The Future Is Still A little Fuzzy...
...but I see that as Wizard's begun promoting their November convention in Texas they've also brought us a larger image, albeit still a little fuzzy, of the Days of Future Past Action Pack, which will be hitting stores in mid-December, about a week before Supernova does. (Click on the image for a larger view.)
No dials are available for the new pieces yet, though I expect that promotional sneak peeks for each of the three figures (and whatever else they might have in there -- we know there is a Feat and a Battlefield Condition in there, too) sometime in October.
The shot makes it clear that the sculpts for the Rachel Summers "Hound" and the Colonel Logan are repainted (and, we're told, with completely new dials) versions of the unique Phoenix from Ultimates and Wolverine from Fantastic Forces, respectively. The Sentinel is a repainted and re-dialed version of the Sentinel seen a couple years back.
I have one of the Sentinels released earlier, and I'm thinking that I'd like to finally be able to have a triad of Sentinels (the way we saw them in the source story for this set), so I'm considering buying two of the Action Packs and then selling or trading off the extra Hound and Logan pieces somwehere down the line. Much depends on what sort of deal I can get, since the list price is $24.99. (Gathering Ground is taking pre-orders for $15.99 plus shipping... hmmm. Well, not something I'm going to dwell on tonight.)
Comments
The different dials and both the Feat and BCF cards are interesting me, too. I'm guessing we'll see some TK earlier in her dial than was the case with the earlier one. Maybe not up front, but early enough to make it more likely she can launch Logan at the Sentinel.
I'm presuming that despite Rachel being in her "hound" state she's meant to play alongside Logan -- otherwise a game using just the pieces from that box is going to be terribly lopsided.
I know Seth or someone mentioned the dial costs for Rachel and Logan, but damned if I can remember where or how much each was. We'll find out soon enough, probably by degrees. A little over 5 weeks until that hits, and a week after that Supernova will be in the stores, so between she action set, expansion, details on the 2099 collector's set and probably the "Cosmic" Doom mail-away, they have good deal of sneak peek material to go through.
Besides what's revealed from Supernova in the magazine spread sometime this month the whole set will be reported on by players by the evening of the 28th. All in all I'm expecting most of the set info to be spilled in October... not that I want to look prior to having pieces in hand.
...and I'm still not sure if I'm going to push to attend a pre-release.
But MTuttle has made remarks that pre-orders for this Sentinel were through the roof, so maybe they are taking for granted that dial previews aren't necessary.... -- grey_zealot
Their scheduling for release dates was shuffled, which might have left some plans in place from before the three week delay on Supernova. They likely weren't originally planning on hyping DoFP in detail until Supernova (originally coming out in October) was due for release.
Between the launch of Horrorclix, the very recent Mech Warrior expansion release, the problems with the collector's advantage club timetables and all of it tying into the sudden layoffs earlier this year I suspect they're running around chaotically. I don't have anything but the view from the consumer's side of it, but to lose an unspecified number of people when there's as much or more to do than there was before would at least seem to equal each remaining employee taking up more of the slack.
Since Supernova is the next, official release on the schedule it seems they're finally getting some time to focus attention on it and this other November release.
Then again, looking around the boards, I see that they're already busy (in house) laying out details of the next three Horrorclix expansions and when and how to announce the various Heroclix 5th anniversary celebration items for 2007.
Wizkids definitely seems to me to be an environment where people will burn out -- especially if they have to split some of their attention to messageboards and dealing with always contentious customers.