The Tease of Things I Don't Need

Another Clix update

(Will they never end?!)

As expected, Wizkids quietly slipped in a few more previews early this evening. The Fantastic Four is largely complete with the addition of the rookie, experienced, and the Johnny Storm "super rare" piece --- but so far, no veteran. It's been several hours now, so it's either an oversight and they've gone home, or they're holding out on that one for now. As you can see (and as we all expected) it's the same sculpt as we've seen for the mail-away LE piece, just rendered in a translucent form. Having seen the more fully painted version I have a much better sense of the sculpt, but the shot they decided to put up for the translucent one makes it look like a mess.

Many players will be happy to see on these in-set versions of the Torch he has the Energy Shield/Deflection he had in his Clobberin Time versions. This plays critically in many plans, because nearly everyone will be fielding these (at least the Fantastic Four-affiliated pieces; I doubt anyone's going to play the teamless rookies outside of the marquees) with his sister, the Invisible Woman, whose Defense he'll be able to copy. The Energy Shield adds 2 to his Defense with respect to anyone trying to hit him at a distance, so if one of the better versions of his sister is somewhere on the board, with a 19 Defense, he'll have a daunting 21 Defense against most clix trying to take aim. Parked over hindering terrain and it's 22. Even someone with an impressive 12 Attack Value would need to roll a 10 or better to hit that.

The higher Damage and Defense, slightly better AVs over all and the dual targets, nice spike in Attack Value (8) & Damage (4) on the last, Pulse-waving click on the experience version have made those generally better pieces. On the other hand, the CT versions have more Running Shot, and if one's counting on borrowing Sue's Defense anyway, for the lower cost the CT versions are still very viable choices, depending upon the build (number of points each team can build up to) and one's style of gameplay. Besides, chances are that no matter how appropriate it seems for a guy who's on fire, the new versions having multiple clicks of Poison - potentially doing damage to any opposing pieces with the bad sense to just stand next to these clix at the end of their turn - it's a power that's not likely to be worth much. Once a certain rules change goes into effect with the new DC base set, Icons, this September it'll be even less interesting for this type of character to have. [ie It's all but confirmed that flyers won't be able to fire out of a situation where they're standing next to an opponent(a situation referred to as adjacency), so if the Torch is next to an opposing piece he'll only be able to attack that piece, not anyone else in his range. We'll be back to old strategies of using low-cost pieces to tie up flying, ranged hitters like the Torch.) Still, hey, put Armor Piercing on these Torches anyway. That way at least the Poison will cut through any damage-reducing powers if the opportunity arises, and it'll come in potentially handy when hitting those clicks of Energy Explosion.

All that said, choices are good things to have.

The other piece they decided to slip in at the start of this holiday weekend (which I'll still call it, even though I'll have to spend most of my Monday in work...) is an odd-ball one. A middle-'70s creation of Jack Kirby, it's Arnim Zola.

A whack-job of a character, Arnim was ahead of his time in several respects. Leaving mere body piercers and other self-modifiers far behind, Zola was heavily into body modifications using mostly genetic engineering but also some electronics tech. Creating custom bodies he could switch his mind between (a trick he also arranged for the likes of the Red Skull and, depending upon how canonical some of the stories were, Adolf Hitler - yes, they saved Hitler's brain! ... or at least his memories and personality matrix) is both a hobby and a passion.

In clix form, they've tried to make him into a fairly stationary, situation-altering piece, which makes some sense. It's 82 points for an 8-click dial, single target, Range of 6 and Hydra TA on what is plainly a supporting piece. Completely colorless on the Speed and Attack slots, the first four clicks of the Defense have Toughness, the last four Mastermind. On the Damage they've given 2 Damage for the first four, 1 for the final four, and alternated Perplex and Probability Control in pairs of two each. Near the front of its dial it's possibly useful as a secondary attacker, but as mentioned above it's clearly a supporting piece, and with the flip-flopped Perplex and PC down the dial and the Mastermind on the second half he can take some hits and still be perfectly useful; a lackey or two he can shunt damage to can keep him from being taken out of the game.

Arnim Z's hardly a must-have piece in terms of gameplay, and on a small team that 82 points may be a great deal to pay for someone who's not likely to directly do any damage. Still, he can amp up a stat here or there with Perplex, force re-rolls with Probability Control, and directly or via wildcards supply the Attack Value-increasing Hydra team ability.