Here he comes to save the daaaaay!Okay, that's Mighty Mouse, but it does seem to capture the spirit of the Man of Steel Superman clix, the first bit of positive mail to hit me this week. (Actually, my eyes must have been bleary-tired yesterday, because the in-hand piece does have cartoonish eyes; almost vertical rectangles.)
Getting straight to the dial of this 200 pt piece, we see that we have a versatile, economically-designed Superman.
Some impressive stats, especially from the current designer (giving me some hope for what we'll see in Supernova), we have a Superman who's not only capable of dealing out respectable damage, he's also able to protect his allies with clicks of Defend on this first, and eighth through tenth clicks (it's that bright yellow.) The big finale trick here is that after making wonderful use of Superman, not minding if he takes some hits along the way, and try to get him back to his allies - preferably on his last click (when his Speed has ramped back up to 12 again, making it easier) and let him share his 19 Defense with them. If he and his team have done their jobs the remains of the opposing force will probably be unable to damage Superman and his pals. Let them laugh at the opposition... and even then Superman has the potential to deal serious damage to anyone who comes within 8 squares of him since his Damage ramps up to a 5 by that final click.
A Range of 8 and only a single click of Hypersonic Speed are where the points were saved over what was seen in the monster that is the veteran Icons Superman. The result is a piece that on several points I'd prefer playing over the 251 vet, especially considering what one gets by putting a 25 point Fortitude on him, to prevent his key powers from being Outwitted (and protect him from Exploit Weakness) and 26 points saved that can go towards teammates, or for extra protection spend 25 of them on Repulsor Shield to protect him from Force Blast, Psychic Blast and Ranged Combat Expert... and still come up with a point to spare.
Without taking powers into account -- and that's definitely no small discounting -- here's a comparison of the straight stats, looking at the averages for each:
Not bad. Again, Icons Superman has that 10 range, three times as much Hypersonic Speed, loads of Ranged Combat Expert and an extra click of consciousness, but then again the Man of Steel has some Charge in there along with three clicks of Flurry to really pound on anyone next to him, and generally keeps better values on all but the Damage, and there the difference is tiny. There's little contesting that Man of Steel is not only more likely to be able to damage an opponent on his final clicks than the Icons version will, but he's not only better able to evade damage he can share that defense with his pals.I'm not suggesting pitting one against the other, the Icons version has much more of a blast-and-run at range capability, and could wear MoS down while staying out of harm's way. I'm just looking at their relative utility to a team.
The Man of Steel's set up to deal wonderful amounts of damage to an opponent, especially up close. Perhaps letting him pick on a lesser target or two beforehand, he's someone to have go after the major hitter on an opponent's team. Since pushing him to get the most out of him on the way to his late-dial protection of teammates, 10 points for Shellhead wouldn't be out of line although it's important to remember it won't work while he's on his Defend clicks.
This Supes also comes with a 9 pt. feat card that Superman or any other flyer:
LOOK! UP IN THE SKY!Those extra two points of speed can help get him where he's needed.
Prerequisite: (Flight)
Choose a character
When the character is given a move action, modify its speed by +2 until the action is resolved.
A character assigned this feat cannot carry other characters and automatically breaks away from other soaring characters.
Okay, that's more than enough on this one.
I'm waiting on a few other things in the mail, but have little idea when any of them will be here. No, wait, I know three weeks of comics (including whatever I ordered that came out today) will be arriving sometime Saturday.
For, for me, though, I have some bills to pay and then a shower to take and attempt to scrub off the shame and stench of failure!
Oh, dear God... tomorrow's only Thursday?!
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Comments
Another n00b question: is there any mechanism that could allow an opponent to exploit the Lois Lane / Jimmy Olsen (or Olson as the case may be) / secret identity weaknesses? Or is that the intent of the Exploit Weakness you mentioned?
I mean, a player would be crazy to play a Lois or Jimmy piece if it existed, but with all the cards and pogs... somebody has to kidnap Superman's Pal and take away his signal watch.
I'd like to see an early Superman- the one with the "they had it coming" attitude when the evil-doers died as a result of his crime fighting exploits.
Or a Legion of DC gorillas?
Special scenarios are always an option, though, and so far we've been given bystander tokens for Lois, Jimmy, Ma & Pa Kent (separate tokens) and Perry White, I believe. So, there's fodder for someone to come up with a mechanic for allowing villains to "capture" a bystander... and then decide how to make it work. It's generally best to keep it simple and play it off the stats. The most obvious would be to lower a hero's Defense by 1 or 2, maybe. Maybe have the player controlling the villain get to roll a d6 at the start of his turn. If he rolls a 5 or 6 the target hero can't attack him, if he rolls a 3 or 4 the target hero gets a -2 to his Defense for that turn (until he's taken damage) or on a 1 or 2 the villain gets Mind Control against the target hero, as in "Go take care of Batman, Big Blue."
Exploit Weakness is that sickly yellow-green in the Damage slot that is meant to show that the character has some special power that will, in a close combat attack, cut through defensive powers to deal full damage. Think someone like Iron Fist, or - when they get around to making him - Karnak.
As for the Legion of DC Gorillas, we may get stand-ins to tide us over in Supernova as I understand we're to get the Red Ghost's Super Apes in the mix -- presumably all three handled as three separate sculpts in a single REV. Sure, only one of the three will be a gorilla, but the orangutan and monkey will have different powers, and depending on where they fall in the set it's likely there'll be extra gorilla sculpts to transplant.
In DC's Hypertime set we did get an REV of Gorilla Grodd, btw.
Well, a great deal's in how one decides to play the piece. The first expansion for DC (Cosmic Justice) brought us an alternate reality Superman where he'd landed on Apokalips and been raised as Darkseid's son. He apparently didn't develop his heat vision there, but he's designed to beat people to death with his fists. On his opening click, without picking up an object to pummel someone with, he can do up to 7 clicks of damage.
He was eclipsed by what became the Superman standard for a long while, the KC Superman in Unleashed, the set that followed. Here we had a Superman who was more mobile, and could not only strike from range but do considerable damage from there.
Most of the Superman versions are corralled under his set symbol, where you can see some of the earlier missteps. His Hypertime versions were extremely restrained (his rookie version couldn't even break through walls), and while his Worlds At War version stepped up from that he was still too calm and self-controlled a character to suit many of his fans.
More recent times brought in the Icons versions, the veteran in particular, a New Guy Night version who's picked up some stealthy tricks from working with Batman, and the Man of Steel I've spotlighted in this piece.
We haven't seen a truly early, old-school Superman, though, as he'd be more Hulk-like in that he leapt from spot to spot instead of flying... though it quickly and quietly changed to flight.
Geez, first I fall behind on the Superman robot, now this...
Where's my Hollywood movie check?
The info on it leaked earlier (someone found the ordering page weeks early) it was officially announced August 1st as part of "The Summer of Superman Continues!" (Go to the DC Page of DC Heroclix, scroll to and click on the "Previous DC HeroClix Headlines", select August and go down to that August 1st announdement. Blogger's started giving me errors with the link html and I'm not up to seeing what the problem is.)
There they also try to hawk those subscription "deals" for the Superman robots. (I haven't signed up for any of the subscriptions as yet; they're expensive and I don't really, consistently want any of their magazines.)
The Man of Steel is $6.99 + shipping, with a limit of 4.
This leaves me waiting for my "Snap" Wilson (ordered from Wizard), a few Sinister LEs I bought off someone on ebay, whatever 12 replacement pieces Wizkids chooses to send me in the Sinister figure exchange, and the GLCorps set.
The GLC set, that is, which we got to order last Wednesday... only to see them all, within minutes, turn into "Back Ordered" items because the Green Lantern sets aren't at the warehouse yet. Indications are they may not even be in North America, leaving some to wonder - depending upon when they arrive and what the first convention in October will be - if people not in the collector's club might end up getting theirs ahead of some of the people in the club.
We've been told that since this week is the one where the warehouse ships out the prize support packs for October events, between that and the odds and ends they're trying to clear up (clearing up problems and delays in some of the Venom orders, for one) even if they did have the Corps sets on hand they wouldn't be shipping this week. So there.
Ah, it's okay though. I don't have much time during the week to do anything with them, and having these things (along with the New Guy Night Silver Centurion armor piece in October) spread out will help fill the clix holes while waiting for Supernova.