for someone like the Hulk who's generally designed to get stronger as he takes more damage.
As things stand now the activation click only fits in a loose, theoretical way and in most practical terms is a waste.
Almost needless to say, as is the nature of most online forae, I may as well have said nothing. I don't hang out there enough to have sufficient credit for anyone to read and respond to anything longer than a sentence or two. People are ignored or talked over, and by the second page someone else was offering part of my argument seemingly ignorant of my having said it perhaps a dozen posts earlier. While he was known enough to get a response I had to laugh as the person who did so rolled over the sense of it and simply restated his own, lame argument.
Is it any wonder why I don't want to go play with some of these people?
Still, I enjoy the pieces and the game.
Comments
Excellent post, especially since WK's site seems to be down. Annoying, though, that my prediction... they'll keep Atom Smasher veiled until the bitter, bitter end, because HE's the one we really want to know about... seems to be accurate. Not that I doubted it, but, still, sometimes its aggravating to always be right about other people's mean spirited impulses.
As to Activation Clicks, I find them to be mostly simply something one makes an effort to get the piece off of. To that extent, Double Time and Haymaker are both lovely, lovely things. Still, you're right; if one does six clicks of damage to Billy, one shouldn't do 5 to Captain Marvel. An obvious fix would be to say that, unlike other times when figs take damage, with an Activation Click (perhaps denoted, as you say, by a special color), the dial is clicked one -- and then, any powers that come up are immediately applied. Thus, if you hit Billy for 3 clicks, you click him once, Imperious comes up... and you stop. (Under my House Rules, of course, Billy/Captain Marvel could absorb up to 5 clicks of up front damage and stay on his first, CM click.)
In fact, I like that rule so much I may House Rule it into existence. Do 5 clicks to Bruce Banner, and you'll do one click, hit Toughness, subtract another click, so now there are three left... move the dial again, subtract another click for Toughness... it would certainly blunt the damage he's taking.
Yeah... I like it. I just hope I'm explaining it clearly.
The "I've mastered the strategy of the activation click" response was what was coming back from the pro-activation click sorts. At its worst was one arrogant SOB who typified those who didn't want the activation clicks as unsophisticated players, looking for an easy ride. Ah, aggravation.
Sure, working within the constraints of the rules players have had to adapt, so we've gone to Double-Time, etc. -- since most clix with activation clicks have a tasty Defense power waiting on that second click and a decent Defense value, paying the extra 10 pts for Shellhead's often a good companion so that when Billy rushes up to 10 squares into action and transforms into a JSA-affiliated Captain Marvel he may have two tokens on him but his 16 Defense is now 18 beneath his Impervious.
Since the point of my argumnent was that activation clicks were only conceptually comics accurate, failing miserably in the task beyond that, well, you saw perfectly well.
They had everyone ready for them to be shut down all of Thursday and possibly early Friday, and instead were down for only a few hours on Thursday. As soon as I saw the high fives being offered to their IT guys today over the unexpectedly brief down time, well -- if we saw that in a story we'd know a problem was about to happen, wouldn't we?