The Tease of Things I Don't Need

Mutant Mayhem Excess

The work week’s over, now the serious work begins around the house. As part of it will include outdoor Christmas decorations some of that is literal. A busy week, I didn’t bother to post anything about my case of Heroclix’s latest Marvel expansion, Mutant Mayhem (most recently discussed in early November - including some pictures), that arrived this past Monday. As I’m watching for word from one friend that his case has arrived and he's torn into it, it occurs to me that I may as well post something about what I've pulled so far, primarily in my case. (Update: Though it must have appeared after I shut down late last night/early this morning, he did report on his pulls and reactions. He had a pretty good case, too, in many ways similar to what I puled.)

The case wasn’t terrible, though I’d likely have a dimmer view of it had I not had the padding of having pulled a Loki from another (pre-case) booster pull along with several other more statistically common pieces. I must note for the benefit of at least one constant reader, that I did indeed pull two, experienced Man Things out of a couple of the boosters. Ba-DUM-dah!

My son Nick and I opened the case, moving through the levels and sorting as we
went. True to most of the case reports, almost all of the uniques and super rares were in the top layer, and the few that weren’t were mostly in the second. I believe there was one unique down on the third level. That’s something to keep in mind if you find yourself opening a case of MM and want to spread out the fun a little more; you may want to just
dump the carton on the floor and mix them up first.

I did have, as expected, the one giant figure (appropriately enough, Giant Man – though they didn’t make the right one…), eight uniques and four super-rares, so it does appear that WizKids has its act together. One aberration I’m going to try to get them to correct was one booster…which had two clix in it. It had four shells, but whatever was supposed to be the in the green and the white shells wasn’t there. (Just to clarify, in MM the uniques are in blue shells and the super-rares are in never before seen yellow shells. Yeah, yeah, I can feel your excitement from here.)

Okay… the uniques I pulled from this case were: Mimic, Fantomex (x2), Bastion, MODOK, Gladiator, Shadow King and N’astirh. (The last two are capable of mind-controlling up to three figures at the same time – not too shabby!) Fairly good, all in all, but as a spoiled brat I was looking for a Count Nefaria in the mix, too. Still, I have some items available for trade – from this set I’m currently holding extras of Fantomex, MODOK, and Donald Pierce (I'd pulled one each of those out of the first 4 boosters I bought), and am only missing Longshot, Black Queen and Count Nefaria… ordered in the reverse of my priority. Somewhere out there, eventually, will be some trades for me.

The super-rares I pulled were Alex (Havok) Summers (though the shot they show isn’t correct, since the super-rare doesn’t fly; they’re showing the experienced Havok), Peter (I wouldn’t even have to tell my mom who this is) Parker, Walter (Sasquatch) Langkowski
and Wade (Deadpool) Wilson. Added to the Simon (Wonderman) Williams I’d pulled during my weekend of periodic excess, I have 5 of the super-rares. I'm not out to collect 'em all, so these are just cool bonuses. I haven't compared and contrasted their dials with the standard clix, but I know that they at least have small but interesting differences in their dials.

Between the case and my other buys the only REV figs I’m still lacking are vet Wonder Man (damn!), experienced Firestar, experienced Bishop, and Tanaraq (vet Sasquatch.) The first and last on that list were the most disappointing to not have show up.

While I still believe the cards (this set includes Feat and Battlefield Effect cards - new game mechanics) were produced in the same quantities, I can see that I’m suffering from a sharp imbalance. While ending up with 7 Automatic Regenerations and 5 Haymakers, I only have one War Zone and White Noise… and not a single Ordinary Day - the card designed to trump any one of the other Battlefield Effects. That could prove to be a tough one to trade for. While I'm sure there’s someone out there who has 7 Ordinary Days and no Automatic Regenerations I suspect he’s going to find plenty of trade offers close at hand.

I’ve spent more than enough on this set, though, so except for the marquee (nutshell: Buy three boosters, create a 300 pt team, play it in three, successive matches) – when I’ll be buying three more boosters - any changes to my list will be due to trades. But for trades, I’ll need to find some willing traders… which is part of the reason I’m waiting to get word on what that friend’s case holds.