The Tease of Things I Don't Need

Some more Heroclix info

Shot from another angle at Toyfair 2004, on the side of the box in the lower left hand corner we can see that Ghost Rider will be part of this set, too. So, that joins the blurry image I showed a couple days ago of versions of Captain America, Spider-man, Dr. Octopus and Wolverine (the last quite clearly in the "Ultimate" theme style) that boneyard was gracious enough to pass along. Also courtesy of boneyard is the latest confirmation of confirmed and rumored info on Ultimates. It's the first place I look for new info on the set.

It's been confirmed that despite the title it's roughly half mainstream Marvel Universe and half "Ultimate" versions. I'm hoping that in most cases the "Ultimate" version will look close enough to the mainstream for me to ignore the differences. From what we can see of the Spider-man and Cap, it looks as if it won't be too jarring for me.

As of this posting the only confirmed figs are "Ultimate" (yes, I'm always going to put that in quotes, because they've clearly chosen a terribly inaccurate word to describe these modern relaunches) versions of Captain America, Wolverine, Spider-man, Dr. Octopus and Storm, along with the 1990's version of Ghost Rider.

The set's due out in June, which is just where I was expecting a new Marvel set.

Directly before it, in May, will be Universe. (Thanks to Tony Collett for pointing out the Previews link, since it's much more convenient than the two, separate pages Wizkids uses to give info on the starters and boosters.) As mentioned in an earlier entry (or, if not, then in several emails...), Universe will be almost be composed of 126 figs, 6 of which will have new stats on their dials. The other 120 will be reprints, if you will, of figures culled for someone's idea of popularity from Infinity Challenge and Xplosion, the two, earliest, still in production Marvel sets of Heroclix. (An interim set, the first expansion for Marvel, was the Fantastic Four-based Clobberin' Time, which ceased production last August.)

In a "moderated chat" (a Q & A session where the questions were screened) concerning a recent announcment that Wizkids (the company that produces Heroclix) will begin officially retiring old sets from some tournaments, Director of Game Design Jon Leithusser said that the figures from Clobberin' Time had been excluded because while it "includes a ton of characters that are popular with the fanboys (and I mean that lovingly), but in most cases would be not well known to new players." The full transcript is available here.

Addition: The changes being presented have reminded several veteran gamers of changes made by Wizards of the Coast to their game Magic -- and few are saying this is a good thing. Slovman, from the Creation Matrix site, came up with a couple, clever, custom cards to express his reading of events:
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Meanwhile, the next DC expansion, Unleashed, is due out March 24th. For a fuller idea of what'll be in that set, see boneyard's current list of confirmed and rumored figs for Unleashed.