Miraclo Miles

Shadow Thief (Here's one I started to put together on the 24th, then it sat unfinished until today. Now I'll send it off before heading out to the second doctor's appointment of the day...) Friday brought designer's notes for Shadow Thief and, eventually, the dials. I'll leave it to Seth (at the above link) to fill you in on the character and what was in mind at each stage. I enjoy the sculpts, though with those arch enemy bases that experienced, in particular, is going to be difficult to turn the dial on without damage. I will note that the bright orange bases mark him as an archenemy of Hawkman , also in this set. Here's a side-by-side look at the three dials. (As always, click on it to see it at a larger size.) Mostly we're looking at a character whose primary angle is in evading attack. Stealth, Super Senses and, in the case of the experienced version, Shape Change all help to accomplish this. His most untouchable click is the first click of his exp...

Time for a Miracle (Quick, unrelated note: Recent silence has been mostly due to my being sick -- a head cold that is taking its damned time clearing despite antibiotics, probably due to general stress levels and a schedule that hasn't allowed me to simply take the time off to rest. These clix items require almost no thought - though some thought would likely prevent the errors, but it's such a trivial subject I don't mind - and upon seeing something new in the gallery this morning I decided to toss up a post.) A week from the release of Origin, the next DC set of Heroclix from Wizkids, they decided to show us the REV of Mr. Miracle. Mr. Miracle is one of Jack Kirby 's "Fourth World" creations, harking back to 1971 when "King" Kirby stunned many of us (there was no strong fan/industry press then, and I was 10 years old anyway, so what I knew of comics only came through the pages of comics) by jumping from Marvel to DC. Based in part on a fellow comi...

Origin: The Uniques While a couple of the details are questionable - two TAs that are obvious errors - the remainder of the Origin unique stats have been located. The thread on HCRealms is here , containing the link to the commercial site the info comes from. The best speculation is that the stats were pulled by a store from the purple-ringed uniques a pre-release venue would be getting as part of the participation prizes. Since we've already seen Johnny Quick, Sandman and the Golden Age Starman, I'll get to the remaining nine, presenting them as they're currently being billed even when there's an obvious mistake. I'll toss in some comments along the way, but the moment doesn't permit me time to give each a detailed look. Being one of those people who tends to eat the least favorite things on his plate first - to get them out of the way - I'll start with a character I frankly don't care one bit about. A legacy character, a replacement one or one mandate...

The Dark Knight Cometh Sometime within the past day or so Wizkids uploaded the dial for the convention exclusive Batman - The Dark Knight . We didn't notice because it was retroactively included as part of last year's Collateral Damage set. At this year's conventions he'll be free to anyone once they've spent $50 at the Wizkids booth on other items. Rather than look at the dial in isolation - though I'll talk about it that way - I decided to at least present it as part of a 300 pt. team with the previous piece in that set's numbering, The Man of Steel . Quite a pair. The Superman TA provides Batman with a few advantages over nearly all of his other versions, all involving hindering terrain. Essentially, he gets to ignore it when it comes to movement or attack -- yet, he still gets to take advantage of it. On any of his clicks he can move at full speed from and over hindering terrain, while still gaining the Defense boost (+1) from range and the ability to u...

Well, at least someone won in the Civil War No, I haven't seen this week's comics yet, as this week's comics won't make their way to me until probably March 3rd, though I'll likely get to read a borrowed copy of Civil War #7 tomorrow. However, tonight I came home with some cool items from a local venue's Marvel Civil War-themed tournament. Short story shorter - because I'm tired and want to do a few other things before dropping off to sleep - I came home with: A Nathaniel Richards LE While not Kang, despite the sculpt, this is the time and reality-traveling father of Reed Richards - the Fantastic Four's Mister Fantastic. Starting with an 18 Defense with Mastermind, a 10 Speed with Phasing/Teleport, 12 Attack Value with Energy Explosion and a 3 Damage with Ranged Combat expert, this 167 point piece also has the Minions of Doom wildcard TA. Having an 8 Range like the rookie and veteran Kangs, but only a single target it's a less martial piece than...

Something Quick Overnight Wizkids added Johnny Quick's dial to the Origin Gallery . A clever dial. I was wondering how much Hypersonic Speed we'd get for 77 points - especially with a Probability Controlling TA thrown in. As it turns out it was much more than I'd expected. Seth's given us a dial that nicely reflects a villainous, junkie speedster. Most of the savings appear to come from no actual damage reducers - just means of helping him evade being hit - and a buried, un-powered click in the third slot, between doses of the drug that grants him his speed. Four of his eight clicks have Hypersonic Speed, half of those with a 3 Damage and the other with a 2. His two leading clicks have the Speed with a useful 10, Energy Shield/Deflection and a 16 Defense (making it 18 at range) to help him evade hits while he's getting into position, and a reasonable 9 Attack Value. He comes to the game already having been on his latest dose for a little while, so he's not at h...

Occupations & Amusements Back to work today. Comics I was originally expecting Saturday, having finally emerged from the blackness they disappeared into last Friday morning, arrived here just a few minutes ago at about 6:50 PM. That they would have been more helpful and welcome during the weekend is a given, but then again I spent the ramp-up line towards the middle of the weekend jumping out of my skin and much of the downside doped down by antihistamines that I don't know if I would have been up to concentrating even on that. Still, they would have worked well for much of Monday. I'm irritated with myself for forgetting that Heroes was on last night. Since the Friday night repeat was unceremoniously dropped from SciFi's schedule a couple weeks ago I'd been catching it Mondays, but this time I simply forgot. Presumably NBC temporarily put the kibosh on the same-week rebroadcasts of the show in order to get more people back to watching/TiVoing it on Monday and reta...

The Monday Night That Feels Like Sunday President's Day is almost as dead as those it's named to honor. I lost so much of the weekend with a skin flare-up, reacting to it and getting it under control, all of which meant going from being too distracted to think to too drugged out to stay awake and alert for long. Of course, it always seems to be something. No amount of time off will be adequate so long as I still have to go back. A common complaint, but I see my situation as different in some fashions I'm not free to discuss with anyone. I've disconnected from pretty much every news source for the weekend, so... have we invaded Iran yet? I'll catch up tomorrow morning. Where's that civilization-ending meteor when I need it? Crypt Leak sent me a link to a Turkish oddity from 1973. If you're interested in seeing the rest of it (it's been uploaded in 9 parts) then follow it back onto YouTube. I was nearly to the end of part 1 before I saw how familiar it al...

Odds & Ends Again (Cleaned up, corrected and mildly expanded the following day, when I'm less addled and once I've seen some of the official rulings.) A little mid-weekend surveying. A skin flare-up's left me terribly uncomfortable. I'm finally a little under control, but the meds have me disoriented. I made progress on my next zine for Legends. The MCs are under way. I would have gotten much farther but a creative challenge from one of the members took me down a path that burnt more time than it should have. I took care of most of the comics organizing and bagging, though as I contemplate moving some of these downstairs I'm faced with a much larger mess. Once bagged, though, stacks of comics become a tower of planes with low friction. Whee! Thanks to DC I could even do a 52 Pick-Up joke. I could, but I won't. No new comics arrived yesterday, so I know the drill. Presumably sometime tomorrow they're emerge from the ass end of the Windy City and show up ...

On a Saturday... Small things happening or expected to happen near and farther away. Legends #121 arrived in the mail, almost perfectly timed and matched to my mood for me to dig into it and get the bulk of my next zine done. In the mix is a fun, April Fools'-themed project Grant Schreiber's brought back this year, where he chooses comics the world forgot - comics he picked up along the way on the cheap, which he thought little of - which are randomly mailed out with the issue for us to rework in any way we wish. FedEx is scheduled to bring me the past three weeks' comics, though the package has dropped off their online tracking software following a departure from a Chicago hub at 8:51 yesterday morning. Several hundred miles South of here two people are suffering the consequences of letting the kids select the movie . Hopefully for them it'll have more going for it than I expect. Definitely geek activities planned for part of today, as - I've picked up 200 c...

The 25 Million Year Leap (This one's for Mark .) Yes, a roughly 25 million year-old frog, encased in amber . The main shot I used in the header is a different example from down in the Dominican Republic, but appears to be the same species and approximate age as the one found in Mexico. It was a larger, clearer shot than the one used in the linked article.

Fooled Me (updated) Strangely, this week's official sneak peek has turned out to be Animal Man , not M'onel. I'll let Seth explain himself . Oddly, upon seeing the dials up I realized that this was one I'd forgotten to include in yesterday's visual guide, so I've popped that poster shot up top. Here's the REV comparison: Animal Man's gimmick is that he can "borrow" abilities from the animal kingdom, which more accurately means that he duplicates them. Ranging from 46 to 75 points, we get to see a range of interpretations. Even just in terms of Speed modes: The rookie is has aquatic abilities and is marked by the Dolphin symbol. The experienced is given a standard, grounded boot symbol, though the leading clicks of Leap/Climb provide the mobility. The veteran, more fully connected to his array of powers, has flight. All three versions demonstrate that Animal Man is a close combat fighter, which will give some players pause in picking him beca...

Origin: A Visual Guide Someone came up with a case poster for Origin, so I'm taking a look at what we hadn't seen prior to this. First in this at least roughly alphabetical guide to the hitherto unseen sculpts from Origin, we have The Atom . While hardly made to scale, it's nonetheless a nice piece from what I can tell; the shot's one of the blurrier ones in the bunch. The presumption is that the rookie and experienced will be Ray Palmer, while the veteran will be the "All-New" Atom Ryan Choi, but that's not confirmed. Given that Ray Palmer is supposed to be both a brilliant physicist and an effective superhero there's some concern as we look at the point costs for the REV. The rookie Atom is a mere 24 points, exactly half the cost of the rookie Ant-Man . Of course, it could just mean that Marvel scientists are smarter than DC scientists. Just a thought. Next are the Blackhawks , adventurous fighter pilots without a country, who entered World War ...